[A Ninja's Parents] Chapter 2
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
XXX
Hayate shrugged at the gathered jounin. "As a special-jounin and an interim replacement, I don't have the authority to nominate Team 7 for the chunin exam."
Hiruzen sighed, looking pained at the reminder of Kakashi's death. "Noted, Gekkou-san."
The rest of the room shifted uneasily as well, discomforted at the memory of the man's recent funeral-service.
Still, that left two rookie-teams to participate in the exam, along with a fairly average amount of older ones, and hopefully it would be a strong enough showing of Konoha's abilities that no other Villages decided to try to take advantage of the infamous Copy-Cat ninja's demise.
Hayate was admittedly not entirely pleased with being unable to nominate Team 7. It was true that he didn't have the technical legal authority, and that he hadn't actually seen them interact on anything above D-ranks, but they clearly had potential. A strong work-ethic, a fierce loyalty towards each other, and a healthy amount of talent. Yes, there was definitely potential to be found with Team 7, and having them try for chunin this early probably wouldn't hurt them.
No matter how lousy Sakura was with genjutsu, or how atrocious Sasuke's bedside-manners were, or how painfully awkward Naruto's taijutsu was. They definitely had room for improvement – except Sasuke and his problems with people, because Hayate would be the first to admit that he couldn't even begin to imagine that kid ever pretending to be nice to people – but it was more a potential for growth than a number of faults to correct.
So it was with a sting of guilt that he watched everyone begin to file out of the Hokage's office. This would be the only exam in Konoha for a bit over a year if he remember correctly, and the next few would be in Kumo and Iwa respectively. And sending Team 7 to either of those Villages would be foolish at the very least.
All in all, because of shitty timing, it was looking like Team 7 would be stuck as genin for a good long while.
Hayate shook his head with a sigh of his own. At least they'd hopefully be too distracted with training to be too upset about it.
XXX
Hiruzen frowned.
Kakashi would've definitely nominated Team 7, and even Hayate seemed to be very much aware of that if his expressions had been anything to go by. The special-jounin certainly seemed to believe they had the potential to try for it as they were, even if he didn't trust it enough to go against protocol in such an open setting.
And of course Jiraiya was still pretending to ignore his messages to return to Konoha.
The man knew perfectly well that Hiruzen would try and drop the genin-team in his lap the moment he put a foot inside of the Village's walls, and-... And even Hiruzen could admit that the man probably wouldn't survive losing another student, let alone three.
But no matter how resigned he was to Jiraiya's behavior, he still wished the man hadn't responded to his request by suddenly beginning to meander away in the exact opposite direction of Konoha.
He wasn't sure if it was meant as an intentional insult, or if Jiraiya had somehow managed to be completely unaware of how Danzo would definitely have people available who'd be able to catch his blatant refusal of a direct order – no matter how half-hearted or low-priority – and translate it into an insult, at the worst possible time, to anyone who might listen.
Hiruzen sighed and turned back to his paperwork. Frowning about it wasn't going to make it better, and he still had a chunin exam to keep in order.
XXX
Sakura tilted her head. "Chunin exams?"
Ino nodded. "Yeah. Asuma-sensei nominated us."
Which was why she'd come looking for them, Sakura assumed. They didn't have Kakashi-sensei to nominate them, so-... so what, exactly? Was Ino there to rub her nomination in their faces, or was she there because she was worried that they wouldn't take the exam with her, or was she there because she wanted to share the good news, or was she there because she was terrified of doing an exam and was hoping for reassurances?
It was hard to tell with Ino, she came from a family that had turned reading people into an art-form, and it made it kind of difficult to predict her.
"Anything we should know?" Sakura asked, keeping her voice politely neutral.
Ino stared at her for a long moment, weighing her reaction, before shaking her head slightly. "Asuma-sensei says that it's an international exam, so there'd be non-Konoha teams wandering about the Village for a bit." She grinned suddenly, and the smug glee didn't even seem all that forced. Ino really was a good actress. "But if you guys aren't there, then obviously my team is going to kick everyone else's ass. So you can start calling me 'Ino-sama' right now, for the sake of practice."
Despite herself, Sakura felt her own lips twitch in response. She'd kind of missed not having someone walking on eggshells around them, even if Ino still kind of was – she just hid it better. "Ah, I guess that makes sense." Sakura nodded to herself as if she'd suddenly realized something. "If it's an exam for rookies, then it'd just be unfair for us to barge in on it. No sportsmanship at all."
Ino paused, looking a bit as if she'd just bitten into something sour without expecting it. Then she stomped cutely and marched off, throwing a final taunt over her shoulder. "We'll see if you're so smug when I out-rank you, forehead!"
Sakura very carefully didn't grin at the sight. It wouldn't do to ruin her image of 'innocently understanding' in case Ino looked back, no matter how false they both knew that image to be.
Shaking her head to herself, Sakura briefly wondered why all of her friends were so weird.
XXX
Sasuke just grunted and returned to his reading. Apparently he hadn't learned everything he could learn as a genin yet, so there wasn't really a need for him to go climbing in rank. Especially since chunin would get stuck with more missions that could interrupt his studies.
Naruto made a face, and seemed kind of annoyed about not being nominated, but kept quiet since Sasuke wasn't putting up a fuss. Personally, Sakura was guessing that Naruto's silent was also heavily reliant on the understanding that genin-teams would often get split up once one or more of them reached chunin.
Sakura was kind of terrified at being out in the field without a jounin watching over their shoulder every step of the way. Sure, they'd survived just fine in Wave even when Gato and his thugs had attacked them, but Kakashi had been the one to really take down all of the ninja, so it wasn't really like they'd had a lot of opposition left at that point.
Hayate had been politely apologetic about it, trying to avoid causing offense about having failed to nominate them in Kakashi's place. But it wasn't as if any of them really wanted to become chunin right now anyway, so it was probably for the best.
Still, the fact that there was some kind of international competition for an exam, piqued her curiosity. It would've been interesting to see what it was like.
XXX
Sakura glanced at the brackets of competitors.
Ino would be up against some 'Gaara'-person, Shikamaru would be up against a 'Temari', and Kiba would be up against a 'Dosu'. Shino would apparently be getting a by to face whoever won of 'Neji' and 'Kankuro'.
It was kind of impressive how most of the ones taking part in the final tournament were rookie genin from Konoha, even if apparently the only Suna-team to participate had been able to reach this point in full. The age-old argument between quantity and quality.
First up to fight was Kiba and Dosu – who was part of 'Sound' wherever that was – and it kind of crashed and burned pretty spectacularly actually.
