A cracky plotbunny spawned by a conversation with kita_the_spaz about a universal-code anti-toxin and what it would mean for Narutoverse. What would it mean? A lot of insanity and suffering.
The Mother of All Anti-Toxins [or] The Search for MAAT
"Genma's bleeding again."
Tsunade's head came up in a drunken fashion as she blinked blearily at the blurry figure wavering in front of her. She groaned as one turned into two, then five, then back to one. Something clattered on her desk and she slapped at the side of her face to feel a pen that was about to make a leap of faith to join the inkan that had just fallen from where it had been stuck to her cheek. She groaned, clutching her head in annoyance.
"Shizune, it's not even noon. Why are you bothering me," she grumbled, fumbling around for a full tokkuri so she could chase her hangover out the door, pressing her free hand over her eyes to block out the light.
"Genma did some experimenting again last night. He didn't synthesize an antidote this time. He doesn't think there is one," Shizune commented with all the excitement of someone announcing bingo numbers.
"Is he dead," Tsunade mumbled, crowing lightly as her hand closed around the ribbed neck of the tokkuri before groaning as her headache spiked again.
"No, but he is bleeding rather a lot. The coagulants aren't working. We suspect he pricked himself with some kind of blood thinner."
"Bugger," Tsunade muttered, staggering to her feet. The imprints of her misspent night were plastered on her face; depressions of ryo markers giving away her late night gambling spree, faint streaks of red telling of her rash of failed bets. The thick planed bottom of her tokkuri bounced off the corner of her desk as she stumbled around it grumbling about villages missing their idiots.
Shizune, well versed in her master's habits, said nothing as she plucked the tokkuri from Tsunade's hand with the practiced ease of an experienced pickpocket—or drunkard wrangler. A similarly sized container of water was slipped into the vacant hand before Tsunade realized it had been empty. That realization came later as she was making her way downstairs, feeling along the wall to maintain her balance.
"SHIZUNE," Tsunade hollered, spitting out a mouthful of water in surprise.
Shizune had already run down to a lower level leaving Tsunade face-to-unamused-damp-face with Elder Mitokado. She was all the way across the village chatting with the chuunin gate-watchers by the time Tsunade made it to the street, red-faced, swearing, and threatening painful deaths to the bushes busy quivering in terror from where they were trapped by the door. Izumo and Kotetsu giggled madly at her flustered expression as she tried to convince them to let her hide in the watch shack's storage closet.
.
Tsunade glared, crossed her arms under her rather sizeable bosom, drummed bright red-tipped fingers on her arm, and glared. A bleary-eyed Genma, minus the normally ever-present senbon, a white bandanna adorably backwards and askew on his head, blinked back, smiling in a vague and goofy way before raising a hand to wave at her. A thin blood-filled tube snaked its way out from under his top to empty into a closed receptacle, wriggling in an echoing greeting with his movement. The medic-nin next to him sighed, pulling his arm back down before his blood transfusion IV could reach neutral buoyancy. It had happened five times since he'd been brought in and they were getting tired of having to restart the transfusion process.
"What did I tell you when you ended up here last week," she barked, an aggravated tic pulsing at the corner of her deeply-bagged right eye. Genma blinked in that same dreamy fashion, obviously thinking hard.
"No getting poisoned on Tuesdays. It's Hokage's gambling night," he chirped with a proud smile. Then he frowned a little, brows creasing towards the middle of his forehead.
"That's right. And what's today?" Tsunade started to tap her foot in annoyance. She really needed a chaser for her hangover (and to reassess her bets for next week's pool). With Genma's bad luck, she'd obviously hit a winning streak which meant bad luck for the village later.
"Wednesday? Maybe? Maybe you should change the names of the days of the week or come up with some kind of rhyme. I can't remember shit like that," Genma muttered, shaking his head with mock regret, poking at the IV in his other wrist. The medic-nin sighed and pulled his hand away again, muttering about plasma and blood platelets.
"Why can't you remember that one thing," Tsunade grumbled, eyeing her fingernails. Red was supposed to be good luck but apparently nothing could break her lifelong streak of bad luck or rid her of stupid nin.
"I left the Academy at 10 during the war, before the standard graduating age was bumped up to 12. We never had time for things like day-specific rituals," Genma grumbled back, reaching out again to touch his IV. The medic-nin shot him a sharp glare, mentally threatening to strap him down with chakra wire. Genma seemed to pout, but dropped his hand.
"No wonder Konoha has such lax shinobi. Should I mandate that everyone go back to the Academy for a refresher course? Because I'm incredibly insulted that you can't even remember my one special day," Tsunade practically purred.
"What? No. No, thank you. School is awful. And besides, every day is your special day," Genma mumbled, nodding dreamily.
"What's that supposed to mean," Tsunade growled, planting her hands on her hips before leaning in menacingly. Genma rolled a lazy glance at her before snorting.
"It means you're about to have a wardrobe malfunction," he slurred, head lolling as he faded from consciousness.
