Twin1: Hello, all! I did better with updating on time this time, right? (Not much better, but still…) In answer to the hundreds of questions I got – actually, the same questions hundreds of times – I decided to put a little section in here as an explanation. Because I'm too lazy to answer a hundred and fifty-odd reviews personally.
Okay, first off, everyone's asking me when I update. I don't have a timetable, so it's 'when it's written', I'm afraid (yes, I'm one of those – feel free to weep) but I try to put up a chapter about once a month, every three or four weeks or so. All of our stories are updated like that, Who I Am included, all those who like that story too. Unfortunately for you guys, the next UP chapter won't be out until after New Year at least, because I'm drawing a blank for the 'Naruto is seven' chapter. Sorry.
I had a couple of questions about Naruto's weight set. Weights should never be used by anyone younger than, like, eighteen. Or sixteen, depending on how you physically mature. They're really damaging to developing muscles and skeletal structures, and it's just not a good idea to do that to your five year old. Or thirteen year old. That being said, Lee wears weights, in the extremist sense of the word, and it seems to have done him no harm. From that, I can only conclude that in the Naruto world, weights don't have the same damaging effect on shinobi as they do on us here on plain old Earth. Probably something to do with chakra, something that Naruto has in excess.
Um, a lot of people have been saying things along the lines of 'OMG Hiashi iz EVIL dont let him hurt Naruchan k?' Poor Hiashi. Everyone's picking on him. T_T For a while I was like 'WTF?' but then I realised that Hiashi's usually one of the in-village bad guys, so I'd thought I'd just say: Hiashi's good in this fic. A little bastardly, maybe, with a stick in his nether regions, but he's more or less on Naruto's side. At least, he's on Konoha's side. And Konoha, in this story, has got Naruto's back.
Lastly, and most importantly, you can get the dancing cactuses (or flowers of all types) from the shop Octopus, which is big in the UK. Look for it online if you're really interested – I have a yellow flower with a green base that dances every morning as I get ready for work. It has a remarkable ability to make smiles happen, which is in fact, if anyone's wondering, why Gai gave one to Rival Kakashi's No Doubt Emo Spawn.
Twin2: (For those of you who don't live in the UK, they're sometimes found in the random quirk-stalls at markets.)
Six years old
A small brown animal padded through the halls of the Hatake home. His squashed black nose quivered rapidly as he sniffed constantly, sounding like a cold on fast forward.
Nudging a particular door open, he made his reluctant way into the centre of the room before giving a little hop that in no way looked sufficient to propel him onto the raised bed before him. But it did, and he landed daintily on stubby legs and matter-of-factly strolled over the lump in the centre of the mattress.
"Pup, time to get up." The lump mumbled and moved a little, before stilling. The creature sighed and began to paw at where he hoped the lump's head was. "Come on. Up, up, up. School today. I did not help with all that mathematics last night for you not to hand it in today."
The scolding and pawing was insistent, so much so that the lump eventually squirmed and whined and shoved the covers back, revealing Naruto's tousled head. "Pakkuuun," he whined. The dog was unmoved.
"Up, pup," he repeated. Naruto grinned and rubbed sleep out of his eye.
"Is Dad back yet?" he asked drowsily, though he knew the answer. The dog shook his head.
"Nah. But you know the drill: up, dressed, feed me, school. Hustle." The child obligingly rolled out of bed and began preparing for the day.
A little more than ten months ago, the Hokage had finally broken the long-term leave he'd assigned Naruto's new father. The old man had been trying to ease Kakashi back into it by offering him a genin team every year, and in secret planned to continue to do so until Kakashi found one that he liked, but as the Hatake continued to uniformly reject every trio put before him, the village leader was left to more concrete methods.
Kakashi's re-joining the ranks of active shinobi had been a relief, truth be told, as numbers were at an all-time low thanks to a certain demon fox with overlarge paws trampling his way through town. On this particular occasion, he was teamed up with a group of his old ANBU war buddies on a mission to flush out a suspected hidden camp of foreign shinobi spies. The gossip in the underworld was that it was manned by ninja – either loyal or defected – of Kumo origin, and Sarutobi had a feeling that the presence of Kakashi on the team that confronted them might send them running for their borders just a little faster.
Kakashi had, as he had promised to do so long ago, left one of his dogs to guard Naruto, with instructions for the boy to go home with Kiba if Dad didn't pick him up from school on the second day of absence – Tsume would look after him, whatever the outcome of the mission.
The child had managed to stay in Kiba's class, disappointing several gossips who were expecting his graduation at a freakish age. Kakashi fended off queries by pointing out that Naruto wouldn't be able to actually graduate until he was twelve or so, so there was no point in bumping up grade after grade.
Stumbling more than once and yawning intermittently (bedtime was not Pakkun's forte), the young Hatake set about preparing for a day of learning.
