Disclaimer: About 90 percent not mine… the other 10 percent I'm holding hostage.

Prompt: Why would a teacher contemplate a change in career?

Warnings: mention of harsh interrogation, growing insanity, and Naruto's mouth.

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Konoha Kung Fu – Career Change

By Renatus

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Umino Iruka escaped Konoha's Shinobi Hospital on a sunny day with a headache and enough raw material to feed his nightmares for months. He squinted up at the sun then pinched the bridge of his nose, hard. He had a headache bad enough to rival getting rolled over by an Akimichi, and the bright sunlight was only making him see dark spots dance in front of his vision. He squeezed his eyes shut behind his hand, trying to get Ibiki's scarred, semi-gleeful face out of his mind.

Seeing Morino Ibiki, Konoha's resident mental torture expert, so early in the morning (and the subsequent hours until afternoon) was always enough to give one a headache.

Iruka found himself to be no exception, much to his dismay.

Worse, the older man had been joined by his prodigy and torture-expert-in-training, Yamanaka Ino, though Iruka would strongly refute her status as being in training for anything in relation to torture, torments or generally making another suffer to any degree. That woman had been a subtle, mostly-hidden hellion when she was still in the Academy – he remembered.

And it was exactly his long term as a teacher of ninja-to-be that had landed him his award-winning headache in the first place.

Morino had said that it was her first psychological evaluation and he wanted to make sure that the girl had supervision so she wouldn't get carried away. Iruka (either bravely or stupidly) called him on the lie and was thus subjected to a half a day of the tag-teaming torment the two gleefully called a standard psych evaluation. They had run him through a gamut of probing and searching questions, tactics, and interrogation techniques (all without any major physical harm) trying to figure out if he was sane enough to continue to teach at the Ninja Academy, and, in Iruka's opinion, try to ensure that he wasn't, just in case he was.

Iruka, at some point, figured out that Ibiki was highly doubtful of his sanity due to his unusually long tenure as an instructor – a sentiment that had been shared by most of Iruka's peers since he took the position over a decade ago and had never gone away (indeed, it had only increased as he kept his position through the years, bypassing promotions and other jobs because he enjoyed teaching). The older man had finally taken it upon himself to give Iruka his yearly psych-eval himself, just to make sure the long-standing Academy instructor wasn't hiding something successfully from medics, interrogators and associates alike for years. After all, if anyone could get information out of some stubborn fool, it would be Morino Ibiki, even if that fool didn't know he was hiding anything at all.

Ino, however, was far more interested in his teaching abilities since her self proclaimed step children would be entering the Academy in the next week. Her motivations seemed far scarier to him than Morino's did, and somehow the concept of overly concerned and protective parents didn't quite match up to the female Yamanaka's intensity. He had known that parents got twitchy with their kids' growing up. He had dealt with more concerned and nervous parents over the years than he could count or even remember. Ninjas were no exception, they were just scarier and knew more successful methods of intimidation. Ino's reaction to 'her' kids joining the Academy, however, likely topped any other in his vast experience, and many of them combined.

After all, none except Ino had yet to kidnap him (successfully) and subject him to hours of torture in order to test his worthiness to teach their children the fine art of being a ninja.

Iruka was pretty sure that if he hadn't been mentally unstable before (which he was quite sure that he was not) than he most certainly was after that experience.

No matter his mental diagnosis by Konoha's Torture-Twosome, he had a bigger headache than he thought was possible.

A sharp sense of impending danger was all the warning he got before a large hand descended heavily enough on his shoulder to make his knees tremble. The motion jarred both his hand and his head, nearly making him poke himself in the eye, before he was able to fully compensate for the added weight and force of the blow.

"Iruka-sensei!"

Iruka groaned, locking his knees under the weight of the hand, and peered up at the taller man, squinting at the brightness of both the sun and the man's hair, then blinked at the wide grin, still seeing spots.