The Sound-nin's gauntlet apparently produced some kind of vibration-attack, and it was painful for the Inuzuka to even really be in the vicinity of where the guy was swinging his arm. Possibly because of Kiba's sensitive ears, though the fact that Dosu was causing rock to crack said that that probably wasn't the only reason.
The fight was pretty one-sided, since Kiba's taijutsu-specialization was more-or-less useless against his opponent's arm-weapon. Kiba might be decent with kunai, but he wasn't good enough at it to rely on it entirely.
That was Naruto's comments on it, at least. The blond was shaking his head in wincing sympathy whenever Kiba screwed up one of his throws, often grimacing long before Sakura herself even realized what had gone wrong that time around.
Apparently Naruto's training had really been paying off, because every comment she heard him mutter to himself next to her, were comments to training-exercises that she remembered him having struggled with for weeks. Sasuke was a good teacher, though he couldn't take all the credit.
One of these days, Sakura would figure out why Naruto always got so dodgy about introducing them to his secret fellow genin 'training partner'. She'd probably have pushed harder if Hayate hadn't looked like he'd been trying very hard not to laugh at them.
Either Naruto's new friend was really weird, or really embarrassing. In the end, they'd dropped all attempts of interrogation when Naruto had let it slip that he'd run into Gai sometimes when they sparred.
No matter how potentially hilariously embarrassing it might be for Naruto, nothing was worth the risk of having to spend time with Gai. Nothing.
The man had been trying to help them out every now and then 'in memory of his fallen rival', and he was actually surprisingly good at teaching. But having Gai teach you, meant that you actually had to spend time in Gai's vicinity. And that was just a horrible experience all around.
No, whoever Naruto's secret training-partner were, they'd have to remain a mystery. Much like how Sakura was going to continue to ignore the fact that both of her teammates technically had apartments of their own to live at, and didn't need to crash on her couch every day of the year.
It was nice, having them around, even if it'd reached the point where the two of them had more or less entirely moved into their guest-room, instead of the actual couch. Mostly though, she'd wish her parents stopped snickering to themselves about how she'd inherited her father's charm, whatever that meant.
Also, Naruto was surprisingly comfy to sleep on top of. Sasuke generally kneed her in the kidneys, or elbowed her in the face, but Naruto kind of just drooled on whatever he was using as a pillow. Positively benign in comparison, even if he had some tendencies towards cuddling.
She knew she had a tendency to bite people who tried to wake her up, so it wasn't like they didn't all have some kind of bad sleeping-habit, even if Sasuke was the worst.
Frowning slightly at the reminder of her teammates' various faults, Sakura really wished that those two idiots would stop scattering their underwear all over the damn room.
Then there was that curious thought about how Ino might react at hearing about Sakura biting Sasuke in the thigh after Naruto had very much failed to properly untangle himself from underneath her without trying to bend her knee backwards. But she quickly discarded it.
It'd feel weird to talk about that kind of thing to someone else. Besides, it wasn't as if there was anything interesting about it. Sasuke might look good in a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, and Naruto's sleeping-hat was hilariously dumb-looking, but she remembered sleepovers with Ino that were more sexually stimulating. And she hadn't been part of any of those since she was like... ten or something.
Perhaps puberty had come and passed her by already, or perhaps she'd kind of hit her head somewhere. She was sure she'd been attracted to people at some point, but she couldn't really remember why.
Sakura shook those thoughts from her head and continued to stare out over the arena with a dull expression on her face.
Shikamaru's match was boring.
Very strategically intimidating, but boring as hell to watch.
Kind of made her envious of Sasuke who'd scoffed incredulously at the idea of cheering for their old classmates, and had instead wandered off to help out at the hospital. He was kind of an asshole. But it sure sounded tempting to just leave, rather than force herself to remain seated, watching this fight go on for literally hours on end.
Shadow-jutsu or not, stalling to the point where he'd be able to use the changing position of the sun to make his move was-... needlessly long-winded, surely? Wasn't this supposed to be entertaining? Where were the explosions and the passion? She felt cheated.
Then the next match was canceled because the Kankuro-guy apparently decided to surrender on the spot. Just... what the hell? What even was this tournament?
Grabbing onto the back of Naruto's jacket to keep him from springing to his feet and shouting something insulting at a foreigner, Sakura very carefully didn't admit that she wholeheartedly agreed with Naruto calling him a cowardly coward who cowered. Though she made a mental note to actually teach the blond proper swear-words at some point in the future, because that was kind of pathetic.
Thankfully, Ino would be up next, so perhaps they'd get something actually worth watching.
Hope sprang eternal, and all that.
XXX
From his fight in the preliminaries, Gaara was the type to not move. His defense was pretty much perfect, but he wouldn't dodge an attack. He would block it, every time.
Still, to make sure she wasn't wrong about that, Ino threw a few kunai at him and suppressed the shudder at how his sand moved to stop them with ease. She was really outclassed as far as offensive and defensive power was concerned.
She did have something up her sleeve though, so that was alright.
Taking a deep breath to brace herself, Ino used the Mind Body Switch on the creepy Suna-nin once his sand retreated out of the way again.
It hurt.
It hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt-!
There was a weight at her back, pressing down on her, trying to crush her, trying to grind her into dust, trying to grind her mind away into oblivion. It hurt so much that her knees buckled. But they weren't her knees, they were the Suna-nin's knees.
It hurt to think, it hurt to be aware of her surroundings, it hurt to try and hide away.
She had the strangest impression of standing over a small form, the ragged and torn form of a boy who suddenly looked so pathetically small. Looming over him, and being crushed in return by the massive weight of something that wanted to squash her like a bug.
Was this-...? Was this what Gaara had to suffer through all the time? That horrible presence trying to grind him away every moment of the day? No wonder he was insane. He looked so small all of a sudden, had he always been that small?
An impression of "Cannot bend, must stay awake" echoed through her from that tiny worn-out body, as if he was trying to overcome her technique with sheer force of will. But she-... Ino didn't want to abandon him. He looked so vulnerable and so desperate and so hopeless that she just wanted to cry.
The pain was agony, but even so she sent an impression in return. "Will stand guard in your place. Will endure in your place. Sleep and rest. You've done enough for now."
And then she straightened her spine, and she gritted her teeth. She was Yamanaka Ino, heir of her clan, and the backbone of her pathetically unenthusiastic genin-team.
And. She. Would. Not. Bend.
He slept, she remained, and the gigantic presence at her back roared in impotent fury at her determination.
XXX
Kabuto made a face.
He'd assumed that the Yamanaka-girl would get her mind eaten by the Ichibi when she used that technique of hers, and had prepared the genjutsu accordingly. It would be best for everyone to sleep and let the – at that point highly stressed – psychopath of a jinchuuriki go berserk unhindered.
