The Protagonist System

Surprisingly, the older woman was back at the orphanage the next day and it was the young woman that had been shuffled off to another posting. I barely had to poke the woman's mind to get all the details, because she was so happy about the situation. Hiruzen Sarutobi himself had cautioned her against being so blatant with the abuse and let her keep her position as the matron of the orphanage.

I mentally sighed at the old man going the Albus Dumbledore route to give me a horrible home life as a child, so he could 'rescue' me later by giving me a crappy apartment as he fed me the idea to become a ninja and then eventually the Hokage, the leader of the village, to earn everyone's respect. It was a stupid way to gamble with everyone's future, especially since he didn't know I was the protagonist.

When the older woman entered my room to feed me rancid formula in a dirty bottle, she was slightly afraid. She remembered what happened the last time she tried it and she approached my crip. Her eyes took in the clean sheets and frowned briefly.

“It seems the Hokage himself approves of how I'm going to treat you, you demon brat.” She said and only cautiously tried to feed me the bottle. Since she didn't want to touch me in the same way the younger woman had, like a surrogate mother, it was really awkward as she tried to position the bottle to pretty much drop it into my mouth.

I sighed out loud and her hand jerked, almost losing her grip on the bottle. I raised my hand and grabbed it from her, then I threw it across the room and the glass bottle smashed on the wall. The smell of the rancid formula quickly filled the room.

She looked shocked for a second and then scowled at me. “Fine, be that way.” She said and stepped back towards the door. “Let's see how hungry you'll be when I don't return until tomorrow.”

I wasn't worried about that and she saw that I wasn't, so she let out that same odd sound as she made her hands into fists and slammed the door and locked it. She didn't clean the formula up, either. I could hold my breath forever, so I wasn't bothered by the smell. When I looked with my X-Ray vision through the walls, I saw the older woman was stomping her way down the stairs.

I chuckled at the perfect plan that image provided me and I used telekinesis to snap the bitch's ankle. She screamed as she fell and tumbled down the stairs. Just before she hit the hard stone of the ground floor, I used telekinesis to snap her neck and she landed perfectly to show that was how she had died.

Since I didn't use chakra or any other type of energy that could be identified, it would be classed as an accident. Now I just had to wonder how long it would take before anyone realized she was dead and came to check on things. It made me sigh when I did a light telepathic sweep of the area and not one single person had thoughts about the orphanage.

With a soft groan, I closed my eyes and had to start searching for a mind that was open enough to consider the orphanage and the welfare of the kids inside. That was a difficult task after the devastation the monster had caused the village of Konoha and everyone was more concerned with repairing the village and healing all of the wounded people.

Oh! I could put the thought into my other caretaker's head. I thought and used my tracking spell on the young woman that had been sent away. I found her and her thoughts were already about the welfare of the children at the orphanage and was focused on me.

She also didn't like her current posting as the assistant to the librarian, because she was doing all the work and the librarian was being praised for it. She couldn't even complain or slack off, because it was the Hokage that had placed her there and his word was law.

You need to check on the kids after work. I implanted into the back of her mind and I felt the idea take root. Your worries are valid. You know you're right about this. You should ask a medic ninja you know for help.

After a few minutes, her resolve solidified and she mentally promised herself to rush over to the hospital and then to the orphanage. There was something definitely wrong there and she had to check it out.

I retreated from her mind and let out another sigh. Being alone all day wasn't going to bother me, since I had learned a long time ago how to keep myself entertained. It was the fact that I was a baby and babies soiled themselves when left unchecked for a long period of time. I did not look forward to spending several hours wearing soiled nappies to keep up the ruse I was a normal baby.

*

Yui rushed out of the library when the old bitch finally let her go for the day. She had known the woman would be reluctant to end her shift, because then she would have to get up off of her fat ass and do some of the work herself.

She made her way to the hospital and searched for Akiko, her childhood friend that was an assistant medic-nin. She didn't have enough fine control of her chakra to progress into the high tier healing profession yet and was taking extra lessons, so she knew right where Akiko was going to be. The training classroom.

