Heyyyy

What's up?

I'm starting a new story!

I want to start by saying that this story, like a great number of my other stories, is dark. It contains graphic depictions of death, pain, torture, war and human suffering. Some people might not like the contents of this story, and that's fine, this is just fair warning before you read.

I'd like to think that you guys have come to expect my stories to be at least some degree of dark and depressing.

The Naruto in this story is OOC and in many ways a few characters in this story are OOC too. I'll be messing around with ages and timelines, and don't worry; I'll try my best to explain what's going on as best as I can. As you guys can probably guess from the name, Naruto is an Uchiha who is commonly called Blue (or Blue the Uchiha), but it doesn't end there.

Read to find out more.

One final thing is that please do not use my former stories as reference material to this one; this one is completely different from Silent Night and the ones before that. I'm saying this cuz it's happened before. I'll be reusing many canon characters, and again please don't mix their behaviours with that of my older stories.

Oh and lastly…HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my buddy Kilare T'Suna. Here's to many more years!

This is a long chapter, so be ready.

As twisted as this sounds, I had plenty of fun writing this chapter and I hope you guys enjoying reading it. Before you guys, my wonderful readers, begin reading, I have to say this:

I DO NOT OWN NARUTO

So without further ado, I give to you…

KILLING OFF THE BLUE UCHIHA

CHAPTER 1

He was drowning.

His hands and feet were bound in rope, tightened so much not even dislocating his wrists could give him even the slightest bit of freedom.

He thrashed about, his cerulean eyes wild with panic as he sank deeper and deeper into the water. He closed his eyes for a moment, telling himself that this was a dream and that he should wake up, but he was slammed back into that nightmare as water rushed into his mouth and into his nose, choking his brain for air and occupying ever part of his lungs.

Adrenaline wracked his body, thumping up into his heart and coursing through his veins. The water turned of red sulphur, charring his throat and burning his lungs to a putrid black, incinerating his soul.

He opened his mouth and roared, a horrendous bellow of air bubbles that exploded from his mouth and rose up as he descended to his doom. He was calling a name, one he didn't quite recall but apparently was the one he sought after in his desperate situation.

He couldn't find his weapons; not his kunai, not his shuriken and not his senbon launchers.

His flailing became more violent as the Shinigami's grasped into his body and held his spirit in its searing, spindly skeletal fingers.

The depths gradually quenched light and the blue eyed man jerked once more-

"Blue?"

His eyes snapped open and he yanked out a kunai from under the couch cushion propping up his head, grabbed onto the hand on his shoulder and flicked the blade under the person's neck, panting heavily with deranged, stubbornly alive eyes.

Blue's eyes refocused and surprise seeped into his eyes as he saw that it was a young boy hovering over his chair, one that was trying not to quake in fear at the blade scraping his throat and one that had his hands hastily raised up in surrender.

The shinobi exhaled and dropped his guard, releasing the poor boys arm with a muttered apology. He swung his legs off the couch and planted them on the ground, returning the kunai back under the cushion and running a sleepy hand through his hair. The boy eyed him for a moment, rubbing his hand at the place the blade nearly bit into his throat, before he said.

"You fell asleep watching TV." The man didn't answer, only yawning widely and rubbing his eyes tiredly, rolling his stiff shoulders. The black haired, black eyed seven year old called to him again. "Blue."

"That's Uncle Blue to you, Itachi." The man corrected with a dry grunt, coughing into his fist and standing up, towering six feet and some inches tall and having a moderately balanced build, one that was trained to a sharp point in the aspects of maintaining his stamina despite running for hundreds of miles, carrying heavy objects and with an air of mysterious patience about him. The boy blinked up at him, his lips screwed to the side and following the man as he stalked around the chair and entered the kitchen, though not before giving the child a familiar tousle of his hair. "Can't sleep?"

The boy went with him into the kitchen, and with a casual look over his shoulder Blue saw that Itachi was visibly still trying to muster up his courage and seem bigger than he was, saying without saying that nearly getting his throat sliced open didn't faze him. Itachi nodded his head and hopped onto the man's kitchen counter, confirming with a nod. "Can't sleep."

The man hummed and scratched his chin, opening the cabinet and bringing out a loaf of sliced wheat bread. "You're lucky this isn't a school night, kid."

The Uchiha boy raised an eyebrow, distractedly swinging his legs. "Or you'd knock me out?"

The man nicknamed Blue turned to his nephew with a wide, honest-to-kami smirk. "Yup." He tore open the bread leather and handed the boy a slice, looking in the pantry for a second before he retrieved a jar of strawberry jam, no artificial flavours, very expensive but very much worth each ryu spent. "You're parents entrusted you to me for the weekend so they can have their wedding anniversary in Snow country."

The boy nibbled on his bread, watching as his uncle spread a thick layer of jam on another slice, placing one more slice atop and forming a sandwich, putting it on a saucer and handing it to Itachi. "No, their first choice was to give me to Lord Minato and Lady Kushina. Dad thinks you're a flight risk and mom thinks you're unstable."

Blue chuckled and ruffled the boys head. "Even for a kid, you're too honest, Itachi."

The young boy raised an eyebrow. "You're not mad your sister thinks you're unstable?"

The man flicked the boy's forehead. "Finish your sandwich, kid."

He looked down at his left wrist and checked his watch.

11:49PM

Way past Itachi's bedtime.

Blue shrugged.

It's a Friday; no harm, no foul.

The boy, chewing on his jam sandwich, said with his mouth full. "I don't think you're unstable, Blue."

"Uncle Blue."

"Uncle Blue."

The man was now bustling around the kitchen; he put a pot of water on a burner of his gas stove, setting it to bubble as he chopped spring onions, green peppers and chilli. He washed a few fresh tomatoes under a cold stream of water from the tap, diced them into tiny bits and slid them off the chopping board, into the pot on the stove. As he waited for the tomatoes to properly boil in the pot, sprinkling in sea salt into the mix and tapping a few condiments into the pot for added flavour, before pouring in the previously cut combination from his chopping board to the pot. Itachi was staring at him cook, memorizing each ingredient and the order in which they were added. Of all the many things his uncle could cook, this was one of his most basic; the recipe was straightforward and it wouldn't take long for it to finish cooking. Naruto turned to his nephew and asked. "Why not?"

"You don't have anger problems like my dad and you're a pacifist, like me."

Blue laughed heartily, a sound that brought a slight smile to Itachi's tired face. The sleep bags under the child's eyes lightened as his uncle patted his head, passing him and entering the kitchen store, coming out with a box of rice. "I've killed more people than you can even begin to imagine, kid."

"That's not what I meant."

"Mhm." Blue poured the rice into a separate pot on the stove, setting it to a low, slow boil.

"I mean, you don't like fighting and you don't like people fighting. I've been watching you."

"Weirdo."

"Not like that." Itachi snapped, a light dusting of red washed over his nose and his cheeks. "Idiot." The blue eyed man tumbled into another laugh, coming to his precious nephew and bringing him into a headlock, digging his knuckles into Itachi's head. "Gah! Stop!"

The ninja released the boy with a small push and stood upright before the boy. He tapped Itachi's forehead with his pointer finger, saying. "There isn't a logical reason for people to fight, except for training purposes. I prefer to resolve my problems without needing to confront anybody. But," the man's eyes swirled and shifted, changing into a peculiar, unseen variation of the sharingan. While others had black tomoe, Itachi's uncle had blue tomoe. Three blue tomoe, a small dot in the centre of each stationary pinwheel in his eye that was a darker shade of cerulean and the whites of his eyes turned a chilling shade of black. Itachi suddenly felt self-conscious at how generic his eyes looked compared to his uncle's. "If my superior's say I should kill, maim or torture someone," he shrugged carelessly as Itachi instinctively activated his one tomoe doujutsu. "No questions asked, I get the job done, get my money and come back home."

