Naruto : Monsters

She rushed forward, grabbed my hand in both of hers and began leading me out of the room.

"What's going on?" I asked.

Hanabi just flashed me a mischievous smile, "Wait, You'll see."

...

Shrugging I allowed myself to be pulled out of my room and down the corridor. Hanabi, in her excitement, was able to outpace me despite my longer legs and kept tugging on my hand to make me walk faster.

As we rounded a corner, one of the side doors on the opposite end of the corridor slid open and out walked a pair of female servants, each holding a pile of folded clothes in their arms.

Catching sight of them, Hanabi quickly let go of my hand and slowed her pace down, dropping back until she ended up walking side-by-side with me. She then straightened her back, held her head high and folded her hands before her in demur manner while her face adopted a calm and serene expression.

She presented a completely different image than she did a second ago. All in all she appeared dignified, the very image of a noble daughter to a respected Clan.

As one of the maids shut the door they had just vacated behind her, they turned and began walking in our direction. The next few seconds were silent as the distance between us slowly closed, and just as we were about to pass each other by, the servants gave us a brief bow, which we returned, neither of us breaking our pace.

The silence remained for a while longer, at least until the servants reached the end of the corridor and rounded the corner we had just come from, at which point Hanabi dropped the act and her excited grin came back in full force. She didn't hesitate to snatch my hand up again and start dragging me to our destination, calling out to me to hurry.

And this is why my little sister is the cutest thing in the whole wide world. It's official – I'm only ever going to have daughters from now on. Girls are so much better than boys.

What Hanabi failed to notice, however, and which I was only able to catch from the edge of my vision because I was looking for it, were the servants sticking their heads back around the corner. They glanced at the now energetic Hanabi, turned to look at each other before breaking out in silent snickers and returning back to their work.

Really, I may have been the most respected child in the Clan but Hanabi was, by and large, the most beloved. Unlike me, Hanabi actually takes her image as the daughter to the Clan Head seriously and tries so hard to appear noble and dignified, which everyone found adorable to watch when she tries to act so grown up.

The entire household had wordlessly agreed to support the little tyke in her efforts and all pretended to take her actions seriously, all the while making sure to look the other way whenever she slipped up. Truly, the Hyuugas are wise to acknowledge the cuteness of my little sister.

"We're here!" Hanabi released my hand and rushed the final few steps to stand before the door to my parent's bedroom, before turning around and smirking mischievously at me, "Get ready to be surprised, Nii-sama."

Then she turned around and slid the door open with a flourish, revealing-

"Hikaru! Help Me!" Naruto desperately called for help, her eyes brightening with hope when she caught sight of me, even as she continued her futile effort to struggle free. "She won't let go!"

The sight before me was so surreal that it took me a few seconds to process what was happening.

Then I laughed. I couldn't help it, what I was seeing was so unexpected and ridiculous that couldn't help but double over in laughter.

"Hikaru," Naruto whined, her voice thick with betrayal, "Stop laughing and help me!"

"Ok, ok," I somehow managed to squeeze out between breaths as my laughter died down, though I couldn't keep the smile off my face. "Mom, I think you'd had your share of Naruto for one day. Please let her go now."

"Never my child," My mother instantly denied as she continued to rub her cheeks against Naruto's. "Never."

My mother, Hyuuga Mio, sat on the edge of her bed with Naruto set firmly down between her legs. Mio had one arm wrapped around the blonde's waist while her other hand was placed on the side of Naruto's face, and was using it to push Naruto's face into hers, all so that she could snuggle her cheek against Naruto's.

Unlike her clone, who had been dressed up in her usual orange and black tracksuit, this Naruto was wrapped up in a light yellow Kimono with orange-coloured petals adorning its surface while a matching coloured obi tied around her waist. Her hair was done up in French braids and, while I could barely see it, she was wearing a very light layer of make-up.

Hadn't I known any better I could have easily mistaken Naruto for a noble's daughter. The only thing that ruined the image of the traditional high-class lady was the increasingly frustrated expression Naruto was sporting as she tried and failed to fight her way out of my mother's hold.

After fruitlessly struggling for a few more seconds she gave up, slumping in my mother's arms, resigned to her fate. Naruto tilted her face up to look at me, her upturned blue eyes wet with unshed tears.

"Hikaru~," Naruto hiccuped, her eyes threatening to spill any second, "She-she took off my clothes and undressed me and… and…and I-I think I've been molested." Another hiccup, "Does this mean I can't be a bride anymore?"

