Just for this story's sake, Tenzou is Yamato's actual name, even though we know that Kakashi only calls Yamato that out of habit because Tenzou was one of Yamato's previous codenames.

I also think, as a quick heads up, I should probably mention that the majority of the writing is going to be tilted. :P So watch your heads.

Thank you guys for the reviews and the support!


"Damn, I don't want to wash the dishes today," Akira groaned as they collected all the plates and bowls from the table, transporting them to the kitchen sink.

"Me either," Tenzou agreed.

After all the used utensils were also thrown in together with the dirty dishes, Akira and Tenzou looked at each other, expressing mutual disgust at the piles of what they had to clean. It was their turn to clean the silverware this night, and normally, both wouldn't minded if there were a couple of pans and bowls and such.

But to wash the entire days' worth of the entire orphanage's dishes made them really want to belong to a regular nuclear family. It was those days that Tenzou wanted to have parents and a real blood family to go home to.

"I've got a plan," Akira suddenly said, turning toward Tenzou, his disheveled jet black hair and steel gray eyes sparkling mischief.

It was those moments that Tenzou realized that maybe living in this government instituted state home wasn't so bad after all. As long as Tenzou's best buddy, Akira, was there, life wasn't too miserable at all.

"What's up," Tenzou asked, having always participated in Akira's tricks.

Akira produced a scroll out from his back pocket, a wide smile across his thin lips. "Look!"

Tenzou's eyebrow raised. "What is that?"

Seeming unable to control his excitement, Akira quickly explained, "One of the older kids gave me this scroll and said that if I activated it, the dishes would wash and dry themselves!"

Akira's anticipation was contagious, and Tenzou encouraged Akira right along, saying, "Let's do it! Let's do it!"

The scroll was unfurled, and Tenzou feasted his eyes on the elaborate writing of the paper, the center character reading 'clean' in kanji. The two of them observed in awe of the scroll's contents for a moment, before Akira quickly got back up and put his hands together.

"Tora, Mi, Inu, Tatsu, Uma, Saru!" Akira performed the hand seals and then finally pushed down on the center character.

The characters all glowed a bright blue for two seconds and then—

"Oh my god!" Tenzou pointed at all the dishes that were levitating on their own accord!

Akira nearly knocked himself into the stove watching the sponges follow the dishes' lead.

Both of them started to laugh in amazement, and then turned toward each other and clapped their hands together in a high-five. Tenzou quickly closed the door of the kitchen and Akira joined him by the door as the two of them watched the soap, dishes, and sponges dance around in the air.

"This really works! It really works!" Akira exclaimed, pointing over at a sponge that was voraciously scrubbing one of the plates to the right.

"Look, look!" Tenzou also added, pointing at the large steel soup pots. "Even the cooking pots!"

"This is so awesome!"

"How cool!"

"I can't believe it actually works!"

"Are there more of these?"

"Look how quickly everything is being done!"

"Aw man! We should have found out about this scroll a long time ago!"

And then after three minutes of excitement, all the dishes had been scrubbed and now just needed to be rinsed.

"You said, they'd dry themselves too, right?" Tenzou asked to confirm, after seeing the soapy dishes hover for a while.

"Yeah, I guess it—"

And then everything went terribly wrong.

All the dishes started to rotate. Very quickly.

So quickly that the dirty soap and leftover food bits began to fly off them.

"Woah, wait! They never told me the dishes dried off like that!" Akira suddenly exclaimed in fright. He scurried over to the scroll, but the characters on the paper was gone and the dishes continued to all spin at high speeds to vortex the crap off their clean surfaces.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit!" they cursed, unable to do anything.

"What are we going to do now?" Akira asked, his eyes wide with fright.

"Did the older kids say that the dishes would stack into the cabinet by themselves?" Tenzou asked. "Because if not, the plates might just fall to the ground!"

"Oh god! Screw the older kids!" Akira shrieked.

And then after a minute of terror, all the dishes had been dried and now were assembling themselves into the cabinet.

Tenzou sighed in relief that the plates hadn't just dropped and fallen to the floor—that would have been quite an evil prank—but looked around at all the walls of the kitchen, where soap and food bits had been transferred onto and were now dripping down to the floor.

"Aw man…I think we ended up with more work than if we had just cleaned the dishes," Akira stated.

"Damn," Tenzou agreed.

They got some rags and started to wipe the walls, all the meantime, thinking of pranks to play back on the older kids.

"We should steal all their laundry."

"Reverse the vacuum."

"Superglue all their toilet seats."

"Spice their chocolates."

"Turn off the hot wat—"

"AKIRA?" the two of them heard from beyond the kitchen door and down the hallway.