That was why Blue's body count was up to the thousands and his net worth rivalled Minato Namikaze's, even for a twenty year old Uchiha like him.

The man was an immensely valuable asset during the Third Shinobi war.

So much so that every month or two he was shifted to another Command Base or another war front by the either the Nidaime or the Sandaime, for his skills had not only liberated his comrades when they were in tight situations but had also turned the tide in favour of his home village, Konoha, and the villages allied to the Leaf that desperately needed assistance, like Suna.

Blue the Uchiha was a well-travelled man.

He had seen many places and conversed with many people, and even though he had been paid in full for every single head, after the war had ended when Iwa broached for the fighting to stop, realizing that they and their allies were painfully on the back foot, the Uchiha voluntarily took himself for therapy, unpacking years of mental trauma he had to endure for the sake of utilizing his skills for his village, since he was eight to when he was nineteen, when the thirty year war ended almost too abruptly.

It was why his sister thought he was unstable.

The standoffish, prideful woman wanted Naruto to be admitted into the Konoha Mental Institution and begin full therapy, where he would stay for a short while in a controlled Psych Ward for a while to treat each and every one of his mental scars before he did something he would regret.

Naruto wasn't too keen on voluntarily staying in a Psych Ward.

Six months after the war, he had begun actively taking missions, primarily high B rank to high A rank, not because he needed the money, for Blue was comfortably set for the rest of his life, but that he honestly, truly like his way of life.

Being a ninja was one thing, but doing what he did was an entirely special thing altogether.

"Tell me a story, Blue." Itachi said, bringing him out of his mind.

The man exhaled, frustrated. "Uncle Blue. If you can't at least call me Uncle Blue then call me Uncle Naruto."

"…Uncle Blue…"

"…You already know all my stories."

Itachi lifted his shoulders freely, swinging his feet and following his uncle with his eyes as the man drained the rice into a sieve.

"You're supposed to be some sort of prodigy, aren't you? I think you're too old to hear my stories."

"Shows what you know."

"I'll tell you one later. Go set the table." The bearer of the world's only blue sharingan smiled genially as the boy rolled his eyes and jumped off the counter, heading into the dining room.

He didn't much mind the way Fugaku or his sister thought of him.

The Uchiha clan generally didn't understand his way of life.

Blue the Uchiha was an anomaly.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Naruto Uchiha, familiarly called Blue by his friends inside and outside of the clan because of his peculiar, never-seen-before cerulean eyes, was a tokubetsu jounin of Konohagakure no Sato and the brother-in-law to the Uchiha clan head.

He had a messy head of black hair with a natural blonde stripe neatly running down a small part of his hair and noticeably sharp canines. He looked so much unlike any Uchiha any person alive had ever seen that his sister, Mikoto, made fun of him and said he was adopted.

Wait…no…

The man paused as he stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Mikoto said her father had picked him up from inside a trashcan in the red light district.

Hurtful…yes, but that was Naruto's childhood.

The blue eyed Uchiha scoffed and ran a towel through his black-blonde hair, walking casually into his bedroom to get ready for his late night mission.

Needless to say, he didn't get along too well with his sister.

Naruto was a Hunter Ninja.

Some hours after the midnight dinner with his nephew, when he was sure Itachi was fast asleep in the boys appointed room in his house, Blue the Uchiha had gone for a quick shower and put on his shinobi clothes; a pitch, short sleeved black shirt and black and dark red pants that reached above his ankles with the dark green Konoha special jounin vest over his torso, a pair of dark red sandals on his feet and decided not to wear his hitaite or his mask. He fastened his shuriken holsters to the side of his right thigh and his kunai holder to the other side of his other thigh, a dark blue backpack on his back and a pair of blood red gloves.

The blue eyed man sat down on his desk chair and strapped on his custom made senbon launchers onto his forearms, staring at them with his activated sharingan for anything amiss, before he put a cartridge of five clear white senbon in each placed a slightly curved forearm guard over the launchers, though not so that it blocked any of the four silver nozzles peeking out from the top, over his wrists.

Naruto flexed his hands and rolled his shoulders, ensuring there was no tightness in his body and that his clothes didn't hinder his movements.

'Good.'

He exited his room, making sure to lock the door and seal it shut at the same time. He crossed the hallway and looked into Itachi's room, watching the boy breathe peacefully for a minute. Naruto was about to close the door but stopped when his nephew groaned loudly, his voice heavy with sleep.

"Duhn…close tha…door…"

"Ok, ok." The man laughed under his breath, not wanting to disturb the boys sleep any more. He left the door open a little bit, allowing the light from the hallway to beam inside. "You know where the food is. I'm heading out."

"Foin…gooowwwww."

Naruto promised himself he was make fun of Itachi's sleep voice when the child was awake.

His feet ghosted over the polished wooden floor, scarcely making a sound as he tramped down the stairs, stalked to the front door and stepped out of his apartment.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Top floor, room 42

Lilac Zen Escort Services

A town five miles from the Wind-River country border

River country

Nanami sat before her dresser, looking at her reflection and attentively touching up her makeup. Her last customer was a short, stout man that had wanted her to cry and beg for mercy, and her first inclination was to decline and kick him out of the room but her matron would cut her weekly earnings in half if she followed through with what she really wanted to do.

She huffed angrily and ran a brush through her curly brown, shoulder length hair and turned her face from side to side, admiring her perfect tan and the seductive simmer of her brown eyes. She wanted to be an actress when she was younger but her parents fell into a bad debt with the Yakuza and sold her off to pay it off in full at the height of the Third War, and if she was still alive after paying off the huge debt then they would get her back.

The pay was shit and barely anything went to her, straight into the Yakuza boss's pocket.

Nanami spat hatefully away from her dresser.

She had only been able to eat when she went on compensated dates with some of her customers, and even then she had to act according to how their fantasies; either eat daintily and pick at her food like a spoilt princess or cram the food down her throat without savouring any bite, like an animal. She was their best girl, that was why she had one of the rooms on the top floor, and yet she was being treated like less than a human being.

She rubbed the sides of her sorely throbbing temple; she was a debt slave.

She should be thankful that she was getting to eat at all.

The whole town was being run by the Fire country Yakuza and most of the people that frequented her room were affiliated with them in one way or the other-

Knock, knock, knock

-She hissed out a curse; she wasn't ready. That choke wounds from her last visitor was still showing on her neck and she needed at least thirty minutes to conceal it properly.

Standing up from her chair and straightening her dangerously short, purple silk night gown. Her bare feet padded on the carpeted floor and she opened the door.

Nanami's head craned back and she swallowed thickly as she saw the person on the other side; he was a seven foot tall man with thundering, barrel-like muscles, a worryingly deep tan and hungry, beady black eyes that immediately narrowed as they saw her in her more than revealing clothes. He was breathing heavily and his fists were clenched, veins popped at his knuckles and up his arms. He didn't have shirt on, though he wore a pair of black suit pants that strained painfully against the scarily large bulge on his crotch.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if his dick was as long as her arm.

He shoved her back, making her trip and he stomped into the room, having to duck a little to get through, slammed the door shut without looking away from her, and his ham-like fingers began undoing his belt buckle.

His voice was exactly as deep and as rough as she assumed it to be, though her body was frozen with fright at the thing he was pulling out of his pants. "Get on yer knees an' say 'ah'" her body was shaking. It didn't want to respond to her, and the man got even angrier, if that's even possible. He grabbed her hair and lifted her clear off her feet. "Fockin' bitch."