But apparently the girl had some ability to give the bijuu pause in breaking free from her control, and so Konoha was now suddenly in charge of the bijuu specifically brought there to destroy Konoha. Which was definitely not an ideal situation to be in.
Still, there wasn't much they could do except cut their losses and attack the Yamanaka-girl openly in an effort to force her back into her own body so that Gaara could go on the rampage that they needed him for.
There were of course other things for Kabuto to be doing than to attack an unresponsive genin's body, and at least one very important scheduled event.
He needed to go fetch Uchiha Sasuke from the hospital. Which was somewhat annoying, because he'd originally assumed that the medic-nin would follow his teammates' initiative and be part of the audience. But no, the boy had to make things needlessly complicated by hiding out in the hospital to get some reading done.
He really didn't like that brat.
But Orochimaru wanted an Uchiha for his new body, and so Kabuto would deliver. He was after all an entirely loyal and humble servant.
XXX
Hiruzen was suddenly very happy that he'd 'invited' Danzo to the show – it'd been more an order than a voluntary thing. He'd been wanting to make a point to all who watched that even if one of their legends was dead, they still had shinobi powerful enough to grow old and decrepit, even as he hammered home to the masses the might of the new generation of Konoha-nin.
He'd been hoping to make it a powerful political message.
Then Orochimaru had popped out of nowhere with an invasion-force, and suddenly Hiruzen and Danzo were standing back-to-back against two undead Hokage and an S-class missing-nin.
Any backup was better than none, even if the years hadn't been kind to his old rival. Though it made Hiruzen wonder about the future of Konoha should they both die.
It wasn't as if there were really anyone available to take up the Hat in his absence. Otherwise he would've retired years ago.
XXX
Sasuke wasn't entirely sure what had happened.
Oh, he had a general idea of it, but the details were a complete blur. One moment he'd been startled out of his reading by village-wide alarms going off, the next he was rolling around on the ground trussed up in ninja-wire.
He was pretty sure that he'd let his guard down around that annoying 'senpai' who'd come rushing to the hospital, and then the asshole had attacked him. Which probably meant that it was either not him, or that he'd actually been a traitor all along. Either way, trying to stab him would've been perfectly justifiable, and Sasuke had been well on his way to worming a hand free enough to reach for a kunai when his back hit the road.
It wasn't the most graceful of landings, but he didn't crack his head open despite his inability to do much more than wiggle around pathetically, so there was at least that. Even if the way the hand – the one which the severed arm was attached to – still had his shirt in an iron grip really creeped him out.
Generally, people didn't actually have detachable limbs, and Sasuke was pretty damn sure he could feel the body-heat evaporating from the thing at a comparable rate to the blood leaking out of the severed part of it. A rate that – despite the medical impossibility of it – was somehow faster than the one that the asshole's new stump was leaking. There was a heart right next to that wound, a massive pump that was kind of fascinatingly effective. And yet... the wound wasn't leaking as much blood as the dribbling end of the already-severed limb.
So... some kind of healing-technique probably. Which would've been a very useful observation to have if Sasuke's mouth hadn't been paralyzed somehow. Dick move, asshole, dick move.
No matter how effective it might be to keep your kidnap-victims from screaming for help, Sasuke wasn't feeling overly charitable about the professionalism involved, mostly due to the thought of being unable to talk properly for hours after this, at best. Asshole.
His attention wandering instead to his rescuer, Sasuke suddenly found himself mildly grateful that going slack-jawed when you were already on the floor with a paralyzed mouth wasn't exactly noticeable.
Haruno Kazuto and Haruno Asuna, both carrying swords. And, despite the chillingly polite smile on both of their faces, Sasuke had the distinct impression that they were most definitely not happy about the situation.
Asuna darted in, piercing through the hand that Kabuto raised in his defense with her rapier. Or, that's what Sasuke assumed must've happened anyway. He didn't actually see her move. One moment she was standing still, the next she was ripping her rapier free from the shredded remains of Kabuto's only remaining hand, causing the kunai he'd been holding onto to clatter uselessly to the ground. "Switch!"
She dodged away out of reach of a kick that would've caught her legs, and then that leg was met with an equally vicious cut with one of Kazuto's two swords. There was a crack, and the leg was nearly sheared in half, only for the second sword to move in towards Kabuto's head.
Kabuto bent out of the way, showing surprising maneuverability for a guy who'd pretty much lost the use of all but one remaining limb. Another kick, though perhaps this was more an acrobatic flip than an actual kick.
"Switch!" Asuna's rapier went into the soft tissue of Kabuto's stomach, and though he twisted away, her blade still must've done some damage to the insides of his ribcage from that angle. The attack allowing Kazuto to retreat to safety.
"Switch!" Kirito came in from a different side, again aiming for Kabuto's head. And the medic-nin dropped down to avoid the attack-, and fell to the ground as Asuna's rapier stabbed him through the knee on his one remaining leg. Kirito took advantage of that in return and swung his second sword, severing Kabuto's head from his body.
The exchange took maybe a few seconds, and quite frankly Sasuke was suddenly feeling a lot more appreciative towards civilians, if this was the level of ability they were all secretly hiding under their regular jobs. He kind of doubted it, but still.
Sakura's parents were cool.
Kazuto frowned at the corpse, before glancing towards Sasuke. "Asuna-," He started.
Asuna however, had already started to move, thrusting forward with her rapier once again, this time piercing through Kabuto's skull.
Kirito blinked at her, confused. "Wha-?"
"Zombie-protocols." Asuna said grimly.
Kirito twitched, then turned suspicious eyes towards the corpse. The corpse whose head, Sasuke noted distractedly, had finally started to bleed properly. Meaning that the medic-nin must've literally been trying to heal from having his head cut off.
There was a long silent moment between the two, before Kirito spoke up again. "You're the best." He sounded so honestly smitten that Sasuke nearly turned away from Kabuto's cooling corpse to stare at them.
Thankfully though, he managed to continue to ignore the two idiot-parents deciding to act like newlyweds in the middle of a war-zone. Though, admittedly, that was almost entirely due to the sudden realization that medic-nin were crazy.
Sasuke felt his lips twitching into a mad grin. He couldn't wait to tell Naruto about this. That ridiculous scaredy-cat would have nightmares about disembodied heads coming after him for weeks.
XXX
Hayate wasn't sure what Naruto had learned from his new 'tutor', mostly because he'd very deliberately stayed the hell away from the whole thing the moment he'd figured out who it was.
Ignoring the amusing way that Tenten and Naruto seemed to click in their love for all things sharp and pointy, there was never a bad reason to avoid being roped into Gai's antics. And considering that the man would hide out in bushes and sparkle brightly about 'blooming youth' to himself as he watched the two, Hayate knew that Gai would definitely drag him into it.
