Naruto 1. Reincarnation?

_You never knew what you got 'til it's gone. _Uchiha Shuichi reflected for what had to be the millionth time as he drained the last of the god awful cheap grain alcohol that was all he could afford anymore from the bottle. He didn't blame Her for leaving him here alone. Things were different after her reason for smiling had been taken away. She couldn't bear it, and he could only bear it when he was too drunk to remember. The house had been so quiet for years. He never believed that he'd miss the noisy laughter and the constant tromping of feet that he'd so disapproved of and called a disgrace for years until a couple days after the funeral of its source.

The empty bottle had been the last of the alcohol that was left in the formerly well kept house, and normally he wouldn't have gotten off his ass to go and get more at this time of night, but he wasn't drunk enough. He could still hear the faint echoes of the laughter that died years ago. Sighing, he got up to go out not bothering with his coat despite the fact that it was February and barely bothering with his sandals. There was a 24 hour market that catered to the needs of the local Shinobi and the more nocturnal citizens a few blocks outside the Uchiha district.

You wouldn't know he had once been a proud Jounin of the Uchiha clan if you looked at him now. He was worn, haggard, a layer of fat covered the long flexible limbs that were practically as much a trademark of the clan as the Sharingan and there was a rather odd growth of hair on his face that was somewhere between stubble and an ill kept beard. He'd quit caring a while ago though. He'd quit caring when he'd found himself alone with only his arrogant pride to keep him company. That had quickly vanished when he realized that all he wanted was his wife who had gone on missions until she found one from which she would not return and his son who he had constantly called a disgrace back.

It had been as he was nearing the market that he had heard the laugh. He knew that laugh. It had been the laugh he had constantly scolded its source for acting in an UnUchihalike manner over. It had been the laugh of a boy he had called a disgrace for not developing as quickly as he wanted him to, for not being as fast as he wanted him to be, for constantly being distracted by trivial things when he had more important things he should be doing. It was the laugh of the son he had not appreciated until he had been lost. It had been clear as a bell, far clearer than the faint echoes that swirled about his home that he drank to forget.

Tonight was his son's birthday. It made sense that the boy would haunt him tonight. While part of him wanted to forget the laugh that had started up once more, hurry to the market, buy his booze, race home and lock the door, another part of him wanted to follow that haunting laugh to its source and maybe see his son one more time so he could tell him he was sorry. After hearing another peal of laughter, this one from just a little farther away, he made up his mind. Turning away from the market he headed after the ghost.

He found his ghost in an alley several blocks over. It was a toddler with a fuzzy spiky mop of blond hair that was chasing after one of the Uchiha Ninja Cats that usually lived with the wise and seemingly ancient Nekobaa at the supply warehouse a great distance from here. As he watched the cat butt its head against the child's legs and restart the chase when the child fell behind, he saw a smile he could have sworn he'd never see again. How could this small child have his son's smile, his son's laugh? His son had died long before it was born.

His son had died before it was born...

He picked the child up to examine it closer, ignoring its distressed squeals and its squirming in a futile escape attempt, even ignoring the fact that Nekobaa's cat was doing its level best to shred his legs to ribbons. It looked a bit like his own son had at that age, but small children pretty much all looked alike, so it was hard to tell. It had wide eyes like his own son but these were blue instead of the standard Uchiha black. Its chin was narrower than his son's, almost pointed though. If you kinda mentally removed the baby fat, narrowed the eyes and squinted a little, another face came to mind entirely, a face that was carved in stone just as his son's name was. In a way, it kinda made sense. His son had so admired his sensei in his last life, never shutting up about the man, it was only logical that he would want to look like his idol in the next.

It was funny really, the gods had seen fit to return his son during his lifetime and one of Nekobaa's cats had delivered him like a package of spare weapons. He was torn between joy and a feeling of unworthiness. He swore then and there that he would do better this time. He wouldn't try to push his son farther than he was ready to go this time. This time, his son would grow up happy and knowing he was loved.

"Come Obito, let's go home." he said as he carried the small filthy child who looked so much like his son's sensei back to the Uchiha district.


	2. Adoption

Shuichi sighed as he looked back at the orphanage he'd just exited. It was now early afternoon, and he was clutching a scroll, a packet of papers, and a three year old boy who was now legally his son with almost no idea of what the hell just happened. He had started out with the plan of washing the boy off, giving him breakfast and returning him to his undoubtedly poor family, hoping all the while that his cousins wouldn't get called in because he'd decided to keep the child overnight rather than frantically knock on doors at stupid o'clock in the morning until he found the right one. Now, he was the child's family, and a rather pathetic example of one at that. As for how he got into this mess, he guessed he could blame the cat who had apparently been payed to watch the boy by someone's dog. As both creatures were a type of summon that generally hung around for however long it wanted to, it wasn't nearly as odd as it sounded.

The headache he had woken up with that morning wasn't unfamiliar, but the scent of urine that had accompanied it that day had been. No matter how drunk he had gotten in the past, he had never pissed the bed before, and it was as he was getting up, trying to figure out the source of the urine smell since he wasn't lying in a wet spot that he spotted the blond child curled up at the end of the bed next to the source of the odor that had woken him.

As he stared at the small piss soaked child that was sleeping in his bed, he'd found himself wondering exactly what he'd done the night before. He vaguely remembered hearing his son's laughter and following it to the child instead of buying the booze he'd set out to get, after that everything became rather fuzzy aside from the memory of the unshakable belief that the child was his son's reincarnation that oddly enough hadn't faded entirely in the light of morning like most of his drunken flights of fancy were wont to do. Now the child whose gender he was somewhat uncertain of was in his home.

Even if the child really was his son's reincarnation, the fact remained that it had a different family this time around and he had no right to take the child from that family. He'd had his chance with Obito and he had wasted it, and since he'd wasted it, he would have to return the child to its new family who were undoubtedly worried sick about it since it had obviously given them the slip sometime yesterday. But, first things first, he would make sure it had a shower and that its clothes were at least somewhat clean before he returned it to its waiting family.

Plucking the still sleeping child from his bed which he would have to clean, disinfect, and air out later, he carried it into the bathroom while briefly wondering when the last time he himself had a shower was. Once inside the bathroom, he gently set the child on the floor near the far wall where it should stay while he turned on the shower, making sure the water wasn't too hot or too cold and thoroughly washing of the layer of whatever the hell that was off the soap. Picking the now awake child up off the floor, he removed its clothes and learned that it was a boy.

The boy squirmed uncomfortably when he put him under the shower's spray and tried to escape when he poured shampoo into his hair. He wasn't sure if he was doing something wrong or if this was normal behavior for small children because he'd pretty much left Obito in his wife's care up until the boy was almost old enough to enter the academy. He did have a couple of recollections of a naked Obito attempting to escape the house at bathtime, so it was possibly normal.

After finishing the boy's shower, making an attempt at handwashing the boy's ragged and filthy clothes, and somehow finding a clean towel in the recesses of a cupboard, he had scrounged around the kitchen until he had found enough edible food to make something that might pass for breakfast. When he had set the food in front of the boy who was still wrapped in a towel as the child's clothes were drying in the morning sun, the boy had given him_ that _smile.

_The wide unbecoming grin that Obito flashed at everyone from the elderly people he helped across the street when he should be heading to the Academy to the kittens he rescued from rain gutters had been tamped down and replaced by something small, hesitant, and tentatively hopeful as he handed him his report card._

_"You could have done better." he said after barely glancing at the boy's grades. The grades were something a civilian family might have found impressive, but were slightly below what was expected of a Uchiha._

_The smile vanished, and Obito turned, and was gone in a flash, undoubtedly crying under those hideous goggles his mother had bought him for his eighth birthday._

Why the boy he'd brought home the night before would give him that smile upon being fed, he didn't know. His behavior while eating was puzzling as well. When he'd first set the plate of what could barely be called breakfast in front of him, the had child grabbed something off the plate and took a few hesitant bites of it before pausing. Whatever the child expected to happen apparently didn't because he took a few more bites before pausing again. After whatever the child expected to happen failed to happen during the second pause, he was gifted with the sight of one of Obito's brighter smiles before the boy started wolfing down the food like there was no tomorrow.

After the kid was done eating and his clothes were dry, he'd dressed the boy and carried him outside where he promptly found himself face to face or rather shins to face with the ninja cat who had done it's level best to shred his trousers and the legs beneath them until he slammed his front door in its face the night before.

"Thank goodness, I thought young Pakkun was going to kill me for sure." the ninja cat said in relief upon spotting his small blond burden.

"Who is Pakkun and why would he do that?" he'd asked the cat.

"He's one of the Nin dogs that depressing gray haired person has a contract with. He paying me good money to watch the kid while he's away, and if anything happens to it..." the cat replied, studying the boy as if he were searching to make sure that there wasn't a bruise or blemish or even a smudge on him.

"So, the boy's father is away on a mission?" he asked the feline that was keeping pace with him as he made his way out of the Uchiha district.

That really would explain the child's current condition. Widowed shinobi that were lucky enough to have summoning contracts who had been unable to find someone to watch their children before they headed out on a mission usually made the mistake of having their summons watch their kids at least once in their lives. Summons may be as intelligent as humans or moreso, but there was the whole general lack of opposable thumbs and the often wildly differing ideas on how to raise one's offspring that made having a summoned creature watch your children a very bad idea. The tale about the shinobi who returned home to find his daughter gnawing on a dead rat in the middle of a large nest that had been built on the expensive antique rug that had been a family heirloom that had been passed around for decades clearly illustrated this fact. Considering that the boy's father had had a dog watching him for who knew how long, it was a wonder that the child hadn't been running around completely naked gnawing on a chew toy of some sort.

"The child's father is dead. I would assume that the mother is as well since he lives in an orphanage." the cat replied, pulling him out of his musings over why someone would be stupid or desperate enough to have a summon watch their child despite all the warnings about why you shouldn't do so.

"Really? Which one?" he asked. He should have asked the cat where the boy lived earlier, as it would save him a great deal of walking as he wandered about the village in search of the child's parents but he had forgotten to do so. Fortunately, they hadn't yet left the Uchiha district when the cat had mentioned the fact that the boy was an orphan, so his slip up hadn't gotten to the point where it would be embarrassing.

"The one with the mean bitch that chucks him out three nights a week regardless of the weather." the cat said. "Usually Pakkun drags him home through the dog door, but since the gray haired one and the pack are gone I was unable to get through the traps to get him into the apartment."

It had been after this enlightening discussion with the cat that left him wondering how an orphanage could be allowed to continue running if it chucked toddlers out into the streets at night in the middle of Winter and why in the hell the gray haired dog summoner who was willing to take the boy in three nights a week didn't just adopt the child and be done with it that he had followed the cat to the orphanage in which the boy lived. It was at the orphanage the cat had led him to that he'd learned the answers to both of those questions, and that answer was because the boy he'd brought home with him was one Uzumaki Naruto, container to the Nine-Tailed Fox.

