Matron - NarutoxHP

Matron, continued

Warnings; Naruto Harry Potter Crossover, with somewhat super and ooc Harry.

Summary; What Naruto wants is a family. What Konoha gets is a force to be reckoned with.

Matron

The word of Naruto’s disappearance comes to Hiruzen Sarutobi in the morning after the disappearance itself occurs. The staff at the orphanage defend themselves by citing the numbers of their charges and how unruly they are – especially Naruto – and how hard it was, understaffed as they are, to keep track of all the little things that go on. And, besides, the orphanage doors are all locked, the walls surrounding the grounds high and supposedly inescapable, there shouldn’t have been any way for any child to escape, especially not a four year old simpleton like Naruto.

“And, for that matter, the boy should have been perfectly content in the orphanage. Food to eat, bed to sleep in, what more can he expect? But no, the ungrateful little –” here one of the staff members are cut off by the head of the orphanage, a middle aged woman with little grey in her black hair, who elbows the other woman hard.

Only the fact that it was hard to find even semi competent staff for Konoha’s only orphanage keeps the Third Hokage from firing them all on the spot. Once maybe, when jobs had been scarcer and the orphanage had enjoyed better funding, it wouldn’t have been hard at all but now days… Well, the fact that Naruto was one of the occupants at the orphanage had taken a big chunk out of the private funding and what the Hokage’s office could supply was barely enough to keep the place going. Not to mention about keeping it going with something like professional staff.

So instead the Hokage bites his tongue at the guileless and not-all-that-guilty expressions he gets from the head of the orphanage, and instead he arranges a quick search. Unruly Naruto might be, but at four years and two months he’s not exactly shinobi material, and shouldn’t have gotten far. The biggest worry he has isn’t about where the boy might’ve gone – but where someone might’ve taken him after he had miraculously gotten out of the orphanage.

There’d be an investigation about that, once the boy himself would be found.

“I’ll deal with this,” he promises the orphanage staff through gritted teeth, when they just linger in his office, like expecting instant results and chance to see the Hokage handing out punishment to the four year old in question. “Just get back to your stations and keep to your duties until further notice.”

They hesitate but the head of the orphanage is more than happy to get out, and with brisk movements she ushers her brood out, leaving Hiruzen glaring at the closed door after them.

The problem with Naruto isn’t just that majority of the village, including the orphanage staff, had decided to replace him as their object of anger and hatred after Kyubi’s attack and imprisonment inside the boy. The problem is that, no matter how hated and belittled he is, the fact remains that the boy is still a jinchuuriki. And even if the civilians of Konoha thought that meant nothing but that the boy was the devil incarnate, it also meant that he was a god damned jinchuuriki.

And jinchuuriki are power – and not just as individuals, but as symbols. Jinchuuriki like Naruto, a young impressionable boy hated by all, wouldn’t be difficult to persuade to go along when offered with even a smidgeon of kindness and comfort. Any spy worth his pay – and Hiruzen was under no illusions about his village being spy-free – would’ve immediately jumped at the chance of doing little inventive recruiting, if they happened to see a four year old jinchuuriki walking alone in the dead of the night.

The orphanage wouldn’t be going through just an investigation – it would also get a security enhancement or two.

“Now,” he murmurs, turning to his crystal ball which is connected to a network of chakra running thorough the whole village. “If I were a four year old on the run, where would I go?”

As he started a grid pattern search, originating from the orphanage, he could see the jounin and ANBU he had send out to search for the boy. Some of them were lazing off on the job – more or less expected, but he made a mental note of them none the less. The ANBU were hardest at work, but it wasn’t too surprising. Not only were they professionals to the soles of their geta, and when Hokage ordered the ANBU jumped. They were also, unlike majority of Konoha, perfectly aware of Naruto’s worth, most of them having no doubt faced jinchuuriki of other villages at one point or another. They wouldn’t leave a rock unturned, to get theirs back.

One day Naruto himself might end up as ANBU. Jinchuuriki often made the best high-danger assassins. Not to mention about high-destruction ones.

Naruto proves to be very elusive, though, and after a while Hiruzen searches, he can’t help but feel a twinge of nervousness. He knows for a fact that no matter what has happened, the boy must still be in side the village – had there been any illegal preaches to the village wards, he would’ve been informed of it, and Konoha still doesn’t permit night-travel except for the official Ninja on missions. The council had tried to get him to revoke that war-time-law, and now he’s very grateful he hasn’t because it means that no one’s gone in or out of the village since last night.

But where is the boy? Somewhere by himself, probably cold and starving and miserable, which is bad enough, or… somewhere with someone who had no right to get near the boy?

Or worse yet, lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

Grimacing to himself, Hiruzen runs his hand over his eyes. He really should’ve pressed harder when it came to the opinions and beliefs people had of Naruto. He was a believer of freedom of speech and free will – to a point – and so had done nothing, but now…? With so many people in the village so desperately against the little blond boy, he wasn’t sure if he could put the worse case scenario out of his mind. People were opportunist, after all, sometimes horribly so.

He is considering calling the Inuzuka clan into the search, maybe with the Aburame too to speed up the search, when one of his four secretaries rushes into the office, hand at her ear where she was holding one finger on her headset. “Sir,” she says. “Ushi’s squad has something in the sector four, thousand and two hundred meters south of the orphanage – training ground eight.”

“They have Naruto?” Hiruzen asks, standing up quickly.

“They have confirmed a blond haired boy approximately four years of age, but there is also something else there too. Ushi informs that their squad’s sensor is getting… strange reading on the other individual and due to the reading, he has deemed it unsafe to approach until further observation on the individual’s intentions,” the secretary says and looks at him expectantly. “Shall I give them the order to retrieve the target?”

“Negative,” Hiruzen says, frowning. Ushi’s squad’s sensor is a Hyuuga and if a Hyuuga says that something is strange it means they have absolutely no idea what it is. Which can mean any number of things, none of them very good. “I will assess the situation myself. Inform Ushi that I’ll be there in approximately two minutes and they’re to hold position.”

“Very good, sir,” the Secretary says, not even blinking as Hiruzen heads to the window. “Shall I cancel your eight o’clock meeting, sir?”

“Hold it for half an hour, if I’m not there until then, then reschedule it,” Hiruzen orders, and then jumps out of the window.

