26I don't own Naruto...
This is a random scene, not part of anything, nor is there anything more to this.
Family Resemblance
"SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET!" The loud voice echoed around the suddenly silent classroom. The next second heard a mad scramble of chairs and moving bodies, as the children rushed to comply with their sensei's order.
The scarred chuunin took a deep breath to calm himself, before he turned to the third year academy students sitting before him.
"Welcome back. I trust your skills training went well this morning?"
A few children nodded here and there, not daring to verbally respond.
"Good. This afternoon, we are going to continue on developing your observational skills. We've been working on how to observe your surroundings. Knowing what is around you, and who, is an essential skill for a good shinobi. The smallest thing can bring down a jounin if they're not aware." Iruka lectured. "Take out a piece of paper. We're going to have a quick check on how well you've been doing this. Without looking, what three things are out of place in the classroom? You have five minutes. If I catch anyone looking at anything but their paper, it's an automatic fail."
A chorus of small groans issued forth at this decree, but the majority complied. The minority being a small blond haired boy and the Nara in the back row. Iruka took a moment and counted to ten before heading to the two boys. He knew the Nara probably had noticed more than the three he told them about. It was a shame the boy just wouldn't do more than was necessary. He had talked to the parents, but they didn't seem concerned. The brunette headed to the one he could have some affect on.
"Naruto, why aren't you writing?" Iruka asked.
"Why should I? I'll fail anyways." The child spat out, stubbornly staring at the paper in front of him.
"Not trying is the same as failing. It's worse, actually." The shinobi quietly responded.
Blue eyes looked up at him, both questioning and not believing what the teacher was telling him.
"If you're not going to even attempt it, you're not giving yourself a chance to prove others, and yourself, wrong. It's a waste of a chance to learn more about yourself." The man explained.
Naruto pondered the words, before slowly reaching for the pencil. Iruka smiled at the boy when he looked up at him, uncertainty still showing in those expressive eyes.
"Just give it your best shot. That's all I'm asking." Iruka reassured him. Leaving him to his own devices, he turned to the rest of the class.
"Two minutes left!"
Scratching and tapping filled the silence, as they raced to write down their guesses. Iruka grinned as he caught a few sneaking peeks out of the corner of their eyes. While technically cheating, he wasn't about to penalize them for their sneakiness. It was all part and parcel of being a shinobi after all. The youth chanced a look at the clock.
"Time's up. Pencils down." He announced.
"What did you notice?"
A number of hands shot up.
"Kimiko."
"Sasuke's hair is parted one inch to the left of where it normally is." She confidently announced.
Iruka choked in surprise. "Uh…very observant of you, but let's keep this to observations about the classroom. Not the people within. Next?" About half of the hands went down, ironically, the majority of his female students.
"Shino."
"The chalkboard has been washed clean over the noon break." The stoic boy answered.
"Very good. That's one. Sakura."
"The portraits of the Shodai and Nidaime Hokages have been switched on the wall." She smartly said.
"That's two. Excellent." Iruka praised. The pink-haired girl beamed.
"One more. Naruto?" A blond head jerked up as his name was called. He blushed in embarrassment, as the entire class looked at him. He mumbled something before sliding lower in his seat.
"Pardon? Could you repeat that a little louder?"
"The glass in the window's been fixed?" The boy questioned.
"That's not quite what I was looking for. I don't believe they've done anything to the windows lat-" Iruka tried to let the boy down easy.
"He's right. There used to be a small web of cracks in the bottom left pane." The Nara boy interrupted before promptly returning to his nap.
"Oh." Was the most intelligent response the sensei could come up with. "Well, good observation. Both of you. Even I hadn't caught that." The smaller blond smiled shyly under the unfamiliar praise.
"There's still one more thing that I purposely changed." Iruka scanned the class for more volunteers.
"Sasuke."
"The chart of the weak points of the body has been taken down."
"That's three. There were actually five different things. Including those three, the door hinges have been oiled to quiet the squeak, and the teacher's desk has a different color mat on the top of it. Now, observation isn't all about inanimate objects or the environment. It's also about the people in it, or interacting with them. A shinobi must be able to identify distinct features about their charge or their enemy. These could include height, weight, build, eye, skin, or hair color, the shape of the face, eyes, nose, basically any feature that can differ from person to person." He paused, checking to see if his charges were still with him. Seeing them still following along, he continued.
