Naruto : Struggle Of Childhood

The Bridge Builder's Daughter

Wave Country was widely considered to be the poorest region in the world. The region was completely dominated by a corrupt business man, Gato and while it had once been a trading hub, it was now nothing but a starving village populated by people who were too poor to get out. Few people ever came to that place anymore. It was a region that the world had decided to forget about. Hired mercenaries terrorized the civilians, and the only authority was that of he who had the biggest muscles.

It was the perfect place to hide out.

The nine kids had been there for about six months. They sold fish they had caught, things that they managed to smuggle over, and they would perform almost any task for a very low price. The price depended on the person and what was being bought. Sometimes it would only be two ryou, which was expensive enough for some people, sometimes it would be for something that the person had. The kids were unnoticeable, uninteresting, and indistinguishable other then a few personal traits.

Rumor had it they worked for a group of powerful ninja who would also work for low prices. Already, several people stated that they had been helped out by this group when they had hired the kids to do something that directly went against Gato's orders.

They called themselves Hakumei.

No one in the town would tell any visitor the name of the organization, fearing that they were Missing Nin who might be picked up at any time. They had already hinted that they would leave eventually, just as suddenly as they had appeared, and the villagers wanted to keep them around as long as they could.

Shippuu no Naruto leaned against the wall of the tiny house, previously abandoned, that they had taken over. No one actually knew where they lived, and if they couldn't keep a bunch of civilians or mercenaries from following them, they had been wasting their time for five years. He had a letter in his hand and was giving the overview to the rest of his friends.

At twelve, Naruto didn't feel like he had changed much from when he was a little kid, actually, to his irritation, he was the shortest guy there, second only to Hinata. His blond hair still had a tendency to spike around, even though he wasn't sure if he really liked it all that much, and the whiskerlike marks that proclaimed that he was a Jinchuuriki were still as obvious as ever. He was wearing a faded dark orange shirt that was slightly torn up, and some tan pants. Since they were supposed to be posing as townspeople, they wore clothing that was slightly torn up to blend in. Naruto's favorite color was still orange, but he restrained himself from the bright orange that he had once admired so much. It wasn't that he disliked the color, it was just that it was impossible to take anyone seriously who ran around in neon orange.

"Baa-chan wants us to be careful…yada yada yada…she doesn't sound all that happy that we're off on our own know." He told them, reading from the letter.

"We're technically adults," Neji grumbled, "Haku and Kimimaro have been adults for three years, of course we can take care of ourselves."

Neji still liked to wear his hear in a low pony tail, and had grown fond of wearing baggy, off-white shirts along with brown pants. The genjutsu that made his eyes appear brown was perfectly in place, and Naruto doubted that anyone other then Hinata would have been able to tell that it was there.

"Well, you didn't give her any reason to be sure this was a good idea," Gaara pointed out, "You were the one who trained in the rain until you had pneumonia last year."

Gaara had found a large, gourd like, container when they were cleaning out one of Jiraiya's attics, and used it know to store extra sand. He was wearing a dark red shirt and grayish pants, both in somewhat bad shape. He was leaning against the wall on the other side, using his sand to refill some of the cracks in the wall.