Running over the village rooftops, he is at the training grounds in less than two minutes, and is approached by the Ushi-team the moment he gets close enough.

“Sir,” the team captain greets him, kneeling down in the grass beside him. “The target is two points south, approximately fifteen meters, with an unknown individual that appears to be a man, but we are not certain. The chakra reading we get from him…” the man hesitates.

“Speak freely,” Hiruzen urges. “What is the reading?”

“No idea, but it gave our sensor a blinding head ache,” Ushi admits with a grimace audible in his voice but hidden beneath the ox-mask. “She says that it’s not chakra, though. She doesn’t know what it is, but it’s nothing like chakra.”

“Hm,” Hiruzen answers, frowning. That is… new. Even summoned creatures have chakra. Even demons have chakra. “What is the status of this individual and Naruto?” he demands to know.

“Ah… they appear to be… cuddling, sir,” Ushi answers. “It is hard to say, but I believe the target is asleep in the… stranger’s lap.”

The Hokage’s eyebrows lift at that and then, making a decision, he strides past the bushes that had been between him and the two targets, and to the clearing. There he sees exactly why the ANBU team had been so confused about whether or not it was Naruto – the boy, if it is Naruto, is almost completely hidden in the numerous folds of black and dark red that cover the strange man who is holding him.

As the man looks up and straight at Hiruzen, the Hokage pauses to take in the whole scene. The man, if it is a man, is sitting in the grass, clothed in what looks like approximately two dozen layers of thick cloth, taking form in elaborate cloak and multi layered robes, with sleeves so wide that one of them is enough to work as a blanked for Naruto, who lays curled in the man’s lap, fast asleep. The man himself is… foreign, somehow. His somewhat pale features are arranged in a way Hiruzen has never seen – his eyes are larger, his jaw wider and

stronger, and just the general arrangement of his face is just… slightly off. The wild black hair and almost glowing green eyes only enhance the foreignness of the features, and the round, black rimmed glasses perched on the straight nose do nothing to hide how odd-shaped his eyes are.

The man says nothing, just stares at him while smoothing one sleeve covered hand over Naruto’s hair in steady petting motion. Aside from his face, the rest of him is completely covered in the numerous folds of his attire, his hands included. He doesn’t seem hostile – the man’s features, as foreign as they are, have almost amiable look about them, calm and soothing. But still, there is something about the whole scene that makes Hiruzen hesitate – and it’s not just the fact that you could hide an armoury’s worth of weapons in the man’s numerous folds.

“You seem to have one of my orphans there,” Hiruzen says, very aware of the fact that around him, hidden from plain sight, there is an entire ANBU squad, waiting for an order to attack. “I’d prefer to have him back.”

The green eyed man says nothing, just blinks slowly and keeps on staring.

Clearing his throat, the Hokage tries again. “He ran away from the orphanage last night. I’m grateful you’ve been taking care of him, but he needs to go back now. It’s time for breakfast and he must be hungry.”

Again nothing, this time not even a blink.

Frowning a bit, Hiruzen takes a closer look at the man’s face and eyes, and realises that there is not a hint of understanding in the man’s eyes. “Can you understand a word I’m saying?” he asks, to no avail. The man doesn’t react in any way, just keeps on petting Naruto’s hair in slow, languid motions.

Well. This situation is becoming rather interesting, Hiruzen has to admit. A foreigner in very foreign clothing, who can’t understand their language and who has something that’s not chakra… and Naruto had run right into him? They were lucky the man had decided to soothe the boy rather than do something else, something worse, but… why? And how had this man ended up in his village anyway? And where on earth was he from anyway, to have features and clothing like that and no understanding over the language spoken widely across the continent?

After a moment of hesitation, Hiruzen takes a step closer. When the man holding Naruto doesn’t react, he takes another step and then a third. Then, when he’s almost close enough to reach,

the green eyed man’s expression shifts and his eyes narrow – just slightly, but enough to make Hiruzen pause for a moment.

“I really must take him home now,” the Hokage says as soothingly as he can, and takes another careful step, bending down a bit, reaching —

The man holding Naruto opens his mouth and a sound comes out. The impact of that sound – a word maybe, it’s impossible to say – is instant. Before he can even think of defending himself, Hiruzen is pushed back two good meters as if by an enormous gust of wind, leaving tracks of his feet on the grass. It’s not painful in anyway, but the force of it is very strong, and it startles the Hokage enough to make him yelp with shock.

Which, of course, alerts all the ANBU near by, who all rush into his defence, taking out weapons and getting between him and the man. Before Hiruzen can order them to stand down, the green eyed man has taken this as a sign of hostility and is already acting on it. There is another sound, another word, and a shimmer of blue suddenly envelopes the green eyed man and Naruto in a sphere which, Hiruzen realises the moment he can get past Ushi to see, is a shield.

“Stand down!” he snaps at the ANBU, eying the man and his shield in fascination. There had been no seals, no hand movements what so ever, just sound, and the shield had appeared. And not just any shield but energy shield which normally should’ve been the hardest to form and maintain. But no. The man just sits there in the grass, with Naruto still in his lap, still looking relaxed and calm though some of the amiability of his features had faded into a frown.

“But sir, he attacked you,” Ushi says, still holding his sword.

“No. He protected Naruto,” Hiruzen says. It was only when he had reached for the boy that the man had reacted. And that shield. It is still up, a shimmering sphere in the air, and Hiruzen can’t help but wonder how strong it was. Would it hold back a Ninjutsu, a person, a weapon?

“Mmnn,” a sound comes from inside the shield and with secret burst of relief the Hokage watches how Naruto stretches in the man’s lap, yawning and then blinking up at one who is holding him. There is a moment of tension as the boy just stares up at the green eyed man, who looks down to him and smiles gently.

Hiruzen is just about to open his mouth to ask, to order Naruto to come away from the man, to say something, when the boy bursts into a grin and jumps up. “It worked!” he yells, throwing his arms around the green eyed man’s neck and nearly sending them both off balance. There is

a grin on the strange man’s face too as he lifts his arms, hands still hidden, to embrace the boy and once more hiding Naruto almost entirely in the folds of his enormous sleeves.