He still didn't know how the hell the Administrator had talked him into it, but one second he was returning a small child to its caretakers where it belonged, and the next he was furiously signing papers in front of someone from Konoha's child welfare department knowing that if he stopped, he'd probably strangle somebody, most likely the Administrator. About a hundred signatures and fifty stamps later, he found himself outside the orphanage holding the child he'd been returning, a scroll that contained the newly named Uchiha Obito's new birth certificate and a packet with his copies of the adoption papers and a bunch of other official forms trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

As he stood there trying to figure out what to do with the kid whom he'd adopted on impulse without having first made any preparations or even consulting Fugaku like he should have, he briefly wondered if the gods had been punishing him. He'd been given a second chance with his son, but it had been given to him under what were probably the worst possible circumstances. Not only did he no longer have any edible food left in the house as they had finished it at breakfast, but the child only had the clothes on his back and some ragged stuffed animal that one of the caretakers had thrown at him when he'd inquired about the boy's belongings. He wasn't sure how he was going to correct this however, as he only had enough money from the "anonymous donations" that had been coming in for the past year to buy maybe one or two meals, and he didn't know when his little cousin who'd thought he was being sneaky about it was going to slip more money through his mail slot again. Considering the shape he was in, he probably wouldn't be able to get work above a very easy C since all Ds were reserved for active duty Genin, and he probably wouldn't be able to find a babysitter if he tried considering who the child that needed minding was.

The cherry on top of this entire pile of crap that he'd managed to get himself into was the fact that he had absolutely no idea as to how to take care of a small child for more than a few hours at a time, as he had left such things to his wife the last time around. This time however, he could not foist the child off on his wife because his wife was gone, having followed Obito into death.

It would seem that Obito had been born with the same rotten luck that had occasionally plagued him the last time around.

"Come Obito, let's go home." he sighed, worrying about what he would do with the boy. He would have to figure something out soon, and he would have to do it fast.

* * *

**Author's Note: **As for why Shuichi didn't immediately recognize Naruto as the container for the Kyuubi right away wasn't just because he was drunk but, because while Naruto was small and didn't get out very much during the day (though he did get tossed out some nights by one of the caretakers) he wasn't immediately recognizable to the entire village at large as he was when he got a little older. At this point, the villagers pretty much have a name with no face to go with it.

**Edited 4/12/13**


	3. A Hokage's Fury

Sarutobi Hiruzen was pissed. Actually, he was beyond pissed. He had left Naruto at the orphanage because it had been the only option he could see at the time despite the fact that the care that the boy had been receiving there had been less than quality. Danzo's proposal to take charge of the Kyuubi Jinchuriki had been gaining support, and the man would have tried using his moving the child to another location before he was old enough for his own apartment as an opportunity to press Koharu and Homura into supporting his taking custody of the boy since the Hokage himself clearly couldn't find a suitable home for him. The matter of Naruto's being tossed out three nights a week by a caretaker who was otherwise well qualified to care for Konoha's orphans over the past several months had been sorted out by Kakashi who brought the boy into his own home on those nights when he didn't have a pressing mission. As the boy was never actually seen taking Naruto home since he had his summons do the deed, there wasn't really anything to link Naruto to him and therefore possibly to his father. While the arrangement was less than ideal for Naruto, it was far better than anything Danzo would do to him should he get his hands on him.

When he had gone to the orphanage that day to make sure that Naruto was in reasonably good health - which was the best he could hope for in this situation considering the fact that feelings were still raw and it was a bit much to hope that someone who didn't know the boy's family would love the boy - he had learned that the boy had been adopted out the day before. While he should have been happy for the child, seeing as adoption by one of the clans was the best thing an orphan could hope for, he couldn't help but be deeply suspicious. For one, Naruto was a Jinchuriki, and because of that, things were never that simple, and for two, it had been a Uchiha who had adopted the boy.

Looking at the report that the agent he'd sent to investigate had filed, he could see that he had been right to be suspicious. Naruto's adoption wasn't nearly the happy occasion it should have been, the happy occasion that the Yondaime's son deserved.

After he'd learned that the boy had been adopted, he had sent one of his ANBU around in plainclothes to discreetly ask the questions that he wouldn't be given honest answers to, and the answers he got were disturbing. Apparently the orphanage administrator and the person in the Child Welfare department that he had put in charge of adoptions after the Kyuubi attack had left far too many orphans for him to deal with directly had given Naruto to some random drunk who had wandered in off the street. They hadn't even bothered to verify if the man actually had a house or whether or not the name he had given was actually real. They had just him sign the forms and handed Naruto over, not even caring about why the man would have been willing to adopt the boy in the first place.

Despite the fact that good orphanage workers who could raise proper ninja were hard to come by, heads would roll.

* * *

Itachi sighed. It was supposed to be his day off. He had planned on spending it with Shisui, far away from his little brother who had been begging him to play with him for days, but his plans had abruptly been changed. Cousin Obito's father had caught him when he had been about to slip his saved up D rank mission pay through the man's mail slot as he had done periodically since he had become a Genin. He really didn't need the money, and "Uncle" Shuichi really looked like he did. The man who spent most of his days sitting in his home quietly drinking hadn't been the same since he lost both Obito and his wife in the space of a year near the end of the war. He barely remembered Cousin Obito, but he remembered liking him a great deal. Obito had been one of the few older ones who were willing to take time out of their busy lives to play with the younger kids rather than spend all of their time training.

While he was trying to think of a reasonable explanation for being there since he knew full well that the man would not accept the money if he saw him give it to him because he still possessed a measure of the pride that the Uchiha were famous for, he had found himself agreeing to look after the man's new son. He didn't know how cousin Shuichi could have gotten a new son when he didn't have a wife, but he knew better than to ask.

Cousin Shuichi's son turned out to be a small blond boy that was about Sasuke's age who was named after Cousin Obito. Not knowing how to take care of him without the rest of his team around to help, he had taken the boy home with him rather than gone over to the pond where Shisui had said he'd be waiting for him. There had been something of a silver lining to the situation though, Sasuke had been so interested in his new cousin that he stopped asking him to play with him, opting to play with his new cousin instead. Seeing as his mother was nearby and both boys were occupied, he could train in the back yard while Sasuke and Obito played and still be watching his new cousin as he'd promised "Uncle" Shisui he would. Hopefully, Shisui wouldn't be too upset that he couldn't meet him today.

* * *

Inside the house, Mikoto frowned as she watched the two three year-old boys play under Itachi's somewhat less than watchful eye. Her husband's cousin had been going through a really bad patch since the war, and while the clan hesitated to label him as what they called the walking dead, that was pretty much what he was. For almost five years, Uchiha Shuichi had been waiting for the grave to claim him as it had the rest of his small family, and that was not a healthy home for such a small child to live in for any period of time.

Then, there was the child itself, the child who didn't really look like a Uchiha. Either the child really, really, took after its mother or some whore had decided to trick Shuichi while he was at his most vulnerable. While she could see a little bit of Obito whom the child was named after in the boy's wide eyes and the smile, there was the fact that those eyes were blue and the kid was blond. Shuichi had the black hair and black eyes that were rather common to the clan, and unless the boy's coloring was a kekkei genkai from the mother's side, having a blond child would be an impossibility for the man.

Either way, it didn't look like Shuichi had been prepared to care for a child if his clothes and those silly looking marks on his face were any indication. There were some things that Sasuke had recently grown out of that she could spare. She could probably even send a meal home with the boy if he got picked up before dinner as well. She would have to be careful how she went about it though, Uchiha pride would prevent Shuichi from openly taking any "charity" even if the only thing left to eat in the house was an old boot.

* * *

Across the village, Shuichi self consciously adjusted his ill fitting vest as he uncertainly stepped into the Mission Assignment office for the first time in years. The last time he'd set foot in here had been when he'd attacked the idiot who'd sent his wife out on her final mission and had to be dragged off of him by the Hokage himself. How the hell could that moron who'd given her the mission have not been able to see what she had been trying to do? Dozens of Death Seekers passed through those doors each year, and those who manned the desk were supposedly trained to spot the signs and turn them away before they did something that couldn't be taken back, as Death Seekers could very easily get their teams killed in their attempts at committing Suicide by Mission.

He needed a drink right now, but he didn't have the money for one as it had all gone towards last night's dinner and this morning's breakfast, and he'd need to get a mission if he were to correct that problem. The only sort of mission he could qualify for at the moment after his years of inactivity however was one of the milk run variety. Taking something that was a glorified D-rank wounded what was left of his pride, but he needed the money, and he needed something that could be done and over with before the evening was over as he seriously doubted Fugaku would appreciate it if he foisted Obito off on Itachi overnight.

**Edited 4/12/13**


	4. A Discussion With Fugaku

Shuichi had been panting and wheezing by the time he got back to Konoha from the outlying town from which he'd been assigned to ferry a package of questionable worth. Four years and some odd months of only leaving the house for food and alcohol as he burned through the retirement nest egg he'd saved up which should have seen him through to his death in old age had clearly taken their toll on him. Had he been as he was in his prime which had only been a few short years ago, he would have been able to get to Suna and back without being too out of breath.

As he made his way through the streets of the village on his way to report the successful completion of his mission and collect his pay, he noted that it was about dinnertime. He was reasonably certain that Itachi would feed Obito, so he wouldn't have to worry about that tonight, but he would have to do something about it soon seeing as there was absolutely no food in his home. He ignored the whispers or rather pretended to ignore the whispers that followed him as he collected his pay for his first completed mission in over four years.

The whispered comment of "That's really a Uchiha?" and its response of "It happens sometimes, they usually off themselves before they get like that though." followed him out the door and back through the village. Though he didn't let it show, each comment he heard stung, wounding him a little more each time. He really didn't need to be reminded that he had become even worse of a disgrace than his son who had given an outsider one of his eyes supposedly had been.

It was as he was nearing the market that he hit a quandary. While he could feel the need for a drink pulling him in one direction, telling him he just couldn't quit cold turkey and should ease himself into it, especially since he could feel that he was already going through withdrawl which was something that would incapacitate him and render him unable to care for his son, there was also the fact that he needed to get food as there was none in the house and clothes for Obito since the boy only had the one outfit which was not appropriate for the weather. While he could in theory get something on credit in the Uchiha district since he was back on active-duty assignments and bringing in pay again, the fact was that he would have to go to a shop outside of the district to get the clothes his son needed. The symbol of the Uchiha clan was sewn on all of the shirts and coats sold within the district, and since he had adopted the boy who had been born outside the clan this time around, he needed permission from the clan head - his mother's younger brother's eldest son Fugaku - before the child could be allowed to wear the symbol of the Uchiha.