He threw her onto the bed and he ripped his pants off his knees.

More than anything in her entire life, Nanami suddenly didn't want that thing inside her.

Seven hundred kilometres from the building and lying down on a sand dune, Naruto peered into the scope of a six foot long contraption that resembled a complicated tube made out of metal, plastic and, in some places, rubber.

He double checked the identity of the naked man that had jumped onto the woman's bed, looking away from the scope of the complex machine to a single sheet of paper, matching the face of the man in the room with the one on the mission specs, then he looked back into the extremely long distance, single eye scope, humming expressionlessly as his target grabbed the woman by her legs, positioning his man meat on her womanhood.

His sharingan eye flared and spun steadily.

In his mind, he performed a quick calculation of the wind speed, especially the difference between the wind of Wind country's desert and the relatively humid air of River's summer, and compared it to the weight and length of the senbon loaded inside the contraption.

The hunter closed his left eye.

Focus.

Naruto inhaled slowly and released the breath just as easily.

There was a sharp burst of air from the tip of the launcher and the needle soared through the air at breakneck speeds.

Nanami wailed in agony as her visitor got a quarter of his mast into her, filling her up completely, and he yelled as he pushed harder, unyielding.

Then there was a wet thunk and the man went still.

He then slowly leaned forward and groaned deeply, like a tree being felled. Nanami screamed, this time in horror, as the man's blood splashed over her face.

Back in Wind country, Naruto shifted the launcher aside and ticked his mission specs with a pencil.

"Lion Gamataro. Dead."

His target had been a Waterfall missing ninja that the Fire country Yakuza had recruited. Lion had risen through the ranks, using his near unmatched muscles to barrel through his comrades and reached the point that he was personally guarding the Yakuza boss.

The Fire country Yakuza was a serious thorn in Konoha's side, as they always found a way to smuggle drugs into the village and somehow kidnap young women and children to sell in the black market. The Sandaime and his ninjas were close to finding and raiding the Yakuza's base but Lion posed a dangerous threat to the success of the mission, for the giant of a man had killed many Leaf shinobi that had come near his boss.

It had reached the extent that the Yondaime Hokage, Minato Namikaze, had personally called Naruto to ask him to find a way to dispose of the Yakuza boss's personal bodyguard, and for Naruto it was a simple matter of calling one of his connections in the Fire country capital and tracking down the town in River that the Yakuza basically owned. An inhabitant told him that every day some of the gang members went to the escort building to be taken care of. Lion visited there once a week, every Saturday, under the shade of midnight and with not less than fifty Yakuza members with him, for the Yakuza boss too was concerned for his guard's safety.

The Yakuza's boss wasn't any of Naruto's business until the Hokage made it him his business.

His mission was to kill Lion and at that exact moment, the Hokage was wiring his dead target's bounty into his bank account. Naruto didn't really know how much but for the missions he took, the bounty rewards were no less than five hundred thousand ryu (500, 000 ryu).

His targets were high profile and extremely dangerous up-close; killer intent could be detected from as far as fifty miles away and in the case of those that could sense killer intent from that sort of distance, they could be classified as more than a threat.

No person could sense killer intent from eight hundred kilometres away and the senbon darts Naruto used as bullets didn't whistle too loudly as they flew, making them nearly silent and completely deadly. The needles were weighted, in case the skulls or bodies of his targets were resilient, and those weights activated within a hundred kilometre range of hitting home, cancelling the chakra from being detected by most opponents. Though Naruto had to account for the added weight in his mental calculations each time he was to use them.

Blue the Uchiha was a long range expert.

Sitting up on his knees, Naruto smirked at one of his trusty, long range weapons; his long range senbon launcher. An old classmate of his dubbed it Crystalline, a play on the blueness of his eyes.

Just like his forearm launchers, Naruto had built it himself from scratch, starting from before he entered the Academy to the present.

The long ranger launcher could hit a target from as far away as eight hundred kilometres. In Naruto's capable hands and sharp sharingan eyes, he could shoot the sclera of a moving target on a windy day from that same distance with pinpoint, deadly accuracy.

The most people at once that Naruto had killed from eight hundred kilometres away were twenty one people in ten seconds, and he had to hastily reload three times.

There was only a small recoil, little to no chakra expelled and a faint, quick blink of light from the tip until his target knew no more.

His skill with the long range launcher made him famous among his comrades back in Konoha, though only a few people outside of the village knew he was the one that was felling people from hundreds of miles away, and even though, deep in Naruto's heart, he knew that this secret wouldn't last longer than another year, he was happy to not be known and to not be included in any Hidden Village's Bingo Books.

He snapped the two stands back into his launcher and gently dropped it into a similarly shaped bag, zipping it up and sealing it into a storage seal in his backpack. The senbon cartridges, exactly ten needles inside each, were also sealed inside the bag, though in a separate seal than the long range launcher.

Naruto mused on his clans continued reaction to his infamy.

They didn't understand.

It wasn't an angsty way of thinking for Naruto but it was exactly that.

The Uchiha clan didn't understand.

They were a clan of tactically thinking, muscle bound people that specialized in either close combat hand-to-hand or ninjutsu, or both.

The older generation couldn't wrap their heads around one of their own, an aspiring young man that was a war veteran and already had more than a thousand kills under his belt, could not use his skills to fight at close range.

For the longest time, his clan saw him as a coward.

Fearful creature.

Weakling.

And for the longest time, Naruto couldn't muster up enough in him to care.

He really couldn't.

His and Mikoto's father had tried his possible best to squash his talent and force him to confront his opponent but the black-blonde haired Uchiha preferred using evasion tactics to give himself some sort of distance from the person he was fighting before he prevailed using two thrown shuriken, one that went ahead and seemed to be going in the wrong direction, and the other following close behind it and clanging behind the first, changing the direction of the first ninja star and sinking it into the neck of his aggressor.

Carefully coming down from the sand dune, backpack intact and the area he had been lying on devoid of any of his belongings, Naruto sighed.

It wasn't even that he was bad at taijutsu, ninjutsu or genjutsu.

Now, that he was twenty years old and a tokubetsu jounin, his skills in those three things were up to mid-jounin.

He could handle his own and his clan mates were just beginning to understand that.

Well…

It took him breaking Fugaku's arm for them to see that he was a tangible threat up-close as he was afar.

His sister, Mikoto, didn't seem to like it but Itachi certainly found it funny.

It had happened on the boys sixth birthday after all.

Thinking back to that day brought a satisfied smile to the blue eyed Uchiha's lips; he enjoyed hearing his sister's husband squeal in pain.

Blue looked up to the starless night sky and he shivered as the cold desert winds licked his bare arms and neck, so he took out a jacket from inside his backpack and threw it on, murmuring with a faint smile as the warmth of the seals washed over him.

His blue eyes flicked to his right and his eyebrows furrowed when he saw a large bonfire in the distance. From that place beat a familiar drum rhythm, one that Naruto easily recognized, and coupled with the triumphantly sonorous singing it sounded like the camp was having a party.

Naruto's blue eyes sparkled and he ran in that direction.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The Seikatu people were a clan of nomadic desert dwellers.

Naruto had once travelled with them during the war, on his way to another assignment in Grass country. It was for a short while and the Uchiha was about fifteen then but he had enjoyed his time with the hospitable desert settlers of Wind country.

Skidding to a stop by a tent, Naruto waved to the old woman sitting on a stool before the tent. She was dressed in thick, colourful clothes that had intricate patterns and a harmoniously curious mixture of materials. These were the kind of clothes the Seikatu clan wore. The woman beamed toothlessly and waved back to the average clothed shinobi that had entered her clan's present settlement.