This is not what Hiruzen had been expecting to see, but it eases his heart a bit. Just a bit. “Naruto?” he calls, clearing his throat as the boy keeps on clinging to the strange man’s neck. “Naruto!” the Hokage finally snaps, making the boy glance backwards, first fleetingly and then again as he realises they’re not alone.

“Old-man Hokage?” the boy asks, blinking, leaning back. The man’s arms around the boy’s waist and back are probably the only things keeping him from falling backwards, and the Hokage can’t help but marvel the trust the boy has on the stranger. “What are you doing here?” Naruto asks, looking confused.

“You ran away from the orphanage. I came to find you,” Hiruzen says with a tense smile. “Why don’t you introduce me to your friend?”

“Friend?” Naruto asks and looks at the green eyed man before grinning. “He’s not my friend,” the boy says happily, hugging the man’s neck tightly again while the man happily returns the favour. “He’s my family.”

“Ah,” Hiruzen says, frowning, not sure how to answer that. Naruto is an orphan and this man is most obviously not in any way related to him, but to say that to the happy face of the boy? “You could still introduce me to him?” he finally settles on saying.

Naruto frowns at that and looks at the green eyed man again. “No,” he then says.

“Naruto,” the Hokage says, with a bit more force in his voice. “This is serious.”

“Don’t care. He’s mine and that’s that,” Naruto says, burrowing himself deeper into the green eyed man’s chest, vanishing almost completely unto the thick folds of clothing. “I summoned him and no one will take him away from me.”

“You did what?” Hiruzen asks, frowning and stepping closer, to the edge of the shield. “Naruto did you just say you summoned him?”

“Yes,” the boy answers from his hiding place, while the green eyed man indulgently wraps his cloak around the boy, hiding him completely. “I did.”

“And how did you summon him?” the Hokage enquires with as much patience as he can muster, even while his head pounds and his mind teeters somewhere between disbelief and worry. “Naruto please answer me, this is very serious. How did you summon him?”

The boy says nothing for a while, and then his arms worm out from behind the clothing he’s hidden in. “Like this,” he says, and puts his hands into clumsy seals, one after another. “Saw someone do it, and summon a dog, so I tried it myself. And it worked and he’s mine and you can’t take him away from me. So there!” and then the boy’s hidden again while Hiruzen looks at the green eyed man in shock.

A summoned creature? No, that can’t be. Can it? Frowning, he looks the man from top to bottom. What little he can see is completely human. But then, he can’t see much, only the man’s head really, the rest is covered in thick folds of his very plentiful clothing. For all he knew, the man could have a reptilian body under all the cloaks and capes he wears. And then there was also the weird chakra… and the shield too.

Shield which he had made not with hand seals, but with the sound of his voice.

“Is it possible?” Ushi asks quietly, turning to the Hokage, his sword coming down a bit. “He’s just a boy; he shouldn’t be able to use chakra yet, not to mention something like summoning! Sir, do you think…?”

Does he think? Hiruzen frowns. What he thinks is that Naruto is a jinchuuriki and that his seal is unique, meant to blend some of Kyubi’s chakra into the boy’s chakra coils and what he worries is that it might already be happening. Naruto might already have some measure of access to Kyubi’s chakra. But to summon? The boy has no contract. And, as far as Hiruzen knows, there is no contract for something more humanoid than monkey’s.

And demons.

His eyes narrowing, the Hokage stares at the bespectacled green eyed man with wild black hair. Could it be…? Naruto had seen someone summon a dog, probably thinking they had been summoning a pet for themselves… and then had decided to summon himself a family.

The green eyed man looks back calmly, and even with a barrier of language between them, Hiruzen can see it written clear as day on the man’s eyes. He wouldn’t be separated from Naruto, not by anyone.

“Well,” Hiruzen says under his breath. “If he is somehow a summoned creature, the summoning will fade at some point. Once it does, we know and if not… then we know something else.” Turning to the Ushi team he smiled grimly. “I suppose until then we can’t but wait and see.”

“Is that wise, sir?” Ushi asks worriedly.

“Wiser than engaging the man and putting Naruto in danger,” Hiruzen says. “For now, let’s try and get them off the training grounds and somewhere safer. Not the orphanage though.”

“What? No, I want to go home and show everyone that I have family!” Naruto says instantly, peeking out from above the green eyed man’s arm.

“Now, Naruto, I’m not sure if that’s a —”

“No! I wanna go home!” the boy yells back, making the so called summon shift beneath him with a frown.

Hiruzen hesitates. “Alright then. The orphanage it is,” he says and turns to Ushi. “I need ANBU operatives to replace the staff at the orphanage before Naruto and his… family makes it there. Hopefully this won’t be for long but for as long as it takes, I want this man watched at all times and all the children well protected. Naruto included.”

“Yes, sir,” Ushi says and after a moment of hesitation jumps away, his team following.

“Now, Naruto, how about we go back?” Hiruzen asks, holding out a hand. “You must be hungry and your friends are all waiting for you.”

“What friends?” the boy murmurs, but crawls out from beneath the green eyed man’s arms and stands up, stretching. With a blink, the green eyed man shifts and stands up as well, making a rather strange image. He isn’t quite as tall as some men Hiruzen had seen, but he makes up for what he lacks in height with the sheer magnitude of his clothing. They had seemed plentiful when he had been sitting, but now that he is standing and all the folds fall as they had been intended to, the clothing looks magnificent and almost ceremonial.

Long flowing black cloak with its deep hood, the red robes beneath it, with their enormous sleeves that reach the ground, and the many layers of his robes’ hems. It’s a lot of cloth. The man also has a thick leather belt around the waist of the robes, with a variety of satchels and what looks like several phials hanging from it, along with two long leather tubes, one at each hip like weapons holsters, except what ever is in them has wooden handles.

As the blue, shimmering shield around the man and the boy fades, Naruto takes the robed man’s sleeve into his fingers and begins tugging. The man goes willingly, falling in step with Naruto and putting one protective, sleeve covered hand on the boy’s shoulders, the sleeve and the hem of his black cloak coming to shield the boy once more.

Well, if nothing, the man seems gentle towards Naruto, Hiruzen muses, worried and curious all at once, and then motions the pair of them to follow him as he begins leading them back towards the village, and the orphanage.

x

Ushi knows the whole thing is a bad idea the moment he manages to convince the staff at the orphanage to take a day or few off and that their absence would be covered. There is some measure of suspicion in the eyes of the staff members, but majority of them are just relieved, elated and few borderline vindictive, muttering to each other how much they wished very good luck to whoever was the poor sucker who got the substitute job.