Sure, it was cute that Naruto kind of looked at Tenten with a mixture of admiration, awe, and-... well, there was no denying the way that he'd go slack-jawed and his eyes would glaze over a bit whenever Tenten laughed about something. Or the way he blushed about any praise she gave him, even if she still seemed pretty damn oblivious about it.
Apparently, the kid had a thing for older girls.
So, without any regrets, Hayate had surrendered the task of teaching Naruto the art of throwing stuff to the young weapon-mistress. She was better suited for teaching him, and the two of them definitely seemed to enjoy spending time together.
He also wasn't entirely sure of the details of the kenjutsu-style Sakura had learned from her family. He understood enough to know that it was a useful style, and that she was learning from a competent source. That was really all he needed to make sure of on that particular subject.
In comparison, he actually had a very good idea of the details of what Sasuke was learning on his own time. Mainly because the hospital seemed to enjoy keeping him up to date on what he was doing there.
Hayate had long since made a personal note to avoid the hospital at all costs until Sasuke had either moved onto field-work or retired entirely. No way was he going to willingly expose himself to the violent little monster. No matter how gleeful the members of the hospital-staff were with his presence, they'd still ended up giving Hayate an awful amount of paperwork about the numerous complaints against the Uchiha and his 'personal touch' with his patients.
It takes a special kind of madness to break a guy's leg so that they stopped trying to run away from having their ribs examined.
But even if he didn't know all of the details of their personal training-regimes, Hayate knew very well how they worked together in a fight. So he wasn't really surprised. Kind of guiltily proud that they were now his students instead of Kakashi's, but not surprised.
All around the coliseum, foreign ninja were dropping their disguises to attack both surprised Konoha-nin and the hapless civilians still caught in the genjutsu. And Naruto and Sakura were doing very well in keeping things under control, despite the likelihood that the ninja they were fighting were actually higher rank than they were.
Most of the other rookie-genin had also closed ranks to keep the civilians safe, but none of them were quite as offense-oriented as his two students, choosing instead to play the defensive game. Neither good nor bad, it merely showed that Team 7 apparently had a more aggressive skill-set to make use of than their old classmates.
Hayate still breathed a sigh of relief upon finding his two students, because they were his responsibility, and he hadn't exactly been in the vicinity when the alarms had gone off. He knew that Sasuke would be at the hospital, and he knew that it was highly unlikely that anyone actually managed to get to him in one of the most defensible buildings in the Village. He couldn't watch over the three of them at once, and whilst he could send Sakura and Naruto off to the hospital, it was likely already so full of ninja that having them underfoot would probably be more likely to hinder them than help.
Harsh as it might seem to let the two of them fight in what basically amounted to a war-zone, Hayate kind of seriously doubted he could've stopped Naruto from fighting if he'd tried.
Besides, as the situation continued and the other genin began gathering the civilians for evacuation, it became increasingly obvious that the two members of Team 7 were actually a lot better at eliminating the opposition than even some of the ninja guards. They couldn't really afford to lose that edge in the middle of an invasion of their home Village.
So instead of swooping in and sparing their innocent little hearts from blood and gore, Hayate continued methodologically slicing his way through Suna-nin and Sound-nin alike. Even if he made sure to keep a careful eye on his two students and their opponents.
If field-promotions were going to be a thing in the immediate future, Team 7 might stand a good chance at reaching chunin before the month was out.
Only time would tell, really.
XXX
Fighting ninja was very different from fighting thugs.
Ninja were faster, more agile, used ninjutsu, and were basically fully capable of hitting back.
Sakura dodged out the way of a thrown kunai, sent her blade piercing through the flesh of another enemy, and stepped aside to give one of Naruto's clones a clear shot at a third ninja.
Fighting in a battle always seemed so chaotic. Blood and screaming, people bleeding out, corpses scattered around to trip over, and her sword's solid weight in her hand. It was a bit more chaotic with ninja though, since they added all kinds of weird ninjutsu to the mix, and the way she kept having to dodge away from attacks.
"Switch!" Sakura pushed away from the enemies that had been trying to flank her, allowing one of Naruto's clones to rush in to force them to 'trigger' their trap prematurely. One more death dodged, Sakura returned to the offensive.
Sakura briefly wondered if this was what her dad meant when he said that battle just kind of 'flowed away' when he tried to remember it. She'd probably inherited that from him. No matter how sharply the experience stood out in her mind as she rushed to stay alive, she sincerely doubted that she'd be able to remember much of this beyond a vague sense of knowing that she'd fought.
It wasn't a berserk-rage, dealing with tunnel-vision and battle-maddened rage. It was probably more something akin to battle-zen, where she could fight unhindered by anything beyond the current battle.
Another dodge, another strike, another dead body.
The battle moved onwards.
XXX
"Sakura, what does 'zombie-protocols' mean?"
Sakura glanced toward Sasuke from where she was sprawled out on the couch of their thankfully undamaged home. "Umm, it's kind of a theoretical 'how do you kill something that won't die'-guidebook. It's mostly a civilian thing, I think. Why?"
Sasuke tilted his head thoughtfully, before shrugging. "Your mom mentioned it."
Which was odd, because generally the only one who mentioned random weird things like that was her dad. "When?"
Sasuke's lips twitched. "When she stabbed a severed head through the eye."
Sakura made a face, even as Naruto made a squeak – the first noise he'd made that wasn't a mumble since the invasion had failed and they'd heard that the Sandaime had fallen in battle.
"What the hell, bastard?!" Naruto glared at his teammate.
"Double-tap." Sakura nodded, kind of understanding why she would've used zombie-protocols to explain herself, before frowning. "What the hell were they fighting that was that hard to kill?"
Sasuke glanced over at her from his place on the floor, where he was currently wrestling an offended Naruto into submission. "Enemy medic-nin."
Sakura made a face. "That makes way too much sense." She paused, trying to shake the image out of her head. "Seriously, there was someone who survived decapitation?"
Sasuke grinned, even as Naruto made a horrified noise. "He was still twitching, at least."
XXX
Their Hokage was dead.
The exact battle hadn't been mapped out yet, but it was safe to say that both sides of that clash had been eliminated to the last. Hiruzen was dead, Danzo was dead, and Orochimaru was dead.
Obviously, the death of the Sandaime meant that they needed to choose the Godaime Hokage before the other Villages figured out that both Konoha and Suna had been injured enough in the failed invasion that they'd be easy pickings.