"Hey there." Naruto said as he got closer to the lady, bowing respectfully. He straightened up and faced the sounds of the drumming and singing, coming from the centre of the clan, where men danced around the bonfire with heavy looking blowing instruments, hooting in tune with the drummers.

The woman squinted at him, taking in Naruto's facial features as the young man focused more on the dancing and singing a short distance from them. "Have I seen you before?"

Not hearing her question, Naruto asked. "What's going on?"

The woman scratched her chin, trying to remember who she was speaking to. She answered. "The Chief's son is marrying a girl from Suna. She's so pretty." She pointed past the bonfire, to the couple sitting there, wearing the ceremonial marriage clothes of thick, stark white materials.

Naruto followed her hand and bobbed his head affirmatively. He felt a small smile touch his lips when he saw the clan heads son shuffle nervously as his new wife hugged his arm. "He got married huh."

He didn't know if they would remember him, and he didn't want to introduce himself and take the spotlight away from the newlyweds. He couldn't really wait for the ceremony to finish because his nephew was alone in his house and the boy, though not saying it, had serious abandonment issues; Fugaku had left the boy alone in the Forest of Death and Mikoto had somehow been convinced to go along with it but Naruto had been the one to bring the boy out of the forest before any more damage could be done.

Naruto promised himself that he would visit for longer soon.

This clan had played a big part in forming his sense of personal awareness and even if there was a chance that they might not remember him, Naruto still felt at home with them.

He had been privileged to attend two weddings during his time with them and they had been nice enough to dress him appropriately, taught him how to dance and gave him singing lessons, at laughed at his expense because his voice was less than pleasant. From those two times he recalled that friends of the newlyweds could give the couple money, so that they could buy some animals to begin rearing. Raising sheep and goats were a source of income for the nomadic clan.

Naruto patted down his pockets and fished out all of his money from his wallet; they didn't collect checks, unfortunately.

The money wasn't enough, not for his pride, and so he unsealed a stack of one thousand ryu notes from inside his backpack, amounting to twenty thousand ryu in total.

That should be enough.

A good goat from Grass country or Waterfall cost one thousand ryu, at least, and sheep were a bit on the cheaper side.

Twenty goats or thirty sheep sounded like a good wedding gift, Naruto decided with a satisfied nod.

As he searched the campfire, the drum circle and the dancing singers, looking for the Chief of the Clan, Naruto suddenly remembered something he had been itching to buy ever since he parted ways with the nomadic clan.

He spoke to the old lady, breaking her deep mental sweep for his identity, and asked her. "Do you know who I can buy some goat milk from?"

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

04:12AM

Naruto's Place

Uchiha clan

Blue stayed in three bedroom house in the heart of the Uchiha clan, a stone throw from the clan heads residence. There was a wide living room connected to the parlour, a basement downstairs where he had his boilers, circuit breaker and backup generator. There was a storeroom in the kitchen and another storeroom at the back of the house, different from the small shed in his fenced off backyard. Going upstairs, there were three rooms, two of which were fully furnished for the daily life of him and any one visitor while the other served as his office, and there was an attic going further up, where he kept old souvenirs and childhood mementos. At the entrance of the house was a thermostat, a coat rack and a place to keep shoes.

He made sure appliances and machines in his house were state of the art and up-to-the-minute, like having a petrol powered lawn mower instead of the kind that didn't have an engine and having a television that didn't look like an explosive device.

Naruto wasn't much for gardens, so he really just paid Itachi or any available genin to mow his front and back lawn once every week.

It wasn't too different from the other houses lined on his street but Naruto kept to himself most of the time, so he didn't think too much of any additions his neighbours made to their homes.

One thing that set him and his house apart from the line of similar houses on that street, and in the whole clan, was that Naruto was loaded. The people street Naruto lived on weren't poor either but by comparison, the black-blonde haired Uchiha was better-off financially. He didn't speak about how he had two bank accounts, one in the National Bank of Fire country and the other in the National Bank of Iron country. His reason was that some of the places he had been to don't accept to deal with Fire country's bank and seeing as Iron country was neutral to all people of all national affiliation they could tolerate dealing with them.

Presently, Naruto's two accountants, one in the capital and the other, a former Master Samurai, in Iron, were representing him in companies and making him silent partners in their affairs. The Uchiha had known both accountants before and they had proven to him on many occasions that they could be trusted with his money.

The sniper bustled through the front door and the door clicked shut behind him, locking. He spied the light of the hallway upstairs was still on and there were sounds of flushing coming from the bathroom, and he assumed Itachi was awake; the boy didn't sleep longer than three hours at a time and Naruto contemplated whether or not to lace the boy's food with sedatives to put him out for longer.

The Uchiha uncle didn't like the sleep bags under his nephew's eyes.

"I'm home!" he called as the person in the bathroom turned on the tap at the sink, the sound echoed down the stairs and to Naruto as he walked into his kitchen with five satchels made out of goat skin, filled to the brim with milk. "I bought some sweetened goat milk!" he called to the boy, dropping the animal skin on his counter and shrugging off his bag, tossing it carelessly into the living room through his kitchen door.

Though he missed the taste of the Seikatu clan's sweetened goat milk, he also primarily bought the milk for Itachi; the man wanted to diversify his nephew's palette and widen his perspective of the many delicious kinds of food he could find in the world. He could have very well provided a few empty bottles of water for them to pour him the healthily sweet goat milk but, experiencing life in the clan and travelling with them through the desert for two weeks on his way to Grass country reminded him that the milk was immeasurably more sweeter if drank from an animal skin satchel.

Some would worry of the cleanliness of the milk, people like his sister and another old friend of his, Inoichi Yamanaka, and Naruto always told them that the milk was purified of any harmful bacteria. He was present and he had watched in fascination as they cleaned the milk, sweetened it and provided it to him to taste.

The man closed his eyes with a longing smile.

It was the best milk he had ever tasted in his life.

Nothing could compare.

What helped with the taste was that he was surrounded by such nice people as they told him stories and listened to his own.

Blue not only promised to visit them but swore he would.

During his travels, mostly by himself and at the behest of the Hokage, stationing him in different war fronts during the ten years Naruto had been on active duty out of the thirty years the war had been going on, the blue eyed Uchiha had eaten and drank many remarkable, interesting people; there was another nomadic clan he had travelled with for a very short while, this one was in Mountain country, and he had gotten to eat a savoury dish of friend rice and crispy plantains.

Those days, meeting those people, felt like there was no war going on.

The bathroom door slammed shut and Naruto's mind tumbled into a memory.

Bang!

A thirteen year old Naruto kicked the door open and stepped aside as Kakashi Hatake-thirteen-stalked inside, turning to the left, Yugao Uzuki-thirteen-followed suit and blazed to the right while the blue eyed Uchiha went straight ahead. They were the three core members of Konoha's Advance Guard in Waterfall, reclaiming twenty miles of territory from Hidden Stone, while the main force stayed several miles away and prepared to storm the land once they got the affirmative from the Advance Guard.

He was also tasked to not only provide cover for Kakashi and Yugao as they went in their previously assigned directions but to also protect their Advance Guard team medic, Kirino Aburame-thirteen-.

This warehouse was a recently built Hidden Stone stronghold that Naruto had discovered with the help of a few locals in the region. It used to be the abandoned grain store of a wealthy merchant but Stone shinobi claimed the property and used it as a Command Centre, spreading their influence throughout the twenty miles of conquered Waterfall land.

