Chapter Text
"WHAT!?" Naruto pushed himself out of his chair to stare at the board. "SO I COULD BE A PRINCE?!"
"BAKA!" Sakura was quick to glare, though she was too far away to punch. "Uzushio would have a Kage! All the Hidden Villages do."
"Naruto, sit down." Iruka narrowed his eyes as Naruto flopped back into his chair. "And not quite, Sakura. You are correct that Uzushio had a Kage, but the position of Kage isn't an official role that is traditionally part of a Hidden Village. It is something the leader of a village declares after they consider their village strong enough to take the role. If nobody attacks them then the village is worthy of having one, but several Hidden Villages have been destroyed for claiming the role without the power to back it up. The strength of the Kage must echo the strength of the village, not the other way around."
"Sorry, sensei." Sakura slumped.
"They can't have been very strong..." Sasuke clenched his hands and forced the words out. It was obvious that he didn't necessarily like what he was saying, but said it anyway. "If they all got wiped out they must have been weak."
Naruto never really got why Sasuke did that. He always did a lot of stupid stuff he didn’t want to do but always did anyway. Why would you do it if you didn’t want to? Unless it was like… super important stuff. Like the stuff the Old Man showed him! Balancing a checkbook was boring, but he needed to do it to know how much he could spend on ramen!
It didn’t seem like Sasuke had anything like that though? He was just always prickly all the time. Like his hair was a warning! That was something animals did, right? They had spikes and stuff to warn other people, so maybe Sasuke was just like that? Meh, whatever. He always acted better than everyone else anyway, and that made him an asshole! Even the Old Man had agreed!
Just… y’know, without actually saying it. One of his super awesome ninja guards said Naruto had to look underneath what he said sometimes to get what he really wanted to say. Which felt kinda stupid? But if the Hokage was doing it, maybe he should try to figure it out.
Iruka sighed. "Sasuke... The collaboration that destroyed Uzushio was and is unprecedented. No other time has so many villages come together to destroy one village. Secondly, no village, and especially no village with a Kage, is weak. Konoha, for instance, likely has the weakest average ninja of all the five Kage-led villages. But our weakest are stronger than any other village's weakest. Our Will of Fire means that by helping everyone we become stronger as a whole and therefore make the village stronger than what it seems. Like a great chain."
"In contrast, Kirigakure focuses on strength through training. They have very few truly unique jutsu, but a significant variety of generic jutsu that anyone can learn. Practice and growth are individual, but something everyone is supposed to be capable of. That is part of the reason they initiated the Bloodline Purges." Iruka huffed. "The other half of that links back to Uzushio. Uzushio had the highest rate of new bloodlines or potential bloodlines in the world. Their training focused on individual strength, like Kiri, but through unique applications of what they knew. It was thought that every bloodline in the Land of Water connected back to Uzu in some way. We have records that every Uzu chakra user, not necessarily ninja, was expected to have a personal scroll of techniques where they wrote down everything they tried, how it worked, and whether or not it did what they expected it to."
"So they all just... tried new things? All the time?" Sakura blinked. "That doesn't sound very stable."
"That was part of the reason Konoha and Uzu had such a close relationship. To the extent that many considered them as a group when making decisions- while Uzu ninja ran the risk of being inherently countered and useless or falling behind if their experiments didn't work out, the success stories were the stuff of legends." Iruka blinked and shook his head. "But that isn't what we're here to talk about."
"But what about a prince?" Naruto wasn't gonna let this go, no sir. Family was cool and the Old Man always said he had one, even if his mom and dad were dead, but nobody ever talked about them. Nobody would talk about the Uzumaki either. Maybe this was why?
"Haaah." Iruka took in a breath and shook his head. "No, Naruto, Uzu didn't have any form of 'prince'. There... was a position called a princess, but we don't actually know the requirements of that." Iruka shrugged. "It was a well kept secret known only to the upper level Uzumaki and if Konoha knows it then it's above my clearance level. AND ALL OF YOURS!"
All the kids settled into their seats at Iruka's glare.
"Now... let's get back to what we were talking about. Questions at the end!" Naruto put down his hand mullishly. "Now... the destruction of Uzushiogakure started the Second Shinobi World War..."
The school day proceeded completely normally. Unless you asked Suzume, who led the Kunoichi training.
It wasn’t exactly unusual to have an extra student or two in her classes. Sometimes they were even invited, but official school policy was that if they could get in and nobody said anything they were welcome to stay. Infiltration training is good for everyone, and frankly the stuff she teaches is… usually good for everyone.
Flower arranging should really be moved to the more in depth infiltration courses. To be taken by everyone who is actually going to need them. Rather than forced on every single Kunoichi just because they happened to be a woman. At no point had any general Kunoichi, or specialist outside of a heavy infiltration role, that Suzume had talked to used flower arranging.
Or… well. There was once. But that was a very long time ago and basically one of about ten different plans they’d used in an attempt to get a warning to the guy they were guarding.
Complete roll of the dice that was the one that worked.
Anyway.