The reason the choice between getting something to drink so he didn't end up going through withdrawl and getting food and clothes for the kid was such a quandry was because he'd taken the absolute lowest paying sort of C-Ranked mission, and he had only received enough to buy a jacket for the kid and a reasonably sized take-out meal for the both of them for breakfast/lunch tomorrow if he left off the booze. He would have to get a better mission tomorrow despite the fact that he'd only barely been able to handle this one today, but he didn't know how he would be able to when there was nobody to watch the kid as he couldn't afford to shell out money for a D-rank and Itachi wouldn't be available to watch him again tomorrow. He could try conning one of the other kids into watching the boy, perhaps even Kagami's boy Shisui, but chances were that he'd never hear the end of it from the parents of the child he conned into watching Obito.

In the end, after a long bout of deliberation which had ended when someone from one of the Shinobi rehab clinics that dealt with drug and alcohol addiction which was unfortunately very common amongst ninja had finally dared to walk up to him and hand him a card, embarrassment over the fact that he had let his addiction control him rather than the other way around and the need to provide for his son eventually won out, and he decided that he'd best get some proper clothing for the boy before he died of frostbite or something. There proved to be another problem with that however. The clothing store that remained open 24 hours a day to service the needs of the shinobi who tended to keep rather odd hours didn't carry children's clothing in Obito's size. The smallest size available would only fit an early academy graduate. The other clothing stores in the area had already closed as well, as their employees had already headed home for dinner, as Konoha was the sort of town where just about everything except for the bars and nightclubs and a few stores that catered almost exclusively to the local shinobi closed before dinner.

It would seem that he would have to get Obito's coat when they went out for breakfast.

Guessing that Itachi might have brought Obito home with him at some point rather than leaving the boy alone outside an empty house, he headed over to his cousin Fugaku's residence. His guess had fortunately proved to be correct as Obito was with Mikoto as she greeted him at the door. When she "loaned" him some of Sasuke's old things after she'd handed over the sleepy toddler, he found that he had to speak up.

While it was true that only a member of the clan who had proven themselves to be an adult in their eyes by showing they could use the Grand Fireball technique was entitled to wear the red and white uchiwa fan that marked them as a full member of the clan, all Uchiha shirts and coats were marked with an embroidered fan which marked the wearer as belonging to the clan. When it came to the clothing that was made for the children of the clan, these fans were located somewhere other than the back, and in thread that usually matched the color of the article of clothing in question. The dark blue on light blue fan pattern that was on the pyjamas that were on the top of the pile of the clothing that Mikoto was holding out was a clear illustration of this.

"Since Obito is adopted, I'll have to ask your husband before he can wear those." he said.

"Adopted?" Mikoto said looking and sounding absolutely floored by this statement.

He knew why. If Obito had been anyone other than the Uzumaki child whom the orphanage clearly wanted to get rid of this time around, there would have been no way in hell that the adoption would have gone through as it did. He wasn't entirely sure he'd done the right thing in adopting the boy either, considering he wasn't in the best shape physically, mentally or financially at the moment, but at least with him Obito would have a roof over his head and a reasonably comfortable bed to sleep in seven nights a week. The house was his free and clear and had been since shortly before Obito was born the last time around. Moving it to the new Uchiha district three years ago after the Kyuubi attack had been a bitch though.

"I don't know exactly how I got talked into it, but considering how he was treated at the orphanage I really couldn't do a worse job." he replied.

"Fugaku should be home shortly, you can speak to him then." Mikoto said quietly as she turned and led him deeper into the house in order to wait for her husband to come home.

It was in the middle of the dinner Mikoto had given him upon learning that he hadn't eaten yet that his cousin arrived. Apparently, Mikoto had sent a message that had briefed him on Obito's adoption, because the man was giving him that look, the one that said he wasn't sure if he should be furious or merely disappointed. Though it was on the face of a younger man, he found himself feeling completely guilty much as he had back when he was a little boy and his and Fugaku's grandfather had directed it at him.

"Mikoto tells me you adopted a child without first consulting me." Fugaku said sternly.

"I was returning him to the orphanage after I found him wandering about in the middle of the night, and the administrator fast talked me into taking him home with me. I wasn't at my best at the moment, and after that cat told me about how some of his supposed caretakers were treating him I thought that even in my current condition I could do better." he said.

"What did the "cat" tell you?" Fugaku asked, going into "Interrogator mode". Apparently, he didn't believe him about the talking cat despite the fact that such things were completely possible. His drinking was well known in the clan, and because of that, he'd evidently been marked as "unreliable".

"That because of that thing we're not supposed to talk about, the orphanage workers were able to get away with giving Obito substandard food if they weren't starving him, and one of the workers on the night shift was able to get away with throwing him out into the street at night." he replied evenly, remembering his fury over the way the people at the orphanage had looked at and spoken to the boy while they were there.

"The thing we aren't supposed to talk about?" Fugaku asked, requesting further clarification. There were many things that were never to be spoken of, but there was only one thing that could get one killed if said aloud in the wrong company.

"Obito picked the wrong month to be born on the tenth of." he replied, hoping Fugaku got the hint as he was reasonably certain Itachi was standing outside listening in on their conversation since he would have done the same when he was that age.

"Oh?" Fugaku said, clearly not comprehending. Realization soon began to dawn and he soon looked shocked. "You adopted the..."

"You'd better reign your younger son in before I claw the hell out of him," a certain cat shrieked as it walked in cutting Fugaku off. "That brat just dumped water on me!"

"You're still here?" he said, surprised to see the cat in the clan head's residence. He'd expected that he'd seen the last of the cat when it didn't follow him when he went home last night despite the fact that it had apparently been paid to look after his son.

"Still here? I live here, at least until I decide that I don't which may be pretty soon if that Sasuke brat doesn't start behaving," the ninja cat said. "By the way, I intercepted one of the toads that that bloody pervert Jiraiya sent to give a report to the Hokage this morning. Through some odd coincidence, it was one of the toads that the Yondaime had doing messenger duty during that Kyuubi disaster. It didn't know how the boy's mother died, but according to another toad he talked to, she was already under a sheet when the Namikaze took the boy."

"That's nice to know. At least now I won't have to say I don't know when Obito starts asking about his biological parents." he said, wondering at the look that Fugaku got when what the cat said made its way through the shock over his cousin adopting the container of the Nine-Tailed Fox.

"Was the Uzumaki child's mother a first generation resident of Konoha or married to a first generation resident of Konoha by any chance?" Fugaku asked.

There had been a contigent of Uzumaki had been living in the village since the founding which had seemingly died out during the Third War, but may not have considering the fact that Obito appeared to have possibly been born to them following the end of said war. Most of the few remaining Uzumaki however were foreigners who hailed from Uzushiogakure, and it was quite possible that the Uzumaki had been born to one who had settled in Konoha following the destruction of the Village Hidden in the Whirlpools during the Second War.

"Considering the fact that nobody seems to know who the father's parents are and aren't talking if they do, the answer may be yes to both, at the very least it is yes to the first seeing as the boy's mother was Uzumaki Kushina who was born in Uzu." the cat who'd apparently gone digging after having had its curiosity piqued by the questions he'd asked it replied.

"Fuck." Fugaku groaned.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I've been after some bastard who targets pregnant women who were either foreign born or married to someone who was foreign born for the last two years. He has seven, and now possibly eight known victims so far. Considering the fact that he operates in the maternity ward at the hospital, catching him should be easy, but he's managed to elude me every step of the way." Fugaku said, sounding pissed. The serial killer he'd been pursuing had obviously gotten to his cousin, and he'd hate to be him or her when Fugaku finally caught up to them considering how it had apparently become a matter of pride now.

"Poor Obito. His life went to hell from day one." he said after processing the information he'd received. Not only did his poor son lose his mother on the day he was born this time around, but out of all the possible candidates, his former sensei had chosen to seal the Nine-Tailed Fox inside of him.

"I'll say. It's actually a miracle he made it past day one." the cat who was apparently fond of the boy considering how far out of its way it had gone for it said. "By the way, I wouldn't go playing with that seal. The toads say that the last thing they heard from the Kyuubi before it was sealed was it swearing revenge on the Uchiha. Apparently, Madara or one of his spawn with the same name had called it up, and it wasn't too happy. As long as the seal stays intact, everyone should be safe though. Considering the fact that it is in Uzumaki special that was further improved by a Sealing genius, it should continue to work either until the stars burn out or until some idiot that has no idea what the fuck he's doing messes with it. Whichever comes first."

"Tama, what about the boy? Will he be a danger to us?" Fugaku asked the cat, apparently unhappy with the fact that the Kyuubi had apparently sworn revenge on their clan which had been unfairly accused of an act that had apparently been committed by an Outside born renegade that hadn't been swept up and been dealt with as should have happened.

"As the child has his own soul that is separate from the Kyuubi whether it is reincarnated as Shuichi seems to believe or not, that depends on what you do to him. If he is treated well, there should be no reason for him to be a danger to you or your clan. If he is treated poorly like he was at the orphanage however, who knows what could happen." the cat who was apparently named Tama replied.

Fugaku seemed to think on this a while. Several expressions flitted across his normally stoic face as he considered and rejected various options, at least one of which would have been to kill the boy despite the fact that he would end up receiving death in return considering what the boy was. Finally, the man seemed to reach a decision.

"The bakery needs an assistant. You will work there until you are back in shape, because the child you named Obito definitely does not need to be orphaned for a second time and you are clearly in no shape to be running missions at this time. When it comes to clothing, you may borrow the outfits Mikoto has set aside until you can purchase proper clothing for the child. I will also allow the child to take your family name as he is now legally your son and therefore your responsibility. If he proves an asset to the clan in the future, we may formally adopt him into our ranks, as such things have been done before, though not in recent generations," Fugaku said, giving his ruling on the boy he had adopted without consulting anyone. "On another note, I now have to tell my wife that I can't read to Sasuke tonight because I have to go back to the office and fill out the forms for an exhumation request."

"Thank you." he replied, glad that Fugaku had been in a generous mood. Seeing as the man could have had him and Obito thrown out of the clan or executed, things could not have gone better. If he were working at the bakery, it would be possible to both bring Obito to work with him, removing the need for a babysitter and to go through a treatment program to deal with his alcohol dependency without it being constantly interrupted. One thing was bothering him however...

"By the way, why do you need to make an exhumation request?" he asked.

"To see if the Uzumaki woman was a victim of the killer I've been chasing. As she would be the earliest known victim if she is, it might be possible to find a part of the pattern I'm missing or a name I'm not seeing. It might be a wild goose chase considering the chaos of that day, but if there's a chance of getting a viable lead..." Fugaku replied.

Curiosity satisfied, he went back to his meal, hoping that he wasn't overstaying his welcome by doing so.

