Prologue.
"Here's one! Here's one," Naruto drunkenly chuckled, "12 years of war, for one day of peace!"
"An hour if we're lucky."
"And we're not!"
"No, we are not." Shikamaru agreed, sighing, "Ah, well. Here-here."
The clink of their shot glasses echoed dismally throughout the small bar. They threw back the fiery alcohol and grunted to each other, then returned the empty glasses to their respective spots on the chinsy table. Naruto wiped his mouth, Shikamaru rubbed his eyes. They were drunk, sleepy, and yet utterly full of energy.
It had been 12 years since they stepped foot in their home village of Konoha. They had arrived late, around midnight, and had spent the last three hours drinking in an all-night bar. It had also been several years since they had ingested alcohol, and it was showing in their lack of tolerance.
"Gimme a cigarette, Shikamaru."
"You don't smoke."
"So?"
Shikamaru shrugged and reached for the pack in his vest pocket. He drew two cigarettes, one for his companion, and one for him.
"Thanks." Naruto said, taking the small white cylinder and popping it in his mouth.
"Hey." From behind the bar, a brutish man cleaning a glass spoke up, "There's no smoking in here."
Naruto stared at the bartender blankly, then turned back to Shikamaru, "A light please, pal."
"Yeah why not." Shikamaru reached for his box of matches and lit one unceremoniously, he held the flaming stick up to his friend's cigarette.
"Hey!" The bartender repeated, putting the glass down and slapping his cleaning rag against the hard oak of the bar, "What did I just say?"
"I don't recall." Naruto said, taking a coughing inhale of the smoke, "Do you, Shikamaru?"
"Alright, ass-hole, you've got about a half second to put out that cigarette before I shove it down your throat." The gruff-man threatened.
"I would watch it if I were you," Shikamaru sighed, "You're talking to the next Hokage right now."
"Yeah right, and I'm the Princess of the Land of Snow."
"I've met her." Naruto said, turning to his friend, "He doesn't look much like her."
"Alright buddy, time is up." The bartender said, stepping out from behind the bar with a small baton in his hand, ready to fight.
Naruto stood up as well, revealing for the first time his face in the full light of the bar's one and only overhead lamp.
"You're-you're-you're Naruto Uzumaki."
"Told you." Shikamaru said.
"Forgive me, Lord Hokage!" The bartender begged, prostrate, before Naruto.
"Whoa, hey, I'm not Hokage quite yet." Naruto said, "Ceremony's tomorrow. You coming?"
"Of course, Lord Uzumaki!" The bartender nervously nodded and smiled at the inebriated knuckle-head, which only made Naruto feel guilty.
"Hey, it's Naruto, alright?"
"And smoke in here all you want! Stay as long as you want to!"
"Actually," Naruto turned to Shikamaru, "We were just leaving. Sorry for being such an asshole."
"Come again please! Congratulations Lord Hokage!" The bartender cheered as they exited the dirty green lighting of the bar.
"I said: it's Naruto." Naruto groaned as Shikamaru shut the door behind them.
"Well 'Lord Hokage', we got a couple of hours left until morning," Shikamaru slurred, "Whattya wanna do?"
"I got one or two things in mind." Naruto said, smiling up at the Hokage monument.
Far away, in a deserted clearing, a young boy was shouting.
"Sharingan! Sharingan! Sharingan! God dammit!" Akira Uchiha swore loudly as a bladed fist swung wildly at his face.
He rolled out of the way quickly, dodging strike after strike from his opponent.
"Sharingan! Sharingan! Shit!" The thirteen year old couldn't summon his father's kekkai genkai no matter how frightened of death he grew, not his death, but the death of his teammate and crush, Io Nara, who was unconscious across the green field he was currently jumping and rolling in.
The ninja he was facing laughed maniacally at him, toying with the boy. Knowing damn well he could end the battle at any minute.
"Akira!" Ryu Inuzuka shouted from several feet away, too wounded to stand. Blood was trickling from his nose.
The genin were seriously outmatched.
"Hang on Ryu! I'll save us!" A heavy kick knocked Akira backwards and he rolled across the grass.
"Stupid children." The enemy ninja cracked his neck, "No one is going to save you."
