Kakashi sighed.

He'd thought Naruto's apartment was the worst of it. Minato-sensei's kid was living in a rathole in the red-light district, in a shoebox-sized ramen-cup dump. There wasn't a single vegetable in the whole place, unless you counted the mold growing on the ceiling. The bedsheets were smelly, every scrap of orange Naruto had lovingly curated was faded with grime, and nothing in the whole 'home' worked properly. He had seen nicer buildings up for demolition.

Now, he was in the Uchiha compound for the first time since Itachi went off the deep end and it was, if possible, even worse.

Walking through the gates, at first it looked like a typical ghost-town. There were empty houses, overgrown weeds, even the archetypal scrap of fabric blowing in the breeze. Then Kakashi nearly tripped over, of all things, a pile of cookware. Up against the backdoor of the police headquarters there was a beat up accumulation of pots, pans, spoons, even scraps of broken plate.

The visit did not improve from there.

Every house had been ransacked. Every. Last. One. The windows were either open or smashed, the doors were dangling off of their hinges. Oh, and also he could see plant and animal life inside through all of the gaping holes in the houses. This was no ghost-town, this place was inhabited by birds, squirrels, and feral cats. None of the damn things even had the good sense to run away from him. He'd gone his entire life before today without being glared at by a squirrel living inside of a kitchen cabinet. He could have gone longer.

There was…stuff. Just stuff, everywhere. In the bushes to his left a refrigerator was laying, ripped to shreds, across half the street. Down the street to his right a spool of yarn had been twined around everything remotely upright within his range of vision, including a bird bath, several mailboxes, a doorknob, a tree, and, most disturbingly, a hatstand half-buried into the dirt.

Kakashi found himself dragging his feet on his way to Sasuke's self-reported address. There was just so much to look at. If this was what the kid had done to the houses he hadn't grown up in, he was unable to imagine what he'd see at the inherited parental-murder-scene. He'd seen battlegrounds with fewer torn apart structures and bent kunai sticking out of walls.

One ten-minute walk later, the Uchiha Clan Head house loomed before Kakashi with all of the subtlety of an active flame. Ironic, considering the actual active fucking forge sticking out of the side of the house like some sort of gaping maw. Actually, as Kakashi edged closer, it looked less like there was an active flame and more like the forge was simply cooling down from a previous usage, putting out more steam than smoke. Small mercies.

Kakashi edged around the bloated lump of metal and crossed his fingers that the indoor-area would be better.

It was not.

Every single wall had been beaten out, manually from the looks of it. There were still bits of plaster sticking to the exposed support beams and pipes. It gave Kakashi a flawless view of the scrapheap that his genin-hopeful lived in. The entire open-floor-plan home was nothing but a winding series of pathways through hills of metal, interspersed with huge tables covered in strange winding loops of metal, wire, and glass. The patches of ceiling above each table were all scorched. Along with the floor beneath them. Oddly, and ominously, the tables were barely singed. Kakashi rubbed the bridge of his nose as he considered that, perhaps, some of the ransacked homes were missing their kitchen tables specifically in order to replace their burnt predecessors.

Kakashi yelped and jumped, sticking himself to the ceiling and clutching his calf. Below him, he glowered incredulously at a fluffy orange cat, hissing up at him with a bit of his pants stuck in its claws. This was the first time in two years that any living creature had gotten the drop on him.

Kakashi grit his teeth and walked across the ceiling to the most lived-in looking area. The kitchen was disturbing in its own way. There was only one place, so far as Kakashi had seen, in this entire compound that was clean, and lived in, and orderly. This kitchen was it. A rack of dishes was drying by the sink, near a bowl labeled "Pazu" that was next to the windowsill with bits of meat stuck to the bottom. The curtains were fresh and drawn back, showing an intact, and closed, window. There was even a door a step down from the refrigerator, an intact, closed door to a room. With walls. The only odd bit about the place was the fleece-lined box on the opposite side of the kitchen from the closed door. It was big enough to fit Kakashi, and the inside was stuffed with mis-matched blankets and pillows of some of the most disgusting colors Kakashi had ever seen, including orange brighter than anything in Naruto's apartment. On the outside, a series of flat wooden tables made up three walls and a floor, as well as a fifth desk in front of the whole contraption. Each table had an attached heating unit. The box was made up entirely of modified kotatsu. Kakashi was blindingly jealous.