Whether it is the authority of the ANBU mask or the sheer ineptitute of the orphanage staff, it’s hard to tell, but the staff eventually leaves without a word. And that is bad – because this is a orphanage, not just some office building or a little shop in the corner of the red light distric. This is an orphanage and Ushi knows just enough of children to know that you don’t leave them without a word. And yet, not a word of warning is given to the children and not a word of advice is passed to the Anbu about when to do what or what to feed to whom, nothing. They just… leave.

“Okay, people. You got your marks picked?” Ushi asks, calling his squad from their various hiding places in the orphanage grounds. All seven of them jump into view and for a moment they crowd the space near the orphanage entrance, a faceless, featureless group of people.

“I’ll take the sour looking one, seems like she doesn’t do much talking and I don’t feel much like talking either,” their sensor says, sounding disgruntled.

“I’ll take the blonde one,” another in the squad says, and they all picl their marks – leaving the head of the orphanage, of course, to Ushi. This leaves two of them without marks, of course, the orphanage only has staff of six, but the last two will be doing their observation, at first, as inanimate objects which would be placed in key points inside.

“Alright. Now, this isn’t a high risk mission as of yet, just a protection and observation detail, but it’s made difficult by the lack of warning and the fact that we don’t have much intel on the station,” Ushi says, motioning at the orphanage. “So be cautious and take as many cues from the charges as you can – but not to the point of letting them control you. Uzumaki and the cloaked man are our priorities, so watch them but not at the risk of blowing your cover. Any questions?”

“Do we have any idea how many kids there are in this place? And what ages they are?” one of his squad asks.

“And how long will this mission take?”

Ushi grimaces behind his mask. “I’ve sent for the orphanage files and it’s my understanding there is a small office somewhere in the premises which might have some info to fill in the blanks in our intel. As for the duration… I don’t know, but if it proves out to be a long lasting mission, I will organise a rotation so everyone will get some time off.”

Had his team been any less organised and dutiful, they might’ve groaned at that. The missions with unknown time limit were always the most tedious ones, but at least this time they were within the village rather than in the other side of the continent, so hopefully it wouldn’t be too bad.

“Okay. Take your stations and let’s see what we can do with this job,” Ushi commands, and the chakra poof of his squad transforming into their chosen disguises is almost unanimous. Ushi takes a moment to examine his squad – all of whom were now exact copies of the orphanage staff members – before nodding and lifting his hands in a seal. He took the shape of the orphanage head, making sure to get the details as right as his brief observation of the woman would allow. Then he, in the disguise of her, motioned his squad to go ahead and get to work.

The whole mission proves to be even worse than he had assumed – and lack of intel plays only minute part of it. Major part of is the state of the orphanage. He had known that the

orphanage was suffering from lack of funds, but to see it is a different thing. The place looks like it’s falling apart. The kitchen is a mess of broken dishes and the sinks look like they’re rusting, leaking and crumbling all at once. Ushi peeks into the bathrooms only once before having to hurriedly look away – it seems like no one has washed them in probably few years. Or decades, judging by the sight of the grime coating the corners and thank gods he hadn’t even seen into the sink or the toilet.

Everywhere, the walls are missing bits and pieces and in few places he can see the jury-rigged electrical wiring inside the walls. Two thirds of all the lighting fixtures are broken or burned, and in couple of rooms he sees what looks like mould growing in the ceiling. The walls are full of holes, from fists and feet and who knows what else, and by the looks of it just about every window in the place is broken. One doesn’t have a window at all, but a plastic sheet, taped in place of it.

And then there are the kids. He sees them first in passing as he tries to find the office to get some more data, and then, after finding the office which really isn’t more than storage closet full of cabinets, badly organised and by the looks of it hardly used, he reads their files. There are thirty four orphans in the place, including Uzumaki, varying from ages of six months to fourteen years. They don’t have exactly individual files, just pages in a binder, with haphazard annotations here and there like, lactose intolerant and mind the rash and got her first period on… and so on.

Thirty four orphans, with a staff of six to watch over them. Over five kids to a person, then. To him, used to the notion that a jounin can only handle three genins at a time, it seems like a lot, but then these are civilian kids, most of them too young to be much bother, so maybe it’s manageable.

Then he finds the files of the orphanage. The head of the orphanage apparently never deals with the children, just with the day to day managing of the place. Neither does two other members in the staff, one of whom is a cook and thus only comes into contact with the kids during meal time if even then, and another is a nurse – one with very poor qualifications – who only looks after the sickly, and even then it is mentioned in the files that it is best to let the sickly kids recover in their own bunks. Which leaves the number of dedicated caretakers to three. Eleven kids to a person, with one left over.

It makes his blood run a bit cold, both at the notion that this is how the Kyuubi orphans are looked after – because that’s what most of them are, orphans from the Kyuubi attack – and that this is what his team will have to deal with during the mission.

Suddenly, he’s very glad that two of his squad members have little kids of their own. Before it has always been a point of annoyance – them asking leave at the most inopportune times, citing that they had to be there for their kids for this or that event, school plays and whatnot – but now it might just save their squad from the sheer magnitude of this mission.

With a grim look at the orphanage files, he swears that if this mission proves to be long term, he’ll start doing a bit of reorganisation when he has the time. They need more concise files for the kids, and what needs to be done around the place. Now, though, now he needs to inform his squad about the status of their mission, it’s true, gruesome status, and make sure that no one breaks character.

He manages to do it just in time, whispering what he knows of the orphanage staff to his individual squad members and hurriedly sending one of them to his station at the kitchen and another to the so called infirmary. That’s pretty much all he manages, wishing he had some words of guidance to give one of the three nearly panicking ANBU who were now in charge of nearly three dozen children. But that’s when the Hokage arrives with Uzumaki and the cloaked man, and there is no more time for preparations.