Some reports also said that this same building was being used to interrogate captured Konoha shinobi.

The Stone ninjas inside came at them without mercy.

The long range fighter might not have been in his element, not with how the two storey building contained Stone strongest shinobi and how his superiors had ordered him to provide close-up support, but the young chunin delivered an astonishing display of clearing the path ahead and supporting from the back, while still ensuring to maintain his march forward as his two Advance Guard comrades went left and right.

Blue the Uchiha was unstoppable.

His sharingan burned darkly, whirring blindingly fast.

He lifted his right arm, fist closed, and squeezed out to needles, nailing a man in his throat, stepped aside from a hail of shuriken and spun on his left foot, kicking aside a blow to his chest and returning with a senbon to the nape of the attackers neck. He slid back a step and slapped down a punch to his face, caught the Kunoichi by her head and leaped up, cracking his knee into her face.

He didn't stop moving.

He dove under a bounding Water Tiger, righting himself and shooting a single needle to his right. The senbon ricocheted off a wall and stabbed the former attacker in the side of his head, proceeding through the man's skull and jamming into the right eye of another shinobi, straight into his brain. The Uchiha turned to the medic following close behind him and he brought down a Stone ninja sneaking up on her, his blue eyes spiralled hypnotically as he turned to his left and reached over his shoulder, into his partly open backpack, pulling out a seven foot long launcher and facing the left side of the warehouse.

"Kakashi!"

He pulled the trigger.

The one-sharingan bearing teen bent low and the weighted needle jammed into the heart of a Stone ninja that rounded a corner with a battle axe hefted over his head.

"I had him!" The Hatake spat, pulling out two kunai from the holster on his lower back and deflecting several Rock Spears from a female ninja, racing to her with stoic wrath festering in his eyes. He skipped away from a kick from the older ninja, pushed off the wall and soared over another kick, landing on the opposite wall and rolled between her legs, spinning back and stabbing his blade into the small of her back, ending her pain by cleanly slitting her throat. "Did you hear me, Uchiha?"

"You're welcome!" Blue used his long range launcher to block a katana stroke that would have cleaved his head in half, kicked the abdomen of the ninja seeing as the man was taller and stronger than him, he only ended up kicking into a backflip behind his medic, sealing the launcher in the process, and he fired off three needles from his forearm launchers from above the Aburame medics ducked form, the man deflected the first two but the last burst into a smoke bomb. Blue launched off Kirino's shoulder and blurred into the smoke with a kunai waiting in his clenched fist.

Kirino Aburame, the fourth member of their Advance Guard as well as a genius medic, nearly tumbled forward at the unexpected action. She sighed heavily as she first heard a chilling crunch before horrifying gurgling sounds followed inside the manmade smoke her blue eyed teammate had pelted into. "Why am I even here?"

"You're our-" the Uchiha paused as he swivelled the head of his opponent with a wet snap, perforating his chest with five stabs from another kunai. "Team medic." He continued. His disembodied voice echoed to the girl, a non-combat person that could only heal wounds with her special kakaichu. She heard his lilting, playful tone from the smoke. "And besides, Kakashi might get himself injured any moment now. I'm out of my depth here, so I'll probably be next."

The girl scoffed and made to reply but Yugao yelled.

"Blue!" Yugao called as she held her place on the ground using her chakra as she entered a stalemate tussle with another sword user.

Naruto cleared the smoke, standing over his former opponents bleeding form with narrowed sharingan eyes, and faced her as he reloaded his forearm launchers with a new pair of senbon cartridges.

"They're retreating!" she swung the opposing sword to the right and ran her knee into the man's stomach, following through with a clean slash through his stomach, when her knee didn't faze him too much. She flicked her katana of the blood and smoothly sheathed it, a grim image of death, from the mangled and shredded bodies left in the teenage girls wake. Them retreating from the building wasn't such a bad thing, other members of the Advance Guard would pick them off as they fled, but. "I found a tunnel!"

"Could be where they're keeping our captured comrades." Naruto mused, seeing as the Stone shinobi weren't using that tunnel to escape. "Head in, I'll be right behind you. Kakashi!" he shouted and the masked teen turned to him, now unoccupied as Stone ninjas ran from him, only to be struck down by Konoha ninjas outside of the two storey warehouse. Dozens of their dead comrades that littered after the four core Advance Guard members meant that they would try their luck with escaping rather than certain death. "Bring up the rear-"

"I'm the one leading this team. You don't get to make the orders, Uchiha."

"We don't have time for this." Blue hissed and motioned for Kirino to follow Yugao into the trapdoor inside a downstairs office the sword user had discovered. He dutifully went after the Aburame, guarding her back as well as providing a set of eyes that could also see better and further ahead than Yugao's, thus covering her as well with his mid-range launchers. Before he entered the trapdoor, he said to his Hatake teammate. "Either you're with us or you're not."

He dropped down into the tunnel and proceeded ahead.

What they saw would stain their minds for the rest of their lives.

Human beings being kept in dirty cells, barely enough for them to stand up straighter than a deep hunch or wide enough for their arms to come up even a little. There was basically no visibility except for a few oil lamps, illuminating the bloody, muddy faces of the Konoha shinobi prisoners.

Naruto gave the order for Yugao and Kirino to stay back and open the cells, as Kakashi was yet to catch up. The medic would heal them and he gave Yugao his bag of ration bars to give the underfed, underweight hollow eyed skeletons that collapsed forward as the cell doors were smashed open once the Lock seals were disabled. It would take them months of physical therapy to correct their postures.

At the end of the tunnel was an interrogation room.

There was only one person inside, slumped to the side on the wooden, seal-reinforced interrogation chair. His ankles and wrists were strapped down by leather belts, also augmented by high level seals that constantly drained the occupant's chakra, and his upper abdomen was held back into the chair by a strip of jagged metal.

Bile rose up the thirteen year olds stomach.

The man's eyes had been dug out by burning hot pokers, which lay haphazardly on the ground and stained with his blood. The extreme ends of his thumbs and ring fingers were nailed down to the wooden arm of the chair by four foot long nails, while his middle finger and pinkie had been sawn off by a rusted kitchen knife. Blue saw the same knife on display on a metal table where other terrible instruments of torture were strewn about, and his sharingan told him that it wasn't only this man's blood that were on the tools.

The man's face was battered; a shattered left cheek, two black eyes from eyes that would never see again, dark purple and blue bruises around his neck and chin, a nose that had been cut off and pulsing with blood from the visible hole, and the top right part of his head had the skin seared off, showing his skull. What hair he had was reduced to pitiful tufts of brown that was matted down by sweat and blood.

The blind man didn't have a shirt on, only a pair of tattered, dirtied boxers, and he could see that the words Leaf Scum and Filthy Pig had been drawn on his chest with a hot, sharp item. Looking back to the torture tray, Naruto wasn't even sure what had been used.

His teeth had been pulled out and Naruto could easily identify what sick instrument had been used, as well as a tray of whitish-brownish teeth.

The man wept blood, heaving out pieces of his battered lungs out of his toothless mouth.

Blue could only see a little life in the man but the boy knew a lost cause when he saw one.

Yet.

How was he still alive?

"Kirino!" he yelled, unstrapping his Konoha comrades ankles and wrists, not sure what to do with the nails driven into his fingers. "Kirino!"

The man was breathing haggardly, panting for dear life. "I in' thalkin'…I in' thalkin'…I in' thalkin'…I in' thalkin'…"

He repeated those words, like a broken record, and Naruto tried his best to keep the man quiet, to conserve his non-existent strength.

He didn't want to look at the state of his tongue, which had been jaggedly cut from the tip to the middle, hence why the man had a lisp.

