Strength From Within (A Naruto Neglect Book)

27

Daidai glanced up from his book on funinjutsu as Katsuko walked over to him. They hadn't officially organised to meet up for training or something, as the female was often busy with jonin duties and such, but she was free and figured it would be good to see her friend and 'brother'. He had yet to tell her the truth, and he knew it was bad to make her wait, but there was no concrete evidence behind her parents actions so he couldn't really explain what they had done and why.

Speaking of parents, Minato had found out about him spending time with Katsuko and wanted him to come over for dinner some time as a member of his wife's and daughter's clan. The man had actually been really kind to Daidai since the incident, and often had offered to talk to him if he ever felt troubled about the Anbu since he was still young. As much as he wanted to let his father back in, the incident had been the final straw. He already struggled in social situations anyway, since his first instinct as a result of Anbu was to never trust anyone, aside from those he had no reason to distrust (such as Tsunade, Shizune, the Nara's and Katsuko). There was no way he could easily trust that man again.

At least that seemed to be going better than his relationship with Kushina. He had tried to meet her a few times with Katsuko, but she'd been nothing but cruel, calling him a monster and saying he should go die in a hole somewhere. She even reprimanded Katsuko for being friends with him, but luckily didn't go so far as stripping his Uzumaki name.

"Yo," Daidai said, giving her a half wave before returning to looking at fūninjitsu. He had gotten rather advanced as the years passed, but without a teacher he hadn't been able to get as advanced as he'd wanted to as quickly as he'd hoped, since he had to do everything with clones incase things didn't go well. Katsuko wasn't interested in the art, and Motoshi only learnt it so he could learn his fathers infamous Hiraishin jutsu.

Katsuko glanced at him, sighing and sitting down beside him. "Hey, Dai. You look tired," she commented, gently putting his book marker in the page and closing the book. "Maybe you should take a break from all that stuff. You've still got a while to go before school finishes and I've already heard from Iruka about how you're always sleeping in his class or ditching, yet you always get high marks when test day comes around. You work much too hard for someone not even a genin." A joking tone was in her voice as she said that last part, as they both knew he was anything but a mere academy student. He was much too strong for that, and she'd also seen his tattoo by accident and figured out his real job. "Still, you're going to crash and burn if this keeps going, Dai."

He sighed and shook his head, opening up his book again and beginning to restart the page. "I can't stop, Ko, you know that better than anyone. I need to keep on training, there'll always be new enemies out there. They'll have heard of my moves, but I won't know theirs, and I need to have things up my sleeve for if I ever need to fight them."

"I know, Dai, but we're still kids. We're only twelve, yet we're out there killing people for a living. In another world, I'm sure that would be considered crazy. Even in our world it's rare for people to start this young, but this is the way we have to live now. Honestly, I feel jealous of the kids in your class. They've never really experienced hardships, they've had a full and happy childhood. Unlike me, we were forced into the academy at a young age, forced to be the best that there was in our classes because of our heritage. And you? I can't even imagine what you've had to go through on all of those missions. You've had your innocence taken away from you for a long time, I didn't even have my first kill until a year ago. I was one of the lucky ones. But we have peace, Daidai, there is no war, no reason to bury ourselves in work or fighting. Take some time to enjoy the world around you for once. Just come and enjoy this afternoon with me, because maybe one day you'll look up and see that there are no more afternoons left to enjoy."