Sakura - or Raccoon rather since she was on duty - smiled behind her mask as she watched Sasuke take little Aiko home after a day in the park. Aiko had started crawling recently, and with her new mobility had taken to getting into everything. The stories Aiko's guards related about the little holy terror never failed to get a laugh in the breakroom, and she wished the girl's mother luck, since that kid was most likely going to grow up to be a nightmare. An extremely spoiled nightmare at that, if Sasuke's behavior today was anything to judge by.

She occasionally felt a pang of something when she saw Sasuke with his children, but today had rather fortunately not been one of those days. There had been a time when her life had revolved entirely around the illusion of the boy she'd held in her heart, but that time had passed however and she had grown up and moved on since then. If one day she and the real Sasuke who was far more damaged than he let on and afraid to let anyone too close because of it ended up together, so be it. If not, oh well. There were other fish in the sea.

Soon, she and her team were at the predetermined location at which Aiko's mother would retrieve her child. A medic was always present at these exchanges in case there were any...complications. Today, it was her turn to be the medic.

She liked this job better than most of the others she was called in for as a member of Konoha's Black Ops forces. Being an ANBU medic was difficult and dirty work, often far dirtier than anything another medic would face during their careers. There were times that she wondered what she was doing here, and if she should just quit. She couldn't though. She had realized long ago that she had gone too far on her path to be able to do so. All of her friends were shinobi, and by the time her first Chunin Exam had ended, she had seen and done far too much to be an ordinary civilian. Besides, if she quit now, she would have wasted all of the time and effort Shizune-sensei had put into making her the woman she was today.

After a brief examination which revealed that Aiko was in perfect health as always, she handed the child over to her mother who seemed surprisingly plain for a mother of a Uchiha. The woman wasn't ugly, but she was...easily forgettable, and the color that best described her was brown. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown clothes, and tan skin. The woman was civilian due to the fact that she'd failed out of the Academy, but most of her other relatives including one of her ANBU guards were Shinobi.

She herself had volunteered to be the mother of one of Sasuke's children before the faint flame she'd held for him had completely burnt out, but she had been rejected on the basis of there being a possible Kekkei Genkai. Apparently, the naturally pink hair she'd been born with had counted against her. According to the story she'd heard later, the geneticist had taken one look at her picture, exclaimed "That's natural?!" and tossed her file into the reject pile without a second glance. She had been upset over the rejection at the time, and had cried for three days straight. Now however, she didn't regret the fact that she'd been rejected. She wasn't ready for a child, and having a little life that depended on her for everything would have completely overwhelmed her. If she had had the child, and her dreams regarding Sasuke hadn't come true, she probably could have ended up hating it, which would have been completely unfair to said child.

As Shizune-sensei had pointed out, it had been for the best.

The woman who was probably in her mid-twenties and her child were soon gone, and after she wrote up her report, it would be time for her to head to her next assignment. She'd dawdle over the report as long as she could though, since she hated T&I clean-up duty.


Naruto yawned and stretched after the last line of a particularly complex seal array was sketched in his notebook. He'd spent several hours tinkering with the damn thing, and now that he'd gotten it completely figured out, he would hand the information on it over to someone who would make good use of it. He would be doing that in the morning though, he had something else he needed to do this evening...

During the three years he'd been Jiraiya's apprentice, he'd learned a great deal. After he'd put his foot down about the whole Kyuubi issue that was. Throughout his wanderings through numerous countries, he picked up several tricks that had made his traps even deadlier over the years. In fact, he'd earned himself an A-rank listing in a Bingo Book on the basis of his traps. Of course, as soon as someone realized that the "mysterious trap master" was him, and that he was the Kyuubi Jinchuriki, the listing became more complete and got bumped up to S-rank despite the fact that he was still a Chunin. That had been a proud day as far as Jiraiya had been concerned, and the man had taken him on a week-long pub crawl to celebrate.

What happened during that pub crawl was something he still wasn't entirely sure he could believe. Seeing as Konoha wasn't named Village Hidden in the AWESOME!, the incident was either a dream, or there was a universe somewhere where the Shodai Hokage was a de-aged Uchiha Madara who had been mentally and physically six years old at the time he and Jiraiya left, or rather had fled from a massive posse that had been headed by a murderous Senju Hashirama who'd apparently actually been friends with Madara, as if that weren't to unbelievable in and of itself.

As Jiraiya was a Seal Master, he would have had to have been incredibly dense if he hadn't learned anything in that area. He wasn't dense.

While he was pretty much crap at making seals, that didn't mean he sucked at the subject. He was in fact, one of the top seal breakers on the continent. He could break down and analyze seals that had left many in his field tearing their hair out in frustration in an amount of time that Jiraiya had said was ridiculously fast. Apparently, if the Uchiha were to be believed, he'd gotten his start in the Academy when he'd ripped through the seals meant to keep students out of the teachers' lunches as if they weren't there which, as far as he was concerned at the time, they weren't. Despite all this, he still hadn't managed to make heads or tails of the Hiraishin as Jiraiya had wanted him to, but it was only a matter of time before he did so.

His business this evening had nothing to do with seals though, and everything to do with the third thing Jiraiya had taught him...