The extra student. A blonde, pretty impressive looking in all honesty. The sort that got pulled out of class for additional training. Both officially, because being beautiful was something the school looked out for, and unofficially, because being beautiful was something a lot of people looked out for and grabbing them young was encouraged among those types.
Suzume knew the statistics on that. In and out of Konoha. It was a proud day when she learned the statistics inside leaned more toward dead wannabe kidnappers than taken kids. The kids probably don’t like it, but it’s a better first kill than a lot of people so they can shut up about it.
Hm.
That was… the technique Iruka was ranting about, right? Hm. Was it actually a modified Henge? Apparently it worked enough like it, but Henge got… bad to keep up for too long. Especially one so far from what the person actually looked like. Plus it had problems interacting with things. Especially that would be outside of the normal reach of the person.
Now… the first thing was easily explained. Not common, but it wasn’t anything Suzume hadn’t dealt with before. More common in Shinobi work, honestly, since Chakra helped with it. The second… well. Maybe the fox had something to do with it. It wasn’t unknown that a Jinchuriki got a bit extra out of carrying their beast. The One-Tail was well established to give control over sand even without using its power. And all those legends about kitsune had to come from something, right?
Ah, whatever.
Suzume blinked and sighed. Saying that way too much lately. Damnit. Whatever. New jutsu weren’t her thing. Better to just… figure out who to actually tell about this so it could get properly checked. Maybe Iruka knew? He knows everyone, somehow. Including the Hokage.
It was uncanny.
He’d definitely know some medic or another that could give a good look. In the meantime… what was it today?
Oh, right.
“Today we’re going to go over noble behavior, how to emulate it, and how to identify people emulating it too well. Remember- no noble entirely keeps to noble behavior. There’s always one person they’re looking to snub, and an infiltrator will be trying too hard not to give anyone offense.” Infiltration is very tricky like that. “Now, we’ll start with the behavior of nobles in the Land of Fire and then move outward. This will be going on all year and there will be a test at the end.”
“Ah…” The blonde shrunk into herself as Suzume turned her attention to her. Hm. Nobody else said anything. Not even Haruno, the most observant one, or Yamanaka, the loudest one. With a dad in T&I. That’s some skill, especially for someone so young and looking like that. “Will we be going over historical noble behavior?”
“No.” The blonde slumped at that. This kid was Uzumaki, right? Damn good if so. Really had to get someone to test for actual infiltration skill instead of just saboteur skill. “But if you want to study historical behavior I can point you toward the books that will show you that. They’re not restricted so you won’t need to bother with your student ID. Now,” a clap brought everyone’s attention back to her, “the primary noble hub for the Land of Fire is…”
And so the academy day ended without any incident at all. Not even Kiba Inuzuka setting fire to his desk.
Again.
And then blaming Akamaru.
The dog. Without opposable thumbs.
Again.
Truly a miracle that resulted in most of the teachers drinking more than normal in an effort to settle their nerves. They were of the collective opinion that a quiet day just made the next day twice as worse.
Smart people.
“Uzumaki, Uzumaki, Uzumaki…” Suzume was pretty nice! And class was actually sorta interesting? Looking at all the clothes and all the rules and stuff was supposed to be boring, but she made it a lot of fun. Mostly by talking about all the ways someone could do things just wrong and be super mean. Like a prank! A special prank, because only certain people would ever know it happened. Which made it an even bigger prank.
Plus, she’d told Naruto where to find the Uzumaki records! Or… the Uzumaki records about their super special nobles and stuff. Nothing actually about her family, just old documents or whatever about how they did stuff. It was still really cool, but not as cool as a super awesome jutsu or anything.
This wasn’t a part of the library… well. No part of the library was a part he usually went to. For this, though, he’d brave it. It would be worth it to figure out more about his actual family. His clan. He had a clan! Sure Uzu was… all destroyed and stuff, but he had to have cousins or something somewhere!
A princess should be the sort of person that went out and helped them all, right? Or maybe he should make a new village? But leaving Konoha felt pretty wrong. Maybe he could make it with Konoha? Like how Uzu and Konoha were big allies and stuff!
That sounded pretty cool. He just had to figure out the whole princess thing first.
The books thunked onto the table as Naruto set them down. They were heavy things, large and pretty old. Didn’t look like anyone had brought them out in a while either. Almost no book around them was even half as large, so that just meant Uzu did more stuff!
That thought kept Naruto going as he flipped open the front page and expertly ignored the dust that popped out.
“Let’s see…” One finger trailed down the table of contents. It didn’t actually look like a lot of stuff? “Why is this- ohhh…”
He’d just reached the ‘celebrations’ part of the table. His finger kept trailing down and down and then he flipped the page and kept trailing down some more. There were… a lot of celebrations. A good part of the book was just categorizing them and giving a brief overview of what they were for and how to do them. Everything else was basically an afterthought in comparison.
“There!” One in particular stopped his finger. “Princess celebration!”
It wasn’t actually named that, but that was the gist of the name anyway. That was the one Naruto had to set up, right?
“I’m gonna be a princess!”
“SHHH!”
“GAH!” Naruto stumbled onto the floor as the library ninja leaned out of the bookcase to shush him. How did they do that?