Unfortunately, Hiruzen didn't exactly have a successor picked out. In fact, every single ninja that could've been in the running for it were either dead or otherwise unavailable. Kakashi was dead, Tsunade was solidly retired, Jiraiya had apparently already in-all-but-name openly refused a direct summon back to Konoha before the Chunin Exam even started-... They simply didn't have a decent candidate.
They needed someone with a powerful name to scare off the other Villages, something to prove Konoha's strength, despite their actual injuries. So they needed a famous name, and-... well, the only ones who came even remotely close enough to the famed power necessary were Sarutobi Asuma and Maito Gai.
Asuma would've been a wonderful option, except for the internal problem of making a former Guardian of the daimyo their new Hokage. After all, no matter how much Konohagakure was technically subservient to their daimyo, they were a separate existence, and needed to be able to actually negotiate about things. As in, giving the position of Hokage to someone who might easily be perceived as more loyal to the daimyo than to the Village itself would be a catastrophe, regardless of whether there was any truth behind the claim or not.
So Asuma's nomination to Hokage was a very shaky proposition on political grounds, even if his name would be recognized. Not to mention that it might stir up some questions about the man 'inheriting' his father's position, which could cause further complications.
That left Gai. Who was-... well, Gai.
The man was strong, could be inspiring when he really tried, and was pretty much utterly useless behind a desk. Ignoring the man's unusually eccentric behavior and the internal problems that it might cause, naming Gai Hokage was more likely to turn Konoha into a laughing-stock than to prove that they remained strong.
Of course, there were other names that could be considered.
Nara Shikaku was a viable option. Except for the tiny little fact that he was well-renowned as a battle-tactician, meaning that to put him in charge over Konoha as a whole would be to send a message to the other Villages that Konoha was gearing up for war. An impression that might be useful as a 'show of strength', but hopelessly counterproductive in their attempts to cover up their own injuries, since it would be more likely to provoke a preemptive strike than it was to stop the sharks from smelling blood.
In other words, they didn't have anyone who'd look impressive enough to the other Villages to take the Hat, and they didn't have anyone who'd actually be useful whilst wearing the Hat. Or at least, nobody who fit in both categories.
So, the only choice available was to take a leap of faith.
They needed a strong jounin who had some ability to lead and who was definitely loyal to Konoha and its Will of Fire.
Of course, before they tried that, they'd sent out another desperate missive to the two remaining Sannin about having them take up the Hat or risking doom upon Konoha.
Tsunade scared off the messenger with threats of immediate bodily harm, and Jiraiya kind of just sighed and wandered off to get drunk before sneaking out of the town they'd found him in. No further contact was made, and so they were on their own.
Konoha needed to choose a new Hokage, and they were truly pathetically short on viable choices.
So they let Akimichi Chouza take the floor.
XXX
"Sakura! You've got to help me!"
Sakura blinked, a little bit dazed as Ino nearly came barreling into her in the middle of the road. "Umm... With what?"
Ino kind of fidgeted in place in a way that actually looked a lot more like an awkward impromptu dance-routine than what she usually did when she was nervous. Hell, Ino looked like kind of like Sasuke when the hospital forced him to pull all-nighters and someone was standing in between himself and the coffee-machine. Only, more confusion and less murder.
It wasn't exactly a flattering look for the girl, and Sakura very nearly opened her mouth to ask if Ino had gotten any sleep at all, before she remembered that the invasion had probably been Ino's first big brush with combat, and that it wasn't unlikely that she was having nightmares about it. Sakura wasn't going to go around pouring salt on people who might still be bleeding, especially not people she cared about.
"Boys!" Ino paused, her wild hand-motions freezing temporarily as she considered that for a moment. "Well, technically, only one boy." Her panic quickly returned however. "But I need help!"
Sakura wondered briefly why in the world Ino would be going to her for boy-advice, considering that they'd been on an equal amount of zero dates. "Why are you asking me?"
Ino threw a hand out in the general direction of Sasuke – obviously she wasn't paying too much attention to it, because she probably would've accidentally decked him if he hadn't dodged out of the way in time. "You're on a team with Sasuke-kun! And you're not molesting him!"
Sakura honestly felt her brain kind of go a bit wonky at hearing someone shout that as if it was an accomplishment to keep her hands off of the bastard who kept kneeing her in the kidneys at three-in-the-goddamn-morning. Honestly, she was more likely to molest Naruto, though that was mostly because he was nice to sleep on top of. Even if he did drool everywhere.
"What." She stared at her old friend.
Ino, clearly desperate and probably not at all in her right mind, made a frustrated noise. "He follows me around like a puppy! How am I supposed to not molest him, Sakura?!" She grabbed Sakura's shoulders, shaking her frantically. "Tell me your secrets!"
Finally realizing that Ino's rambling was attracting a lot of weird glances from their surroundings, Sakura decided that enough was enough. She'd been woken up at an ungodly hour by Naruto screeching in her ear like a banshee – something about heads chasing him – she'd nearly dislocated her jaw by biting Naruto in the nose and having him flail around wildly, she'd had to listen to Sasuke's snickering refusals to heal either of them, she'd had to sit through Hayate-sensei staring suspiciously at the teeth-mark on Naruto's nose, and now she was being accosted by Ino.
Sakura hit the girl with a sleep-genjutsu. She went down like a house of cards.
Hayate glanced over at her from where he'd been politely ignoring the conversation. "Harsh, but fair."
Naruto was mostly just staring at Sasuke. "Why would anyone want to molest you anyway, bastard? It's not like you're nice to hug."
Sasuke shrugged. "Neither is Ino." He commented blandly.
Naruto scrunched up his nose in thought. "Does that mean you want to molest her too?"
Sakura ignored the two idiots and slung Ino over one of her shoulders. She was not going to get involved in a discussion about sexuality in the middle of a street. "Naruto, ask mom."
Naruto's face turned red. "What?!"
"Dad gives shitty answers." Sakura said sensibly. "So it's easier for everyone if you just ask mom first. I'm not even entirely sure dad knows where babies come from, honestly. He's kind of dense."
Hayate-sensei stifled a snicker, but Naruto looked curious and Sasuke looked awkward.
Sakura glanced at the medic-nin. "You were given the Talk by a nurse or something, like a month ago, weren't you?"
Sasuke made an offended noise and very blatantly didn't say anything to contradict it.
Sakura sighed. "You should probably talk to mom, too. There's more to it than the basic mechanics."
Sasuke spluttered, face red. Naruto still looked confused. And Hayate-sensei nearly fell over, choking on a mixture of coughs and laughter.
XXX
So it turned out that Ino had – after a thorough scolding from her father about using the family techniques on someone with an obviously unstable psyche – somehow ended up in charge of keeping an eye on Gaara, until Konoha figured out what to do about him and his siblings.