The sight would have been heartbreaking for most people. Sadly for Naruto, my mother wasn't most people. Mio always had a thing for sad little animals, and could never resist trying to adopt any tiny injured strays that happened to catch her eye on the way home. So instead of helping her, her big teary eyes and sad face just made her that much adorable to my mother and only helped to seal her fate.

"Kyaa~~ that's it, I can't take it anymore." Mio glomped onto Naruto even tighter before she shot me a beaming smile, "Hikaru, marry this child! I want her as a second daughter right now."

"What!" Naruto looked up to my mother in a flustered panic, "But-But Mio-san I-"

But my mother quickly cut her off, "Now, now, no need to call me Mio-san. Call me Okaa-sama, no, even just Okaa-chan will be fine." She ordered before resuming her nuzzling.

"But-" Naruto turned her pleading eyes on me and mouthed 'help'.

"Ok, that's enough mother." I clapped my hands twice, "You've used up your Naruto time for the day, time to let her go."

Instead of behaving like a reasonable adult that she was supposed to be, my mother pouted like a three-year-old instead.

"No," She pouted, "she's just too adorable. I'm never letting her go." Then shut her eyes and buried her face into Naruto's hair

Rolling my eyes, I walked up to a nearby table, muttering under my breath all the while about who was supposed to be the parent and who the child. Picking up a spray bottle from the table, the one my mum used to water her plants, I turned back to my mother and sprayed her face.

"Hikaru!" She yelped, dropping Naruto as she covered her face. Naruto, knowing a chance when she saw it, scrambled away from my mother as fast as she could move and scurried to hide behind me.

"There," I said, setting the spray bottle back down on the table, "have you finally learnt your lesson? If you keep insisting on acting like a clingy cat, I'll have to treat you like one."

Hanabi, who had been standing off to one side and enjoying the show, just dropped to the floor in a fit of laughter. Well, I'm glad at least one of us is enjoying themselves.

"But Hikaru-" The thirty-five-year-old woman whined, literally whined, and I couldn't help but be reminded of a petulant child who just had her favourite toy taken away.

"No buts." I told her, cutting her off, "Neither Naruto or I have time to play with you today. We need to get to the Academy early. They're going to be announcing our teams today."

"That's right," Hanabi perked up from where she was still lying in a tangled heap down on the floor, "Are you and Naru-Nee going to end up in the same team Nii-sama?"

I smiled at her, "We won't know for sure until we get there but seeing as we were both ranked at the top of our year, we're pretty much guaranteed to be teamed up."

It wasn't easy but we somehow managed to boost up Naruto's grades high enough for her to beat out the other girls. That's not to say Naruto was a bad Ninja or anything, far from it. It's just that she wasn't a well-rounded one and that was the crux of the problem.

To graduate from the Academy all prospective Genin were put through a series of exams, ranging from an assortment of different categories. There were the obvious ones such as taijutsu, ninjutsu and genjutsu. Then there were things like stealth, tracking, general knowledge, trapmaking, clones, first-aid and information gathering.

When it came to taijutsu or stealth, Naruto had it in the bag. She was so far ahead of the rest of the girls in hand-to-hand combat that I couldn't help but pity them during sparring practice. I remembered all too well how it felt like to be on the wrong end of her punches when we first met all those years ago, and she had only grown stronger since then.

I was never quite certain if it was due to her Uzumaki heritage, her status as a jinchuuriki or a combination of both but the sheer amount of raw physical power Naruto held in her body was extraordinary. It was well beyond anyone else in our class.

If I wanted to match her in raw strength then I had to carefully control the timing and flow of the chakra in my muscles to draw out their maximum potential. But Naruto didn't need to do that, she has so much chakra coursing through her veins that all she has to do was swing and her punches would be just as devastating as mine, if not more.

So no, it wasn't the taijutsu exam but the genjutsu and chakra control exams that had us sweating buckets. To say she was terrible at them would be putting it mildly. If Naruto doesn't outright flunk those exams I would consider it a win.

The top male and female Genin of the year was determined by averaging the scores from all the exams. Which meant that if you bombed two or three exams badly enough, you'd be out of the running even if you aced several others. 

So if Naruto ever wanted to end up in the same team as me, which she really wanted to be, she needed to find a way to boost her grades up and fast.

We gave up on chakra control as a lost cause straight from the start. 

If Naruto still hasn't gotten it down after all these years, then there was no way she would manage it in time for the exam. Instead, we focused on her other weak points, clones and general knowledge.

And I already knew the perfect solution to both those issues.

Shadow Clones.

...

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