Hiruzen kept his word and had someone check on us once a day to make sure we alright, but not much of note had happened since we started living together, other than Naruto having gained a stalker. While I wasn’t paying attention, he seems to have saved the young heiress to the Hyūga clan from some bullies, and for a while every time I saw her she would glare at me as though I was her mortal enemy.

At least until our seventh birthday. Due to Naruto’s incessant demands, we got Ramen at Ichiraku despite it not being the right day of the week, and she just so happened to also be getting ramen. As a result she overheard Naruto and I having our regular argument of “Call me Onee-chan” “we’re the same age” until I finally got him to at least call me “Saku-nee” one time when I said it was for a birthday present.

Ever since then, Hinata ‘randomly’ runs into me all the time and has recently even begun to call me ‘sister dearest’. (“Scary, I don’t remember her being that confident as a child”). But, I won’t deny the great joy it brings me when she call’s me that, so I teasingly pointed out to her that if she married Naruto she could really be my sister. Unsurprisingly, she turned crimson and ran away, though she later asked me not to tell Naruto about that conversation. Shame, but I’ll do my best not to ruin his future relationships. Maybe if I’m lucky, due to her being a bit braver, they may end up together far sooner.

A few months after out we turned seven, the Uchiha clan was wiped out. It may be callous of me, but I didn’t even know anyone from the clan so I don’t particular feel any grief. Naruto seemed saddened when he heard about it, but I think that was more just due to his kindness than any sort of personal attachment.

Moving to a brighter topic, Naruto has actually been studying, and isn’t the idiot he was in canon. I even managed to convince Hinata to help us with our studies a bit. Since she is the heiress to a major clan, she has already been taught things that we would normally learn at the academy like geography and history. Perhaps due to my existence causing some domino affect, Naruto seems to have already developed some feelings for her, even though he is unaware of them. While I don’t plan to ever try to push them together, even when they’re older, I have definitely started teasing them. Thankfully there haven’t been any real romantic advancements, which is good since they are still far too young.

Me? I’m not into children, and the two of us don’t really interact with others, so there’s no way I would find someone, though I wouldn’t want someone who is attracted to children anyway, so any romance prospects for me are far in the future.

On an unrelated note, ever since the day we left the orphanage, I have been able to use my time powers… kind of. I can freeze objects in time making them effectively indestructible, and through practice have figured out how to undo it without it just wearing off.

Naruto let me test my powers on him once I was confident I could undo it, but maybe I took my prank too far me. After freezing him him while he was lying down, I put him in bed, put on makeup to look old, got a cane, brought a chair beside his bed and sat down beside him before un-freezing him and telling him it had been 50 years. I can’t say I truly regret it, but he hasn’t let me test my powers on him since.

I don’t know for sure if it’s my fear of another failure or a limit that was placed on me that’s making it harder to do, but other than one time I haven’t been able to use my powers on myself. I still try every day, while practicing my powers, but I think it will be a while before I succeed again. I don’t want to have another accident, so I need to make sure I have my power under control.

The one time I did successfully use my powers on myself, rather than twisting time to give the appearance of teleportation while I really just moved around while time was stopped, I ended up just freezing myself. As a result, though I haven’t explicitly told the hokage about my powers, I have no illusions that he doesn’t have someone watching both of us and thus is aware of that happening. I also learned the hard way that while time stopped things are definitely indestructible, having my time stopped did not prevent Naruto drawing on my face.

While I still haven’t been able to use my abilities on myself, by the time I was 10 years old, I managed to get my success rate up to one whole percent when attempting to temporarily duplicate objects by twisting their time. While it’s much better than what it was before, it feels like at this rate I’ll learn to make shadow clones before I can realistically use it. The only reason I even bother trying to practice is that for some reason my powers don’t use chakra. I don’t know if there is a measurable limit to using them, but if there is I have yet to have reached it.

Speaking of us having reached 10 years old, Naruto and I both managed to get accepted into the academy, though to be fair I don’t actually know how someone could fail considering the lax requirements being that as long as you’re healthy, don’t have any obvious hatred for the village, and don’t have any violent aspirations, anyone can enter. Makes one wonder if Sasuke only got in due to nepotism.

While it is slightly vexing that we’re going to have to take classes that will teach us things that, some of which with Hinata’s help, we already know, I am definitely looking forward to other classes. I’m especially looking forward to the more practical classes like taijutsu, which is basically the ninja academy's equivalent of PE, and the ones that teach us how to use chakra. Hinata helped us become aware of our chakra, but there wasn’t much she could teach us beyond that as any jutsu or techniques she can use are clan secrets and we don’t need to give them any more reasons to prevent her spending time with us.

I don’t remember where I learned of it, but I remembered there being a method of training chakra control by dipping your hand in water while covering it in chakra to attempt to prevent it from getting wet. As a result, Naruto and I have been practicing it since we first became able to manipulate chakra, so one would think that in these few years we would have been successful by now. Sadly, while I have at least managed to make it so my hand gets a little less wet, Naruto is still utterly failing, likely due to his larger chakra reserves. Thankfully, I’m sure the practice will have paid off when we actually start learning about it at the academy.

Tsukino_Mei

Canonically the academy's admission requirements were:

1. Love the village and hope to help preserve peace and prosperity.

2. Have a mind that will not yield, able to endure hard training and work.

3. Be healthy in mind and body.

If the above conditions are met, admission to the Academy will be granted.

 

To me, the second one seemed more like a requirement to stay admitted, than to be admitted, since you don't really know what someone can endure until they have tried to endure it.

Tsukino_Mei

next chapter actually is the start of the academy, as while I haven't written much of it yet it does start with day one of the academy