"Kirino!"

"Goat milk?" Itachi said from the top of the stairs, violently yanking him back to reality. He blinked as the world briefly blurred before his cerulean eyes, reorienting and placing him back in the present, away from the horrors of war.

"Sweetened goat milk, from the Seikatu desert clan of Wind country." the man cleared his throat and answered, not turning around. The five goat skin bags were a gallon each and he took four of them, storing them in his fridge and briefly taking his time to check if he needed to run to the grocery store for anything, distracting himself from what his mind had dragged up from the past.

The boy took his time coming down from the stairs. "Cow milk isn't good enough for you."

The man chuckled and snagged a single goat skin of milk, tossing it to the boy standing by the kitchen door. "Just try it."

Itachi uncorked the satchel and sniffed the contents hesitantly. Naruto leaned into the counter and crossed his arms, observing his nephew as he tipped his head back and took a large mouthful of the milk at once.

Itachi froze.

He was suddenly a baby, swaddled in soft, delicate clothes and was being rocked gently. There was a merrily burning fireplace that warmed the room soothingly and his nose perceived the wonderful scent of his mother Winter Rose perfume, back when he was truly close to his mother.

Naruto saw the sleep bags and the haggard lines on his seven year old nephews face clear up ever so gradually, making the child face glow as his whole being was washed through with the delectable taste of the desert dwellers goat milk. The man wasn't sure what sort of goats they used or what they were feeding the goats but whatever it was, they should never stop doing it.

The man laughed deeply as his nephew collapsed into the frame of the kitchen door, exhaling slowly, breathing out every single stress and releasing it to the world. Blue raised an eyebrow and smirked proudly. "I take it you like it." the boy listlessly nodded, swallowing another mouthful of the milk and sighing again, sliding down the frame and sitting on the kitchens tiled floor with his back propped up by the door. This time he took his time drinking the goat milk, savouring each drop. Naruto spoke as the boy groaned, realizing that his one gallon goat skin bag was now up to half. "We can make it into cheese, we can make it into butter and we can make it into yogurt. The sweetness in the milk isn't artificial so, don't worry about how it'll taste when it's turned into cheese or butter. I'll show you how to make them into cheese, butter and yogurt, and when you're older you can do it yourself."

Itachi hugged the goat skin bag to himself and groused. "Where did you get this?"

"Seikatu clan…I'm pretty sure I told you. Two hundred ryu for a gallon, way cheaper than how much it's sold for in Suna; over in Sand, it's five hundred for a gallon."

"I…need…more…"

Naruto snorted. "That's a gallon of milk. You're telling me-" he stopped when Itachi inhaled the last few drops of milk, darting his tongue into the satchel for any little drop left inside. "-Ah…You know what?" the blue eyed uncle squatted down to his weeping nephews side and placed a hand on his head, though it seemed Itachi was too busy squeezing the goat skin bag. "If you get into the top three of your class at the end of the semester, I'll give you as much goat milk you want."

Itachi groaned, this time louder, throwing the empty skin bag away. "Give them to me now. I swear on my life I'll get first place. On. My. Life"

"No, no," Naruto patted his head and stood up, entering the living room and hopping onto his couch, he clicked on the TV. "That's not what I said. At the end of the semester." He sent a wide grin over the couch to his festering nephew. "You'll have to make do with the milk your mother buys."

Then and there, Itachi contemplated two things.

Make a run for it to the fridge and leap out of the window with at least two more satchels of goat milk, or he could ambush his uncle and threaten him to comply.

Those two ideas went up in flames in his head when he remembered that Blue the Uchiha was an expert marksman and could sooner shoot him with a barrage of senbon before he could make it past the kitchen door. Naruto was also a special jounin while he was yet to make it through his first four months of the Academy.

Another helpful tid bit about the blue eyed Uchiha was that he had once snapped his father's right arm in two places, and Fugaku was a full jounin.

The boy's shoulders slumped and, without looking back to see the defeat in Itachi's eyes, Naruto chuckled heartily.

Sometimes he always forgot that the boy was still a child, especially when Itachi read and spoke on a higher grade level than those his age and his father touted him to be a prodigy when he activated his sharingan when he was only four. Against Naruto's wishes, Fugaku had enrolled the boy in the Academy a whole year early, and the semester was coming to a close in the next two weeks.

At Itachi's age, Naruto was already in the Academy and when he was eight and a half he graduated, and was immediately shipped off to the warfront. He got two field promotions; from genin to chunin and then to special jounin.

Resigned to never tasting the heaven sent milk for another two weeks, for Itachi was confident that he was leagues ahead of his classmates, the boy tramped over to a chair in the parlour and slumped into it, heaving out a grating, frustrated sigh.

"It's not fair."

"I want you to be the best in your class. Oh, and hey, I did say we'd make cheese, butter and yogurt."

"What good is that?"

The corners of Naruto's lips turned up. "Well, you can melt the cheese ever so slightly and put it on bread." In Itachi's mind, he imagined himself seated on the counter of his uncle's house and chewing on toast with the melted cheese atop, stretching the cheese as far as it could go. "Not sure you know this but butter can also go on bread." This time, the bread wasn't toasted. It was the plain white bread his uncle liked buying. Even in his imaginations, he was surprised when the buttered bread melted in his mouth. "And the yogurt is pretty self-explanatory."

Yes.

It was.

"You can't just get me hooked on that stuff and take it away from me." Itachi grunted and crossed his arms, turning his body away from his uncle and facing the TV as an old samurai movie from Iron country played. "It's not fair."

Naruto idly wondered if he was spoiling his nephew too much; the boy hadn't behaved like this with his parents or that many other people, not since he was three, and for Naruto this was the only Itachi he knew.

Entitled and cold, like his sister.

Then he shook his head.

If the boy trusted him enough to be himself and be open with him and only him, then who was he to judge?

He was glad Itachi trusted him.

The blue eyed hunter ninja removed his kunai and shuriken holsters from either side of his thighs, both made from the standard leather and each was a forest green, and he chucked them at his nephew, who turned back to him and caught it with a questioning look in his eyes, predominantly a question of why a twenty year old adult would give a seven year old boy lethally sharp weapons.

"If you stop pouting," He wiped out a single, new shuriken between his pointer and middle finger. "I'll show you how to do this."

A small movement of his fingers and that one multiplied into three, and another motion and the three multiplied into ten, fanned out in both of his hands. Itachi's one tomoe sharingan was working a mile a minute to slow down Naruto's actions and to relay to his brain how it was done.

All he saw were the shuriken dividing, and that didn't make sense, not even from an illogical standpoint.

He forgot about the goat milk and his whole face became a question mark. He looked down to his uncle's shuriken holster and wondered how he would even begin to perform the shuriken trick.

"It's to something your sharingan can't copy, not now anyway."

"Is it fuinjutsu?" the boy asked, honestly confused.

Naruto raised an eyebrow, saying in a somewhat lilting voice. "Do you think it's fuinjutsu?"

"…I…I don't know."

"You want to figure it out for yourself or you need help?"

"…Let me see if I can get it myself, if not I'll ask you." The boy nodded and plucked out two shuriken from his uncle's ninja star holster, turning them in his hands and under the intense scrutiny of his one tomoe sharingan.

"While you're at it, think of what you want for breakfast." The man added, sitting back comfortably in his couch and watching the samurai movie on the TV, one that was apparently about a ronin that was protecting a princess from bandits and assassins sent by her late father's relations, all for her to not claim the throne and become Shogun.

Itachi grunted. "Ok."

Blue seeped his concentration into the movie but it seemed to become an idle buzz somewhere in the back of his mind, throwing his attention onto other things.

