AN: yes, the crack pairing that you've probably never read before, or even likely imagined in any realm of possibility.

i guess each character always struck me as interesting on their own, Karin is THAT bitch and also she fought the war in her freaking pyjamas. Yamato is lbr the most reliable and sweet member of Team Seven, who is a bit of a flat-faced fool with a kind face whose actually got a elite ninja record history that's actually terrifying. they're kind of extreme opposites and i was intrigued by the sheer wtf-ness of the pairing, and the wtf-ness of a world after the war where Yamato is immediately (somehow) a criminal and ends up falling in with an unwelcoming Karin, another criminal, who he has been responsible for chasing in the past in his team. and writing the dynamics is good practice and actual fun. when you think about it, how could you not put these two together? also i come from the school of i-didnt-ask-for-this-and-didnt-even-want-it-but-now-im-obsessed crack ships. it doesn't have to make sense or cannon, it just needs to be fun enough with zero pressure. lemme know what yall think

Yamato had always looked on the young with sentimental fondness.

As a man conceived in a test-tube and cloned out of a tenacious hybrid of Hashirama's cells and aborted embryos, all things considered, he'd grown up pretty okay.

Spent his formative years according to the textbook, had had trained handlers and well-adjusted shinboi elders to raise him, even if he was some grand experiment. He'd had a better upbringing than most would have in his position.

Well, he'd spent his formative years in ANBU barracks, house-sitting Kakashi-sempai's dogs and picking his tabs, because Kakashi was his sempai so obviously some level of deference was expected, and Yamato had been created to defer. Perfect soldier and all.

Anyway, he had always looked on the young with sentimental fondness. Like flower buds being coaxed into bloom, the young were. It was up to him to encourage them along.

Well, this nostalgic stupidity took the backseat to the fact that he'd almost died in the bloodiest war to ever scour the shinobi world and he had – he fished around the back of his ears, mouth tugging into a bewildered frown – gravel behind his ears. He felt exhaustion triple the force of gravity till his body became an actual weight, dragging and lagging towards the gates of the closest hidden village and mumbling sleepily for a bed while everyone around him grabbed at each other in some sort of post-war sex-crazed frenzy.

Yamato yawned so hard his jaw cracked, swayed heavily out of the way of an Iwa kunoichi who was already halfway disrobed, and occasionally slapped away the arms that came pawing for him. Sex and alcohol later. No, thank you. Yamato wanted a bed, his own, preferably unoccupied. He was looking forward to locating a shower, or a water pump, or a pool of gestating rainwater to wash bone matter out of his hair and the blood caked on his flak vest. He was tired, felt euphoric with relief, tempered by grief for those he'd lost.

He'd stood about for a perfunctory five seconds to bask in pride at Naruto's success, but that was five seconds. Sentimental fondness required energy. Yamato required sleep.

Leaf ANBU, however, he did not expect to see unless they were making their way towards Uchiha Sasuke and his band of misfits. Orochimaru, and all the other sex offenders. Yamato only got so far as three undemolished shops from the gates of Iwa (where he'd been when super powered Uchiha Shenanigans led to geographical landmarks collapsing on him) before he was apprehended.

"Taichou, we need you to come with us."

Yamato frowned in confusion, they'd mobilized quickly despite the fact that standing leadership had just barely been recovered. "Under whose orders?"

They shuffled, and did not answer.

Yamato looked if there were any masked faces he might recognize but he'd never seen any of them before. A coup? He thought, skeptical, the dirt and grease and death slathered across his face could hide his expressions for them. Their inscrutable masks stared back. But by who? And so fast?

He didn't know a single one of them. But that was just jumping to conclusions, right?

"Come on boys," he swayed back with a belligerent, disapproving frown. Radiating the combined sternness of five middle-aged fathers. "It's too early to start work."

"Sir, we're not here to post you," a voice came crisply from a dog faced porcelain mask, "We're here to arrest you."

Yamato's first response would have been to have burst into hearty laughter, wipe a merry tear from the corner of his eye and sigh, touched by their failed attempts at humor. Some ANBU operatives had been absorbed from the emotionally stunted ROOT branches, and their efforts towards social assimilation though sometimes well-meant, and ridiculously out-of-touch. This was obviously a joke.

However, he was not given the opportunity to make dubious noises because you know, he wasn't much for dilly-dallying when met with the sweep of a tanto.

He cleared out of the way, action snapping the exhaustion right out of his form.

With the angle of that blade, it didn't look like they were trying to 'arrest' him.

"Impersonators," he said in a steely voice, "what do you want? Who do you work for?"

The ANBU in the fox mask didn't sheathe his blade, he crouched lower, ready for another strike. "You're wanted, dead or alive."

Yamato's eyes flicked over either sides of the leafy trail, no witnesses. He was running low on chakra, running on too little sleep. Any fight would be bloody, wasn't in his favor. The leaf ANBU – and they were that, their training, their uniforms, it was unmistakable – were still battered from the war, masks scuffed with ash and just as exhausted as he was. But there were eight.

By who? Was the running question. Yamato tried to think of it logically in the vague three seconds awarded to him after the attempt to liberate his head from his body. Should Konoha collapse, who would be in the best position to squander its weakness? Danzou gone, the daimyo's too removed from ninja inner functions to be of much use, or interest…the elders possible dead. Even they wouldn't have mobilized themselves this quickly.

And why, should anyone assemble themselves and seek him as a target? How was his death relevant? Or, in arrest, his silence?

Yamato's tone was idle, but his eyes were cold. "When did ANBU become clan dogs?"

The ANBU in the fox mask stiffened, and Yamato confirmed what had seemed a far-fetched idea. It was disgusting that someone could choose now to be an opportunist, after everything that had happened, after that vision of ninja unity and the war they'd fought against the worst foe ever seen.

I'm sorry Naruto, Yamato felt his hands close behind his back, quickly executing seals, not everyone's ready to accept your dream yet.