"Dammit!" Tsunade swore, shoving the medic-nin out of the way, green healing chakra already pulsing at her fingertips. Behind her, the door flew open to reveal Sakura carrying a poisons identification kit and a sack of glass vials. Shizune, having been unable to gain entry to the sacred storage closet, had broken into Genma's apartment and raped it of all his toxicity paraphernalia before dumping the entirety of it on Sakura and sending her off to her doom. —to help Tsunade-sama, Shizune mentally amended.
.
Four hours worth of hangover-plagued life-saving later, Tsunade finally managed to synthesize an anti-toxin and stabilize Genma who was still blissfully unconscious. As it turned out, Genma hadn't produced a new poison so much as he'd managed to synthesize a rather potent antidote for an old Amegakure poison that no one had ever been able to counter. Fixing Genma's problem hadn't been so much treating him as it had been creating the poison, then tainting his bloodstream with it so the anti-toxin pumping through his system had something to attack other than just its host. It was all very complicated and gave Tsunade an even more massive headache just thinking about it. Even so, she had to hand it to the senbon-sucker. Even when doing something so useless as jeopardizing his own life by not paying attention, he'd managed to give them something invaluable in return. Her shinobi were good, if not sometimes completely helpless. On a side note, she could probably hold her bets for the coming week. Two points for her.
Just as she was stretching and generating some really disgusting sounding pops and cracks from the vicinity of her spine, a strident yell of "SAKURA-CHAN" came blasting through the hallways of Konoha Hospital just as a faint emergency alarm started to blare. She groaned, clutching her head and swearing as she charged down the hall to the hospital foyer.
There was chaos in the hospital entryway. Naruto, on a short visit back to the village with Jiraiya, had somehow upset a stretcher containing a moaning jounin. Jiraiya was busy trying to pull Naruto back by the collar of his jacket as he blubbered his apologies to the man that lay bleeding on the floor and coughing up a lung. Another injured and heavily bleeding man leaned on a nurse, waving a hand at them and yelling something about Tsunade obviously trying to cull the ranks by employing klutzes. The noise rose to a deafening pitch of pained groans, irate yelling, and Naruto's bumbling apologies as he tried to carry the injured man through the door—drag would be the better operative term. A rather large smear of blood marked a path from just outside the door to the front desk.
"Shut the hell up, all of you, or I'll make sure you never leave," Tsunade bellowed, slamming her fist onto a gurney, sending it crashing to the ground in two pieces. Her tic was back and she was fairly foaming at the mouth. Blindly, she reached behind a potted plant and pulled out a hidden tokkuri. Sakura groaned. Shizune would kill her for missing that one.
"NOW. What is going on here," she barked once she'd swigged at least half the bottle.
"Poison, Hokage-sama," a brave medic-nin managed, knees quaking.
"More poison?" She gritted her teeth and rubbed at her temples irritably.
"More? As opposed to previously being unpoisoned? Because being poisoned is not my natural state of being," the upright wounded man muttered churlishly, starting to look a little bleary. The man lying on the ground moaned in pain — or in exasperation — at the comment. Tsunade was desperate to do a little aggravated moaning herself.
"You know what? Never mind. What is he doing on the floor? Someone get him up. And you," Tsunade barked, pointing at Jiraiya who was trying, unsuccessfully, to hide behind Naruto. Jiraiya had the nerve to look sheepish, laughing loudly in an obviously fake manner, scrubbing at the back of his head as he patted Naruto heavily on the shoulder. Tsunade glared, grip tightening on her tokkuri.
"The boy wouldn't stop complaining about ramen this and Iruka-sensei that so we just had to come back to say goodbye one more time," Jiraiya said with a shrug, as if there was nothing he could have done.
"You've only been gone three days! You are a sad excuse for an adult and a shinobi," Tsunade yelled, whipping her tokkuri at his head. He dodged with a cheeky grin as he caught it between two fingers, tsking all the while.
"Throwing things, Tsunade-chan? What are we? Five? Besides, I'm not just an adult, I'm a Super Pervert™! I don't have to do things the proper way. In fact, that's an affront to my sensibilities and I'll thank you to apologize." Jiraiya crossed his arms over his chest, nodding sagely. Naruto copied his motions, nodding vigorously in turn. Sakura cowered behind a particularly leafy plant in the corner, covering her ears. Tsunade snarled and that was all the warning they got.
Passers-by might have been forgiven for screaming like scared little girls when two blurs slammed out of Konoha Hospital, orange following red, white, and green as a demonic roar of what might have been "GET OUT" echoed through the village. The owner of a somewhat inconveniently placed fruit cart was so startled, he didn't even bother to get mad when said pair of blurs smashed through his pile of watermelons before disappearing into the next district. Somewhere in the bowels of Konoha Academy, Umino Iruka, in the middle of wrapping a hand around the ankle of an escaping Konohamaru, looked up, Sensei-senses tingling. Across the village in an old training ground, Hatake Kakashi, busy doing chakra-less rock climbing exercises, slipped four metres down the rock face as his Sensei-senses went haywire. He groaned, clinging for a moment, then gave up and dropped to the ground below. His Sensei-senses were never wrong and now he wouldn't be able to concentrate until he investigated what had set them off. He whipped out a bright orange book and casually made his way back to the village. It wasn't as if he had to be on time or anything.