While Uzumaki hurriedly toes off his simple sandals and dashes into the building, probably to inform the other kids that he now has a family, the cloaked, bespectacled man hesitates a bit, looking around himself. Ushi sees him noticing the very things he had noticed – the broken lamps, the holes and scratches in the walls, the lopsided door frames, the mould in the corner of the ceiling…

What he makes of it is hard to say, but there is a frown on the man’s face as he shifts where he stands and then leaves his shoes on the floor – some sort of leather boots with slightly heightened heel and elaborate yarn at the front. It is somehow a odd mental image, to know that the cloaked, robed man doesn’t have foot wear, as he steps further into the orphanage, his eyes flicking this way and that aqs he takes in the many, many imperfections around.

“Everything alright?” the Hokage, who was bending to rid himself of his geta, asks idly as Ushi sidles closer to him.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Ushi asks, almost begs and the Hokage nods, looking bemused. “Sir, this place is a mess. It’s under staffed and falling apart and my team is very poorly equipped for this sort of work. There are too many children for trained professionals to handle, and while my team has two individuals with children they’re no where enough to watch after thirty four.”

The Hokage sighs. “I know. Hopefully it won’t be for longer than a day,” he says. “If this is summoning, it won’t take more than that for the summoning to run it’s course. And if it is more, then I will have Naruto transferred to some other location, where he and the man can be watched by more suitable guards.”

Ushi only barely manages to stop himself from thanking the gods at the sound of the Hokage’s plans.

“Just keep a close eye on the man and do the best you can to handle the orphanage itself,” the Hokage says. “I can’t stay for long, I have a meeting to get to, but I’ll see to the introductions.”

“Very good, sir,” Ushi says, bowing his head slightly as the Hokage walks past him, and then hurriedly following after.

When they get to the main hall – which seems to be the place where the kids spent most of their time in – Uzumaki is in process of explaining how he had himself a family now and how he himself had summoned the man. The man himself is still taking in the signs of neglect – which here reach beyond the broken furniture and windows and to the threadbare clothing and extremely bad haircuts. Not to mention about the fact that, now that Ushi takes a moment to notice it, pretty much all the children are rather skinny.

“So you see,” Uzumaki says in extremely self important voice. “I am not an orphan anymore. So there.”

Most of the children – especially the elder ones – are eyeing both Uzumaki and the man with looks of deep suspicion. There is one girl though – maybe a bit older than Uzumaki, with long black hair and scratch on her cheek, who is biting her thumb thoughtfully. “Can he be my family too?” she asks meekly.

It seems to start something Uzumaki hadn’t been expecting, because another kid, maybe three years old, quickly busts out, “I wanna family too!” and then another one, “I want one, it’s unfair that just you get one!”

“No way, he’s my family!” Uzumaki says, looking horrified. “Get your own!”

“But I don’t know how!”

“You need to share, they’re always telling us to share!”

“It’s unfair!”

“Quiet down you idiots!” one of the older kids snaps at them. “Uzumaki’s just bullshitting! There’s no way you can just summon yourself a family, that’s just stupid.”

“It is not!” Uzumaki says, bringing up his fists. “And I am not bullshitting, I really did summon him and if you’re trying to pick a fight –”

He stops, when the black cloaked man steps closer, placing a hand covered in a long, red sleeve on his shoulder. Uzumaki blinks, looking up with confusion as the man slowly crouches down to his eye level, smiling first at him and then looking at the other kids – couple of whom have moisture of frustration and jealousy in their eyes.

Ushi blinks, and his eyes widen. The man doesn’t say anything, hell, he doesn’t even do much. But somehow he brings the crowd of kids under control, just by looking at them. Somehow he even manages to convey his thoughts out, just by expressions alone. When he turns to look at Uzumaki, the boy bends his head, first looking begrudging and then guilty, as if admonished except not a word had been said. While the other kids stare, shifting on their feet nervously, eagerly, the boy speaks.

“Well… I suppose,” he says. “But I really did summon him. I did the hand things and there was a poof and he appeared,” he adds, glaring at the older kids. “So he was mine first,” Uzumaki adds, but at another silent, pointed look from the man the boy sighs and pouts. “But I guess I can share him.”

The girl who had been the first to bring up the notion brightens at that, taking a hesitating step forward and stopping. When the black cloaked man looks up at her, holding his wide sleeved arms up in invitation, she bursts into movement and dashes forwards, crashing right into the man’s chest to be caught in the man’s sleeves. She’s just the first of many, as the three year old rushes forward and the man catches him too, holding both the little boy and the older girl close.

“Fascinating,” the Hokage murmurs. “I’m quite sure he can’t understand a word of our language, and yet… I think he actually knows more about what just happened than I do.”

“Understanding over body language and voice analysis, perhaps. The cadence and tone of voice can say more than the words, at times,” Ushi muses, watching how the man, hugs all the children in return, first the younger ones and then the older ones too, as they somehow, against their will by the looks of it, get drawn into the flood of hugs.

“Come on, let’s show him around,” Uzumaki then says, taking the black cloaked man’s sleeve, tugging. “Come on, come on!”

The whole crowd of children get into that, of course, and as the Hokage and Ushi follow, they move like a flood of people from room to room, happily babbling as they go, pointing at things, and drawings on the walls, at broken windows, the halls, the bathrooms, anything and everything. Ushi is relatively certain that the man can’t understand a word of it, but he is certainly taking it in nonetheless – the cloaked man never stops looking around and it seems almost like he’s making metal notes of the many broken things and places, the general disrepair and neglect.

“Sir?” One of Ushi’s squad mates asks, coming closer with what seems to be the youngest person in the orphanage in his arms. He’s the team’s field medic, and one of the two in Ushi’s squad with children. One of whom, Ushi recalls, is less than year old. “I’ve performed a perfunctory exam on this child here and I think he ought to be taken to the hospital.”

“What? Why?” The Hokage asks, looking at the child who is contently sleeping in the disguised ANBU’s arms. “He looks perfectly content.”

“Precisely,” the ANBU answers. “The child is running a fever and I think he has a inner ear infection, and yet he is sleeping like a log. One of the children accidentally tipped over a chair right next to him, it was quite loud and yet the infant didn’t react at all. I think… sir, I think he’s been giving sleeping medicine. And quite bit of it too.”

“Oh,” the Hokage says, first turning pale and then starting to redden with anger. “Has the inner ear infection been looked at, or treated?”