This meant that Ino spent a lot of time hanging out with him, and sometimes – under careful supervision – using her Mind Switch to give Gaara a chance to rest without 'being devoured'. Apparently it wasn't a painless process, and that was a large contributor to why Ino looked so frazzled.
Beyond that, Shikamaru had apparently been slotted for a promotion to chunin, even if they weren't going to officially declare him as such until another week or so when things had calmed down somewhat and everyone had the paperwork ready. And Chouji's dad was somehow one of the main candidates for becoming Hokage, which was pretty bizarre to think about.
Life was weird on Team 10. Not quite as weird as Ino seemed to think it was on Team 7 – because apparently the idea of Naruto and Sasuke kind of moving in with Sakura and her parents was utterly absurd in Ino's eyes – but definitely weird.
Of course, back to the subject of Gaara. It seemed as if the redhead had grown quite attached to Ino, to the point where he kind of followed her around like a lost puppy and looked adorably awe-struck by her whenever she smiled at him.
Ino was seriously debating dragging the poor kid into a closet somewhere and ravishing him, and Sakura was a little bit nervous to realize that the ANBU that were probably also watching might not actually take measures to prevent Ino from doing so. There was a fair chance that they'd interfere once she actually did it, but there was likely no actual preventive methods involved.
Which was why she dragged her off to talk about this with her dad. Her dad was amazing at not molesting people, even when they bodily threw themselves at him. Though that probably wasn't entirely unrelated to how her mom generally kept a shinai within reach whenever someone female ended up visiting.
Sakura paused, thinking about that for a long moment.
Her mom literally had to beat women away from her husband with a stick. Wow.
Sakura silently resolved to never marry a guy who was either as dense or as pretty as her dad. It sounded like an awful lot of work.
XXX
"Naruto calm down." Sakura sighed, not really expecting it to work.
"Mission! Mission! Mission! A real mission!" Naruto practically vibrated on the spot, grinning widely.
Hayate was glancing towards the blond with some trepidation, apparently a little bit nervous about Naruto's unusual level of enthusiasm. Which kind of just proved how uncharacteristically non-loud Naruto had been over the months of D-ranks after their disastrous mission to Wave.
Even Sasuke looked a bit brighter around the edges, though that might have more to do with him not having to fight through sleep-deprivation through a mixture of caffeine and pure spite. Regardless, Sakura felt quite hopeful herself.
She didn't want to wander around Konoha with nothing to distract herself except continuous repair-work. Ignoring the unsettling realization that the dark stains that they were trying to clean away were the blood-stains of the previous owners of a shop, they'd been stuck on D-ranks even before most every genin available were dragged into the whole thing after the invasion, and it was becoming unimaginably dull.
So, even if it'd all gone wrong last time they'd left the Village on a C-rank, they were all stronger this time. And besides, it wasn't as if they'd end up running into an A-class missing-nin and his apprentice, this time around.
Not even their luck was that bad.
XXX
Hayate took a deep breath, and then explained it again.
Akimichi Chouza, the Godaime Hokage, stared at him. "So, the caravan you were supposed to guard ended up running into the remnants of Sound."
Hayate nodded, resisting the urge to fidget.
"And then you somehow managed to save a village, destroy half a mountain, defeat dozens of enemy ninja, and uncover one of Orochimaru's old research-bases, before finally finishing the mission you were actually paid to do." Chouza looked like he had a sudden headache. "Right. Well, I guess that means that this will officially be reclassified as an accidentally mislabeled C-rank, because this report sounds and awful lot more like that of an A-rank."
Hayate shifted uncomfortably at the knowledge that with this, Team 7 would end up with something like over seventy D-ranks and two A-ranks to their name. Surely, there should be something in between those two mission-ranks? Where were the proper C-ranks? Or even the B-ranks?
Ignoring the grim reminder of Kakashi's death, their mission-records would end up looking utterly ridiculous at this rate.
Hayate made a face and decided that it was definitely time for him to start training even harder. Konoha in its weakened state really couldn't afford to leave a talented team of genin in the Village, dead teacher or no. And if Hayate was going to be acting as Team 7's jounin-teacher for the foreseeable future, then he clearly needed to be capable of surviving dragging a bunch of genin through the middle of a war-zone, just in case they were ever sent out to go track down a ferret or something.
Their luck was that ridiculous.
XXX
Temari wasn't entirely sure what to think of her youngest brother.
Generally, he was fairly easy to read, seeing as how his moods could be roughly estimated as 'murderous' and 'not-quite-murderous-yet'. But after the failed invasion that he'd spent unconscious whilst that Yamanaka-girl wandered around in his body-...
Temari wasn't entirely sure if it was a good thing that her little brother had changed, or a very bad thing. Being a ninja, she was trained to expect the worst, and it was entirely possible that the blonde had wired Gaara to explode at some massively inappropriate time.
So even if she appreciated that her little brother seemed unusually non-murderous, it was hard to determine whether or not that was a good thing.
The trip back to Suna had been done mostly in shame-faced silence, seeing as they'd just ganged up and ambushed a major Village only to get their asses handed to them. But the real changes with Gaara started to pop up later.
They sent him after a missing-nin, figuring that he'd enjoy splattering the poor bastard across the desert to make up for his previous lack of bloodshed. And then Gaara had finished his mission and dragged a whole body all the way back to Suna. Which was weird, because carrying a corpse around was annoying at the best of times, and Gaara rarely even bothered to remember to bring back their heads in a recognizable state.
Except... not only was he hauling around a body, it turned out that the body was still alive.
He'd captured a missing-nin.
He hadn't even been all that rough with the man, mostly just breaking a few limbs to keep him from running away.
It was-... It was utterly bizarre, that's what it was.
Gaara killed people. He killed lots of people. He didn't go around capturing people using almost entirely humane methods. That just didn't make any sense at all.
And what the hell did it mean, that when they'd asked him about it, he'd just said something about 'kindness being paid onwards'? There wasn't really a good answer for that. So Temari was mightily confused, and she was blaming that Yamanaka-girl for it all.
But-... even so-... Watching Gaara struggle for words whilst trying to figure out how to explain to them the concept of him not 'killing everything that moves'-...
For some reason, the sight of it kind of made her feel like laughing and crying, both.
XXX
Hayate sighed as Ibiki appeared in front of him. He'd known that it was only a matter of time before his old teammate ended up meeting his students, but he would've still appreciated a heads-up from the man.
Which was probably there definitely hadn't been one. Sadistic asshole.
The introductions were however mercifully brief and uncomplicated, because Ibiki relied more on fear than scandal in his sadism, and Team 7 were unusually comfortable with completely ignoring the concept of fear.