.
It was late in the afternoon, bordering on sunset, when Tsunade finally finished up at Konoha Hospital. The jounin and chuunin brought in that morning had swiftly been joined by a four-man chuunin squad that had been ambushed by Kiri Nuke-nin on their way back from a courier mission. The trio of poison victims in Ward One had suddenly jumped to a septet. An hour later, a genin had joined them after one of his teammates accidentally nicked him with a senbon he'd lifted from his sister's weapons pouch. She was officially sick of poison, their victims, and her hapless soldiers in general. What she needed was a good strong dozen drinks and some sweet, sweet drunken oblivion. She hadn't seen Shizune since her rude awakening that morning so she was fairly confident she could get away with it.
The bright orange of the lowering sun assaulted her eyes as she left the hospital, reminding her of a certain recalcitrant genin who wasn't supposed to be in the village at the moment. A loud and distinctive laugh made her stop and squint.
A familiar bright orange jacket flashed behind a tree trunk near the Academy alongside the green flak vest of a standard Konoha uniform. A small boy with a long scarf and large goggles on his forehead bounced beside them. Naruto had come to greet Iruka as detention had let out. Konohamaru, predictably, was the last one to leave. The boisterous trio was not an unfamiliar sight. The surprising thing was the lanky body of a shinobi crouched on a thick tree branch above them, distinctive silvery-grey bush of hair identifying him immediately. Tsunade snorted at that.
Kakashi wasn't half as mysterious as he liked to think himself. It was obvious that he'd come to check on Naruto. The boy hadn't been gone three days yet and he'd already been missed. Although, she'd heard from Shizune that Kakashi and Iruka had taken to meeting since he'd taken on Team Seven a year prior. Maybe they had a dinner date. She paused and chortled to herself at that. Kakashi and Iruka dating. Now that was a betting pool she knew she'd be able to make money off. She made a mental note to have Izumo and Kotetsu start one. She was starting to feel lucky again and it wasn't even Tuesday anymore.
Up in the tree, Kakashi's wild grey bush of hair shook and dropped between his shoulders just before he disappeared in a flash of falling leaves. Naruto ran around the base of the tree screeching that he'd heard someone sneeze. Iruka diverted his attention with a promise of ramen, but stopped to cast a suspicious glance up into the foliage before the two boys pulled him away. Tsunade snickered to herself as she marched back towards Hokage Tower. She had bets to take.
.
Shizune was busy kicking herself as she risked a wary glance into Tsunade's office the next morning. Porcelain choko littered the room like white stones amid a sea of white paper flags. Tsunade lay in a heap of green across her desk, snoring softly. She narrowed her eyes in sudden realization. There were gambling markers scattered all over Tsunade's desk and betting pool books wide open, scarred with black ink and red lines. It wasn't even Tuesday!
She grit her teeth and threw the door open with a bang. Tsunade flinched but didn't awaken, drooling slightly and mumbling under her breath. A pile of ryo markers tumbled to the floor.
"TSUNADE-SAMA," she shrieked.
"Whu?" Tsunade rolled off her desk and hit the ground with a resounding thud.
"Did you stay up all night gambling again!"
"No, not all night," Tsunade groaned, dragging herself up by the corner of her desk. "I came up with a brilliant idea to make some cash—" Shizune groaned. "—and a way to keep those troublesome shinobi from being hospitalized so often."
"Tsunade-sama," Shizune protested, hands fluttering at her sides with distress.
"I'm sure this time! It's brilliant! Summon the men," Tsunade hollered, waving a tokkuri. She paused. "—and the women."
"Can't we at least clean up a little," Shizune offered hopefully. Tsunade seemed to grin a little evilly at that.
"Summon Iruka-sensei. He loves that kind of thing. I need to talk to him anyway."
"What about his classes?"
"Izumo and Kotetsu are probably busy breaking the new TV in the Mission Room. I'm sure they'd love to help out at the Academy today instead."
Shizune shuddered in terror before backing out the door and making her way towards the Academy. Something was up and she wasn't so sure she wanted to be a part of it. She thought of the smug look Tsunade had worn and picked up the pace. Her master couldn't be left alone. It was obviously bad for everyone's health, mental or otherwise.
.
Iruka stood next to Shizune, clutching a clipboard and shifting his weight uneasily. He'd spent a good half hour cleaning Tsunade's office and airing it out so it didn't smell so much like a dive bar. He didn't know how, but Tsunade kept finding hidden tokkuri and was steadily working herself into a nice oblivion. He sighed a little as the fifth group of jounin that morning walked past them, grumbling about their compulsory mission. He nodded slightly as a sixth unwary group entered the office, calling out a greeting.
"Tsunade, Hokage-sama." The group bowed with wary respect, eyeing the flushed and swaying woman.