“Judging by what I can tell without my equipment… no,” the field medic answers grimly. “Permission to take him to the hospital for a examination, sir?”

“Granted,” Ushi says quickly. “Go now, while the kids are distracted by our… guest.”

Too late. One of the children had been close enough to hear and at the sound of Ushi’s order she asks, rather loudly, “Where are you taking Ryu?!” which, of course, alerts all the other children and, inevitably, their cloaked guest.

Ushi isn’t sure why, but when the man’s bespectacled, green gaze is turned to them, he freezes guiltily in a way he hasn’t, since he had been seven and gotten caught stealing cherries from the Uchiha compound. There is that same, horrible authority in the man’s eyes, that he had seen in the eyes of the Uchiha Elder who had caught him. It seems to affect his team mate

the same way, as the medic stills where he stands, in the disguise of one of the orphanage’s female staff, though the Hokage is more or less exempt from it.

“Your house mate is ill,” the old man says, smiling to the children. “He needs to see a doctor.”

“What? He’s not ill, he’s perfectly fine. You’re just saying that to take him away!” one of the kids accuses. “Like with Tetsu!”

“And Usesaru!” another child, older one, says.

“Who are Tetsu and Usesaru?” the Hokage asks, while the cloaked man comes closer, still frowning that horrible frown. Ushi, still feeling like kid stealing cherries, can’t help but marvel what a large figure the man makes, despite being average in height. It’s the robes and the cloak, the way they billow, he’s never seen anything like it. It just makes the man impossible to ignore.

“Tetsu was a boy that was here once,” one of the kids says, looking at the Hokage and the ANBU suspiciously and Ushi has a horrible feeling they’re blowing their cover, right there. “Bit older than Ryu. Ma’am took him away one day and he came back no more.” At that point, the glares were all directed at Ushi.

“Uesaru too. It happened while ago, before Tetsu,” one of the older kids says. “He was a little kid too, couldn’t talk yet.”

Then the cloaked man is there, looking at the silent, slumbering infant, and there is a very startled look on Ushi’s field medic’s eye as he stands there, like rabbit caught under shinobi’s foot. The look only grows worse when the stranger shifts his cloak out of the way and reaches one of the long, cylindrical holsters at his waist, drawing out what looks like a pointing rod but which they soon realise must be something else.

There is a silence and then an awed “ooh!” from the children, as the tip of the thin wooden rod glows in faintly. The man taps the glowing tip against the infant’s forehead – and what had been a worried frown turns into a look of pure outrage.

The Hokage seems to realise what happened quicker than anyone else, because he’s quick to placate the man. “Please. We don’t know what happened here precisely, but the child needs to be taken into hospital. This is why he needs to be taken to hospital.”

The cloaked man glares at the Hokage and then puts the stick away, reaching for the infant away. Looking helpless, the disguised medic relinquishes the child to the man’s hold, and without anyone knowing what else to do they just watch as the man crouches down and then sits to the floor, right there in middle of the run-down corridor, settling the child gently in his lap.

While the adults exchange a confused look, the kids are quick to follow the man’s example, settling themselves on the floor all around the cloaked man, all leaning in to watch. “What’s wrong with Ryu?” one of them asks. “Are you going to fix him?”

The cloaked man doesn’t answer, just shifts his cloak again out of the way. This time he takes one of the vials on his belt, detaching it from the clasp holding it tightly in place and lifting it up. There is a fascinated silence as the man opens the crystal vial, very careful not to slosh the clear liquid inside. While the Hokage crouches down to watch, Ushi and the medic following suit, too curious to stop themselves, the man turns the child’s head gently to the side.

“That’s the infected ear,” the medic murmurs and opens his mouth to object as the man very, very carefully pours just a single small drop of the clear liquid, right into the child’s ear, right into the canal – somehow doing all of this, without a finger showing. What it does is impossible to say, but as a result a thin thread of smoke curls out of the ear, vanishing into the air almost exactly after it had appeared.

Then the baby scrunches his face, hands squeezing into fists and legs kicking – right before he starts to wail loudly and demandingly.

“What just happened?” the Hokage demands to know, while the cloaked man stoppers the crystal vial, putting it back to his belt.

”I don’t, I…” the medic hesitates and then reaches closer, to touch the infant’s ear gently, concentrating. “It’s healed – the infection is completely gone. What ever that liquid was, it completely cleared the virus. The fever’s still there, but… it’s gone down a degree. And there’s no Thrace of the sleeping medicine.”

“Just from a drop?” The Hokage asks, while the cloaked man, still frowning at them, lifts the baby up to his chest, holding it there gently with one sleeve covered hand supporting the child’s head. Ushi can’t help the shocked stare too because while he is not any specialist of medicine, even he knows of remarkable it was. Something that could deal with a viral infection, all the while bringing down a fever and detoxing the body from a medicine? He’s never head to like.

“I think it’s safe to say that this guy doesn’t work within the parameters of our medical knowledge,” the field medic murmurs, horrified and fascinated while the cloaked man stands up.

“Who are you?” one of the older kids asks then, but the question isn’t directed at the black cloaked man, but at them – at the field medic. “You’re not Ashia-san. And you’re definitely not Matamo-sama!” he adds, pointing at Ushi.

“But they look like them!” another child says, frowning.

“They’re fakes. Ninja can do that!” the older boy says, pointing at them, at the Hokage. “And aren’t you the Hokage? You’ve replaced Matamo-sama and Ashia-san with ninja fakes!”

The Hokage looks surprised at first and then smiled. “Now why would you think that?” he asks.

“Because I’m not stupid and Matamo-sama isn’t screaming at us to not sit on the floor because our trousers might get dirty and we better not make more work at her,” the boy says, folding his arms.

“And Ashia-san would never know stuff like that,” another kid says. “The fancy stuff she just said,” he adds, pointing at the disguised field medic.

“Ah,” the Hokage says and if anything he looks appreciative of having been found out, even while Ushi groans internally. This is what happens when a squad is pushed into an infiltration mission they don’t have enough information for. He had never expected it to happen to his squad, but here it is.

The other squads would never let him live this down.

While the Hokage proceeds to explain that the orphanage staff has a holiday and that there’d be some people – who would look just like them to avoid confusion – to take their places for a while, the black cloaked man walks away from the crowd. Most of the kids stay to listen to the Hokage, but others follow the man like puppies, and with a frown Ushi does the same. After a bit of peeking into the rooms he passes by, the cloaked man makes his way to the kitchen where he begins breaking the laws of nature. More or less.