Hayate very carefully didn't snicker at how disappointed Ibiki was by it. He knew Ibiki well enough to see it, no matter how good the man had become at hiding his expressions from other people. And drawing attention to it would've been rude, entertainment-value aside.
Then Anko showed up.
Things kind of deteriorated from there, because Anko loved playing up scandal, and even if Team 7 could ignore fear without blinking, they weren't quite ready for scandal.
It didn't help matters that Sakura's eyes had been glued to Anko's chest for the past five minutes. Ever since a certain well-practiced fidgeting habit from the woman revealed that she was definitely not wearing a bra. Bouncy bouncy, and all that.
Hayate nearly rolled his eyes. Those poor kids hadn't even really started in on puberty, and Sakura was already shoving clear signs that there was going to have to be some kind of acclimatization-training in regards to the cleavage being flaunted by female ninja. He wasn't going to lose one of his students just because she was paying too much attention to the wrong places of an enemy.
Anko seemed to be enjoying herself though, even if her 'flaunting the goods' only seemed to work on Sakura.
Hayate wasn't sure if that meant that his other students' sexualities were incompatible with staring at Anko's assets, or if they were just late bloomers as far as those things goes. He wasn't really sure which one he was hoping for – though it did make him curious about Naruto's blatant attraction to that Tenten girl.
He did, however, wish that Anko would cut Sakura some slack before the girl fainted from massive Anko-overload. Carrying his student around the Village like a sack of potatoes would be crass, and if he carried her in some other position and something else happened or someone misunderstood-... It wouldn't be life-ending, but the rumors of him going for a 'younger model' would certainly receive an annoying increase in plausibility in a lot of people's eyes. Which would in turn definitely cause some kind of trouble one of these days.
Then again, he wasn't really holding out any hopes for Anko restraining herself. She was Anko, and she always went all-out in her own brand of gleeful madness.
Pinching his eyes shut as Anko decided to summon one of her many snakes in order to startle Sakura out of her hormone-induced daze, Hayate kind of missed what happened.
One moment, Sakura had been staring at Anko as if she'd been punched in the gut with her entire sexual orientation all at once, the next she was cooing over a snake that Hayate was pretty damn sure was lethally venomous, and which was definitely right in front of her face.
"Oh, you're so pretty!" Sakura smiled reaching out to scratch its head with a perfectly slow and steady hand. The kind of slow that someone might use when petting an Inuzuka-dog. More respectfully careful than actually wary. "I think I saw your species in a book once."
Then she said something unpronounceable that Hayate was just going to assume was the scientific name for the reptile – he'd long since resigned himself to accepting that Sakura was simply better at useless trivia than anyone else alive, excepting maybe her father.
Anko on the other hand looked utterly shell-shocked. It was either the fact that her attempts to mess with the girl's mind had been completely destroyed by a push that ought to have caused her to run fleeing for the hills, or it was the bizarre sight of a genin softly scratching a snake-summon's head without any kind of wariness at all.
It was definitely a strange scene, considering that – even ignoring civilians and their opinions on the matter of most all things venomous – snakes were kind of frowned upon in Konoha after Orochimaru went missing-nin. Sure, the man was dead now, but that didn't mean that the stigma had faded.
Hayate had his eyes open this time however, and he was pretty damn sure he felt his heart stop in horror as Anko's expression of shock morphed into something eerily close to the expression Naruto made whenever Tenten went on one of her long rants about weapons. It looked soft and vulnerable and Hayate was nearly starting to hyperventilate because surely his student couldn't have accidentally seduced Mitarashi Anko on their first meeting, right? That wasn't actually a thing that could happen, right? He was just imagining things, right?
Hayate made a whimpering sound as Anko's lips turned upwards into the softest and most love-struck smile he'd ever seen.
The blond was all-but-dating Gai's student, and the girl had seduced Anko. His life was doomed, because here was no way that Gai and Anko both wouldn't see this as a good reason to strike up conversation with him. He didn't want to deal with all of those crazies on a regular basis.
His only last desperate hope, was that Sasuke was going to turn out completely asexual, so that no third crazy person would crawl out of the woodwork and force him to deal with them. But-... Well, there was probably no hope on that front either, because he was too pretty for there not to be someone who tried to pursue him, regardless of if he returned the feelings or not.
Oh yes. Even if he managed to dodge a specific crazy person, it would probably be compensated for in the sheer mass of fangirls throwing themselves at the last Uchiha, a lot of whom would likely be trying to go through Hayate in order to get to his student.
The moment Team 7 hit puberty as a whole, Hayate was going on vacation that'd last until they were married with children. Or at the very least he'd try to file for retirement.
Sakura continued to coo happily over the snake – with the boys standing a healthy distance away and looking on dubiously – whilst Anko blushed a little bashfully and admitted that she hadn't done a lot of research on her summons in their natural habitat, since hers were trained for combat.
If it wasn't so horrifically creepy to see Anko act bashful at all, Hayate might've thought they made a cute scene. No, beyond that, there was also the age-gap to consider, and-...
And Hayate was not going to put any thought into Mitarashi Anko's sexual preferences. Ever. Even if that might mean risking the mental, physical, and emotional health of his student.
But he did make a note to drop the whole kettle of fish in the lap of Sakura's parents.
They were responsible people, he could totally trust them with this.
Probably.
XXX
Five C-ranks after their first attempt after the invasion, Team 7's luck still hadn't changed. Mainly in that they kept running into a lot more ninja – and weird conspiracies – than what actually made sense, even if every investigation proved that the source of the incidents were unrelated to each other.
The C-ranks were classified as 'attempts' because they were 'attempts at doing a simple C-rank instead of an A-rank'. Which was apparently a lot more difficult than what should be possible.
Hayate still held some hope that this particular C-rank would at least not cause any undue complications, even if there might turn out to be a secret ninja-Village built from shipwrecks or something.
Technically, they were just going to investigate some rumors about ships getting attacked by pirates. Nothing complicated at all, even if there had been some sea-monster rumors, and the townspeople seemed to believe that people were being spirited-away.
Hayate made a face. There was technically still a chance that his hope wasn't misplaced, but he wasn't really feeling it.
"Those bandages, are you injured?" Sasuke frowned at the girl who was their big clue to the people being spirited away, and who lived completely on her own. Though in all honest likelihood, Sasuke was probably more likely to be frowning at the haphazard way the girl's bandages had been wrapped than at the girl herself, because the brat had a tendency towards tunnel-vision.
She responded with a glare, and turned to leave.
So Sasuke tackled her to the floor.
The genin had spent enough time at the Konoha hospital to recognize when an injured individual was avoiding the subject of the extent of their injuries. And he'd been very deliberately trained by the hospital-staff to not let those people out of his sight until they'd submitted to some kind of prodding to make sure that they wouldn't accidentally kill themselves somehow.