Yui looked through the open doorway and saw several students practising their chakra scalpel techniques on cadavers and suturing them closed because healing chakra didn't work on a dead body. She walked over to the table where her friend was and whispered to her about her worries for the children.

Akiko sighed and finished her clean needlework, tied off the stitches, and waved at the instructor. The older woman nodded and motioned for her to leave. Both Akiko and Yui walked out of the room and out of the hospital.

“I think you're overreacting.” Akiko said and walked with her friend towards the orphanage.

“I hope I am.” Yui said, a little desperately. “I just have a feeling...”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” Akiko said and they reached the large building. “You got hooked on the first cute blond you've ever seen.”

“Akiko!” Yui gasped and blushed.

Akiko laughed at her not denying it and opened the door. It wasn't locked, even if it should have been. There were also no children out and about and that worried her.

“AKIKO!” Yui gasped and pointed.

Akiko turned to look and saw the clearly dead body at the bottom of the large staircase. She rushed over and knelt, checked for a pulse, and felt the dislocated spine. She performed a basic check with her chakra and tried to not sigh.

“She's been dead for at least 8 hours.” Akiko informed her friend.

“No!” Yui gasped and ran up the stairs. She knew the older woman always locked the doors to keep the kids inside until the designated times for meals and playtime outside. Since there were children from babies to toddlers to five year olds, all of them had been lock in all day and hadn't been fed.

Of course, the first one she checked was Naruto Uzumaki and the horrible smell hit her as soon as she opened the door. She choked on the smell of rancid formula, urine, and feces that filled the room and covered her mouth and nose with a hand. Two steps brought her close enough to look inside the crib to see the sad state of the newborn baby and her heart broke at the tried tears on his cherubic face.

“You poor thing.” Yui said and scooped him up, despite the filth, and carried him out of the room.

“Oh, hell.” Akiko said when she saw the baby. “I need to go report this to my mentor.”

“Please hurry back.” Yui said and opened the next door, only for a similar smell to hit her. “Bring lots of help.”

Akiko nodded and ran down the stairs, avoided the body, and ran out the door. Her thoughts were on the huge mess this was and she resolved to never doubt any of her friend's feelings in the future. If she had believed her yesterday, today might not have happened. It also made her wonder what the Hokage was thinking when he left a clearly incompetent woman in charge of an entire orphanage.

Less than five minutes after she explained to her mentor, all of the nurses and apprentices rushed back to the orphanage to take care of all of the neglected orphans and to give them all check-ups. All of them let out surprised sounds to see the state of the children and went to work. Baths and clothing changes were given and food was prepared for them all, then the questioning began to find out what happened.

By the time word reached the Hokage's office about the matron's death at the orphanage and who had put her in charge, a good portion of the ninjas and civilians in the village had heard about it. Unfortunately, since Naruto was involved, the death was attributed to the Kyuubi and the superstition about the nine-tailed beast's influence grew.

Hiruzen was much too late to order everyone to keep things quiet, especially since they all knew he was at fault, so he had no choice but to transfer Yui back into her position in the orphanage and appointed another older woman to be in charge as the matron. Unlike the last one, she hadn't lost anyone during the Kyuubi's attack and didn't blame Naruto for it.

That wasn't ideal for the old man and he had to accept it and work around it. He knew the civilians and a lot of the ninjas would still harbour a lot of hatred for the boy and that would have to be enough for now.

When Naruto was a little older and started walking around and exploring like all children do, Hiruzen knew the boy would encounter much more hatred and animosity that could be used to his advantage to convince Naruto to use it as motivation to be better than them.

*

So, my plan kind of worked. I still had an older battleaxe of a woman in charge, only she was not as harsh about my treatment and she spread her animosity among all of te kids. I was still neglected as much as possible, since I was a model child and didn't cause a fuss all the time. The workers concentrated on the problem children and they earned most of the attention, which was both good and bad.

It was good that they were taken care of and bad because I was left mostly alone. I could have behaved in a similar manner and had an equal amount of attention, except that would only make the workers work that much harder and I didn't want anyone to overexert themselves trying to take care of me when I didn't really need it.