"Was that Obaa-chan?" Akira asked, leaping up in panic, wet rag in his hand.

"I think so," Yamato replied. "Think she found the lizard?"

"Oh god, we're going to get caught," Akira apprehended. "She's going to come looking for me and she knows we have kitchen duties today."

The two of them began to dread the impending footsteps that sounded louder and louder, getting closer and closer to the kitchen…

"I got this," Yamato told Akira, and putting down his rag, he stepped away from the walls and placed his hands together to concentrate.

The door swung open to an angry Obaa-chan, who was swinging around a broom.

"AKIRA! WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT BRINGING PESTS INTO THE HOUSE?"

"I'M SORRY OBAA-CHAN!" Akira bowed his head down in sincere apology and fear. He looked over at Tenzou, knowing that in any second now, Obaa-chan would notice that the walls of the kitchen were a complete mess.

"Geez!" Obaa-chan scoffed, crossing her arms over her white apron. "There's already enough cleaning to do around here without the trouble! And you know some of the girls are scared of lizards!" She suddenly looked to the side at one of the walls opposite them.

Akira braced—

"Well then, carry on with the dishes," she added before leaving.

A second passed before they snickered silently.

"Dude! What did you do?" Akira exclaimed.

"Something that actually worked," Tenzou replied wryly.

"You guys used genjutsu, didn't you?"

The two boys looked up, seeing another girl of their age walking into the kitchen with an all-knowing smile on her face, midnight blue strands of straight long hair framing her face and emerald eyes sparkling with interest.

"A-Aoko," Akira greeted, suddenly standing straight and composing himself.

Aoko looked around the kitchen, and not being a victim of genjutsu as Obaa-chan was, she saw the kitchen in its true form. She clucked her tongue. "Well then," she said, turning back around and going down the hallway.

"Wait!" and Akira ran forward to grab her wrist to stop Aoko, spinning her back around. "You're not going to tell Obaa-chan, are you?"

She forced her hand out of his tight grasp, rubbing her wrist with the other free hand. "Of course I'm not," she said, slightly offended. "I'm going to go get a hair tie and then come to help you hopeless idiots out."

sekibetsu

Yamato spotted the purple-haired kunoichi from the other night at the drinking party with the other jounin. She was walking down the street in the opposite direction of Yamato alongside Kurenai, and the two females looked like they were exchanging some gossip, laughing and leaning in to hear each other's words.

He shifted his eyes to the ground slightly to the left of him, hoping to avoid any eye contact with either of the two and went merrily along his way.

He didn't really notice anything, too focused on trying to stay out of their attention, and—

"SAYONARA!" the feisty voice yelled, a bit too close to his ear for comfort.

Wha—

She bumped into him, not looking at where she was going herself, since she was waving a goodbye to Kurenai. He caught his balance and swung to the side, and she caught her own.

"Sorry," he mumbled and stepped to pivot, but she hadn't seemed to hear him.

"I'm sorry!" she returned an audible apology, sheepishly. "I didn't see you there."

She looked like she was about to strike up a conversation, but noticed that Yamato didn't seem to be in the mood to talk and was half way out of their encounter and let the chance for conversation go, turning to go in her own direction to wherever she had to be.

itisfiveinthemorning

Someone else was in that room.

Tenzou's eyes opened and not moving his head, quickly scanned the room, and confirmed his prediction when he saw a lanky silhouette whipping around the large room, where Tenzou and at least fifteen other boys of his age slept peacefully on their tatami mats.

He didn't recognize the figure. It was too tall to be anyone that he knew, and it was most certainly not Obaa-chan since she didn't move that quickly.

Was it one of the older kids coming to play a prank on them?

Tenzou instantly got up, his torso off the floor, but a hasty whisper came up from behind his head.

"No, no, go back to sleep, boy. Things are going to be alright."

He was about to protest, but felt a hand clasp over his mouth and then suddenly, he was out.

Between bouts of consciousness, he knew something very bad was happening, seeing the rest of his orphan family around him slowly disappearing and being taken away, but he was unable to process the negative feelings completely and he couldn't move at all.

It was his turn, he knew, and shivered when cold arms picked him up and lay him next to another half-awake person, the warm body of one of Tenzou's other orphanage brothers.

They were on some wooden cart, and Tenzou knew it had wheels because of the way it rocked as more and more sleeping bodies were loaded, another warm body placed against his back.

And then finally, Tenzou saw a cover slid down over all of them, taking a last glance at the starry sky that he wouldn't see for a long while after that.

"Take them over to the boat, Anko."


:3 Well, whaddaya think?

thir13enth