Disclaimers: See last installment for pertinent information.

Iruka had been past the worrying stage and making his way steadily to frantic when he finally heard a cough and the rustle of sheets. He crossed Naruto's small apartment with a few quick strides to find the boy sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes. He had cried and screamed himself into exhaustion not too long ago. Rather then report for further duties, Iruka carried Naruto home and let him sleep. He probably was pretty tired, given how thickly he was involved in the war.

Ninja or not, people were still people and Naruto had more personal demons than the one sealed in his navel. He was sitting up in bed, alternately trying to rub or blink the bleariness out of his eyes. His glaze landed on his former teacher when the latter's hand landed affectionately on his head. Iruka regretted the action; it seemed to pull Naruto out of his sleepy haze and back into his miserable one.

"I don't even know my parents' names," he muttered, "or my own birthday."

"October 10th," Iruka replied.

"How do you know?" the boy asked, clearly not expecting someone else to have the information he'd gone so long without.

"It's not hard to figure out," the other told him. "You were born the day the nine-tailed fox was defeated by the Fourth Hokage. You were probably only a few hours old when the Fourth preformed the seal."

Naruto perked, hopefully. "Do you know my parents' names?" Not a kind question to ask, given that October 10th must have also coincided with the deaths of Iruka's parents and the parents of many of his contemporaries.

"No," Iruka answered truthfully after a moment's pause. "Konoha has forgotten your father's name. I'm not sure it ever knew your mother's."

"Bet the old pervert would know," Naruto mumbled, "if he really did know my dad."

"Then," Iruka smiled, "I guess he's the one you'll have to ask."

Though Anko's grin made him want to wince, Sasuke conceded that things were certainly different now. He hadn't imagined that there would be a person in the village who had successfully dealt with Orochimaru, nor that said person could be so cheerful when speaking about it. She was the same sort of person as Naruto, the kind who could speak of terrible things irreverently, not caring that it shouldn't be possible. Where was this woman's grief, her guilt, her pain? The memories of the things she had seen at Orochimaru's side?

Still smiling, the 'special' jounin,-Sasuke had always thought it would be more efficient to create another level between chuunin and jounin if some of the latter were subordinates of their fellows, but that wouldn't take their specific area of expertise in account-promised to look after Sasuke and pulled him by the arm from the audience hall once they had been dismissed. The ANBU team dispersed and hid themselves among the billboards and rooftops of the cramped little village once the duo they were watching over had left the building. Sasuke had shook Anko off by this time and though she was blabbering about something, shit, she really was like Naruto, he had occupied himself by trying to locate the chakra of the assassination squad. He hadn't done so by the time it occurred to him that these men, he was pretty sure they were all male, were used to S-class missions. The thought sobered him quite a bit; Sasuke refused to think of himself, merely an ex-missing nin, as an S-class criminal like Itachi.

"I'm just like you," Anko was saying, after giving a life story Sasuke hadn't been listening to. "Someone I looked up to and trusted betrayed me and cast me aside." The woman was exactly like Naruto, Sasuke decided, all her smiles and energy only masked pain. "I wasn't even worth the time it would take him to kill me."

Like any woman of the hidden village of Konoha, Tsunade found Uchiha Sasuke to be a fascinating young man. Not for the same reasons as the young girls, of course. He hardly could have an air of mystery to someone who'd been around enough to see his type many times over and she certainly wasn't looking at prepubescent boys in a way that his appearance would be of any interest. He was the only known survivor of the Uchiha massacre, though not through any merit of his own. He'd learned to use his Sharingan immediately upon its development; in fact, she'd been told that Kakashi suspected Sasuke had possessed some rudimentary aptitude for it before any additional pupils had appeared. But what was most interesting was that Orochimaru wanted the boy and Tsunade couldn't pretend she didn't suspect why. For now, though, she'd decided to leave him in Anko's hands.

Part of being Hokage was loving and protecting every person in the village, but never really having the time to forge a personal relationship with any of the ninja who served the village, and by extension, herself. Thus, she couldn't deal with the Uchiha boy directly. She didn't care for this delegation, especially not after she had put so much work in his teammate Naruto and she knew she would be dealing with the last member of Team Seven soon enough.

She had tried to get as much information on Haruno Sakura before making her decision regarding Sasuke. She already knew Naruto rather well and Tsunade felt taking his teammates into account was a very important part of the judgement process. The information she gained was sparse at best. Sakura had been one of the top students at the academy, though there was some dissention over whether she or Sasuke was the valedictorian of their graduating class. Tsunade had been surprised that someone on the Haruno clan register had not made it to the third portion of the chuunin exam and went over Sakura's records personally.

Real battle experience was conspicuously absent.

Tsunade would definitely be handling this one herself.

The girl in question had stood to leave with her teacher after the trial had been dismissed and seemed rather surprised when Tsunade called for her to stay.

Jiraiya had known from experience that certain young men, when seeking attention, could only be avoided for so long. Now and then, he'd make something of a game of it, playing Keep Away from Naruto until the boy managed to corner him. He liked to think of it training in the field of pursuing an objective, but 'I don't feel like dealing with this right now' would probably be a better name. A major battle had been brewing for about twelve years now and the biggest reason it hadn't happened yet was probably his own avoidance. The little princess had him cornered now, not dealing with little boys when he didn't have the patience was perhaps the only perk finally being walled in had. An old man gets accustomed to living his own way and his had been a relatively easy life of 'gentlemanly' pursuits and vague threats. He'd thought if Orochimaru knew he was out there, same as always, it would keep the Snake Master at bay.