"BRATS! Here is your mission, if you choose to accept it!" Tsunade flung a mission scroll wildly, missing her targets completely.
"We have a choice?" One of the jounin gingerly pulled the scroll from where it was impaled in the wall, shaking it free of dust.
"Hell no! It just sounds dramatic if I put it that way." Tsunade took a rather large swig from her now ever-present tokkuri.
"Dammit!" Another jounin groaned, shaking a fist in overdramatic frustration. Iruka snorted, nudging an apologetic Shizune into silence. Tsunade, typically, ignored the outbursts and bulldogged on.
"All active shinobi are henceforth drafted on a mandatory mass mission to find the ultimate treasure of the Shinobi Nations," she proudly proclaimed with drunken pride.
"… Are you drunk," a particularly brave —or stupid— jounin ventured.
"Of course—" Tsunade seemed to catch herself by surprise. "—not. That's beside the point. In any case, you are all going to find the mother of anti-toxins! It could be anywhere. Rumor has it that Orochimaru synthesized it and hid it somewhere inside the country borders."
"What rumor? Are you making things up again? And this country is huge," that same death-desiring jounin blurted out. Tsunade glared, squinting against the brightness of the room.
"This is your mission. You go find it and bring it back and maybe next time you stagger in with your guts hanging out and more poison in your veins than blood, you'll thank me for it," she growled, patience running thin. "It could be anywhere so you will be taking on missions of any rank, regardless of your own. I expect every dog walked, every cat bathed, every fallow field plowed, every marsh unmarshed, every dirty diaper changed; everything done with no complaints. The Academy students will be joining you so I don't even want to hear a peep out of you!"
Next to Shizune, Iruka's smile drooped as he recalled that particular stipulation. His kids would never become genin now. His only hope was that Tsunade would get tired of her own nonsense and cancel the mass mission before too many irate shinobi decided to go Nuke-nin or his students reached puberty.
The group of jounin grumbled as they grudgingly agreed to the mission, one complaining that he had cat allergies and never did well on D-rank missions in the first place. Another whimpered slightly, muttering something about horrible swarms of spiders and old man Takegami's drafty sake cellars. Tsunade just cackled madly, marking something in one of her gambling books with a flamboyant motion.
.
A week later and Naruto was still in the village, loudly declaring to all and sundry that it would be he that would find the particularly-named grey tabby, Pochi. He was determined that Pochi's nametag was the ever-elusive source of the directions to Orochimaru's fabled Mother of All Anti-Toxins. The animal was practically a summon, what with the way it had escaped every jounin, chuunin, genin, pre-genin, and random old woman that had tried to wrangle it. Personally Iruka thought its talent for quick escapes was the only reason it was still alive. Its giant-bosomed owner, Lady Miasa, came daily to request a mission to find her perpetually-lost cat. Lately the requests had turned into A and S-rank mission demands that had Naruto and the pre-genin screeching that she was in cahoots with Orochimaru or Orochimaru himself in disguise and getting caught every ten minutes tailing her with various implements of the pranking variety. The sheer power of her perfume was enough to overwhelm the senses of the Inuzuka who had refused to perform any work for her. Her bosom had nearly incapacitated the group of pre-genin that had found Pochi the first five times after she'd hugged them almost to unconsciousness. Her high-pitched screeches drowned out even Naruto and sent both genin and chuunin running in terror leaving only hapless jounin to her untender mercies and flagrant groping.
On the other hand, things hadn't run so smoothly in Konoha in ages. There were no D or C-rank missions to be found as the jounin and chuunin could complete the tasks in a fraction of the time it took genin. B-rank missions were likewise parsed by jounin; courier missions completed in record time. Little old ladies were getting to their doctor's appointments on time. Konoha's gardens had never looked so nice. They finally had funding to expand the Academy's budget. And that's where the downside really started to kick in.
Tsunade was drunker than ever, always giggling about something only she knew about. Izumo and Kotetsu might also have been in on the secret since they perpetrated a fair amount of giggling themselves, though Kotetsu giggled normally so that might not have meant anything. Somewhere along the way the original mission objective had been lost and Pochi had become the Holy Grail. Iruka's students had started to run amok, disregarding the silly missions they'd been assigned to weed gardens and help old ladies cross streets— that one old woman couldn't possibly need to be helped across the street ten times in one afternoon!— and instead plotted for hours and crouched in bushes trying to think like cats. The shinobi were likewise going a little crazy, some swearing that the cat really must be an Otogakure implant and that they were going to be the ones to find it. Maito Gai had been seen sneaking into one of the homes of their more wealthy citizens, purring like a giant cat that smoked too much, Rock Lee at his size dressed like a cat and carrying a sack and a stuffed mouse toy. Speaking of Konoha's Glorious Green Beast of Prey…
"Kakashi!"
"No."
"It's that too-cool attitude of yours that I hate the most!"
"Still no."