"We're going to start by looking at how features are shared across families. Here's a picture of my parents and myself. What similar things do you see between me and them? Keep in mind that it doesn't have to be everything."
A boy in the third row raised his hand. At a nod from the teacher, he started.
"Your hair color is similar to both. Although you put it up like your dad."
"Hair color is often one of the most telling signs of being related. It is also one of the easiest to hide. The subject could be dying their hair, but that would have tell-tale signs, such as darker or lighter areas where the hair grows out by the head. What else?"
"You have the same eyes as your mom." Sakura added.
"Indeed. I share the same eye shape and color with my mother. When looking at a child, they could have either the shape of the eyes, or the color, and sometimes both, like in my case."
The class continued naming off things they could see before Iruka finally curtailed the discussion.
"Now that you've had practice at my expense, some people being more respectful than others." Iruka glared at Kiba, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"For Friday, I want you to take a picture of either of your parents and compare it to your own features. Make a list of things that are shared between the two of you. This gives you three days, people. I don't want to hear any excuses, got it? Good. I would like to see Kimiko, Ren, and Naruto before you go. Class dismissed."
Noise exploded as they rushed towards the door. Soon, only those three he had called were left in the front of class.
"I know that you three aren't fortunate enough to have you parents with you. I would like to know if you at least have a photo or two to compare with them, or someone you can talk to about getting one. Do you?"
Two children nodded, but the third stared at his feet.
"Ren, Kimiko, you can go, I just wanted to make sure you could complete the assignment. Have a good afternoon." Iruka dismissed the two, leaving only Naruto in the room. Iruka sighed.
"What am I going to have you do…I can't just let you get out of the assignment. It's an important thing to learn." Iruka wondered as the boy waited impatiently.
Umino walked over to his desk as an idea came to him. He pulled out a tattered old book. The black cover was faded, the pages curling and yellowed. He handed it to Naruto who looked at it in confusion.
"What's this?" Naruto asked.
"That, Naruto, is a bingo book."
"A what?"
"A bingo book. It is a collection of profiles of strong and powerful shinobi, along with missing nin." Iruka explained.
"Oh." Naruto thumbed through the pages. "So…old man Hokage is in here?"
The chuunin chuckled. "Mhmm. Here." He turned the pages to the appropriate sheet for the boy.
Naruto's eyes widened. "He's not as wrinkly in here!" He exclaimed, eliciting another laugh from the teacher.
"Well, of course not. This book is from the middle of the last war. It's probably thirteen years old, if not more."
"Oooooh, that makes sense. So what am I supposed to do with this?" The blond asked.
"This book lists known family members or associates at the bottom of the page. I want you to find two people who are related by blood, preferably parent and child, but siblings would work too. List down any traits that you can see that they share. Understand?"
Naruto nodded his head.
"If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask."
"Thanks, Iruka-sensei." Naruto said, before darting out the door.
Iruka watched the boy leave, hoping that he would actually give himself a chance to excel.
0o0o0o0
Naruto sat on the floor in his apartment, thumbing through the book his teacher had given him. Occasionally, he checked the clock to see if the three minutes were up before his ramen would be ready to eat. Only one more minute left. He returned to the book.
It was actually kind of interesting to see what kind of shinobi there were out there. A surprising number were from Konoha. He chuckled as he found a picture of a girly looking man with gold eyes. Surely he couldn't be that dangerous, right?
Grabbing his now ready ramen cup, Naruto started slurping the noodles down. An idea began to form in his mind.
This book was only a few years older than he was, three tops. It would have had all the awesome ninjas in there from that time. Surely his parents would be in there, right? They had to have been some kickass shinobi.
Only problem was…there were dozens, if not hundreds of entries…
"Ok….what did Iruka say to look at first….?"The blond muttered. "Hair! Ok, so I have blond hair, meaning that one of them had to have had it."
The blonde started racing through the pages, stopping from time to time to jot down a name.
He ended up with a list of about three dozen shinobi. Naruto groaned.
"Now what?" the wanna-be shinobi complained, staring at the profile of an Iwa nin.
"Wait a second. This book has all the villages. My parents wouldn't have been from somewhere outside Konoha." He reasoned to himself, one again checking the list. He winnowed the list down to about thirteen. Seven men, six women.