* * *

Kakashi frowned as he signed in. Tonight was one of the nights Naruto got tossed out. Neither he nor his pack had been there for the last night, as he'd been on a difficult mission and he'd needed his dogs with him in order to survive. He wondered how Naruto had fared in his abscence, since the boy would not have been able to get into his apartment on his own, as it would be suspicious if the boy who had officially never been there were keyed into his Seal based defences. Pakkun had said that he had made arrangements with someone he knew, so things shouldn't have been too bad for the boy since the person with whom Pakkun had made arrangements was supposedly completely trustworthy.

"Let's get paid, get Naruto, and go home." he said as soon as he was out of earshot of the gate guard. He was almost looking forward to getting Naruto, since after that last mission he needed a little normalcy in his life.

"Speaking of getting paid, I'm going to need about twenty thousand Ryo. Tama'll have my balls if I don't pay him for looking after Naruto right away." Pakkun said.

"Tama?" he asked, wondering at the unusual name of Pakkun's associate, and hoping it didn't mean what he thought it did.

"He's one of the Uchiha cats." Pakkun replied.

"You had a _**cat **_looking after Naruto?!"

**Edited 4/12/13.**


	5. A Hunt and a Warning

Uchiha Fugaku felt like he was about to drop from exhaustion as he made his way to the Hokage's office. In addition to the full shift he had worked yesterday, he had spent most of the night filling out an exhumation request. After tossing and turning for a few hours as his mind tried to digest the evening before following the completion of the exhumation request form, he had hauled himself in to work early in the morning to have a more bureaucratically minded subordinate look over the paperwork to make sure he hadn't made any mistakes on it as everything would have to be in order before it was presented to the Hokage's secretary who'd use the smallest of mistakes as an excuse to hand it back and have him fill it out again rather than give it to the Sandaime. The subordinate had obviously been familiar with the Uzumaki woman he vaguely recalled seeing around the village - most often in the company of his wife oddly enough - as he had referred to her as "The Red Hot-Blooded Habenero", and winced at an apparently painful memory.

Normally, as he was the Chief-of-Police, he wouldn't bother with these type of cases, but this one had become personal two years earlier. While he was out on a long-term mission, his father's younger brother's son had made a rather foolish mistake, but had redeemed himself in the eyes of his family and his clan by doing the honorable thing and marrying the civilian girl he had impregnated during a long mission in Tea Country rather than leaving his child to be dealt with either through abortion or assassination as, aside from the case with Kakashi and a few others to whom a Uchiha who should have known better had willed the eyes that would die with their recipients, there could be none outside the clan who had the Sharingan, none outside the clan who could pass the Sharingan on to others. On a day that should have been filled with the celebration of welcoming a new child into the clan, there had instead been mourning as mother and child had both died shortly after the birthing process had ended. An exceedingly thorough autopsy done at the Clan's behest had revealed that both had been poisoned in the one place they should have been completely safe.

Over the next two years, two more women and three more children with them - two of whom were a set of identical twins - died in the same manner as his cousin's wife. Learning that this may have been going on for much longer than two years right underneath the noses of the Police who were supposed to protect the people of the village from such things without being noticed had been a blow.

It seemed an almost ironic twist of fate that the Yondaime's sealing the Nine Tailed-Fox inside a vessel that had quite likely been approaching its last breath after stubbornly clinging to life longer than its mother had been able to had actually saved its life. Whether it was the man's intention all along considering the boy's coloration and some of the things he'd vaguely remembered hearing while he was half listening to his wife would remain a mystery, as men who have been dead as long as the Yondaime tell no tales.

* * *

Kakashi had been searching around Naruto's favorite haunts the night before when Pakkun returned from paying the hired minder who he wasn't all that happy about to inform him that Naruto had found a safe place to sleep during the last few nights. Relieved, he had returned to his apartment to catch a few hours of sleep himself. Bright and early that morning, he had arrived at the orphanage to make sure Naruto arrived safely only to discover that he hadn't arrived yet, and he'd ended up waiting for several hours and was becoming antsy, because he would have to report in for patrol duty soon, seeing as there were extra patrols due to the security nightmare that was the arrival of the ambassador from Kumogakure.

Heaving a sigh, he summoned Pakkun and ordered him to go and find Naruto. The dog who was a rather good tracker despite his small nose and squished in face put his nose to the ground and attempted to do just that. After nearly an hour of searching, Pakkun stopped outside the bakery that served the Uchiha district in which he wasn't exactly welcome thanks to Obito's gift, where two of the employees were conversing.

"It's really creepy. The kid really does have Obito's smile, and his laugh." one of the retired Shinobi who ran the bakery said to the other.

"Did you notice how the pupil in his left eye didn't contract properly when Shuichi brought him outside earlier?" the other whispered back.

"You don't think..." the first one started, then stopped upon noticing him.

"May I ask what you're doing here when there are three perfectly serviceable bakeries outside our district?" the first bakery employee said in a tone that wasn't exactly outright challenging but came pretty damn close to being so. The Uchiha hadn't exactly been fond of him since he had "taken Obito's eye", but thanks to his late sensei's interference on his behalf they'd never outright attacked him.

"I was looking for someone, and Pakkun led me here." he said, doing his best to look and sound non-threatening as a fight was the last thing he needed at the moment.

"Due to the health code, the dog's not allowed inside, so he'll just have to look elsewhere." the second employee said, clearly dismissing him.

It seemed he would have to come back later to find Naruto. Considering the fact that there was a distinct possibility that the Uchiha were responsible for his sensei and Kushina's deaths as well as the Kyuubi attack, he just hoped that he wasn't too late. For now though, he would have to do a tactical retreat and report this incident to the Hokage.

* * *

Inside the bakery that Kakashi had departed from, Shuichi smiled as Obito helped stamp out the sugar cookies they were making for those who had acquired a taste for the odd foreign treats using the fan shaped cutter since a day that was important to the clan was approaching. There was a look of utmost seriousness on the child's face as he tried to stamp the dough in straight rows the way Daisuke had shown him. If it hadn't been for the medic down at the treatment center who'd given him something to help him get through the day, he would not have been having this moment with his son, a moment that he'd never once had with Obito the last time.

How the hell did he manage to completely miss these kinds of things the last time around?

Daisuke entered followed by Akira as Obito started on his third row.

"That Hatake kid came by sniffing around with that dog of his." Daisuke said as he pulled something out of one of his pockets while inspecting Obito's handiwork.

"Oh?" he said, not entirely certain how to reply. He wasn't sure what he thought or felt about the Hatake boy. Obito had been exceedingly jealous of Hatake Kakashi the last time around, but they had obviously become friends somewhere near the end otherwise Obito would not have given the Hatake boy one of his own eyes to replace the one he had lost. On the one hand, it had pretty much been the Hatake's fault that Obito had died since he'd been leading the mission, but on the other, the boy had carried the only living piece of his son who had gone off to rescue his teammate against the Hatake boy's orders. The fact that Kakashi had eventually followed Obito in order to save the Nohara girl didn't change the fact that his son had chosen his teammate over his mission much as the Hatake boy's father had done.

Without warning, Daisuke flashed the penlight he'd pulled from his pocket in Obito's eyes and frowned at the result. He could guess why the other man had frowned because he'd seen it too. There was what could be considered an entirely logical explanation for the trouble with that eye, considering the very faint burn scarring on that side that looked as if it was the result of a tag having gone off near the child's face at some point, but the fact that it was the eye that Obito had lost...

"You should take the kid to a medic to get looked at. There seems to be a problem with his left eye." Daisuke said, ignoring the startled gasp that came from Akira.

* * *

Fugaku was almost stunned at the swiftness with which his request had been granted after he'd explained it to the Hokage who had insisted on being present at the exhumation after the paperwork had actually gone through without a hitch for once. It was rather fortunate that Uzumaki Kushina had not been cremated, as the testing of ashes tended to be viewed as being somewhat unreliable. That, and some poisons didn't survive the cremation process.

As he stood at the graveside and supervised the process, two officers used an Earth jutsu to bring the Uzumaki woman's casket to the surface after the Hokage had carefully removed several hidden protection seals from around the grave. Fortunately, said coffin appeared to be intact, if slightly dented. Much to his surprise, the Hokage followed as the Uzumaki woman's casket was brought to the Coroner. Apparently the Uzumaki woman that he'd vaguely remembered as being rather loud and on-again off-again friends with his wife had been far more important than he had originally thought.

When the casket was opened in the autopsy area, he found that things were better than he expected. Someone who had been rather close to the deceased had rather thoughtfully placed preservation seals on the inside of the casket, and the body inside was nearly as fresh as it had been the day she died rather than three years decomposed. This would of course make things easier, as any evidence that may still have been on and in the woman at the time she'd been interred would have been preserved as well.

After the body had been laid on the autopsy table, he watched as the Coroner's Assistant carefully removed the clothes that the Uzumaki woman had been buried in. Underneath was...

Had he not been Shinobi, and therefore accustomed to such sights, he might have been ill. The woman's belly had obviously been torn open, and around the ragged edges of the wound were what looked to be the remnants of a seal of some sort. Considering the expression on the woman's face which hadn't entirely been smoothed out despite the best efforts of the undertaker, the woman had not died instantly.

The Hokage seemed oddly unsurprised by the sight, almost as if he'd seen it before.

"Why did you let me exhume her if you knew..." he started, gesturing towards the corpse, knowing that there was some sort of message - quite likely a warning - that the Hokage was trying to convey.

"When the person who found them brought them to the hospital, Naruto was in surprisingly good health considering what had happened to him in the few short minutes he'd been alive." The Hokage said. "When Minato arrived to retrieve him, Naruto was very sick. I wanted you to rule out the mother's death as the cause of his illness."

_No. _he thought as he looked down at the body on the table, _Considering the fact that you seem to have already known about this, you would have already known if the Uzumaki's death caused her son's apparent illness. There's something else you're trying to tell me. Something that has to do with the Uzumaki woman's body._

Looking at the body once more and wondering what the Hokage might be getting at, he realized that the remnants of the seal looked somewhat familiar.

"Exactly when did she die?" he asked as his mind frantically tried to place the seal.

"Very early in the morning on the Tenth of October." the Hokage replied.

Two very disparate things suddenly connected in his mind. It would seem that the near destruction of Konoha had been caused by some stupid moron with malicious intentions who had been playing with a seal he really shouldn't have been messing with if what Tama had been talking about last night was any indication. Whether or not the person in question really was Madara really didn't matter at the moment. He would have to call a clan meeting very soon. The Hokage's warnings were never given lightly, and even though he knew he could rule the village far better than the old man whose day had long passed, he knew better than to let them go unheeded.

**Edited 4/13/13.**


	6. Explosive Meetings

Fugaku looked over the crowd that had arrived for the emergency clan meeting that he had called the instant he had left the morgue. The secret meeting place of the Uchiha was absolutely packed that night. Usually such meetings took days to arrange, this one had only taken hours. Word of something had spread around the clan, and from the whispers the rather exhausted Uchiha Fugaku was hearing, he strongly suspected that it was centered around one Uchiha Obito who had been born Uzumaki Naruto.