“How is he doing that?” one of the kids asks, as cupboards and closets open by themselves in answer to the man’s glances, closing themselves after the man doesn’t find what he is looking for. “Is he magic?” the kid asks, turning to Uzumaki uncertainly

“Of course he’s magic!” Uzumaki says, folding his arms and looking insulted. “You think I’d summon someone not magic?”

While the sensor of Ushi’s team – who is playing the part of the cook – creeps closer, the captain of the squad watches the cloaked man closely, wondering how he’s doing it. Chakra strings? No, it doesn’t seem like it, use of chakra strings requires delicate control, usually by hand, and the man’s just looking at the cupboards to make them do as he wants.

“What is going on?” the sensor in disguise of the cook asks, frowning.

“Well, our cover’s completely blown and I think we lost the charge of the kids here before we even had them under control,” Ushi answers, folding his arms. “And that man knows how to use arts I can’t even begin to name. And he apparently is in possession of some form of ultimate medicine which can clear viral infections, fever and detoxify all at once, without any negative side effects as far as I’ve observed so far.”

The sensor says nothing at first, just looks at the man who is now peering into one of the cupboards, before a baby bottle floats out of it. It takes both of them, by surprise and Ushi has to take another look just to be sure he’s seeing what he’s seeing – but sure enough, there is indeed a baby bottle floating out of the cuboard and to the man who examines it and then nods with satisfaction while the kids around him go, “Ooh,” with amazement.

The sensor clears her throat. “Do you want me to have a look again?” she asks, uneasy.

Ushi considers it and then sighs. It wouldn’t help them any to give his sensor a worse headache. “No, it’s alright. Let’s just make sure he doesn’t do any harm.” Though at this point it seems like the man’s intending to do quite opposite to harm, judging by what had happened with the baby.

After the cloaked man had gotten the bottle out, Uzumaki seems to figure out what he wants because the boy rushes forward, jumping at the locked fridge. “Here, the milk’s all here,” the boy says, pointing. “But the fridge’s always locked, the cook has the key –” he says, and stops as the man turns to the fridge and says something, a incoherent word that means nothing to Ushi. It seems to mean something to fridge, though, because it pops open at the word, the door swinging.

In few minutes, the man has found the bottles of baby milk and prepared a bottle for the baby, not just filling the bottle without touching it, but somehow heating it as well with a murmured word. Then, while Ushi and his squad’s sensor watch with some sort of baffled fascination, the man sits down on the floor with his back against the cupboards, the baby settled in his lap and the other kids quickly surrounding him as he begins to feed the infant.

“Whatever he is, he’s good with kids,” the sensor notes.

“Hm,” Ushi agrees, eying both the man and Uzumaki and wondering. The man certainly seems to know a thing or two about child care. And Uzumaki had said that he summoned a family for himself…

Could be that Uzumaki had actually a summoned the man? It had seemed ludicrous before, but now… Most summons are battle oriented, yes, but there are others. Like Tsunade-sama’s famous slugs, which work better as conduits of healing, than in a battle. Then there are summons specialising tracking, information gathering and so on, with as many varieties as there are needs.

Uzumaki had tried to summon a family. And family for a child probably means someone to take care of them, to protect them, to love them. Can it be, is it actually possible, that the boy has managed to summon some sort of… child-care specialised summon?

x

Hiruzen rather regretted the fact that he had been forced to leave the orphanage in order to get back to his work. The whole situation had proved so fascinating, with the strange man’s strange powers and affinities. Not to mention about the children themselves – and the orphanage too.

It’s been nearly six hours since he left the orphanage behind and in care of Ushi’s team, and he still can’t get it out of his head, the state the place is in. He had seen it before, but the incident with the boy Ryu had brought it home, indeed. A child with a infection who hadn’t been

treated and had instead been just drugged with sleep medicine, most likely to make him quiet… Hiruzen doesn’t like that notion one bit. The neglect of the general repair of the orphanage doesn’t exactly fill him with happiness either.

Sure, the orphanage is suffering a certain lack of funds. But letting electrical wiring stick out from the walls? Surely they could’ve at least taped the hole so that none of the children could get their hands on the wires.

The fact that the cloaked man had so simply cured the infant child of both ailments had been very fascinating though, as are the powers the man has so far displayed. Ability to push a person back with a word, to make a shield, to somehow perform a medical examination with a tip of a pointing rod, and then the rest. Before Hiruzen had been forced to leave, Ushi had informed that the man had some sort of gravity-defying power that let him float objects, and that he could open locks with a word and possibly also heat liquids.

Already the green eyed man seems to have in his possession more abilities than the average chuunin – and all of them performed without hand seals. And most likely with some power that isn’t chakra. It all supports the theory that the man might be a summon – even if a summon vastly different from all others he had even heard of. A summon from some place that doesn’t use chakra.

A summon most likely from another world.

It would be a pity, if it proved out that the an would vanish once the summoning ran it’s course. With so little observation Hiruzen had already learned so much – he can’t even imagine what it would be like, to learn more. What other powers the man possesses, what other abilities and what, in truth, was his motivation? Ushi’s somewhat embarrassedly admitted theory about a summon that specialised in child-care was fascinating Hiruzen immensely. Can it really be? And if so, where did the man come from? And how had Naruto really managed to summon him?

He’s thinking more of these things, than concentrating into his work and he’s perfectly aware that it’ll show in the results, but he can’t help it. It has been a quiet year, and this is in truth the most interesting time he has had in a while. He is still wondering about it, after several hours of lost work, when Ushi comes to report his work,

“How was the day?” the Hokage asks, perhaps a bit too eager considering the possible risks involved in the situation. “And speak freely, this situation is too bizarre for formalities.”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” Ushi sighs and stands up straighter in front of his desk. “The day was… well, bizarre, but overall not bad. And I believe even if the man is to vanish, the orphanage will thank him for every having appeared in the first place.”

“He hasn’t disappeared yet, then?” Hiruzen asks, leaning forward a bit. “How is Naruto’s condition.”