"What else…" He whispered. Naruto caught his reflection in the glass. Blue eyes stared back at him. The light bulb once again went off. The list got narrowed down to three. Two men and one woman. The woman was soon discarded as Naruto couldn't see anything resembling his own features in hers. One of the men soon followed, leaving him staring at the profile of Namikaze Minato.
The Uzumaki glanced over the profile. Jounin level, meaning this Minato automatically fit the awesome category in Naruto's mind. He possessed the same shade of hair and eyes, although the features were a bit different.
Naruto got excited reading about the man who could possibly be his father. So many cool techniques and battles he had been a part of. When he reached the bottom of the page, his heart skipped a beat.
'Known associates: Jiraiya – sensei, Hatake Kakashi – student, Rin – student, Uchiha Obito – student, Uzumaki Kushina – unknown relationship, but often seen in subject's company. (See profile for more information.)'
Naruto quickly flipped through the pages, until he finally found her profile.
"Uzumaki Kushina…" He read out loud from the top of the page.
The picture is what most intrigued him. He could see his face shape in hers, although the coloring was nowhere near his own blond and blue.
He continued down the page.
"Last known member of the Uzumaki Clan." The child read to himself. Naruto felt blood rushing in his ears, as his heart pounded. If she had been the last known member at this time, and he was the only Uzumaki he had ever heard about now…
"Mom?"He whispered, hopefully, begging the picture for impossible answers. The photo just smiled back up at him.
There was one way to know for sure. The prankster carefully marked the book, and ran out the door to the one man who always knew everything.
0o0o0o0
Sarutobi leaned back into his chair, letting out a deep breath as he looked on with contentment at the neat piles on his desk. For the moment, the paperwork war had reached a standstill. There were no more reinforcements to be signed at the current time. The hokage took the moment to relax with a pipe. Perhaps he could go for a stroll…
A loud argument broke through the peaceful quiet. Sarutobi could the distinctive voice of his pseudo-grandson. Biting back a groan, he rose to his feet to go see what was going on.
"I just need to ask him something!" Naruto yelled in the hallway outside his office.
"You don't have an appointment. Hokage-sama is very busy and can't be bothered with the likes of you barging in." The secretary sneered.
"It won't take long. Besides, he told me I could always come and see him." The boy argued.
"I'm very sorry but Hokage-sama is booked solid all day. You'll have to come back another time." He told the boy, superiority and disdain barely hidden in his voice.
"I was just about to take a break, Shigure-san. Next time, I expect you to let me know that Naruto-kun is here. You are my secretary, not my keeper." Sarutobi broke in, ending the argument before it could escalate. "Why don't you come on in Naruto? I have some time now for whatever you needed to see me for."
The boy looked back to the secretary, and stuck out his tongue in a childish display before heading into the office.
"Now, what did you want to ask me?" The elder man asked, settling into his chair.
The boy in front of him fidgeted for a second, before steeling himself to start his tale.
"We're talking about how to notice if people are related to each other in class. Our assignment was to compare ourselves with our parents. Since I didn't know my parents, Iruka-sensei gave me this bingo book, and told me to find two related people in here, and make the comparison. I figure, that my parents would have had to be some awesome, super-strong ninja, so they had to be in here, right?" Naruto explained in a rapid-fire manner.
Sarutobi felt his dread growing, noticing the age of the book the boy was waving around as he talked.
"There's got to be hundreds of people in here, so I used what Iruka-sensei taught us to narrow it down. Um….basically, I just wanted to ask you if…" Naruto paused, as he got to the point of his visit. If his hunch was correct, he was on the brink of finding out who his parents were. After years of being a nobody, he could gain the standing of a clan member.
"Are Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina my parents?" The boy finally asked. Blue eyes begging for the truth.
A/N: Yes, I'm evil. This is a little scene that's been stuck in my head for a while. I don't plan on adding anything else to it. If you wish to take up this scene, feel free, as long as you give me a heads up that you're doing so.
I don't really know what to call this, since it's not a complete story like a one-shot, nor do I plan on doing anything else with it :/
Thanks for putting up with me, and please don't roast me too badly.
Thank you for reading. Consider it a graduation present to me. Yep. That's right. Proud recipient of a Bachelor of Music Degree ^^
Adios!
Soprano-in-Waiting