_"...Left pupil didn't contract properly. Shuichi took him to see old man Izuna, and he said that he was probably born that way since the Kyuubi would have healed it otherwise like it did all of Mikoto's injuries."_

_"...Same laugh, same smile, it's really creepy. I swear, if that kid were older, he'd be running around the village helping old ladies bring their groceries home and playing ninja with civilian children."_

_"...Habenero was one of Mikoto's friends wasn't she?"_

_"...Was thinking about a marriage contract with Sasuke, until she found out she was expecting a boy. I honestly don't know why I seem to have forgotten about both her and the child since we were such good friends. I would have taken him in myself to tell you the truth."_

That last had come from his wife. Who could she have possibly have forgotten? The fact that she had forgotten a "Good friend" was suspicious in and of itself and should most definitely be looked into considering the fact that more than a memory removal may have been done. As if he didn't have enough on his plate already...

It took more than a simple throat clearing to call the meeting to order that evening, and everyone was more than eager to get the usual business out of the way as quickly as possible.

"Now on to the subject you all seem so eager to discuss, Obito." Fugaku said once some tentative plans for the coup which was still on the back burner as it had been for decades despite the fact that it had been mentioned more and more frequently in recent years had been pushed through.

"First of all, anyone caught messing with Obito's seal will be immediately put to death. For those of you who think this punishment unfair, I will now inform you that I have received some intel from someone who had interviewed someone who had personally witnessed the sealing that indicates that the Kyuubi's first target once released will be the Uchiha Clan itself. The Kyuubi is apparently still rather upset at Madara, and the Madara wannabe bastard who will be dead the instant one of us catches him if he isn't already that somehow turned it on Konoha three years ago." he said .

The uproar at that comment took several minutes and a small "flash bang" jutsu to calm down.

"For those of you who are now wondering why I have allowed the boy that Shuichi had decided to adopt and name Obito to live within the walls of the compound, my decision is twofold. First, as long as the seal remains intact and Obito remains well treated, there is little to no danger to us from that quarter. Second, as long as he is under our supervision, no outsider will be able to tamper with the child's seal without us knowing and/or being unable to do something about it." he said as soon as the yelling and overlapping calls for action of some sort had stopped.

This apparently mollified the crowd, though some of his relatives looked like they would need further reassurance in the near future.

* * *

The Uchiha Clan meeting had run rather late, and it was nearly Eleven Thirty when a rather exhausted Shuichi had gone and retrieved his child from young Shisui who had begun making a name for himself with his talent with the Shunshin. After putting the rather cranky Obito to bed in his old room, which had been cleaned, aired out, and had the furniture and whatever belongings were safe enough to be given to a three year-old pulled from storage and returned to it where it belonged, he did a final check of the house and retired for the night himself.

Sleep was hard to come by considering the fact that he'd felt a strong urge for a drink that was mostly psychosomatic considering the medication the medic from that morning had put him on, but he'd eventually drifted off into a fitful slumber. It had been nearly three in the morning when he was awoken by a small noise that had seemed out of place. As he lay there straining his ears and hoping it was just his imagination or something he would need to call an exterminator for considering what the other options were, he quietly reached for the kunai he habitually kept beneath his pillow. Soon, he heard another noise - one that nearly caused his heart to stop - the sound of a door stealthily being opened.

That was the door to Obito's room!

* * *

Hatake Kakashi braced himself for just about anything when he opened the door to the room Pakkun had led him to when he had once again set Pakkun searching for Naruto that evening. The reason it had taken him and the dog this long to get to his sensei's son had been because they had been forced to carefully pick their way through the Uchiha district without being seen by the Uchiha who were unusually active for so late an hour, and had been forced to hide in a tree by someone's house for a couple hours while everyone had settled down, gone home, and gone to bed before they ghosted through the - finally - silent streets on their way to a house that Kakashi had hoped to never see again.

Some of the rumors that had reached his ears after the guys at the Uchiha bakery had basically told him to get lost had been unsettling to say the least. According to one source, Naruto had been handed over to a crazy drunk who may have had a great deal worse on his resume considering that he'd been a ninja. After hearing this and a number of other rumors that had made that one seem downright tame in comparison, he had found himself imagining all of the horrible fates that could have befallen Naruto because he hadn't at the very least left one of his pack behind to watch the boy and therefore through this oversight had allowed some random person to take him home with him since Pakkun's "completely trustworthy" babysitter had proven not to be. Finding Naruto in Obito's old house both was and wasn't a relief. There had been something in Obito's demeanor when he was alive that had told him that while he had both parents, he didn't exactly have a happy home life, but the boy hadn't shown up for training looking like an abuse case either.

The house in the middle of the Uchiha district that Pakkun had led him to had been familiar when he'd caught sight of it when he was more than a block away, though he remembered it being several streets over. Once inside, Pakkun had led him about, trying to find the one area where Naruto's scent was the freshest and most prevalent as the boy had spent a good deal of time in the kitchen/dining area, some time in the bathroom, and was currently in...a room he had been in once before when he had gone to personally drag a certain teammate to the village gates so they wouldn't be late for a mission.

They had been late for that mission regardless, but it had been through no fault of his own, or Obito's for that matter. That had probably been the strangest day of his life, what with the feral cats, the tea ceremony from hell that they'd been unable to escape because of that crazy old lady who'd been around during the Era of the Warring Clans, the flying ramen, and that mix-up with the medics. By the time their sensei had managed to bail them out of lock-up and get them to the village gates, they had been eight hours late for their mission, not that that mattered now. Naruto, who was in Obito's old room for some strange reason was all that mattered at the moment.

When he finally entered the room that he'd been hovering almost uncertainly outside of remembering the last time he had been there and worrying about what he would find now, it was to find Naruto sleeping peacefully on a traditional futon. Nearby was a box of old toys, and a set of rather well used wooden training kunai that had obviously been played with recently. The open closet revealed several used outfits in dark blue with the near-invisible child's fan stitched onto them. The pajamas Naruto wore were also covered in fans, these dark blue on light blue cloth.

Kakashi had less than two seconds to take this all in however, because Obito's father had chosen that moment to attack the intruder in his home...

**Edited 4/13/13**


	7. An Abduction or Two

Obito's father was long out of shape, and it was easy for Kakashi to overpower the older man despite the fact that the man was taller and heavier than he was and had decades on him when it came to experience both with the Sharingan and the ninja arts. When the man attacked upon finding him in his home, he rather swiftly disarmed him and pinned him to the floor. The noise of the altercation woke Naruto however.

The child seemed afraid and looked torn between running and hiding, and going over to see what was going on. He ended up choosing the latter though.

"Kashi!" Naruto yelled upon spotting him.

As the boy started to run over to where he had Obito's father pinned, the man frantically struggled beneath him. This, and his efforts at keeping a hold on the man which was proving to be somewhat difficult brought the toddler up short.

"Wha?" Naruto asked curiously, wondering what was happening.

"Go back to bed Obito!" Obito's father yelled.

Obito? Obito? Naruto's name most definitely was not Obito. It was Naruto. Sensei had given him that name, and nobody had the right to take it away from him. Especially not this sick bastard who was apparently using the boy to replace his dead son. He would be having words with the workers at that orphanage. Words that involved weapons and pain. Giving Naruto to someone who was obviously fucked in the head was beyond the pale.

Naruto wasn't staying in this place any longer, not if he had anything to say about it.

He swiftly knocked Obito's father out since killing him would open a can of worms he really didn't need right now considering how strained his relationship with the Uchiha clan was. The man was also a Konoha citizen and fellow shinobi despite the fact that he was insane, and killing him would open him up for a court martial if he weren't summarily executed on the spot. After making doubly sure that the man was unconscious and therefore wouldn't be coming after him anytime soon, he then grabbed the now crying Naruto and ran with him.

"Shh Naruto. It's okay, Kakashi's here, and he won't let anything happen to you." he said, trying to comfort the boy as he carried him out of the house and out of the Uchiha district where he most definitely didn't belong.

* * *

Uchiha Fugaku had been trudging to the office where some sort of crisis that required his presence had sprung up seemingly minutes after he'd gone to bed when he'd seen the flash of silver making its way though the district. It took him a moment to realize exactly what it was, and when he did, his blood ran cold. Hatake Kakashi had been poking around the Uchiha district again, which was an occurence that no member of his clan would be happy to hear.

There were some who feared what the boy would do should Obito's eye fail him, and they didn't want him near them, their homes, or their families. One man who most definitely wouldn't want Kakashi near his home was Shuichi, but that was for a different set of reasons, reasons that had more to do with the fact that his son's death had been Kakashi's fault. Shuichi wouldn't be happy to learn that Kakashi had been poking around near his home, but he would have tell the man in the morning after this crisis was resolved though, seeing as the man deserved a head's up.

He'd nearly been at the gate that separated the district from the rest of the village when there was a yell of "Obito!" and the alarm went up, the alarm that the clan prayed that they'd never hear. One of the children had been stolen, and he could rather easily guess who. He also had a sneaking suspicion that he knew who the culprit was as well.

Running in the direction that he'd seen the Hatake boy in, he made to give chase.

* * *

Over in the Hyuuga clan compound, Hyuuga Hiashi groaned as he awoke from his spot at his desk where he'd apparently fallen asleep over some stultifyingly boring documents the night before, drooling on several important papers in the process. It would seem that his years of relative inactivity as he led his clan rather than fought in the field had taken their toll if the fact that he'd actually fallen asleep at his desk was any indication. The reason he had awoken from an apparently sound sleep was that there was an almighty racket coming from the Uchiha compound. From the muffled swears he could hear nearby and the yells coming from the Inuzuka compound, both his and the Inuzuka clan which were the closest to the Uchiha end of the village had been awoken at stupid o'clock in the morning. He honestly wouldn't have been surprised if the whole village was woken up by the noise that the Uchiha were making.

As he tried to figure out why the fact that he'd fallen asleep at his desk was bothering the hell out of him and causing a small mental alarm bell to ring, there was a yell of "Hey! What the hell are you doing on our property?" outside.

Normally, he would have a serious discussion about decorum with the person who was yelling practically outside his window, but he figured that he would let it slide since he too felt like swearing at the moment. Seeing as he was awake, he decided that he may as well go and see what was going on.

Once he got outside and made his way to where the source of the minor commotion in his own compound was, it had been to find that one of the Branch House members who was still in his pyjamas had incapacitated a masked intruder. When they removed the man's mask, it was to find the face of the ambassador from Kumo underneath.

"This creep was trying to climb into Hinata-sama's window." the Branch house member whose name escaped him at the moment said.

"Tie him up, and find a police officer who isn't involved in whatever the hell has got the Uchiha district acting like a kicked over anthill." he said as he scowled down at the man he'd dearly love to kill but knew he couldn't since it would spark a war between Konoha and Kumo if he did so.