"Naruto," he greeted, taking in the blonde's height, and the broad shoulders. The blonde had grown incredibly in the last few years of his youth, shooting up past both Kakashi and Jiraiya in height by the time he turned eighteen. Iruka, not being the tallest ninja around, barely reached his once-student's nose. He remembered a time when the noisy blonde had been the shortest of his class, and not just of the guys. Now, he was the tallest of his peers, though both Shino and Neji were close in height, and Kiba had more breadth.

"Ossu, Iruka-sensei!" Naruto said, giving him a bright smile. "What's happened to you? You look like you had a run in with Sakura or something."

Iruka frowned. "She only beats the pulp out of you, you know. She's a perfectly civil girl to anyone else."

"And Kakashi-sensei," Naruto countered easily, "since she got fast enough to catch him if he's off-guard and he's done something to annoy her enough to bother with the trouble of stalking him long enough to catch him off-guard."

Iruka's frown deepened and he returned his fingers to his forehead, hoping to quell the still throbbing headache his psych-eval had given him.

"Hey, Iruka-sensei, what's up with you, huh? Did Anko get hold of you again?"

"Psych-eval," he mumbled, ignoring the subject of Anko altogether. After a morning with the Torture-Twosome, he really didn't want to think about the blood crazy woman jumping him due to boredom or some twisted attempt to keep him on his toes. He felt Naruto guide him into walking, the other's hand still on his shoulder. He let the other man push him down the street, not particularly caring yet where the blonde was leading him.

"Yearly psych, huh?" the blonde talked as they walked, seemingly not caring a wit that Iruka wasn't joining into the one-sided conversation, or even responding at all save for the occasional meaningless grunt. "Ino mentioned something about those coming up this month. She was all excited about them for some reason. Can't imagine why, she's been forced into giving the damn exams for years and she's always bitched about them before."

Iruka grumbled under his breath, just knowing that the woman had been excited at the prospect of doing his evaluation, though Iruka was still somewhat sketchy on the why of it all. It seemed a bit over-board for a girl to be so protective of a couple of kids that weren't hers (by blood or marriage – though Iruka honestly had to acknowledge the 'yet' that was there).

"You know," the blonde continued, his energy transmuting itself into talking even as his body seemed relaxed and calm and continued to guide Iruka's headache-ridden self through Konoha's streets. "The twins are starting at the Academy this year. I think it's got Ino worked up a bit, she's all nervous or something. She shouldn't be really, they're good kids and they'll do great. She's made sure they're prepared, though they keep trying to skip out on some of her lessons. That pisses her off something terrible, believe it! You think Sakura's temper is bad, shit! She's got nothing on Ino when the twins manage to get one over on her."

Iruka grunted, trying to imagine the up coming terrors that where going to be invading his classroom in the form of Naruto's twin children. They were well known, even at their young age, and not just because of their father being the proclaimed next Kage. They had somewhere along the way picked up many of Naruto's youthful habits – mainly causing trouble, pranking the council, sneaking into ninja's homes or stalking the various ANBU who were too conceited to realize that a couple of kids were trailing them back to the ANBU Headquarters. Stories of the young miscreants' exploits were quite popular, especially amongst those who knew their parents. And they would be joining the Academy – his class – in a week. His only consolation in the whole matter was that they weren't identical.

"Did I tell you their latest scrape?" Naruto asked, not actually stopping in his talking long enough for Iruka to reply – had he wanted to. Iruka simply continued to squeeze his eyes shut in the shade of his hand. He was pretty sure that his headache was getting worse.

"They somehow managed to infiltrate the Aburame compound and avoided getting their chakra sucked dry from all their bugs, which I have no idea how they did. I mean the Aburame have more creepy-crawlies than the Forest of Death. I have no idea what they were doing, but they claimed they were just visiting. Strange, I don't think they were actually invited. TenTen finally trapped them in a courtyard with razor wire and Shino actually dragged them in front of the Hokage requesting they be charged for breaking and entering a Clan Compound. Did you know how serious the consequences are for something like that? They thought he was damned serious too, and the old-hag Tsunade went along with the act the whole time."