After all, even if most every medic-nin were taught to prevent evasive ninja from leaving their sight, Sasuke had had the wonderful advantage of being politically important enough that he could bodily tackle them to the floor and break their legs until they stopped struggling, without being called out on it.
There was a reason that very few ninja ever tried to flee from Sasuke, once they'd already tried doing it before. Apparently – from the reports that kept finding themselves in front of Hayate awaiting his signature – he didn't have time to go looking for them in case they ran away, believing it to be much easier to just maim them a little bit and strap them to a bed somewhere for his own convenience.
Isaribi went down very much like a civilian, even if she managed to shove an elbow into the boy's ribs and shriek loudly enough to make everyone around her worry that their ears might start to bleed.
Sakura very deliberately turned away from the scene in front of her, and instead looked at the blue sky.
Hayate coughed awkwardly, following her example. "Nice weather we're having."
Naruto rolled his eyes from his position next to them. "That's what we're going for? Talking about the weather? Really?"
None of them twitched as the sounds of a struggle continued on behind them. Sasuke could take care of himself, and they'd be damned if they gave him any inclination to believe that they were hindering his work of fixing the mess that were the girl's bandages. And it was entirely possible that 'peeking' on a girl having her bandages forcefully unwrapped was considered 'interfering', so yeah. Not doing it.
Except then everything was suddenly silent, and Hayate felt a shiver run down his spine.
"This." Sasuke's voice was almost soft even as it echoed eerily in the oppressive silence. "Who did this to you?"
"T-That's none of your-!" Isaribi screamed back at him.
"Who?" Sasuke growled out, beginning to leak killing intent. "Who did this to another human being?"
"Let go-!" Isaribi was struggling again.
"Girl." Sasuke sounded absolutely murderous. "I don't care who you think you're defending, but whoever did this isn't going to stop with just you. This isn't stable enough, and if they've done this much, they'll try to do more. Probably by dissecting you and keeping you around for spare-parts!" Sasuke took a deep breath, forcefully lowering his voice. "Who did this to you?"
Isaribi seemed to consider it for a moment. "Why should I-?"
"Because if you tell me quickly enough, I might be able to tear them limb from limb before they have a chance to destroy all of their documentation." Sasuke sounded like he was smiling, but none of his teammates were willing to turn around to watch what was probably an utterly terrifying expression. Not when it would also be accompanied with the risk of him getting pissy about them interrupting him. "And once I've made sure that nobody ever tries to pick those experiments back up, I probably won't have to spend years upon years of figuring out what they did to you before I can start working on either stabilizing this, or curing you entirely. Whichever, really."
There was a long moment of silence. "You can... cure me?"
"Helping people is why I became a medic-nin. I'll cure you, or die trying." Sasuke swore through gritted teeth.
And of course a semi-failed human experiment likely meant Orochimaru and his goons, which probably meant a few dozen more ninja that they'd need to wade through.
Hayate coughed again, but it was more like a sigh. "One mission. Just one mission. That's all I ask. One simple C-rank where I won't end up having to explain to the Hokage how we ended up with another A-rank."
Naruto elbowed him in the gut, and hissed out. "Ix-nay on the interrupting-ay."
Sakura put on a strained smile, her eyes not wavering from where she'd originally started to search the completely blue sky for clouds back when Sasuke started. "The weather is definitely nice." She agreed.
Naruto groaned.
XXX
Hayate was kind of amused to realize that Sasuke hadn't actually left Isaribi's side since the moment they'd met.
A little bit relieved too, because at least she seemed like a nice girl. No real connection to anyone of dubious sanity, no truly crazy behavior on her own part, and-... Actually yeah, it was still a bit weird to see Sasuke being nice to someone, but at least he seemed quite restrained in his affection. If he even had a clue about what he was feeling at all.
Hayate might've been able to dump the Talk on the shoulders of Sakura's mother, because she seemed quite capable of giving it, but having been given the Talk was quite different from actually figuring out that you had a crush on someone.
Sexuality and romantic-inclination weren't exactly synonymous after all. And besides that, Sasuke was kind of sheltered on the affection-spectrum after what had happened to his clan.
Shaking that particular thought out of his mind before it brought his mood down, Hayate glanced over at where Sasuke was trying to explain the details of what he was studying to Isaribi.
They looked kind of cute together, and it was a huge relief to see that Sakura and Naruto both seemed to wholeheartedly agree with that assessment. Their team really didn't need any more drama on it than there already was.
Hayate's expression turned thoughtful as he considered that for a moment.
Sakura had lost her older sister at a time before she was even born, and had learned to live with it. Naruto had never had family, but had been welcomed into the Haruno household to the point where he rarely stayed elsewhere. Sasuke had lost his family, and had been welcomed into the Haruno household where he usually slept, even if he still had a tendency to disappear off sometimes just to be on his own.
Kakashi had died, but they'd hardly known him, even if his death had fused their team into a family. The Sandaime had died, but the only one personally invested in him had been Naruto, and he seemed to have bounced back admirably. Sasuke had nearly been kidnapped by one of his senpai at the hospital, but he'd apparently never gotten along with any of those in the first place so there wasn't much of anything emotional happening on that front. Konoha had been invaded, but the ones responsible for that were long since dead.
As it was, Naruto spent most of his time outside of team-interactions with Tenten, Sakura kept 'mysteriously running into' Anko – though from Sakura's recent foray into visiting every dango-stand in the Village, that was likely very much a mutual thing – and Sasuke seemed to have finally calmed down from his original desperate need to learn as much about being a medic-nin as he could. Sasuke might still enjoy spending time learning, but from the reports Hayate had been getting, it was more professional and less the desperate coping-mechanism of a genin who had their jounin-sensei die in front of them.
Hayate hummed thoughtfully. Was it possible that Team 7 had actually developed into an almost entirely drama-free team at some point?
Isaribi started to laugh, and when Hayate glanced over, Sasuke was smiling too.
The rest of Team 7 exchanged glances at how bizarre it was to see Sasuke look happy, but then kind of all just collectively shrugged and continued walking. It was a long way back to Konoha, and it was a pretty nice day for a walk.
XXX
A/n: This chapter had to deal with some heavy revisions. Mainly in that I added lots of scenes instead of fixing a few sentences and then kind of had to redo a lot of them because of a genre-shift. I think it worked out mostly okay, but yeah, if there's some uncomfortable differences in the mood between the chapters, blame my "the more I write the crackier it gets"-problem.
And that's not even mentioning that I had to rewrite the Epilogue from scratch, so that one will be actually showing up in a third chapter (along with an omake of the more cracky version).