By the end of the war, last year, Naruto had become a millionaire.

This was due, in part, of when inhabitants of an allied towns or cities paid him for his services once he was done being posted to that area or when Konoha paid him for every person he had shot down with his mid-range or long range senbon launchers. The Hidden Leaf had gotten this apparent fortune from an agreement from the Daimyo after the Yondaime and the former Princess of Whirlpool had saved him and his family from certain calamity.

Leaf had also raided enemy camps and looted treasuries.

The Sandaime Hokage had led the village through to winning the war and the Yondaime Hokage made sure that the other Hidden Villages, allied or otherwise, knew for sure that Konoha wasn't to be trifled with.

Naruto didn't know what to do with his newly acquired wealth, so he put a majority of his money into his two separate bank accounts, Iron and Fire banks, and left them to the devices of his two trusted accountants, who took it upon themselves to expand on their employers wealth by making silent investments into ventures and companies, ensuring to keep Naruto's name unknown but the Uchiha's money spoke on his behalf. Though no major decision with his money was made without Blue's express permission; he paid them well and they lived well and so they worked for him loyally, no problem.

There was a major, leading textile company in Kumo that Naruto owned more than fifty percent of, essentially making him the CEO and the primary decider of anything that company did, but he left the main control in the hands of the existing Board of Directors. That company in particular exported to all over the continent.

An entire book can be written on Naruto's savings and investments, his silent partnerships and the companies he owned.

Understandably, Blue the Uchiha didn't want to stretch himself or his two accountants too thin by having them shadow manage and fund too many organizations, so he limited their spending to four major corporations and eight up-and-coming, prospectively profitable businesses, to be shared among them however they mutually agreed to. From what the statements sent back to him, the Iron accountant, being able to manage Naruto's neutral account, had his fingers deep in three major organizations and five prospective ones around the continent, while the Fire accountant was only able to get the rest due to the condition that dealings with Fire country was too deeply investigated, and investigations were the last thing Naruto needed seeing as he wanted to stay anonymous for as long as humanly possible.

He didn't keep track of it all, and in hindsight that wasn't very smart, but in his defence it was a lot.

It was working for him and his two accountants were doing a commendable job.

His accountants multiplied his millions into billions and the Directors of the National Banks he had accounts with were adequately bribed to speak nothing of it.

There were two things he was actively putting his attention into; he was funding a program to provide food and relief for civilians that had lost their homes and livelihoods to the war, in Fire country. They only knew their benefactor as The Man from Chill.

He had the money and half of the time he didn't know what to do with it, might as well give what he could to people that needed it, right?

Another thing he was doing was pouring a portion of his money into a Medical Research Facility in Hidden Chill.

Last month, he had received his bank statements and there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the number of zeroes in the two spiral bound books and where those zeroes were going. Another bank report, the Fire and the Iron, was expected to come that morning.

The secret billionaire had learnt to not completely trust anyone, so he had different sets of outside eyes check up on what his accountants were doing without them actually seeking the two money managers out or making their presence known, for Naruto hated being cheated, even if he still didn't know what to do with his money.

Those outside eyes did not make up a spy network, like the ones Jiraiya of the Sannin had, but a complicated network of contacts and connections Blue had accumulated overtime during his travels, conversing with the locals and relating with them at some level. He didn't want them sticking their necks out for him, only to keep their eyes open and their ears on the ground; any information they thought would be valuable would be relayed to him and he would properly compensate them for their worries.

There was a whole system of coded messages and sealed scrolls.

It wasn't a spy network.

It was vast network of contacts and connections.

Contacts being people that had knew would have the information he needed and connections were people that could point him the direction of who he could ask to find what he needed; a contact can also be a connection and a contact can be different from a connection.

They were how Naruto was enlightened on events before most of the population.

His contacts in Fire country affirmatively reported that there was actual change being made to alleviate the lives of the scattered masses. The people around the northern and eastern regions of the country, those in towns and villages close to Iwa and Stone, had been hit worse by the war than the rest of the country.

One funny thing a contact in Iwa told him, backed up by two other strings of connections in Demon country was that there was a conspiracy theory going round of a Shadow Organization that owned and controlled most of the influential, rich corporations and they were based in Fire country, tripling the suspicions behind any Fire country dealing done outside of the country.

This could easily not be about Naruto, whose money and silent partnerships was placed firm around the life blood of four major and eight minor businesses, but it could also be about Minato.

The Namikaze Hokage was another millionaire that had gotten his riches during and after the war, and though the man was five years older than Naruto and was in the same age-group as his sister and the present clan heads, the man didn't limit himself to the 'Four and Eight' but to anything that looked like it could rack him more money. He wasn't able to hide his wealth as quickly as Naruto was but, capitalizing on being a Legend class shinobi as well as a business tycoon, he swerved into the skid and made his money into billions, not trusting his own accountants to do anything but hold his money and give him when he ordered it.

Minato wore his money on his sleeve and though not dressing like a pompous idiot and drawing an even larger target on his back, the man acted the part.

Kushina Uzumaki, his wife, was also rich but her money came more from old, inherited clan money and land. Being married to Minato, she didn't really need to spend her money so she just kept it aside for the moment.

The two men, the Uchiha and the Namikaze, were tied when it came to riches.

The man's sharingan activated and he swivelled his head to the front door as the mail slot rattled, some letters were pushed in a second later.

Naruto checked the time.

06:01AM

"The mailman's a bit early." Itachi commented absentmindedly, still deciphering the shuriken trick Naruto had shown him. "Maybe father ordered him to come by earlier."

"Yeah…maybe…" Blue trailed off with a raised eyebrow. Fugaku, the clan head, didn't like birds randomly flapping into and out of his clan compound, so he made it so that the falcon messengers left mail at the front entrance with the chunin guards and the guards there would deliver the mail by hand every morning. Anyone expecting would have to go to the front entrance and inquire about it. It was honestly making an easy thing more troublesome than it needed to be. "Could be the water and light bill…? I haven't gotten them yet."

"I thought the clan head pays for clan light and water." The seven year old looked up, his eyebrows furrowed inquisitively.

"The clan head is more like a representative when it comes to paying the water and light bill. We give him the money and he pays it on all of our behalf." The man said in a lecturing tone, standing up. "If anyone can't pay up, it's up to the clan head to decide what to do with them."

"Oh…"

Blue the Uchiha ruffled the child's hair as he passed him. "Keep working on that."

"Sure, Blue."

"Uncle Blue."

"Uncle Blue."

The man sighed tiredly and stomped to the door. He bent down and picked up the mail. His spinning blue doujutsu checked them from traps or concealments.

Nothing.

"Hm."

"What is it?" his nephew called from the parlour, his voice was partly drowned out by a sword fighting scene on the television.

"Don't worry about it." the man answered, craning his head forward and shuffling the letters in his hand, his sharingan never stopped whirring, doing so slower and seemingly more methodical. "You haven't told me what you want for breakfast yet."

"Working on it."

Naruto grunted; two white envelopes had the Fire and Iron country postage stamps, reliably the two bank statements from his accountants. Like for the past year, the handwritten letter inside was of the accountants sending him their pleasantries, enquiring about his health, informing him, in summary, of family matters and that there was nothing to worry about concerning his money and his investments. There would be a For-Authorized-Eyes-Only seal at the bottom of the letter, containing the blue back spiral bound book where the full statement was typed, from computer to printer. The two accountants, in their individual reports, would list out, in full, the number of industries, companies, ventures and small businesses his money was going to, how profitable they currently were, how profitable they would be in the near future and their advice for him on where to go from there. The statements also had smaller, summarized reports from the companies he owned a majority of, usually containing how the Board of Directors wanted to meet him in person, to put a face and name to the silent partner slash owner. The accountants could say that the Relief funds was coming along nicely and that the Medical Research Facility in Chill had made several breakthroughs, contained in a differently sealed letter by the Director about the many amazing things they had done with his financial support. Lastly, the accountants would ask him to let them know if he was in town, for he was always welcome in their homes.