“Very good, sir. I… well, sir, I don’t believe Uzumaki is actually supporting the man’s existence. If there is a summoner’s and the summoned creature’s bond between the two, it is not based on chakra. Uzumaki is showing no drain what so ever, and the man is showing no lack of energy. In fact, sir, while Uzumaki had a nap late this afternoon, the man kept on functioning without hindrance,” Ushi admits. “If he will vanish, it won’t be due to lack of chakra support. I doubt he even needs it.”

“Fascinating,” Hiruzen murmurs. But if the man doesn’t need chakra, then… how is he staying here? Or is he so unlike the other summoned creatures that he isn’t actually anchored into his point of origin? But… if the man doesn’t need chakra to stay then… he wouldn’t have needed chakra to appear! How did Naruto summon the man in the first place?

Unless he didn’t and the man is just a man.

“Report the days events,” Hiruzen orders. “I want to hear everything the man did, to the smallest detail.”

And he hears it – and Ushi’s comment about the orphanage thanking the man soon makes perfect sense. It seemed that the man didn’t have a good grasp of general medicine, but also general repair. Even while somehow managing the children in a way that had made Ushi’s whole team feel like they were not only unnecessary but in the way, the man had repaired the orphanage.

“First it was just bits and pieces, sir. A window, a hole in the wall, that sort of things,” Ushi says. “But when one of the children started to complain about hunger, the man made his way to the kitchen, to make food – which was the strangest sort of food I have ever seen, sir,” he pauses in recollection. “Hard to eat with chopsticks, but rather tasty. Anyway, while he made the food, he also repaired bits and pieces of the kitchen…”

The way Ushi explains it, the man had fixed whatever he had encountered in the kitchen. Leaky faucet, cracked sink, somehow clearing away the rust and polishing the stove, all the pots and pans he had used to make his food, then all the pieces of dishware he had used to serve the food. All this, without touching anything but the ladle he had stirred and taste tested the food with. It had all been done so gradually that only by the end of the meal – which the

ANBU squad had found themselves taking part in – the kitchen had been more or less polished, and everything had looked very nearly new.

“And he cleaned everything too. Fridge, sink, all the cupboards, the floor, even the ceiling, without as much as a touch. He used the stick sometimes, especially when he was making the food, but mostly he just used words,” Ushi says. “And after that he had moved onto other things.”

Judging by the sound of it, the man had fixed the whole place up, including the bathrooms which before then had been in a gruesome state. And after the ceiling and windows and all the holes in the walls and floor had been taken care off, then came the clothing. All the children had gone through a handling by the man, which had instantly cleaned and repaired whatever they were wearing, fixing up holes in the knees and rips in the shirt collars and leaving everything near and whole. And after that, the man had fixed the toys, and so on.

“The kids got used to it pretty quickly. Sure they followed him around and brought him things to see him just fix them, but they stopped being shocked by it pretty quickly.” Ushi continues, sounding amused and irritated at the same time. Apparently his team hadn’t gotten past it so easily. “The guy really has a way with the kids too. And somehow they just understand him.”

“Did he speak to them?” Hiruzen asks.

“No. Only time he says anything is when he’s doing something, the way he does things,” Ushi shrugs. “Not sure how much he can understand about what’s said around him – we never got much of a reaction when we tried to talk to him. But when ever the kids asked something, he seems to get it immediately. He also reacts to the kids more than to us – we just get blank looks from him while he’s all smiles at them.”

“Supporting your theory that he’s a child oriented summon,” the Hokage murmurs and then blinks. “Did he eat?” he asks then.

“No. Not during any of the meals – and he made three meals too,” Ushi answers. “He did drink tea though, after putting the kids down to nap in the hall – though he did something weird to the before drinking it. Died up the leaves and put sugar in it. And milk too. Didn’t seem to like it much, though.”

“Hm,” Hiruzen hums, leaning back.

“Also, there’s one other thing,” Ushi says. “He took his boots off when we got inside. When I got mine upon leaving the orphanage, they had vanished.”

“Some of the kids took them, perhaps?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Ushi hesitates and then straightens his shoulders. “Sir, I have been observing the man as closely as I can all day. Due to the adverse effects our sensor experienced, I didn’t have him look at him with her Byagukan again. I did, however, had my team’s medic try and get a sense of him. He has a bit of sensor abilities, nothing like eye based techniques, but he can sense people’s vitals when he gets close enough. And this man… doesn’t have any.”

The Hokage frowned. No vitals. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he doesn’t have a heart beat or blood pressure. And the way our medic says, it’s like he’s just room temperature,” Ushi explains. “I’d like to have someone with heat-sensitivity to get a closer feel of him, but I trust what our medic says implicitly. Whatever the man is, he’s not human as far as body functions go.”

“Hm. That raises quite bit of interesting points about him, doesn’t it?” Hiruzen asks. “A creature summoned by a child who has only the rudimentary knowledge of the hand seals and no contract. A humanoid summoned creature without understanding over our language or anything like our chakra in his system, who wears foreign clothing and has foreign features, not to mention plenty of very foreign abilities. A summon, who seems child oriented in every way…” he trails away.

“May I enquire what you are thinking, sir?” Ushi asks slowly.

“Hard to say. This is like no summoning I have encountered before. And performed by a child too,” the Hokage murmurs. “When you put together what the man knows and does and what his abilities are, you have consider something, however. Especially since there was no contract.” He looks up. “What if the summoning wasn’t on Naruto’s part? What if it was on the man’s part – and what if Naruto simply was an opportune summoner?”

“You mean to say that the man might be some sort of self-inserted plant, who used Naruto as a way to get in?” Ushi asks with a worried frown.

“Perhaps,” Hiruzen agrees and smiles somewhat sardonically. This is his old heart talking, the part of him that still wants to believe that there is good in the world… “But perhaps he is a summon, who’s purpose is to care and protect children in need?” he asks.

“That is a… very optimistic theory, sir,” Ushi says neutrally.

“Yes, it is. And yet it is also the one I want to believe the most,” Hiruzen admits. “I’m afraid I’m going to need your team to continue its observation,” he adds them. “And I want steady reports and immediate word if something unusual happens. Keep me informed, Captain.”

“Yes, sir,” the ANBU answers, saluting and then vanishing in whirl of leaves and leaving the old, sentimentalist Hokage to his optimistic wondering.