Iruka blinked. He hadn't seen Kakashi since this whole "Mother of All Anti-Toxins" fiasco had started a week prior. They'd run into each other at Ichiraku when he'd been treating Naruto and Konohamaru and Kakashi had joined them, mentioning that Naruto was a speedy trainer since he'd returned so quickly. Naruto had, in turn, blamed Jiraiya saying the perverted Sannin hadn't been able to stand being away from naked women for so long. A familiar muffled shout of "HEY!" had immediately turned into "Oh YEAH! Take it off!" which really hadn't help Jiraiya's case at all.
In any case, here the elusive jounin was. And there Gai was —in his fluffy green-tinted cat-costumed glory, complete with giant bell. Rock Lee posed at his side, similarly clad and clutching a huge stuffed mouse as if it was his lifeline, large eyes shining with joy. A squinty-eyed Naruto stood next to them, clad in an orange black-striped cat outfit, arms crossed as he thought hard about something. Iruka hoped he wasn't hurting himself. It looked painful.
"My Rival! I have finally found you!" Gai posed like a giant flamboyant ballerina cat. Lee mimicked his actions, waving his stuffed mouse like a flag.
"I thought you were looking for a cat." Kakashi hadn't looked up from his red book. That particular volume of Icha Icha Violence had only recently been released, Iruka realized, then internally recoiled at the realization that he had actually known that.
"I AM! But I have also realized that it has been more than three days since our last Youthful Challenge!" Gai pointed at Kakashi and started to laugh boisterously. Kakashi's eye slid slowly to the side where it locked on Iruka. Iruka began to sweat nervously. He hoped Kakashi wasn't going to drag him into anything ridiculous and by ridiculous, he meant anything Gai-related.
"Maa, I've been occupied." Kakashi turned a page in his book meaningfully. Gai's jaw dropped.
"You are far too cool! I CHALLENGE YOU! I will find the Most Adept and Stealthy Pochi by sundown or I shall crawl through Konoha Market covered in fish tails five hundred times to see how many cats I can avoid," Gai shouted with far too much pride as he posed, flower petals falling from somewhere, offsetting his overwhelming green with delicate pink plum blossoms and shimmering mica like a shoujo manga bishounen scene. Lee sobbed and waved a paper fan with Gai's face on it, cheering for his Beloved and Magnificent teacher, rambling about how he was such an inspiration. Naruto had started to screech about how it wasn't fair of him to come up with such a devious idea for luring out the cat and that he would find it before anyone else, -ttebayo!
"I'm pretty sure you've been issuing challenges like that to everyone you've met all week. Enjoy those fish tails. Ja," Kakashi muttered, turning a half-step before disappearing in a poof of what appeared to be toy mice.
Iruka's eyes narrowed in suspicion as Gai started yelling about the utter Youthful Hipness Of His Eternal Rival and how he would Not Be Defeated In His Springtime. Had he just seen a cat's tail pop out from under Kakashi's vest? Steadfastly ignoring Gai who'd suddenly realized he was there and had started ranting about his utter magnificence as an instructor for Konoha's youth, Iruka made a beeline for Kakashi's apartment. He knew something was up when the man disappeared for no good reason. Kakashi wasn't known for turning down a challenge. His Sensei-senses were tingling like mad and he wasn't about to let Kakashi get away with whatever he was playing at.
.
Iruka arrived at Kakashi's apartment in record time. He hadn't been back since the Chuunin exams when they'd met to plot out how he would test the Rookie Nine. His eyes lit upon the well-worn planked roof that ran like fins along the sides of the jounin's tenement building, mildly noting that nothing had changed since he'd first started leaving baskets of fruit and minor death threats in memo form for Kakashi to take to Naruto. A window opposite a rather conveniently grown towering tree was cracked open. Well, that was as much of an invitation as any. As a ninja, who was he to deny such convenience? Alley-oop.
To say that Kakashi's apartment was spare was an understatement. There was a bed with a surprisingly cheerful bedspread decorated with a shuriken print nestled in the corner just beside the open window. A series of small framed photographs clustered at the far side of the window ledge, watching over the room. A happy looking plant rustled in the breeze from its perch by the picture frames. The bedroom door gaped open as if in surprise, exposing the austere living area beyond. A strangely soft rumbling echoed from the room beyond in time with a deep baritone voice.
"I'm telling you, we won't have it," the deep voice rumbled. A soft murmur responded but its words were indistinct. The same strange rumbling grew louder before a high-pitched mew broke the monotony. Iruka blinked, then narrowed his eyes in suspicion. A strangely high-pitched giggle was quickly muffled but served to cover any sound he might have made as he darted to the wall framing the open door. A sudden breeze ruffled the leaves of the plant by Kakashi's bed. Iruka took that moment to untie his hitai-ate as a soft voice muttered that "Ukki-san is in agreement". Across the room, the plant fluttered its leaves again.