The format was always the same, varying a few times; Naruto had come to expect that from them.

He appreciated how much they respectfully dumbed down their words and the numbers, not wanting to sound snobbish or rude to the person paying their salaries and also not wanting to create some doubt in his mind on their capabilities of ensuring the privacy and prosperity of his accounts with them.

They were nice people.

Blue the Uchiha had befriended them while he was on the road to another station.

And, speaking honestly, they knew that there was no barrier and no distance that would stop him from harming them if they stabbed him in the back.

He tucked the two letters in his back pocket; he'd read them later.

Another letter was from his sister; she wasn't yet used to using a phone so she still sent letters. It was to ask about Itachi, remind him not to keep the boy up too late at night, feed him properly and to generally not rub his instability on her child. She also told him she and Fugaku would return to the village the next day instead of in two days, cutting their anniversary short, her reason being she couldn't leave him for prolonged periods of time with her son, not when she had another child on the way. His return letter would contain his home telephone number and the words 'Bite me'.

He didn't get along well with Mikoto but she was still his sister. She knew not to take offense at his insults and neither did he to hers.

The last one wasn't an envelope but a hand-sized scroll.

He rolled it open and he skimmed the contents briefly.

His blue eyes saw red.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Minato Namikaze barely got himself settled on his chair before he heard a commotion on the other side of his office doors.

The door slammed open and Naruto stormed in, his blazing blue eyes glowing angrily.

"I'm under surveillance?" he slapped the open scroll in his hands on the Hokage's desk, as the blonde man sat forward in alarm at his Uchiha friend barging in at so early in the morning.

On the scroll, clear as day, were Official Orders for Naruto Uchiha to be classified as a Class A flight risk and to be watched at all times, stamped and made official by the Hokage's Seal at the bottom, accompanied by Minato's own signature.

Minato blinked down at the document, then his blue eyes looked up at the younger man breathing fire on the other side of his desk.

He didn't even claim the document was forged.

The Hokage's Seal couldn't be forged.

He motioned for Blue to calm down, for the ANBU and chunin mission dispatchers that had tried to hold the long range master back and were currently on guard, standing defensively in readiness to protect their Kage. "Let's all just settle down." he waved his hand to the others to leave his office and they dutifully exited. "Now, Naruto-"

"Why the hell am I being watched?"

"Sit down, Naruto."

Blue spat balefully. "Answer me, damn it."

Class A internal threats were given to people that were still active within a village's Ninja Force that were less than mentally stable and were also rightly powerful. They were not only a threat to themselves but also a threat to those around them, people that would snap at any moment and of whom their watchers were tasked to bring them down at the slightest sign of a crack in the foundation.

They were people physically and psychologically falling apart at the seams.

Only a matter of time before the person had a mental breakdown.

Minato coolly sat forward on his desk.

"Aside from the fact that you have continually refused to give us the schematics for Crystalline for us to mass produce in defence of our village?"

The Uchiha exhaled through grit teeth. "I've told you before, once my launchers are mass produced, then sooner or later they will get into enemy hands and after that people that aren't trained or qualified to hold them will find a way to acquire them, like children and crazy people." He brought down his fist onto the Hokage's desk, growling.

Blue the Uchiha couldn't claim to be an inventor, though he was the one that built and designed his forearm and long range launchers.

"If your inventors can't come up with how I could make my launchers, then I think it's best to not arm anyone with it." Naruto said with finality, stepping back and centring himself once again.

"…Our friends are worried about you, Naruto."

The black-blonde haired man's eyebrows lifted up. "Oh, so they're in on this as well? They think I'm crazy?"

"The war changed you-"

"It changed all of us." Naruto bit.

"None more than you." Minato fired back, feeling his temper rise. "We all seeing how hard it is for you to forget. We only want what's best for you."

"So you classified me as a Class A madman?" Naruto asked incredulously.

Minato nodded. "Your launcher and your doujutsu make you more dangerous. Every year of the war and every new station the Sandaime posted you to not only made you more brazen but more unfit to be out on the field. For obvious reasons, Hiruzen couldn't take you off, so he squeezed as much out of you as possible."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing; my own friends think I've lost it." Blue grabbed his head. "I am not crazy! I'm fine!"

"Understandably, you were an asset that helped us win the war but all that weight of expectation would have been lifted off your shoulders if you gave us the blueprints for your launcher."

"Is this what that's all about?" Naruto hissed, clenching his fists and stepping back again, centring himself. "I will not give you those plans. Not even if you order me."

Finally, Minato lost it. He shot up from his seat and said, jabbing a hard finger at Naruto. "That, right there, is one other reason I gave the Council permission to make you a Class A threat." Blue didn't even rear back in intimidation, glaring darkly at the shouting Hokage. "Your inability to listen to orders. Because you are an asset doesn't mean you aren't disposable."

Naruto's lips became a straight line and he tilted his head to the side a little, lifted an eyebrow, suspicious. "What's that supposed to mean, Minato?"

"Daylight Sagittarius." the Yondaime suddenly reminded him.

This time Naruto paused.

His knuckles cracked

His eyes hardened.

"Not only was it none of our business; it was also insubordination." Minato ground, coming around his desk and standing at equal height with the other tall, though younger, man.

The corners of Blue's lips twitched down, staring right back at his Hokage. "I could do something, so I did."

"You disobeyed a direct order-"

"They were children, Minato-"

"Iwa children." The Namikaze corrected. "Whatever Oonoki does with them is up to him."

"Are you even hearing yourself?"

"Are you?" Minato returned venomously. "You had one job to do; take them all down, and you fucked that up-"

"You watch your mouth, Blondie." Blue snarled, his sharingan spiralling into life and glowing wrathfully. "I did more than what you wanted. Are you going to blame me for having the sense to end the attack at the source?"

"Don't forget who you're talking to, Naruto."

The two men glared hard at each other, not speaking, until Blue closed his eyes and cracked his neck. His doujutsu cooled down and returned back to Naruto's sky blue orbs. "I know what you're doing, and I won't give you that satisfaction."

Minato smirked, a small, secretive expression and he chuckled, raising his hands in surrender that his plan for Naruto to strike him hadn't worked. That action would have resulted in him being arrested, his wealth and assets being seized by the village, including the much coveted launchers Minato was vying so hard to acquire.

Blue the Uchiha notoriously hated when the superiority card was used on him, especially outside of a war scenario.

"I won't call off the order, Naruto. For your own good." Naruto turned around as his Hokage spoke, walking to the door at a slow, easy pace. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, sparing only one hand to open the office door. "We only want what's best for you, Naruto. Don't forget that."

The Uchiha didn't reply.

"Kushina is planning a little get together tomorrow night." Naruto stopped, silently looking over his shoulder with one hand on the door knob. "She wants you to be there, Naruto."

Blue the Uchiha pursed his lips and nodded solemnly. "Sure, I'll be there."

Authors note

First chapter done.

Next chapter we'll find out what happened in Daylight Sagittarius. Can you guess what happened?

So…how was the first chapter?

Anyone interested in reading another?

Drop a review, would you so kindly. In these troubling times, please stay safe, wherever you are in the world, and I will see you when I see you.

Foy.