After stretching once more, he got up and headed out. Out the door, out of the apartment building, down the road, and out of the village, nodding to the two Chunin at the gate as he passed. About an hour later, he was in Shukuba Town, and after a bit of wandering, he found a rather nice lady who quite happily joined him on his trip to the bar as he reflected on what his friends in Konoha would think of him if they saw him now. When he entered the somewhat seedy establishment, he saw someone he recognized from his travels.

"Hey, Takeru-san!" he called out to the man. "It's been a while! Mind if we join you?"

Soon, he and his companion who had come to the town from her family's farm in order to let loose were seated across from the man Naruto had spotted. Throughout the evening, Naruto and his companions talked, drank, played cards, darts, and "I Never". Eventually, it was time for the bar to close, and Naruto and his lady-friend made their way to a nearby inn. As soon as they reached their room, the woman fell asleep.

As soon as Naruto was sure the woman was asleep, he pulled out the piece of paper that his contact had slipped into his pocket at the bar. As soon as he read it, his good mood swiftly evaporated.

Orochimaru was planning something, something he was keeping close to his vest, and it involved Sasuke. When Orochimaru had seemingly given up on his former teammate nearly three years ago after the third recruiting team had been rather messily dispatched, he should have known it was too good to be true. Considering the amount of chaos and destruction Orochimaru could cause if he got his way when it came to Sasuke, he couldn't allow that to happen. He'd kill Sasuke first if it came to it.


Orochimaru smiled as he called for one of his best subjects in order to give the young man a very special mission. In the three years since he'd tested Uchiha Sasuke, the boy had grown much stronger, and even more powerful but, he'd grown even more vulnerable as well. The boy now had quite the Achilles heel, and he would be exploiting that in order to get what he wanted, what the little Uchiha upstart had denied him three years before.

Ordering Sasuke to create a new generation of Uchiha in case the worst should happen had been a smart move on Tsunade's part. In fact, though he hadn't originally planned to do so, he himself had done what he could to help, and had one of his agents in Konoha get ahold of a certain set of samples, which had been surprisingly easy to do. Uchiha Sasuke now had seven children in Otogakure. As soon as his subordinate's mission was complete, there would be eight.

He had considered using the seven children he had on hand in order to lure Sasuke to him, but he knew the Uchiha boy well enough to know that he wouldn't risk anything for a bunch of possibly fictional children he'd never laid eyes on before. He would be willing to risk everything for a child that he'd developed an emotional attachment to however...

Soon, one of the rising stars of his forces was kneeling before him. He wasn't of the elite, but he was close to getting there, and would be counted amongst the elite should he successfully complete this mission.

"Orochimaru-sama, I live to serve." the man who was only just on this side of human said. "My life is yours to do with as you see fit."

"Good," he replied. "Since there is a strong chance that you won't be returning from this mission. If you do however, the reward shall be great."

"What would you have me do?" the man asked.

"I want you to go to Konoha and retrieve one of Uchiha Sasuke's children, preferably the son. You are to bring the child back here completely unharmed." he replied.

Not unnecessarily wasting any time, the Jounin bowed and left to prepare for his mission.

"Soon Sasuke." he said. "Soon, I shall have your body, and those eyes."

The wait had better be worth it. He had invested time and materials in Sasuke that he could ill afford to spend in the here and now, despite the fact that one had to use resources in order to gain more for the future. The reason he wasn't destroying Konoha at the moment was because one of his experiments involving viruses had caused an epidemic that had wiped out nearly half of his forces. It was all he could do to keep Suna out. The fact that the bastards were picking his men off every time they came across them in the field was bad enough.


Kamiya Satoshi yelped in more in shock than in pain. He had set foot in the front door of his favorite Konoha gambling hall, and had nearly been electrocuted when he did so.

"What the hell was that? !" he yelled.

The retired ninja who was currently employed as a bouncer looked slightly sheepish as he handed him a slip of paper.

"Your blond friend asked me to give this to you." the man said.

He looked down at the paper.

Satoshi,

I know that you are going to hate me and probably want to kill me but, I can't stand by and do nothing while you throw your life and career away. I've put seals on all of the gambling halls in Konoha in order to keep you out in hopes that you'll use your time accordingly.

Naruto.

He growled as he crumpled the paper into a ball. He was going to kill that brat. It was his life, and he'd live it however he wanted to. If he wanted to spend all of his free time gambling, then he would do so. It wasn't anyone's job to dictate to him what he should and shouldn't do, especially not Naruto.


Danzo sighed as he wiped the vomit off of his clothing. He hated this part of child rearing, it was one of the reasons he'd tended to select orphans rather than have some of his Root operatives breed more of them to replace the losses. Considering the fact that he had the room and the resources and the time, he could have easily done so had he so chosen however.

Part of the reason that his forces were so loyal to him was that he created an attachment to him early on before the training meant to eliminate all emotion kicked in. He became something of a father figure to those who had no parents before he became their master. The problem with this particular recruit who was currently undergoing the attachment conditioning was that since there had been no orphan Uchiha besides the closely watched Uchiha Sasuke, he'd had to breed his own. That meant, that this recruit was still in diapers, and prone to vomiting on people.

The attachment and therefore loyalty to him must be formed and as early as possible however...

"Take this back to the nursery." he said as he handed Uchiha #4 off to his nearest agent. He'd had enough for one day. He was going to bed.

Edited 4/22/13