Iruka leaned against the wall behind the door and tilted his hitai-ate at an angle with the crack between the door and the frame, watching the slightly blurred images from down the hall reflected back. A familiar lanky frame topped with a less-vigorously-bushed-than-normal silver-grey head of hair hunched in front of a yet-again familiar small brown pug, apparently in deep discussion. A brown dog with a wild black tuft of fur arching skyward like a dancing flame watched them with wide blue-white eyes, seeming to giggle every so often. A white dog with similar eyes and a wide sharp-toothed grin lolled his tongue out and leaned against his pack mate, wheezing with snickers as Kakashi muttered something and nodded vigorously. A huge black lump with a blue vest lay closest to the door, blocking much of the scene. A sudden flick of grey had Iruka adjusting the tilt of his hitai-ate. He waited and was rewarded with another, longer flick of a grey tail curling over the neck of the big black dog, weaving around the massive spikes on the thick leather collar. Mew. Iruka had to bite his lip to keep from cheering. Bingo.
"I need more support," Kakashi's voice came suddenly. Gentle footfalls and a slight pause as he climbed over the big dog sprawled on the floor marked his journey. Iruka gritted his teeth as he realized the jounin was approaching the bedroom. His eyes flew wildly across the room as the floorboards nearest the room creaked, flinging himself out the window in a motion so quick the little plant's leaves were sent rustling again.
"Hello to you too," came Kakashi's surprisingly gentle voice from the room. Iruka clutched the wall outside, gasping silently. He heard nothing for a moment when a sudden tingle along his spine made him look up. Kakashi, hovered overhead, leaning out the window and waving cheerfully with his trademark eye-smile. Iruka groaned.
"Yo!" Kakashi reached down and patted the top of Iruka's head, lingering a fraction of a second before retracting his hand, fingers sifting through the flyaway ends of his ponytail in a brief stolen touch.
Iruka's ponytail squashed itself flat against the wall at his back as he tilted his head back to fire a rather sheepish smile back. His finger came up to rub at his nose, just at the point where the scar crossed it. His eyes closed as he thought nervously of a quick excuse for his presence and he missed the way Kakashi just stared. A gentle heat had his cheeks flushing a soft pink as he waved back awkwardly. "Um… Hello to you too, Kakashi-sensei."
.
As it turned out, Kakashi hadn't so much taken the cat as the cat had adopted him. He'd been sitting in a tree by the Academy (the most comfortable reading perch in the village, he assured Iruka) when the cat had originally found him —fallen into his lap to be more precise. Being a dog person, Kakashi had ditched the cat —left her clinging to the tree no less!— and hied himself off to a training ground. Somehow the cat had kept finding him since then, yowling when he tried to eat, sneaking into the bath as he tried to shower and bathe to steal his rubber duckies, curling up on his bed and purring like a locomotive as he tried to sleep, scratching at him as he tried to close the window to lock her out of the apartment. Eventually he had just given up and they'd come to a sort of agreement. He stopped trying to get rid of her and she in turn stopped trying to make the jounin's life a living hell.
It seemed Iruka had stumbled upon what had become a now-daily ritual of Kakashi seeking permission from his ninken to keep his new pet. Bull, the big black dog, had taken immediately to the tiny feline and apparently liked to nap with her —and take up half of Kakashi's bed in the process. The other dogs didn't mind so much as they thought it hilarious that their summoner was so whipped by a tiny cat. It seemed that Pakkun was the only one with real objections, all of which were quite sound. The sunglasses-bearing ninken, Akino, seemed to firmly support Pakkun in all causes, nodding vigorously to punctuate every argument the nin-pug made. "You can't have a cat because we're dogs." A dizzying head nod from Akino.
"Consider it a step forward in inter-species disarmament. A step towards peace, if you will." The wild-eyed pair of dogs snickered at that, falling over each other in a mess of limbs.
Pakkun growled. "It's got hairballs." The bandage-covered dog, Uuhei, nodded at that one, pawing sadly at the grey fur stuck to his vest.
"And you've got hair. You're just jealous because she's got more of it." The wild-eyed pair on the floor were joined by a Naruto-esque dog with a shit-eating grin. The newly formed trio rolled in a pile, giggling to themselves.
"It needs too much attention. Look at all the toys you got it." Pakkun pointed a paw at a pile of cat toys piled up by the kotatsu. The small dog with black eye spots and the Nin kanji on his head nodded in sad agreement. "Bisuke want toys too," he muttered pathetically. Kakashi rolled an eye in response.
"Bisuke has a lot of toys already and she doesn't eat too much. She eats a lot less than you pack of mongrels. It's not as if you have to take care of her anyhow," he uttered with finality. Akino whimpered in dejection.
"She doesn't belong to you," Iruka cut in softly. Pakkun came to sit by his knee and raised his paw. "Agreed."
"She's happier here, Iruka-sensei," Kakashi responded evenly. The plant next to him ruffled its leaves in agreement. Kakashi had carried it into the living area when he'd brought Iruka in, claiming that all family members should be present for such a serious discussion.
"She still doesn't belong to you," Iruka reiterated. Akino nodded vigorously, head already whipping back towards Kakashi as he spoke again.
"I can take care of her." Kakashi seemed a little edgy. Pakkun seemed to sigh.