Naruto stopped talking long enough to make Iruka sit down. Iruka finally took his hand away from his forehead in order to see where he had been led to, wondering if he really wanted to know, or cared. He was seated now on one of the stools at Ichiraku's, the savory smells of ramen wafting past him. The scent both soothed him for its familiar comfort and made his stomach roll slightly as it sparked his headache to throb.

"Come to think of it," Naruto continued, looking a bit thoughtful, as he took his own stool. "She almost had me convinced she was serious, too. I mean, Shino can lie through his teeth and you'd never know the difference, but I was pretty sure the Godaime had had a few drinks by that point. It was mid afternoon. Her ability to keep her face straight after that kinda drink takes a dive."

Naruto illustrated said dive with a sharp gesture of his hand, ramming his fingertips into the counter with a muffled curse. The blonde countered the action by slamming his palm onto the counter with a resounding smack, the noise of which stabbed straight through Iruka's temples.

"Oi, Teuchi-san!" Naruto called, waving the chef over, "three miso ramen please!"

Naruto grinned at the older man, exchanging a few words of familiar greeting before the blonde turned his attention back to his old sensei.

"Ne, Iruka-sensei, you gonna be alright?"

Iruka took a deep breath and nodded, thinking that his headache might have died down a little, but it was rather hard to tell. It wasn't all that much better in the grander scheme of things.

"I'm fine," he said, slumping on his stool and letting his eyes drift half closed.

"That eval that bad?" Naruto asked, smiling crookedly.

Iruka debated, briefly – very briefly, informing the blonde that his girlfriend (and some days, not-girlfriend, depending on what stupidity Naruto had done against the woman) had decided to take his psych-eval herself, with the help of her sensei, but decided that he'd rather not risk her fury for informing Naruto of her over-protectiveness towards his twins. She had told him to keep it all 'hush-hush,' as they let him go, the threat to his evaluation scores (and likely future health as he slept) evident. No, he'd definitely not tell Naruto that Ino had been involved. Misdirection was in order, then.

"They're always rough," Iruka said, smiling weakly at the other man. "People always seem to think I'm crazy for willingly teaching at the Academy for so long."

Naruto laughed, his head tilting back slightly at the force of his mirth. "I don't know how you do it, Iruka-sensei," Naruto said, still grinning widely, "I was made a Jonin Instructor, and I think just my three Genin drove me fucking crazy. I can't imagine you having to deal with thirty of them every year."

Iruka frowned, a bit dismayed that even Naruto thought his mentality suspect.

"How long have you been doing that, anyways?" Naruto asked, dividing his attention between his sensei and the recently arrived bowls of ramen. Naruto immediately claimed two of them, sliding the third to sit under Iruka's nose where he leaned over the bar.

Iruka slid the bowl a few inches away from the edge, and just let the smell of the food sooth his head for a minute before answering.

"Over a decade," he said, fiddling with his chopsticks.

"Longer than that, isn't it?" Naruto said around his noodles. His voice was slightly affected by the food in his mouth, his tongue pushing against his cheek obviously, but the blonde spoke quite well considering he never really stopped eating in order to do so. Iruka had found the skill somewhat amusing and quite a bit impressive.

"It hasn't really been that long," Iruka hedged, thinking that to Naruto, it probably had been.

"Well, shit! You taught there the year I finally made Genin. I was twelve then."

Iruka nodded, knowing exactly where the conversation was going to end up. It had one inevitable conclusion and he could see it already. "But I had been teaching before that year," Iruka said.

"Oh? When did you start then?"

Iruka sighed, and figured that the revelation that was about to be made was a better one than the blonde figuring out Ino had put him through a 'psych-eval' that morning.

"Five years before that," Iruka said, watching the blonde figure out the numbers in his head. He needn't have bothered watching. Naruto spelled it out for him, actually stopping to eat this time.

"Five years? I would have been seven. I'm twenty-six. That was nineteen years ago! Iruka-sensei! You've been teaching at the Academy for nearly twenty years?"

Iruka groaned lowly and slid downward so that his head rested on the counter. The coolness of the bar helped sooth some of his headache. "This is my twentieth year."