"A guy who ran by said something about a kidnapping." another Branch House member who'd come to see what was going on supplied. "Do you think this is related?"

"Probably." he replied hoping the Uchiha roughed the Kumo bastard up a bit as they were wont to do with prisoners, and wishing that he could be there to watch.

Seeing as the ambassador had obviously been after a portable and unsealed Hyuuga who possessed the Byakugan, it wouldn't surprise him if the slightest if he or one of his staff had gone after someone with Konoha's other Doujutsu earlier in the evening. It was a pity that the ambassador wouldn't be getting what he deserved considering that whole diplomatic immunity issue.

* * *

Out just beyond the village boundaries, Kakashi held Naruto as the small toddler sobbed in his arms. He'd just gotten out of the Uchiha district when the alarm went up. Fortunately, he and Naruto were safe for the moment since he'd managed to make it to his bolthole before anyone had spotted him. He didn't know what he would do now, but he would figure something out. Naruto wasn't going to spend another moment with that sick man who had tried to use him to replace Obito, even if he had to run away to make sure that happened.

The Hokage would understand though. The Hokage would understand why he had taken Naruto from that place, and would be able to help him keep Naruto away from that man. He would have to get to him before someone found him however...

**Edited 4/13/13.**


	8. Tobi's Return

Tobi paused, seriously considering going after Kakashi and ripping the child from his arms and killing it in front of him just to watch him suffer despite the damage that doing such would do to Madara's plans. Kakashi deserved to suffer for what he'd done, and considering how Jinchuriki were usually treated, the kid would be better off dead. Seeing Kakashi make his way to one of his former sensei's safe houses had torn him in two directions, part of him wanted to kill his father, and another part of him wanted to kill the kid. The kid who shall remain nameless since the name that he had discarded would never belong to him was important for future plans though, and his father wasn't, and that was what had finally decided it for him.

Though he hadn't been back to Konoha since the night of the failed Kyuubi attack, he had received a number of highly accurate intelligence reports on the current events of the village in which he'd been born in the three years since then. He still felt pangs of guilt when he thought about what he'd done to Kushina-nee that night, and how she hadn't died instantly despite the fact that the Kyuubi had literally ripped itself out of her, but he swiftly squashed them before they could go beyond the level of guilt one would feel for killing say a bandit or an enemy combatant one encountered across the battlefield as he always did. His former Sensei had left him to die, and soon afterward let Rin whom he'd loved more than life itself die, and so deserved to lose everything he'd held dear, just as Kakashi who'd actually murdered Rin now did.

It had been one of the intelligence reports he occasionally received that had sent him to Konoha at top speed several years earlier than he had planned, despite the fact that several things were up in the air at the moment, and the fact that his control over the Mizukage was tenuous at best. According to what he'd heard from one of his confidential informants who'd sent the information via a summons, the Kyuubi Jinchuriki had been adopted by a member of the Uchiha clan. Not just any member of the Uchiha clan, but his own father who had named the boy Obito in an attempt to replace him. Despite the fact that his father was dead to him, and Obito was dead as well, he'd discovered much to his surprise that it still stung.

Obito had died the day Rin did, back in the days when he had still been recovering and had not yet been well enough to make his way back to Konoha. Tobi had been born from what little was left of Obito after Rin's passing, when the knowledge that he hadn't been able to save her had caused his Mangekyo to manifest, reforging him into someone, something else, that might survive in a world without Rin. Where Obito would have gone along with Madara's plans out of a sense of gratitude, and done his best to minimalize the number of sacrifices it would take to cause them to come to fruition as he did so, Madara's plans were Tobi's reason for living. With the completion of the Moon's Eye Plan as his life's only goal, Tobi was willing to do whatever it took and kill whoever it took to insure success.

Despite Tobi's best efforts, not all of Obito was gone though. There was still that inclination towards silliness when the situation didn't warrant absolute focus and/or absolute ruthlessness, and there was that burning desire to get revenge against those who had hurt him, those who had betrayed him that he'd quashed for most of his life until Rin's death had set it all free. On that list was all of Konoha, including and most especially the entire Uchiha Clan. His former sensei's son who would have merely been one of nine who would have to die in order for the world to be remade had been added to that list under the category of "It's Personal" through no fault of his own. When the time came, he would show the child why he had to die personally by his hand rather than through an agent, and exactly who was responsible for his demise before he killed him. He would preferably be killing his former sensei's son in front of Kakashi who would be forced to live with the fact that he'd once again been responsible for the death of someone else who was supposedly dear to him as he watched, unable to do anything else.

After making his way into the village, Tobi ghosted his way through the streets of the Uchiha District which hadn't existed when he had lived here as a child, passing by former clansmen who frantically raced from house to house carefully counting the few Uchiha children that had been born that generation and checking to make sure that none of them had been taken. Many of the houses from the old Uchiha neighborhood which hadn't been walled in to keep the world out like this place was had been moved here, and laid out in a mockery of the old neighborhood. Passing the family home of his little cousin Shisui with whom he used to play Ninja while little Itachi toddled along behind them begging to be allowed to join in, he made his way towards what should be his childhood home based on the way this place was laid out.

When he got to where his former home should have been according to his internal map, there it was, tucked in a back corner of the district, near a wall where an alley should have been. Considering who Kakashi had taken, it was no surprise that the house was the center of activity at the moment. It just went to show how inattentive the members of his former clan really were when he'd managed to skirt around the group that was comforting some fat slob who should have died years ago and make his way into his old home to look for his father who would not be seeing another sunrise.

As he made his way through the place he'd called home for the first thirteen years of his life in search of his father who was nowhere to be found, he flinched as memories came unbidden. There were far more unhappy ones than there were happy ones, but that had been par for the course in his life. His father had been a cold bastard, and his mother, who had been kind but weak willed had constantly urged him to appease the bastard, rather than encouraging him to follow his own path in his own time the way a mother shoud. But, that was the Uchiha clan for you, anyone who didn't quite fit the mold were cut to size until they did. Either that, or they died in the process.

When he reached his room, it had been to find that it had been re-arranged for someone else, someone who had been playing with his old toys, all of which his mother had bought for him since his father had considered such things to be useless. He nearly punched out the nearest wall when he'd realized who it had been who'd been staying in his room and playing with his things. The son of the bastard who had rescued Kakashi and left him behind to die, buried alive as the pain overwhelmed him and the air slowly ran out with him still alive, the boy his father had chosen to replace him, had been pawing through things that he had absolutely no right to touch.

He barely managed to rein in his temper and put it in check before any walls were destroyed and any of the people outside were alerted to his presence. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum like he would have done a little more than four years ago, he sat down on what had once been his bed to wait for his father to return from wherever the hell he was and do his usual check of the house before he went to sleep. As he waited, he played with one of the wooden kunai that he associated with the one good memory he'd had of the man before he'd turned cold and decided that he was a disgrace who wasn't worth his time because he wasn't developing fast enough for his tastes.

He ended up waiting for over an hour before the group outside broke up and the front door to his former home was opened. As he heard his father shuffle through the house and make his way towards his room, he considered and rejected any number of dramatic lines as he tried to decide on one with which he would make his presence known and clearly convey the message to the man who'd sired and replaced him that he was dead. As the door to his room slid open, his heart began to beat faster, and adrenaline flooded his system in preparation of the epic fight that was to come.

The "Tadaima" he'd finally settled on died in his throat when the fat slob who'd been out on the porch entered the room and he'd recognized a number of features he'd previously disregarded on his way past him since many of them were common to members of the clan. He said nothing as he threw the bastard who should have been the cold man who had shown little to no emotion towards or around him rather than this overweight creature that smelled vaguely of booze that had tear tracks running down his face onto the floor and started hitting him. It wasn't fair. The bastard was supposed to be at the top of his game when he killed him. There should have been an epic battle, and he should have been satisfied when he killed the bastard who'd sired him and took his eyes to use for the final stage of the Mangekyo.

There was no enjoyment as he pummeled the man who didn't bother to fight back, the man who should have loved him, not that little brat he'd replaced him with. In fact, he wanted nothing more than to get out of there rather than continue this travesty. Hitting the half-dead creature that had been his father one last time, he got up. It shouldn't have been like this, there should have been a fight, a struggle in which he could have proven himself.

He gave the man who could barely be considered such a firm kick to the ribs before he turned to leave, feeling no satisfaction as one of those ribs broke beneath his foot. As he departed planning on leaving this waste of space that his father had turned into behind him without a second glance, he was hit with an idea which turned into a plan which may work out and allow him to have the fight he had wanted if he was patient.

"Worthless scum." he said as he paused in the doorway. "You're lucky that that Hatake bastard took the brat tonight. The next time I can fit it into my busy schedule, I will be killing the Yondaime's son as planned, and since you seem to value him so highly, I'll do it right in front of you."

There, that should do it, since he'd given the paranoid bastard just enough reason not to question why he'd targeted his home out of all the houses in the district or even the village for that matter, and enough reason to train relentlessly in order to get back into top fighting shape. Give him a year, maybe two, and he would have the fight he'd wanted. That, and his bastard sensei's brat would be just old enough to understand loss, and the pain of losing a parent as the bastard who had used the brat to replace him was killed right in front of him.

"Who are you?" the fat slob who used to be his father asked.

"I am nobody." he replied before vanishing into the other dimension that his eye either created or could access and departing.

**Edited 4/13/13**


	9. Aftermath

When he was well enough away from his former home and had calmed down enough to get back in control, Tobi chucked his bloody gloves into a nearby bush in disgust, and pulled on another pair without once looking down at the hands those gloves covered. He didn't just keep virtually every inch of his skin covered to cover the fact that he was far too young to be Madara, or for the sake of the general public whom he was forced to move around in on occasion since the type of scars he had would be far more memorable than a mask, especially since half of his body wasn't even human anymore and wasn't quite the same color as the other half. Fortunately, being a ninja, he had mastered the ability to get ready for the day in a short period of time without the benefit of a mirror.

His schedule was just about as busy as he had told that fat slob who'd once been his father it was, and looked like it would be for a long while. His control over the Mizukage was tenuous at best, because he currently only had control of the Sanbi, and the man in whom the Sanbi was contained had been defiantly fighting the beast within him, trying to gain control so he could save his people who were suffering thanks to the civil war that had been started in his name. He'd let it go if he could since there were times when being the de facto Mizukage was more trouble than it was worth, but having control of the ruler of Kirigakure was necessary for a number of Madara-sama's plans, and not only because it would provide a secondary base for if things went wrong with Nagato and his little group which had been coming along quite nicely so far despite their somewhat rocky start.