However, there was an upside. Each time it was my turn to be fed, Yui took it upon herself to do it and spent the entire time petting my hair. She had even roped her friend Akiko into visiting regularly to give me unnecessary check-ups and to show off how good of a baby I was.

The days quickly turned into weeks, then months. The seasons changed and I was occasionally carried to the closest window to show me the different states of the outside. It was nice that Yui cared enough about me to keep me informed about those kind of things, so I never objected or made a fuss about doing whatever she wanted to do.

When I reached my six month birthday, after many practises with pulling myself over to the bars of my crib where Yui could see me, it was time to start showing off a little. When she placed me on the floor near some baby toys for playtime with the other kids, I rocked myself from side to side, clearly indicating what I was going to do, then I flopped over onto my belly and put myself up on all fours.

Yui caught her breath when I shakily moved my arms and caught myself before I lost my balance, then I moved my knees and corrected my stance. I moved one arm and one knee, let out a little giggle, and them crawled across the floor to her chair. I grabbed onto the leg of her pants and carefully pulled myself up to my feet, using the cloth like a rope ladder. I stood proudly and giggled at her shocked face, let her pants go, dropped to my hands and knees again, and started crawling all around the room.

When playtime was over, I had successfully avoided all of the other children trying to grab me. I did sit down once and clapped when one of the toddlers knocked over a large tower of blocks, just because it was a nice tower and had scattered all over. He looked happy to have an audience, too.

When I was nine months old, Yui had accepted that I could crawl almost as fast as she could walk. I also had a bit of a surprise ready for her when she showed up to take me to daily playtime. When she entered the room and smiled at me, I pulled myself up by the bars of my crib and then reached up for her.

“Yui!” I said and made a grabbing motion with my hands.

Yui froze and gasped at the same time. Tears came to her eyes and she walked over to the crib. She picked me up and hugged me tightly as she whispered about being my first word. After a few minutes cuddling me, she tucked me onto her hip and held me with one arm before she wiped at her face. She didn't say anything else as she brought me to the playroom and set me down on the floor.

Like usual, I made sure to right myself and crawled around for a bit, then I looked over at her. She was watching me a little closer than usual, just as I planned, and I crawled over to the small toybox. I used it as a brace and pulled myself up into a standing position, about five feet away from her, and then turned my head to look at her with determination on my face.

Yui caught her breath at the look and she knew what I was going to do. She slid off of the chair to kneel on the floor with her arms out. I didn't need any more prompting and moved my foot to point towards her, then let go of the toybox.

“That's it, Naruto! You can do it!” Yui encouraged me.

I took a very shaky step and waddled a little, as if I was going to love my balance, and moved my other foot to catch myself. She looked relieved and then clapped before she held her arms out to me again. I took another step, wavered only slightly, then took another step with my arms out to her. Three more steps and I was scooped up into her arms as she laughed and swung me around.

I giggled and laughed with her and hugged her neck. It had made her very happy to be both my first word and she was the reason I took my first steps. I thought it was the best reward I could give her for taking care of me, even if she always regretted that the other kids demanded more of her time, because they needed her more than I did.

After that, I had a lot more autonomy and a few new restrictions. I wasn't allowed in certain rooms, or outside without an adult, and I was to always be careful as I explored. Yui didn't want me to ever be hurt and she worried about that a lot more, now that I was more mobile and could reach new things.

I couldn't quite reassure her I would be careful, since I couldn't let out the secret I could say more than her name. All I could do was show her I wasn't going to be reckless with my new freedom of movement whenever she was around. It made her smile when she saw that and she seemed a lot more relaxed.

Of course, now that I had established I could safely move around without supervision, it gave me a lot more leeway to start investigating a few things that I suspected were going on in the background. With Konoha being seen as weaker after the devastation caused by the nine-tailed beast, even almost a year later after having bolstered their numbers of ninja with cannon fodder, I was sure there were enemies around to take advantage of the situation.

I just had to find them and deal with them before they became a problem. But first, I had to figure out how to avoid the ANBU ninja that were constantly observing me.