It didn't. And now Sarutobi was dead and the Fourth had been gone for so long. There were only two people left who could face a one-on-one winner-take-all battle against this foe and Jiraiya knew who they'd come to first.

He'd been trying to avoid Naruto for about fifteen minutes now, his mind occupied partly by the Uchiha kid's trial, the results of which had been planned out long before anyone let Sasuke in on it, and partly by the other worries that led to his current opinion that an old man deserved a moment's peace. It was bad enough Princess Tsunade would undoubtedly have his head on a platter or some other such euphemism for being pissed as he hadn't made an appearance at said trial, he didn't need some twelve-year-old kid trying to chew him out, either.

But about sixteen minutes into the game, Naruto had cornered him with some two dozen Shadow Replicas and that was the end of that. Jiraiya took some pride in the fact that without his tutelage, Naruto probably wouldn't have improved so much so quickly, but it was a small victory at best.

The replicas disappeared in twenty some odd puffs of smoke, leaving the real Naruto face to face with his current mentor. He didn't seem angry, but Jiraiya couldn't place exactly what his expression was. Normally, when his eyes were opened as opposed to his usual fox look, he possessed an air of determination. Now his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, something Jiraiya had never seen before. Naruto had been crying?

Even though Naruto had chased him down, the boy didn't seem like he was going to say something anytime soon, so Jiraiya broke the silence, figuring that he didn't know what the kid's problem was after all. "This isn't about your friend, is it?"

Naruto blinked. "Huh?"

"The Uchiha's trial. Probably ended about an hour ago."

Naruto gaped in sheer horror. "That was today? Sakura-chan's gonna kill me! I promised I'd go, aw, crap!" He was now holding his head and bouncing from foot to foot in some sort of panic dance. "I was waiting for Iruka-sensei to get back from his mission and totally forgot. What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?" He showed no signs of calming down; Jiraiya found in entertaining in an odd sort of way. "Ooh, I bet Sasuke won't let me live it down, he's such a jerk." Naruto launched into his Sasuke-impression, at which time Jiraiya stepped in. This had not been the reason he was tracked down, after all.

"Why were you looking for me, boy?" He asked, trying to sound somewhat intimidating so that Naruto would return to the subject at hand, whatever that was. Even though he didn't take into account that Naruto had never been intimidated by him, he got the boy's attention all the same. Naruto froze mid-word, swallowed hard and asked straight out:

"How did you know my dad?"

"What makes you think I knew him?" Jiraiya parried smoothly.

"The old lady was following us after you were talking to her about Sasuke. You told her I was like my dad after you thought I left."

Jiraiya smiled proudly. "Not many people can detect it when the Hokage is stalking them. You've come a long way."

Naruto didn't register the praise. "How did you know my dad?"

"He was a student of mine when he was a kid; him and two other genin." Jiraiya motioned to the large scroll he had strapped to his back. "You've seen the signature next to yours on the contract." Naruto's jaw dropped. His father's name had been right there and he hadn't even noticed?

"What was his name? What was he like? How did he die?" Naruto seemed determined to rip the scroll off Jiraiya's back in his eagerness to everything about his sire.

Jiraiya shoved Naruto away enough to sling the scroll off his back and unroll it. The name was barely legible next to Naruto's, written in his father's own blood.

"His name was Uzumaki Arashi," now that Jiraiya had said it, Naruto could almost make it out. "He was one of the best shinobi I've ever met. He rode on Gama Bunta's head like it was nothing." It was amazing how easy it was to be proud of someone you'd never met. Naruto had summoned the king of toads, but only when adrenaline and the nine-tailed fox inside him could make his chakra so open to manipulation. But that stubborn toad had accepted his dad as its master.

Never knowing his parents, Naruto had never been able to look up to them. Most children his age had already gone through the phases of worshipping one's parents as perfect and infallible and the goal to aspire to, and then realized parents were people, had faults and could be just generally annoying. Naruto had been an orphan for as long as he could remember; this was the first time in his life that a parent had been something real and tangible to him. He knelt on the ground, hands spread on the unrolled scroll, staring adoringly at his father's name. "I wanna be just like him. No, better! So that he'll be really proud of me." He gave Jiraiya a grin. "He'll brag about me to all the other ghosts!"

"He died fighting the nine-tailed demon fox."

For the second time, Naruto was horror-stricken. "No... No..I didn't kill him." Naruto was sick of crying, he hated crying, he had vowed years ago never to cry again, but the vow didn't mean a thing when the tears wouldn't stop. "No..."

Jiraiya pulled Naruto to his feet by the arms, spun him around to face something they had both stared at many times before.

"He died for this village, to save it and to give the people he loved a better life." They gazed at the monument. "Don't you dare make light of what the Fourth Hokage did for you."

Author Notes:

1) In chapter three, Iruka said Sasuke had the best grades of their class, though Shonen Jump's stats says Sakura was the valedictorian, i.e., person with the highest grade point average. Slight contradiction, that.

2) The names on Jiraiya's scroll are purposely illegible, though some fans insist one of the names is 'Uzumaki Arashi.' Using this saves me the trouble of thinking up my own name for the Fourth and besides, I like what it means. (Spiraling Storm)