One of the main reasons for the bloodline purge that he and Madara-sama had been trying to start in Mizu had been a rather sizable family of red-heads who had settled along the coast after the Second War. A family whose abilities could put serious kinks in the Moon's Eye Plan, especially since the patriarch of that family had been part of the first generation of one of Madara-sama's more ambitious breeding projects, and his descendants could potentially produce another like Nagato, which the world most definitely didn't need more of. The bloodline purges would enable them to get rid of that family without alerting the rest of the survivors of that particular clan which were scattered across the continent that they were being targeted until it was too late and there were too few to fight back. The weakening of Kirigakure and the destruction of a number of other dangerous clans was only a side benefit as far as they were concerned.

As he left Konoha once more in order to get to Kiri where his work was waiting for him, he didn't look back. There was really no reason to do so since - aside from his coming fight - there was nothing left for him there. When the time came, that fat slob would either be ready for him when he found the time to return and deal with the situation in an agreeable manner, or he wouldn't, but either way, he would die the next time they met.

* * *

Well away from Tobi, Kakashi rocked Naruto as he paced around the bolthole which had formerly belonged to his sensei trying to calm the inconsolable boy down. Rocking the child and whispering some sort of nonsense in his ear had always calmed the boy down after his frequent nightmares, but tonight, the boy would have nothing of it. He continued to rock the child and pace around his bolthole however, because he didn't know what else to do.

In the three years and some-odd months since the day his sensei had died leaving this place abandoned, he had not touched any of Minato's belongings, and had only used what little open space was left when he had claimed his sensei's old bolthole. Everything that had not been his in the first place had been left the way it had been when his sensei had died, everything whether it was dirty, stained, or quite clearly junk. He shuddered briefly when he caught sight of the stained pillow that was on the bed that was against the back wall, remembering that day, the day that particular stain had been created even though he hadn't been there to witness most of what had happened.

Kushina-san had rather unexpectedly gone into labor after dinner on the evening of the Ninth of October. Rather than taking her to the hospital, Minato-sensei and the Sandaime's wife had swiftly hustled her out of the village under the cover of darkness. At two a.m. on the Tenth of October, the Kyuubi was in the middle of Konoha and Minato-sensei had arrived at the hospital, where he'd been waiting since he'd figured that Minato-sensei would take his wife and son to the hospital for a check-up once the danger that Sarutobi Biwako had been talking about had passed. When he arrived, he'd had Kushina and Naruto in his arms, and it was obvious that something bad had happened to the both of them since Kushina looked half dead and Naruto looked decidedly singed.

When Minato had arrived at the hospital and handed Naruto and Kushina-san off to the frightened medics before racing out to help deal with the Kyuubi, it had been obvious that Kushina was dying. He'd seen enough abdominal wounds to be able to tell when one would be fatal or not, and the gaping hole in Kushina's stomach was most definitely fatal. An hour later when Minato-sensei had returned looking somewhat worse for wear after he'd herded the Kyuubi out of the village, Kushina-san was dead and Naruto had been about to follow.

When the sun had finally risen on the Tenth of October three years ago, the village had been in shambles, and his sensei was amongst the thousands of casualties, but the Kyuubi had been sealed away inside Naruto and the village was saved. When he found time to take a break from the rebuilding efforts several days later, he had come out here to check the seals and make sure that nobody could try to claim this place or steal his sensei's stuff now that his sensei was dead. When he'd arrived, he'd caught the scent of dried blood, and something else. Somewhat morbidly curious, he'd followed the scent to a pillow where the newborn Naruto had obviously been laid before he'd been cleaned up following his birth for some strange reason, a pillow he hadn't touched since then. Seeing it though was a powerful enough reminder of what had happened on what should have been a day of celebration.

Since he had been so caught up in his memories, he had barely registered when Naruto's crying had stopped, and had looked down in surprise only to find that the boy had finally cried himself to sleep when he'd finally figured out what was missing. Being careful not to jostle the boy, he carefully laid him down on the small futon that he'd dragged here long ago and set down on what little floorspace was left to him. As he did so, he heard a noise behind him.

Whirling around to face the intruder, he found himself looking up at the Hokage who was most definitely not smiling.

"I thought I might find you here." the Hokage said with a sigh.

* * *

Fugaku growled in frustration as he drank yet another cup of black coffee from the pot in the hospital breakroom. He dearly wanted to strangle someone, and the fact that he was starting to get jittery from the caffeine wasn't helping matters. Last night's fire in the file storage area had been bad enough, but to have a kidnapping, a failed kidnapping, an attack, and now this on top of it...

As soon as he found the jackass who had set the file storage room on fire, he was going to skin him alive. It would have been an unmitigated disaster rather than a crisis that needed his attention and little else if his grandfather hadn't gotten the bright idea to hire an Uzumaki to come in and put fire protection seals on just about everything in the station that was flammable. After the Uzumaki had virtually died out, Jiraiya and later the Yondaime had been responsible for that task. Unfortunately, none of the files that were newer than three years old had the same protections as the older ones, and there had been a great deal of damage done to them. Fortunately, the files for the cases that were currently being worked on were almost all either in someone's desk or in one of the metal filing cabinets that ran along the back wall of the bullpen, meaning that very little of import had been lost.

As he'd been on his way in to the office to survey the damage that was more of a nuisance than anything since their records on some of their closed cases had been lost, Hatake Kakashi had broken into the Uchiha District and kidnapped young Obito for some unknown reason, possibly in order to get revenge for his fallen sensei. Instead of heading into his office and yelling at some people and handing out demotions before heading back home to bed to get maybe three hours sleep before he had to head in again, he had been forced to turn around and try to organize the chaos that had erupted in the wake of little Obito's kidnapping.

As he was getting things under some semblance of control, a runner from the Hyuuga clan had approached and told him that Hyuuga Hiashi was requesting his presence. Apparently, on the same night that the Hatake brat had decided to snatch Obito, a member of the delegation from Kumo that had arrived for diplomatic negotiations between their two villages had attempted to sneak into the room of the daughter of the head of the Hyuuga clan presumably to kidnap her, though other reasons weren't being ruled out. So, while his own clan was behaving like a beehive that had just had a rock chucked at it and waking an entirely ungrateful village in the process, he'd been forced to make his way to the Hyuuga compound to take a diplomat who incidentally came with diplomatic immunity into custody, and find a way to twist the law around to allow Konoha to hold him for more than the five minutes it had taken to get him out of the Hyuuga compound.

He'd thought he'd gotten a bit of good news when he'd heard that the Hokage had found the Hatake boy and Obito, and that Obito was in good health, but it had only turned out to be a precurser to the next bit of bad news since such thing just had to come in clusters of at least three. Because he'd needed a bit of a pick me up after the night he'd had, he'd decided to personally give Shuichi the news before he headed home to get some sleep before dealing with the mess from last night in a few hours. When he'd gotten to Shuichi's home, it had been to find that someone else had broken in and beaten the poor man to within an inch of his life. The man had been in no condition to speak as he had brought him to the hospital, and therefore had been unable to reveal anything about his second attacker who had to have been working with the Hatake brat because it was too convenient to have been coincidence.

If that all wasn't enough, when he got to the hospital, it had only been to learn that the bastard who had turned the Maternity Ward into his own personal killing ground had struck again.

* * *

As Shuichi lay on a hospital bed, recovering from the early-morning attack that had come hours after Naruto's abduction, he ran the confrontation with the masked intruder through his mind once more. Each time he did so, one small detail that he'd quite possibly imagined kept sticking in his mind.

Just before the masked intruder who he could tell was Uchiha, but not quite recognize because none of the members of the clan who had shoulder length hair had that particular pattern of spikes, had said the word "Yondaime", there had been a faint and barely aspirated "Se".

* * *

**Author's Note: **Sorry to my readers who wanted to see Naruto be Obito's re-incarnation. When I'd started the story, I'd had the idea of leaving that up in the air, and possibly pointing out that those who believed him to be Obito reborn because of this that or the other had seen what they had wanted to see, though there was enough to see to give them the idea in the first place. After Kakashi kidnapped Naruto, I got stuck. Kakashi kidnaps Naruto, gets caught, gets in trouble, and then what? Then came the revelation that Tobi really was Obito, and I wondered how a Tobi/Obito who was half mad from what he had seen as betrayal and hadn't yet had seventeen years to cool down would react if he ever found out that he'd been "replaced".

Yeah, yeah, I know, the story of the Kyuubi attack was off, but this is an AU. Let's just say that things went somewhat differently in little spots here and there, but the major stuff that had happened before Naruto turned three pretty much happened as history said it did.

**Edited 4/13/13.**


	10. Resolve

The Hokage sighed as the looked out the window of his office. Normally, the view of the village that he was supposed to watch over and protect soothed him during troubling times, but this time nothing seemed to help with the problems that had all been dropped in his lap in the span of roughly an hour. Yesterday, the village had been ticking along as usual, better than usual even since it had looked like Konoha would have come to an agreement with Kumo that would have led to a mutual defense treaty like the one they had with Suna bringing the world that much closer to peace. Today however, the treaty was yet another unattainable dream, and both the Hyuuga and the Uchiha were both fit to be tied for similar reasons, the attempted abductions of members of their clans.

There had been differing motives behind the attempted and briefly successful abductions, and young Obito's position in the Uchiha clan was uncertain, especially since there was a great deal of pressure from the other clans to have the boy removed from the care of the Uchiha who were still suspects in the Kyuubi attack in the minds of the average villager, but the fact remained that people had broken into the compounds of two of Konoha's most prominent and powerful clans with the intention of removing children from their care. Because of this, the heads of both clans were howling for the heads of the would-be abductors, and for a variety of reasons, giving them to them would be nearly impossible.

If the Kumo ambassador were to be killed within Konoha's walls, war would be declared. With it being less than four years since the end of the Third War and only three and a half since the Kyuubi attack, another war would break Konoha's back. Konoha was barely holding itself above water at the moment, and it would only take a small nudge for the village to drown. Though Konoha boasted 10,000 + shinobi, the truth was that more than half of said ninja were on inactive duty, either being civilians who had been trained to Genin level and could only be called up in times of war or other extreme disasters such as the Kyuubi attack, or being "retired" for a variety of reasons. They'd returned the Academy curriculum to wartime footing, but it would be a while before new ninja would be entering Konoha's forces in significant numbers.

Because of this, he could not give the Hyuuga the justice they wanted for the egregious breach of the security of their home. He had however sent a missive to the Raikage informing the man that he'd rather poorly chosen his ambassador and that should the next ambassador he may choose to send behave in a similar manner, he would allow those whose home he or she invaded deal with them however they chose.

In theory, the Uchiha's request was an easy one to fulfill and he could hand the Hatake boy over to the Uchiha in an instant since he was a member of his own forces, but in fact things were slightly more complicated. Relations between the Uchiha and the ANBU of which young Kakashi was one were strained, and had been so since the aftermath of the Kyuubi attack. There had always been a bit of antagonism between the two groups, but the almost friendly competition and the acknowledgement that at the end of the day all of them belonged to Konoha seemed to be missing lately.

