After the Rain

Chapter 2: Play Pretend and Tea Parties

A/N- Just to clarify; In After the Rain Naruto was born a girl, is a girl and will continue to be a girl throughout the story. There was no gender switch at any point. Just de-aging.

Chapter Two – Play Pretend and Tea Parties

"No, you don't get it, that's why I'm telling you. You think you get it, which isn't the same as actually getting it. Get it? - Hatake Kakashi

One Legged Parade was located on the west side of Konoha and was a road leading all the way from the main street to the west side gate of the village border.

The street had originally been named after an incident many years ago before the Akimichi clan had settled in Konohagakure.

One of their clan members, Akimichi Cho, had jumped all the way from a battlefield close to the desert of Sunagakure on his only remaining leg to get help to save his family who'd been taken hostage.

It was said he came through the west gate and made his way through the main street without being stopped. Everyone who saw him felt pity for his injuries, so they let him through. There he jumped straight into Senju Hashirama, better known as the First Hokage, who agreed to help free his clan.

With the help of the Nara and Yamanaka clans they successfully rescued his family from a rival clan, that no one today recalls the name of, and the Akimichi as a result settled in Konoha. Cho was without a leg, but miraculously still survived even after the immense amount of blood loss from getting it chopped off.

To this day, the Akimichi still lived on the west side along the street, and everyone born within the clan has heard the story in greater detail.

Here was also the entrance to the Nara clan compound, but the majority of the inhabitants of the west district were still civilians. The only two clans living in the area were peaceful ones, and the civilians were rarely woken up during the night from ninjas jumping across their roof or random brawls.

This also happened to be the location of Konoha's Orphanage home.

After three days of travelling, mostly by getting a piggy back ride from Jiraiya to increase their speed, they had arrived on a sunny Wednesday at noon. Naruto had been in Konoha for about two days in the custody of Jiraiya before being granted citizenship as an orphan resident of the Village Hidden in Leafs.

And this meant she was back in this kami awful building, which often came up in Naruto's less pleasant dreams from her childhood.

When she had actually been a child the orphanage had been a place of loneliness, relentless bullying and many days with little to no food. They had never bothered to care for her enough and she had remained the smallest of her age group for her entire stay.

Naruto had been given an apartment when she turned eight. It was after the ANBU discovered that she had been starved for two days with only water to keep her alive. She didn't remember it all that well anymore, but she'd gotten into a fight with a boy a year older and the isolation was her punishment.

As she watched her could-have-been godfather leaving the outdoor grounds from her window, Naruto wondered how it would be this time around. It couldn't possibly be the same since no one knew she was a jinchūriki, and therefore had no reason to mistreat her.

Still, she wished she never had to set foot in this place again.

She let out a sigh while running her fingers through her hair. Naruto guessed it could have turned out worse.

The uneasiness between the countries was growing, and everyone were automatically suspicious of people who were without a home and sought sanctum in their village. Of course, Naruto did have a home, they just didn't know it.