"I would not be so sure about that!"
"What?"
"Sensei." Akira said, looking up in awe as a green clad man fell from the sky, a pair of matching nunchaku in his hands.
"My name is Rock Lee of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, and these are my pupils you have assaulted." Lee looked up, a charming smile on his face, "And for that, I will have to kill you."
Akira blacked out just as the battle began.
Some time later, he awoke, with a grinning Rock Lee standing over him. The enemy ninja lay dead some yards away.
"Are you alright my youthful student?"
"I'm okay." Akira suddenly leapt to his feet, "Io? Ryu?"
"Io is resting now," Lee said, placing a reassuring hand on his pupil's shoulder, "And Ryu is watching her."
Akira sat back down, placing his head in his hands.
"What is troubling you, Akira?"
Akira sighed deeply, "I can't do it."
"The sharingan?" Lee asked, knowing the answer.
"Yeah."
"Hmm." The sensei sat down next to his trouble disciple, "My best friend had a kekkai genkai, not unlike yourself."
"Did he have trouble using it?"
"No," Lee said calmly, "I believe he was truly the best with the Byakugan of anyone in the village."
"How is that supposed to make me feel better?"
Lee exhaled slowly, "Because he died. All his skill with the Byakugan couldn't save him. I couldn't save him. No one could."
Akira stared down at his feet, unable to understand what Lee was getting at.
"What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't rely so heavily on something you've never successfully done. You can't rely on something saving you that you can't even do. You have to train at what you can do. Do it better than anyone else."
"Like you and taijutsu?" Akira asked.
"Well yes," Lee answered, "Or Naruto Uzumaki and his shadow clone jutsu... or your mother and her strength."
Something about Naruto's name interested Akira. The man was a legend in the village, and a friend of his parents, but he had been off fighting a war for nearly 12 years, Akira had never met the Uzumaki, as far as he knew.
His mother often spoke of him.
The boy shook those thoughts away, "But I just want to be a real Uchiha."
"You are," Lee smiled at the naive boy, "Even if you never can do the Sharingan. It's in your blood. It's who you are."
Lee shook Akira's copper hair out from in front of his green eyes and stood up.
"Now come on. We've got a mission to complete."
Sakura Uchiha sat up slowly in bed. The alarm clock on her nightstand read 5:03am. She couldn't sleep. Her only child was on his first mission, and she had worried herself sick.
Beside her, Sasuke Uchiha lay sleeping. She looked briefly at his face. Oddly enough, she thought to herself, in this light he was almost indistinguishable from her other teammate.
In fact there had been more than one occasion where upon waking in the middle of the night, she would look over and swear that it was Naruto and not Sasuke beside her. She had no explanation for this.
But she knew who she had married, and she knew who was sleeping soundly beside her. Gently, she poked his forehead with her finger. He smiled in his slumber.
She returned her attention to the window. The dawn was just beginning to arrive, and the whole of the village was coated in a grey-blue mist.
She thought of her son far away.
Then she thought of her other teammate. Naruto. And how it had been nearly twelve years since the original members of Team Kakashi had all been together. And how tomorrow that would change.
She stretched, rose to her feet, and walked the short distance to the large window. She pressed her hand against the glass. It was cool to the touch. She looked across the village to the Hokage Monument. She could have sworn that she saw two figures at the very top.
She chuckled to herself, shook off her suspicion, turned away from the window, and walked downstairs to start a pot of tea.
"Take this." Naruto handed a bucket of paint to Shikamaru, who was already carrying three others.
"Dammit Naruto, my hands are full already."
"Quit complaining, I have to take get the brushes out." Naruto pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and flicked it over the side of the Hokage Monument. The sparks sprayed as the small paper tube crashed into a rock face below.
He pulled off his canvas rucksack and drew two large paintbrushes from within its mostly filled interior.
"Here's yours." He said, handing Shikamaru one of them, "And here's mine."
"This is really what you want to do with your last day as a normal ninja?"
"Yep." Naruto said, smiling at the rising sun, "One last time."
Shikamaru dropped the buckets of paint at the soon to be Hokage's feet. He put his hand on Naruto's shoulder.
"Just one more time." and Naruto grinned.