Disclaimer: i don't own naruto in any way, shape or form. If i did, sasuke would regularly get beaten up and sakura would have had her head stuffed in a toilet at least once.
In the gentle sunlight of the early afternoon, a class full of children were outside, training and working their way through a trap field set up by their senseis. All except for three of the children were only halfway through. One trio was near the end, near sprinting to the finish line, avoiding all traps, though some by the narrowest of margins. The two males seemed to be competing to get over the line first while the female was simply smiling at their antics while keeping up.
One of them jumped the last metre and turned triumphantly, arms raised above his head, a breath sucked in to jokingly mock his friends when the other two screamed simultaneously, "KO! LOOK OUT!"
Their warning had him hit the deck as quickly as only a ninja could, the blunt side of a ninja-to swinging past the air, ruffling his hair none-too gently. No sooner did he hit the ground, did the supervising senseis kawarimi over, replacing his friends, Udon and Moegi.
The grey haired sensei who had replaced Mizuki was rapidly forming seals, being a recently retired chuunin, and whispered his technique, raising a cocoon of stone over Konohomaru while Iruka, the scar faced sensei also began to form seals, but a much longer series, though at a hugely faster rate.
The new sensei, Enoki, pulled out a pair of kunai and engaged the masked nin in close combat, fighting ferociously. Suddenly, three other masked and armed nin jumped down from the rooftop of the academy, one with another ninja-to drawn, the other two forming seals quickly. Iruka turned and inhaled, spewing a torrent of water at the new ninjas, smashing one of the ones forming seals, but taking a slash from the ninja-to wielder on his shoulder, luckily not cutting deeply, then got picked up by a focused hurricane and smashed into a tree.
"Iruka!" Enoki turned after stabbing a kunai into his opponent's dominant shoulder, unfortunately earning himself a cut to the ribs for being distracted. He spat out a vile curse and re-engaged the man while the other two nin advanced on Iruka, who was hunched over on the ground, seemingly in pain, but forming seals rapidly, shielding them from view with his body.
He came to his knees with a roar of "storm style: hurricane torrent!", his two affinities of water and wind combining to form an extremely quick and rapidly spinning water, essentially water blasting the advancing enemies.
The brunt of the jutsu was taken by the unarmed man, cutting his clothes and flesh apart and slamming him against the academy wall, cracking it from the impact.
The ninja-to wielder was quick enough to swipe his weapon in front of his own body, channelling wind chakra into his weapon to deflect it. He sprinted to Iruka and slashed at him rapidly and continuously, not giving the scarred teacher a chance to cast another jutsu and forcing him to focus on defence.
Enoki gurgled, a blood soaked ninja-to cutting the life from his body. He feel and with his last breath, he yelled at the students to run.
Another masked nin jumped down from the roof tops and drew a pair of tantos, cursing the other two for incompetence. "I was supposed to just keep an eye out for back-up, you lazy, useless bastards. Making me get out my tantos for one low-life academy teacher prick, you'll pay for this."
All three men advanced on Iruka, who drew in a deep breath, then tapped two tattoo-seals on the undersides of his wrists, unsealing dual katars, and gripping them with all his dimished strength in preparation. The punching daggers were only around four inches long, but he had found they suited him well while he was on more active duty.
The three mean came at him all at once, the two ninja-tos swinging in from either side which he caught easily and twisted aside before spinning and kicking a tanto aside with the side of his foot, then he started to back up, concentrating on blocking, gaining a multitude of small cuts but also inflicting several on his opponents. Then he found himself against the academy wall and cursed under his breath for such a rookie mistake.
Suddenly, one of the men was struck heavily in the side with a bandaged zanbatou, flinging him across the training ground. Looking up, Iruka saw a tall, blue man grinning. It would of been a feral grin on a regular face, but on a blue face and with a mouth full of pointed teeth, it was reminiscent of a shark in a feeding frenzy. He jumped at the other two, swinging his zanbatou with a single hand, like it was a baseball bat rather than a chunk of steel nearly half again his height.
