Author's Note: Yep. Writing stories in my climatology class again. Go me. Way to pay attention. This is just some gobbly-gook (I love that word) that's been floating around in my notebook.

Disclaimer: Yeah. Not mine.


20 Truths: Tonbo Tobitake
Chapter 1: S-ranked baby

Tonbo had completed his first S-rank mission at the ripe old age of seventeen hours. His father boasted about it some years later, that someone had finally outdone the Hatake brat in something, and that it had been his son.

Hotaru, his mother, a slightly-built Konoha kunoichi born and bred, had just left on a deep-cover intelligence gathering mission in Rock. Disguised as a merchant of fine kunai and shuriken, it was a scarce few weeks into her multi-month assignment before she learned of her pregnancy. In far too deep to break cover immediately, she had quickly cozied up to a Rock-nin, who had subsequently thought the pregnancy his handiwork. Seven and a half months passed before she could make a break for the border.

She had nearly made it too, before the Rock-nin caught up to her. Heaviness from her late stage of pregnancy had slowed her down just enough sealed her fate.

The extraction team, stationed just on the Konoha side of the border, had rightly assumed the worse as she crossed over, literally arm's reach ahead of a band of angry Rock-nin. A kunai was embedded deeply in her lower back, and labor pains had begun. The only saving grace to occur that miserable day was for the Rock-nin remaining on their side of the border.

The extraction team had scooped up their rescuee and made a mad dash for the nearest village. The team's medic had never birthed a baby and had panicked, pulling rank on the team's commander, who wanted to push back to Konoha instead. One look at the medic's face, and the jounin had relented, turning their course for the village. They had shaken the village midwife from her bed at an unholy hour of the morning, begging for her aid.

Hotaru, perhaps knowing as the mortally wounded and ill sometimes do, knew she wasn't going to be able to complete her mission as she was. She demanded the team medic pain-block her as the midwife worked, scrawling everything she could on a scroll.

Just before daybreak, the midwife produced a smallish, but perfectly healthy, newborn. Hotaru, weak from blood loss, limply dropped her scroll into the team leader's hands and clutched at her son. The midwife handed the tiny child over to the medic, his father, and disappeared, pulling the team leader behind her. The medic knelt before his gravely wounded wife. Hotaru had just enough energy left to brush the babe's cheek. "Tonbo," she breathed heavily, blood trickling slowly from the corner of her mouth. Her husband nodded, fighting back tears, as his beloved Hotaru slipped away.

Tobitake Akira gazed down at his son, then scooped up the scroll that had cost his beloved wife everything, kissed her forehead a final time, then silently left the room.

Years later, the elder Tobitake would joke about how the day-old Tonbo had been left on the mission desk, the scroll tucked into his bunting. And indeed, although Tonbo himself didn't know until after his chuunin exam, he did indeed receive credit for the completion of an S-ranked mission.


Eh. Tonbo's such a background character.