Iruka was pretty sure that the world could count on one hand the amount of times that Uzumaki Naruto was rendered truly speechless. The silence from the blonde was impressive. He would have sworn that such a long period of not-talking was utterly impossible for the other man. Naruto certainly had never been so quiet in his classroom (unless the blonde was sleeping). It was somewhat unnerving and made Iruka more uncomfortable than he liked, considering he was a ninja, despite the years he'd spent teaching. He taught ninjas, it was more than enough to keep his skills sharp. Stray kunai, over-powered jutsus, trip wires and explosive tags set off accidentally – it was all enough to train for a war. Then there were the inevitable trouble-makers, at least one in every class, often more given the general nature of ninjas and the types of characters the profession lured in. Iruka fancied himself to be quite skilled for a Chunin. He was one of the very few (often the only one) who could even catch Naruto anymore. That definitely counted for something. Naruto was set to be Hokage if he survived the occasional assassination attempt and the training by the Godaime.

"Twenty years!"

Iruka rolled his head on the counter enough to be able to look at the shell-shocked expression on the blonde next to him. His headache hadn't gone away, but the food had made it stop throbbing, and the shade of the ramen stand allowed his eyes to focus (mostly) without having spots dance in front of him. He wished he felt better so that he could enjoy the expression on Naruto's face more.

"Damn Iruka!" Naruto exclaimed, slapping the counter with his fist. The impact reverberated through Iruka's ears, making him suck in a sharp breath as the pounding started up again, beating from one side of his head to the other in rhythm with his heartbeat.

"Who did your psych-eval?" Naruto demanded, "they've seriously let you teach a bunch of brats for twenty fucking years? Are they nuts? Are you? Hasn't it driven you crazy? Damn! Three of them nearly drove me crazy and Kakashi swears to the moon that we drove him completely off his rocker before we even made Chunin."

Iruka groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose again, squeezing his eyes shut.

Maybe he should consider a change of position. Someplace quieter. And darker. And far far away from the entirety of the Konoha Torture and Interrogation Department, but more specifically its Torture-Twosome. And on top of that, it would probably be a good idea to get away from Naruto's Twin-Terrors, too. They were sure to be worse than their father – there were two of them. Naruto had been bad enough, really, no matter how well he turned out once he grew up. If today was any indication to his twentieth year of teaching at the Ninja Academy he'd be lucky to be alive by the end of it, let alone survive with his mental faculties in tact.

He wondered if it was too late to ask Ibiki and Ino to mark his psych-eval as 'unsuitable for teaching children.' He was relatively confident that he could bribe them – torture in any form certainly wouldn't work on either of them. They'd likely laugh at any of his attempts and then give him a practical demonstration (which he would like to avoid at just about any cost).

Maybe he'd just run off and become a missing-nin. Then he wouldn't have to worry about the damned psych evaluation or Naruto's exclamations about telling everyone exactly how many years he's been teaching (and how old that must make him) Konoha's craziest brats how to maim each other and sneak around while doing so.

Really, he must have gone insane years before now. Just, no one's ever noticed because it happened right at the beginning, or he had always been a bit mad. He must have been to take the job in the first place, or to even want to be a ninja. All ninja's were reported to have some mental issues, especially the longer they were in the profession. It was a standard assumption that all ANBU were nuts by the end of their first year and an unstable mind was practically a prerequisite to becoming a Jonin.

At least he'd be able to pass any mental evaluation part of the Jonin Tests should he decide to take them. They'd probably let him pass due to word of mouth alone. All of his peers had claimed him insane since he took the position as Academy Instructor, and none of them had ever made any secret of their opinion on his mental stability.

Iruka let out a long breath of air, sinking bonelessly across the counter of Ichiraku's. He desperately needed a vacation. He could probably put in a request for time off (or a position-change) before the day was out.

"Ne, Iruka-sensei," Naruto asked, leaning over him and jabbing a finger into his shoulder repeatedly. "Are you alright?"

That missing-nin idea was looking more and more enticing by the minute.

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Author's Note: lol. Poor Iruka.