This could be related to the fact that Danzo had been sending his little Root recruits over to spy on the Uchiha district more and more frequently, causing general ill will for the ANBU amongst the Uchiha who didn't differentiate between Danzo's off the books forces and the regular ANBU forces. The fact that both wore similar masks and ROOT "didn't exist anymore" didn't help matters.

The Uchiha district itself had been something of a sore point as well. While it had originally been created for the safety of the Uchiha as there had been a number of unprovoked attacks on them immediately following the Kyuubi attack after a number of villagers had put two and two together and got "the Uchiha did it", it had become something of a separate village as the Uchiha became increasingly insular with each passing day. As far as the Uchiha were concerned however, the district was something of a prison in which they had been unfairly incarcerated after being tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.

Things with the clan that his sensei had been wary of were starting to head towards a boiling point, and he was afraid of what would happen when they did.

* * *

Kakashi paced around the cell in which he had been placed until is fate was decided. Though he'd thought that the Hokage would understand, he hadn't. In fact, the man had told him that Naruto would be returned to that insane bastard who'd named him Obito and used him to replace his dead son as soon as the man was well enough to get out of the hospital.

How could the old man see that Naruto wasn't safe with the Uchiha, especially not that Uchiha? While the clan as a whole may not have been responsible for the Kyuubi attack, the fact remained that one of them had done it and had gotten away with it. The Uchiha who had been responsible for the attack could get their hands on Naruto more easily with him living amongst them and try again, killing Naruto in the process. That was if the man who was using Naruto to replace his son didn't have a total breakdown and end up doing something to him first.

The Hokage should understand his concerns, considering the fact that he'd lost his own wife during the attack...

Could it be?

Was it possible that despite his claims the Sandaime didn't have Naruto's safety and best interests in mind? Could the Hokage hate the child, and blame him for what had happened as most villagers seemed to? He himself had felt somewhat cold towards Naruto for a while, and then he'd been forced to interact with the boy when that woman had started tossing him out at night.

Considering the fact that Kushina was the Kyuubi's Jinchuriki had been a reasonably well kept secret that wasn't known to the vast majority of the village, there was no reason why anyone should have known that Naruto had become a Jinchuriki as well. The Sandaime could have kept the knowledge of what Naruto was to a small circle much as it could've been with Kushina couldn't he? So, how did the information get out? Why did it get out? Such information would ony serve to inflame sentiment against the child who contained the beast who'd caused so much destruction.

Could that have been what the Sandaime had planned all along?

Why else would the old man have allowed Naruto to suffer the way he had in his short life? Why else would the old man claim that his hands were tied and continue to allow the boy to be treated as he had been if not so the man could watch the child grow up unhappy and unhealthy in revenge for the loss of his wife? The Sandaime was in charge of the village, and being so, he could have easily found a place where Naruto was safe and well cared for. The fact that he hadn't indicated deliberate maliciousness on his part.

He had to get out of there. He had to get out of there and get Naruto safe. Since nobody, not even the boy's godfather who'd hared off for parts unknown, was going to protect his sensei's son, he was all the boy had left, and he couldn't fail Naruto like he had everyone else.

* * *

Shuichi did his best to smile for the small boy who was staring at him with such concern. Due to the pain he was in, the smile was mroe of a grimace however. Despite the fact that she had responsibilities to her own family, Mikoto had rather kindly brought Naruto in to visit him at the first available opportunity.

As he looked at the boy, he found that he couldn't get the masked intruder's words in regards to the child's paternity out of his mind. The Yondaime's son. The Yondaime's son who was hated and reviled by most of those who encountered him for something that the child had been unable to prevent or control. If it hadn't been for the boy's eerily uncanny similarities to Obito, he had little doubt that the Uchiha clan would have reviled the child much as the rest of the village as a whole did. He himself would have likely done the same as well had he met him under different circumstances and not seen his own son in the child, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that.

The fact remained however that because his Obito had been born to his sensei in this life, becoming his son as he'd repeatedly screamed that he'd much rather be during his more emotional moments, he was in danger, and there was nothing he could do about it from his hospital bed. And, even when he got out of the hospital, there would be little he could do about it since he was so far out of fighting shape it wasn't even funny. If he wanted to protect his child, he would have to train relentlessly until he was in a position in which he could. Until then, he would have to depend on his clan to do what they could to keep Obito safe.

As he vowed to protect his boy come hell or high water, a small niggling at the back of his mind wouldn't let go of the masked stranger, the unfamiliar Uchiha who'd started to call the Yondaime something else before he caught himself, something that had started with "Se".

* * *

**Author's note: **I've gone back and edited the previous chapters a bit, giving them a bit of a polish. The story line is the same, and there aren't too many changes to the story.


	11. Spiraling Downward

He smiled as he sat quietly playing with the blocks that the Kaa-san lady had handed him. Nobody had given him blocks before, but he'd seen other children playing with them back at the other place. The Sasuke boy was on the other side of the room playing with a duckybird on wheels.

"Sasuke, Obito, come, it's time to eat." the Kaa-san lady said from the kitchen where she'd been making food.

Getting up from where he was making a block tower like the one the Old Man Hokage lived in, he went into the kitchen. It had taken him a long time to realize that when someone said "Obito", they were talking to him. He'd been called something else in the other place. Several something elses, and none of them had been said nicely like his new name was, except by Kashi and the Old Man Hokage, but they were strange.

The new place he was at now was strange. He had one of those "parent" things that he'd heard some of the older kids talking about, and he lived in a house. Or, at least he did until Kashi had taken him away to that place that smelled awful. Now, he lived in another house that had two of those parent things and two other kids, a big one and one his size. The Kaa-san lady had said that he would be going back to the house with his Tou-san when he got better. His Tou-san was hurt bad enough that he wasn't all better when he woke up, so it could take a long time before then.

Carefully hanging back to let Sasuke go in first because he would push him if he didn't, he went into the dining area. Sasuke was okay most of the time, but he would push him when he was "in the way", and sometimes he would get angry and tell him that it was his house and that he didn't belong. The Itachi boy was nice all the time, and never told him he didn't belong, but he was gone alot. The Kaa-san lady was nice too, and she made him food, and gave him things, and gave him hugs, and told him stories at night. The Fugaku-sama person was strange though, he was gone alot, but when he was there, he was just...there.

When he got to the dining area, he looked at the table hopefully, hoping to see ramen again like there had been on his first day here. There was no ramen however. There was some really tasty rice balls though. They were much better than the ones his Tou-san tried to make the day Kashi took him and Tou-san got hurt. All of the food that the Kaa-san lady made was better than the food Tou-san made. The fact that there were tasty rice balls didn't stop him pouting when he found out there was no ramen though.

"What's wrong?" the Kaa-san lady asked.

"No ramen." he replied as he sat down across from Sasuke.

"You are so much like your mother." the Kaa-san lady said before laughing and patting him on the head.

He wondered why the Kaa-san lady had said that. He didn't have a mother parent. He just had Tou-san. Tou-san who was gone now, but the Kaa-san lady had said that he would come back.

* * *

Tobi screamed in frustration as he turned back around and made his way back to the mainland less than five minutes after he'd finally set foot in Kiri. When he'd arrived, it had been to find hostile forces in the Mizukage's office waiting for him, and Yagura nowhere to be found and controlled. He'd killed them as a matter of course, but the alarm had gone up and more would be coming soon, and even more after that, and more after that. Though he was completely unharmed and unlikely to be so in the future, it would be best at this point to retreat and regroup, and re-plan how he was going to go about things until it was time for the final pieces of the plan to be implemented.

He should've known that something like this would've happened if he had left before he had complete control over Yagura who still fought him on occasion. The fights had been getting weaker and weaker lately, and he had been certain that he could take a few days to look into the issue in Kohoha without any problems in that area.

Yagura hadn't been made Kage of a village that had been known for its bloody reputation practically since its founding for nothing though. Beneath that deceptively childlike exterior lay a strong body, a keen mind, and an iron will that was difficult to break, and Yagura hadn't been nearly as broken as he pretended to be. The bastard had been lulling him into a false sense of security in preparation for one last and desperate struggle, and like a dumb kid, he'd fallen for it, leaving the bastard alone with his village.

By the time he'd returned, Yagura had retaken Kiri and had taken measures to prevent him from taking control of him and the village again. If he wanted to use Kiri as he had been doing, he would have to kill Yagura first, and even then he would be in a tenuous situation because the shinobi had been alerted to his presence and village of origin, and few if any would follow a Konoha shinobi. He would have to slaughter ninja left and right, which would weaken Kiri to the point where it would look like an easy target for an ambitious village seeking to expand.

While he wouldn't mind if every last citizen of the blasted village and the country surrounding it died, such a drastic change in the political landscape would destabilize everything and start World War IV early, making the plan which depended on several conditions potentially unsalvageable. Kiri would get what was coming to it soon enough.

The entire world would.

There was nothing for it now however. Now, he'd have to make his way to Nagato who he knew was coming up with a plan of his own which coincided with Madara's to a point, and see where things went from there. Having been forced to learn it, he had patience, patience enough to outlast this and lull Yagura into a false sense of security before getting his revenge. As they said, pain is the best teacher, and he'd been through almost every kind of it over the eighteen years he'd been alive.

* * *

Iruka nervously hung back at the edges of the crowd at the meeting that Mizuki had dragged him to. What was being said had bordered on treason, and he was afraid that someone in power would discover and take issue to it. It was on the Hokage's orders that the Demon container lived with the Uchiha despite what one of them at the very least had done, and it had been the Hokage himself who had returned it to the Uchiha after Hatake Kakashi had gone insane and taken it for some strange reason.

The people here were speaking of removing the Demon vessel from the Uchiha, by force. The current plan which would seemingly keep everyone's hands clean was to hire a missing-nin to do the actual removal. Of course there was an issure of exactly how to get said missing-nin into the village. A Chunin who often guarded the main gate had offered to turn a blind eye to the mercenary, had offered to willingly allow a criminal to invade Konoha unimpeded.

The offer and several other suggestions that had been made that evening made him sick. After his parents had died, the Hokage had been there for him, had been there for the entire village, retaking his hat when he should've been enjoying his retirement, and these people were speaking of undermining him.

"He's slipping, everyone can see it." a grizzled older ninja who had a set of scars that looked like claw marks running down his face said. "There's a reason he retired and handed the hat to Namikaze. He wanted to quit before he became a liability. Now, he's pandering to those damn Uchiha, probably because the bastards had threatened to up stakes and leave. As far as I'm concerned, it should've been good riddance to the lot of them."

Most of the people in the surrounding area had the decency to look uncomfortable at the man's statement, but he could see one or two with considering looks on their faces as if they were contemplating and accepting the statement as truth.

This saddened him. The Hokage had done everything he could to hold the village together after the Kyuubi attack, and now they were starting to turn on him.


End file.