"It has nothing to do with whether or not you're capable…" Iruka trailed off at Kakashi's somewhat disappointed expression. He threw up his hands in frustration. "My students can't go back to class until you surrender the cat, Kakashi-sensei."
"But Boku-kun likes it here," Kakashi whined. The trio of dogs resumed their giggling.
"Don't tell me you named her 'I'. Please don't." Iruka rubbed at his temple, feeling a sudden headache coming on. Pakkun rolled his eyes in agreement.
"Okay, I won't. Boku-kun is a fortune teller." Kakashi had the nerve to smile. The flame-headed dog looked like he was about to have a seizure, he was laughing so hard.
"Okay, that's worse. Please go back to calling her 'I'," Iruka groaned. Bull whuffed at that in what seemed to be amusement.
"I need to keep her, sensei. She makes Ukki-san feel better," Kakashi whined again, reaching out to tug at Iruka's sleeve like a child. The plant at his side rustled loudly as now-Boku's tail flicked through it.
"Better than what? Your plant doesn't care about a cat, and why would you name it something so depressing anyway?" Iruka tugged at his sleeve caught in Kakashi's grasp, completely lost. Uuhei stopped trying to clean his vest and perked up at the banter.
"I didn't name him. Naruto-kun did. Are you trying to say something about him?" Kakashi pulled harder, a playful glint appearing in his open eye. Bisuke wriggled impatiently as if he had a secret he wanted to spill, quivering tail shaking Ukki-san's leaves anew.
"Maybe he was trying to say something about you," Iruka shot back, fighting down a grin as he pulled back even harder. Akino was starting to look a little dizzy from looking back and forth, wavering in his seat.
"That's harsh." Kakashi was definitely smiling. Boku mewed in agreement, clambering over Bull's head and planting her feet on the wrinkles at his brow like a summiting mountaineer.
"You're the one hording someone's cat to keep your depressed plant company," Iruka laughed, falling forward as Kakashi wrapped a hand around his wrist and pulled. Pakkun scuttled out of the way as he fell, a smug smirk crossing his normally dour face. Akino toppled slowly as Bisuke leapt into the air like a spring unleashed. The other ninken howled and laughed, dog-piling as the two men began to wrestle playfully, each trying to shout out each other's apparent character flaws. The cat that started it all rode it out like a sea-faring captain, climbing the roil of limbs on dainty paws, clinging to the backs of shirts as they surfaced briefly from a mass of fur.
.
In the end, Iruka had departed sometime after dark and before midnight with a reluctant wave, belly full as Kakashi and the ninken had insisted on feeding him. He promised the jounin a week's reprieve while he figured out what to do about Boku. The ninken, it seemed, had been in cahoots with Kakashi in an attempt to mess with his head. They truly liked the little tom girl cat that dared to cross claws with their master and in fact had spent the first few days goading her on in secret. Kakashi still hadn't told Iruka what fortune Boku had cast to earn her name. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.
The next few days found Iruka supervising his students on a variety of D-rank missions, mostly gardening and still looking for the ever-elusive "MAAT" as everyone had taken to calling it. Each time he passed under a tree, he'd take a swift glance up to see Kakashi reclined with a garish volume of Icha Icha open before him, the slightest flash of a long grey tail flicking across his flak vest as the jounin flashed an eye-smile back. Each time Iruka handed out new missions to other shinobi on the street or updated them on the status of a previous one, Kakashi was there on his periphery, nonchalantly reading while leaning against a building, a little grey tail twitching at the hem of his vest. When Shizune met with Iruka about Tsunade's suspicious new gambling venture, there was a dour-faced little pug sitting under low-lying shrubbery, a green-eyed grey cat waving back. He thought he was going to lose his mind.
"Kakashi-sensei," Iruka cried out as he climbed in through the window next to Kakashi's bed, mentally cursing himself for having picked up the jounin's habit.
"Maa, Iruka-sensei," the jounin in question purred, appearing in the doorway wearing a yellow apron over his uniform. Iruka gaped at the chibi-dolphins cavorting across the front.
"Ka… Kakashi-sensei, what on earth," he sputtered, forgetting what he was going to say.
"Ah, this?" Kakashi poked at the dolphins which apparently were joined by tiny scarecrows. "Isn't it cute? I found it at the market, or rather Bokkun did. Do you want one too? It came as a matched set!"
"Egh?" Iruka blinked again. "It is cute," he conceded, feeling his face heat up against his will. A tiny mew had him looking down as Boku pawed at his leg, the corner of a blue dolphin-and-scarecrow-covered apron caught in her mouth. Reason returned to him.
"Kakashi-sensei, it seems to me," Iruka bent down to take the apron from Boku, pausing to stroke a hand over her arching back. "That you haven't decided to let her go. So what will you do now?"
Kakashi shrugged, crossing his arms and leaning against the door with an easy satisfaction. "I'll adopt."
"…Adopt? Adopt what? Boku is not a child," Iruka muttered, scooping up the cat with his apron. "She still has a proper owner, you know."