Then a face with bandaged eyes lent down to ask him if he was alright in a quiet, strangely familiar voice. The bandaged covering his eyes was stained with old blood and it ran down his cheeks slowly, still bleeding even now. Then a slender hand reached out to support him while the other pointed at the downed man, who was struggling to stand and he froze, eyes glazing over.
Iruka looked curiously at the man's face while the blue lunatic destroyed the remaining two nin, laughing gleefully the whole time. Then he recognised the face and drew back, holding his katars up defensively.
"What the hell are you doing here Itachi?! I won't let you hurt Naruto!" Iruka shouted at the man while supporting himself against the wall.
The slim young man smiled bitterly and bowed his head. "I'm not here to hurt Naruto, old friend. Won't you let me help you? I can smell a lot of blood from you." He held out his arm, offering Iruka the support.
The man with two tantos was faring fairly well against Kisame, but was being thrown around pretty hard by the pure force of the blows he had to block. Then, will a loud war cry, the blonde Hokage fell straight at him, an axe kick aimed at his head. The man just managed to move his head to the side, but was crushed to the ground by the insane power of the Godaime.
Two squads of Anbu surrounded Itachi and Kisame, weapons levels or hand locked into seals for jutsu before the Hokage loudly shouted at the two missing nin standing quite calmly in the academy training ground. "State your business, Akatsuki!"
Kisame shouldered Samehada with a smirk, fully confident in his ability to fight off all the Anbu present if need be. Iruka stepped back from Itachi, who surprisingly dropped to his knees in front of the Hokage.
"Tsunade, Godaime Hokage of Konohagakure, I do hereby formally request asylum for myself, Uchiha Itachi, and Hoshigaki Kisame, within your village."
To say the assembled shinobi were surprised was an understatement. Kisame blushed slightly, then grumbled and kneeled beside Itachi, placing Samehada in front of him and bowed. "I, Hoshigaki Kisame, former jounin of Kirigakure, one of the seven swordsmen of Kirigakure, do hereby request to join the ranks of the Konoha ninja force, specifically the special tactics division, or Anbu."
The blonde was dumbfounded, "Um, aren't you guys, like, supposed to be trying to kill me or something?"
Kisame chuckled and stood up. "That was while we were working in Akatsuki. We defected from their ranks when Otogakure was being attacked. We spent the past several weeks rounding up a group of refugees, along with several ninja families from the Oto ranks who didn't particularly agree with the Otokage's laws. They decided to split into two groups, one of which headed to Suna and the other on its way here. We came ahead once we heard of a kidnap attempt on Konohomaru, the grandson of the Sandaime. Judging from conditions on our arrival, we arrived in a timely fashion." He chuckled slightly self-congratulatory and nodded to himself.
She was now tapping her chin with one finger, weighing up the pro's and con's of allowing the two high class missing nin to join her village. Well, technically, one to join and one to re-join.
Itachi reached into his robe and drew out a scroll, placing it in front of him on the ground and touched his forehead to the ground. When he spoke, his voice was choked.
"This scroll contains three properly preserved sharingan eyes, one belonging to Danzo as well as my own. They are my gift to you whether or not you accept us into your village."
Tsunade grinned at the thought of suddenly having another three ninjas with the sharingan. Kakashi could surely train them in its use and just as she was about to announce her decision to allow them to join her, a sob came from Itachi and he looked up, blood running freely from under his bandage and his face was ravaged with grief and pain as he began to cry, his voice hoarse as he began to beg.
"Just, please, kill me if you can't accept us and bury me here, with my family. Just let me be home. Let Kisame go on his way, but just let me be with my family. Just let me be at home, dead or alive!" He was wringing his hands as he begged, drawing blood from them and Tsunade rushed to his side, her heart wrenched by the sight of the broken man.
She healed his hands as she announced in a loud voice that they were welcome in her village and that they were under her protection from now on. Kisame sat down on the ground heavily, heaving a sigh of relief and then he clapped a hand onto Itachi's shoulder. "So now we've got a home, huh? Gonna take some time to get used to that idea, I guess. Been a long time since I've had a home a home to come back to. Guess it's a good thing we've got time then."