Kakashi dropped himself down into the pile of fleece with barely a sound. It was even warmer and softer than it looked. From this seat Kakashi could read all of the papers strewn over the kotatsu-desk, as well as look down into the dozen or so mugs crusted with the remnants of, Kakashi sniffed, orange juice.

The paper highest up on the desk was, and this was new for Kakashi, math a bit too hard for him to decipher. The diagram was the only reason he didn't assume the paper was coded and call the Hokage. Whatever it was, he could recognize a circuit when he saw one. There was the input, the on/off switch, the wires, a series of measuring nodes, and something Kakashi couldn't decipher. There was some sort of circle that it seemed like all of the split pathways were meant to end up feeding into and monitoring, but it had no label, rather there was a tiny arrow pointing downwards to a diagram that definitely wasn't a circuit. It looked more like a plant's root system.

Kakashi lifted his hitai-ate and glimpsed over the desk with his sharingan. He'd need to review the equations later. He hadn't visited the Harunos yet, and he was already three hours late.


Sasuke got to the academy building five minutes early, which meant he was the only one there. As usual. He hated being late, and he hated walking into rooms full of people. Being so early added to his nerd image, but it also meant he could get a seat by the window every day.

Over the next twenty minutes, Sasuke sat quietly with his hands laced in front of his mouth, elbows on the table in front of him as his classmates trickled in. Haruno-san and Yamanaka-san were screaming and trying to get a seat next to him, presumably so that they could stare at him and laugh whenever he did something weird. They needed hobbies. Naruto was also there and making his own ruckus. Apparently, his classmates didn't think he'd graduated, which was stupid considering Naruto was wearing his hitai-ate proud and shiny on his forehead. Naruto was a better Shinobi than Haruno-san and Yamanaka-san put together, anyways.

Said blonde, agitated over something or other, suddenly jumped up onto the desk right in front of Sasuke. He crouched there like a frog, pouting at Sasuke with every whisker mark fluffing out from his pursed lips. His eyes were scrunched up, but the sliver visible was bright sky blue against his sunny-yellow hair. Sasuke lowered his hands from his mouth, feeling warm all over his face, as Naruto's eyes went wide and round and shiny, coming in so far closer that Sasuke felt enveloped by that sunlit sky. Then something bumped Sasuke's face and his whole body went warm and dizzy.

Naruto was kissing him. Those lips were touching his own and Sasuke was being kissed. Naruto's cheeks were brushing against his own, and the whiskers were rough against his face. His lips were so soft, and dry with a plush curve beneath his own, and they pulled in his own lower lip. Naruto's breath puffed against Sasuke's nose. Sasuke hadn't felt so close to someone in years. He felt like Naruto was tugging on something in his chest that had never been tugged on before. It was beautiful.

Sasuke's eyes had shut without him noticing, and he only blinked them open when Naruto pulled back. Sasuke felt faint, and he wanted to lean forward, rest his forehead against the only real-feeling thing in the world, except then Naruto looked back to him and Sasuke froze in his seat. Naruto was grimacing. He was sticking out his tongue. He was screaming and rubbing his mouth against his sleeve.

Sasuke threw his head against the desk in front of him, and his hitai-ate made a bell-clear clang against the wood. He grabbed his hood and yanked it over his entire head, so that he was entirely in the dark, and crossed his arms around the fabric so that nothing could pry it away without a fight. Sasuke wished he could still shunshin. If his chakra wasn't messed up, he'd be halfway to the compound by now.

Outside of his hoodie, Sasuke could hear Naruto screaming over the combined shouts of what sounded like every girl in the class. They must be teasing Naruto for what happened with Sasuke. Sasuke cringed deeper into his hoodie and wished that Naruto's screaming didn't make him want to stab whoever was causing it. As of today, he'd stab himself before defending Naruto Uzumaki.

Eventually, life outside the hoodie calmed down as Iruka-sensei started calling out team formations. Sasuke stayed buried as he waited for his name.

"Team Seven is…Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, and Sasuke Uchiha."

To his right, he heard Naruto, and then Sakura, cheer. Sasuke twitched with each exclamation. Maybe he could just stay here in his hoodie forever.