"Let's take our case to Tsunade-sama then," Kakashi chirped, appearing at Iruka's side with a bound. Boku mewed in agreement, nuzzling into the crook of Iruka's arm. "Oh, and it's Bokkun now," he murmured as an afterthought as he caught hold of Iruka's sleeve.
"Case? What ca—" The rest of Iruka's words were swallowed up as the transportation jutsu took them away.
.
Tsunade blinked blearily, hiccupping slightly as she fumbled for some kind of paperwork —or another tokkuri— in her drawer. A scroll with a rather sizeable list of names lay open across her desk, peppered by empty bottles and chop marks. Even from a distance, the names of Kakashi and Iruka could just barely be made out in the list's title. It was all very suspicious.
The two shinobi bearing a matched pair of rather adorable dolphin-and-scarecrow aprons stood before her awaiting her response. To say that she'd been startled when they'd poofed into existence, Iruka slapping at Kakashi's shoulder and shouting something while clutching an apron and a suspiciously familiar grey striped cat as the jounin giggled to himself unmanfully while wearing a surprisingly heartwarmingly cute apron would be a massive understatement. All in all it looked very domestic, though she hadn't been at all prepared for the words that had come out of Kakashi's mouth.
"We want to put in a request for joint custody. We'd like to adopt."
Iruka had gasped and flailed uselessly as that damned cat had clung to his occupied arm, mewling away happily. Kakashi had, in turn, wrapped his arms around Iruka's flailing one and visibly trembled with glee. Shizune's sudden gasp had announced her entrance, followed by Naruto's shout and Jiraiya's perverted giggle sounding like doom in concert, and all had turned to a confusing chaos until Tsunade had given in and shouted them down.
"Now," she pulled out a scroll and a new tokkuri with a triumphant cry as Shizune slapped a hand over her face in exasperation. "You are adopting…"
"No!" Iruka choked out before Kakashi clapped a hand over his mouth, nodding fervently.
"The cat," Tsunade went on as if she hadn't been interrupted.
"IT'S THE OROCHIMARU CAT," Naruto screeched, trying to charge Bokkun who hissed in response. Jiraiya sighed and caught the back of Naruto's cat outfit, cleaning his ear with a pinkie while the boy flailed in his grip.
"Naruto, be QUIET," Tsunade bellowed, slamming a fist on her desk before groaning at her resulting headache. Naruto pouted as Jiraiya clouted him on the back of his head, muttering at him to shut up before they all were killed.
"And you two—" she pointed broadly at Kakashi and Iruka was struggling to free himself from the jounin's grasp. "Joint custody. Lifetime appointment. Granted. Happy honeymoon. Don't disappoint me. Get the cat out of my sight. I'll figure out something to tell Lady Miasa." She blinked a little, inking her inkan with shaking hands. "You're still here? Out."
Iruka's eyes widened as he tried to shout something behind Kakashi's hand. Tsunade waved him off, muttering that she'd cancel the mass anti-toxin mission at the same time. Kakashi smiled even more broadly, giving a two-fingered salute as they poofed out of sight in a shower of cat toys. The vision of Tsunade slamming her chop on what appeared to be a civil union and joint properties and ownership approval form was the last thing they saw. Naruto screeched anew.
"If I drink more, this will all make sense, because there is no way I'm sober right now. Either something is very, very wrong, or I am incredibly stoned," Tsunade muttered in the din as Izumo and Kotetsu burst in, shit-eating grins proudly displayed as they shoved Naruto aside and reached for the gambling scroll Tsunade had laid out across her desk, both eager to cash in on the Kakashi-Iruka bet. Gai, in green cat glory, burst in after, sobbing with joy. Tsunade swept up her new tokkuri and took a fortifying swallow, letting out a cheerful "Haaa" in a toast to the apparently newly-wed couple.
Shizune had no answers for that.
NOTES
三浅 Miasa - Three Shallow/Superficial/Frivolous
武神/武上 Takegami - Warrior God | Warrior Elite [maybe old man Takegami was a former ANBU]
卜 boku - choosing/divining/fixing/predicting/settling/telling a fortune
鬱気 ukki - gloomy/melancholy
Pochi is normally a name reserved for male dogs, similar to "Rex", "Fido", "Rover"
Bokkun is similar to Pakkun which I'm assuming originated as "Pug-kun" and is a cute nickname.
Tokkuri - the bottles that are used to hold sake
Mother of All Anti-Toxins [MAAT] - obviously an impossible, yet imminently desirable thing. Anti-toxins must be carefully synthesized for certain toxins. Applying the wrong antidote can be even worse than the toxin itself. Fun note: Maat is also the Egyptian goddess of order, something definitely missing in the wake of this crazy mission.
Inkan [also known as hanko]- carved stamps containing a "chop" or stylized signatures or symbols designed to represent a kind of notarization or officiation. Each person and department has one.
sneezing - sneezing is the Japanese equivalent of "someone's ears burning" meaning that if you sneeze, someone is talking about you behind your back