Far away, just inside the Wind Country border, an older Hatake shifted in his place, eye fixed on the unchanging horizon he was viewing through a slit in the hidden (illegal) fort that looked from the outside like just another sand dune. Even someone trudging up the sloping walls outside would be unable to tell the difference when the door was closed.
Inside, it was a tarp box. Sand pressed in on all sides, held back by thick canvas which was supported by a skeleton of hardwood poles. It was uncomfortable, stuffy, and stifling hot. The sun had been up for a scant few hours, and already Kakashi was wet through with sweat.
Something bumped his elbow, and Kakashi broke from his vigil to glance at the man in the shelter with him. Sarutobi Asuma had just recently returned to the village after an absence that had begun just after Kakashi had returned with Naruto. Gossip had it that the departure was caused by the broiling tension with the man's father reaching breaking point, but Kakashi hadn't asked Asuma for details. He was back now, and the Hatake treated him as if he'd never left.
The dark-haired man was holding out a small snuff box filled with chewing tobacco. His addiction to nicotine wasn't something that could be turned off for convenience on a mission, but lighting up a cigarette on this stake out would be suicide – either because the smoke gave you away if you opened a vent to let it out or your teammates murdered you for smoking up the already-unbearable air in the shelter if you didn't. Chewing tobacco was a handy compromise.
Kakashi shook his head, declining the offer, and Asuma took some himself, dropping the tin after closing it securely. Neither man spoke.
The silver-haired man watched the sun climb steadily, its position telling him what time it was. In the inactivity of waiting, his mind wandered home, to the small blonde boy no doubt just as bored as he was. He'd be at the Academy now, and usually Friday started with a theoretical lesson – mathematics perhaps, or reading. Poor kid would be near tears by the end of it.
Overall, though, Kakashi had been pleased with how well Naruto had taken to the whole 'school' situation. After moving up two classes in as many weeks, the father had been braced for a rocky entry into 'Kiba's class!' as well, but had been pleasantly surprised with how smoothly the whole thing had gone. He had led his son to the new classroom as per instructions and made the acquaintance of the teacher who would be guiding this group through school. The Academy assigned teachers to classes, not grades, so this teacher would teach third form this year and fourth form next year, following the students up the ladder until they graduated, at which point he would be assigned another class of first form students.
Anyway, this class's teacher was a young man named Umino Iruka, a chuunin that Kakashi vaguely recognised as one he'd seen 'around'. He'd exchanged a slight bow with the man before announcing to Naruto that this was his new classroom, and this was his new teacher, Iruka-sensei, and then waited with bated breath for the reaction.
He needn't have worried. The blonde child had walked right up to Iruka-sensei, tilted his face almost vertically upwards to look him in the eye, and asked candidly, "Are you a real ninja?"
Iruka, to his credit, took it all in stride. After barely a pause he replied with equal frankness, "Yes, I am. Now go sit down."
Naruto had turned to his father and smiled. "I like this teacher better, Daddy. He's a ninja."
"Good," Kakashi had replied, shooting an apologetic look at the other adult in the room. "Do as you're told and sit down, Naru. I'll see you after school."
And there had been no more trouble from the little boy.
Yet.
A smudge on the horizon jolted the jounin back to the present. Kakashi narrowed his eye and nudged Asuma, indicating the smudge with a nod. Asuma nodded back and leaned forwards, waiting.
Slowly, maddeningly slowly, the smudge grew into a person, which gradually grew into the person they'd been waiting for, their informant.
He approached the hideout, looking around nervously, scanning for some clue as to where to go. Kakashi examined him carefully, looking for signs of deception or genjutsu. Then he examined his surrounds, looking for any hint that the man was being watched or followed. Nothing.
A glance at Asuma, and the Sarutobi shook his head, indicating that he hadn't seen anything either. Kakashi cleared his throat and spoke, voice rasping as he said his first words in hours. "Let him in."
Opening the door of the shelter was like opening the door of an oven. Heat blasted the inside, scaring away any lingering coolness the night had brought. The informant spotted the opening in an instant and dodged inside, Asuma slamming the door shut on his heels.
It was crowded with three. Kakashi focused on the perspiring man in his face, trying not to appear uncomfortable despite the fact that if he leaned forwards just a bit, he would be kissing him.
"Do you have it?" he asked flatly. The informant nodded.
"They changed their path – they've swung far south. They'll slide right past you here."
"Shit." That was Asuma. The man reached for his nonexistent cigarette and, upon finding it to still be nonexistent, ran an agitated hand through his hair. Kakashi's brilliant mind whirred.
"How far away are they?" he barked. The informant chewed his lower lip.
"Five hours or so?" he said hesitantly. Kakashi nodded: they had some time. They could salvage this.
"Okay. Asuma, run to the border as fast as you can and see if you can raise Raido on the comm unit – his squad are out our way somewhere too. Then the five of you see if you can get around the other side of our targets and swarm them – see if you can't get them to change their minds about where they're headed. Herd them back this way. We're still set up best here, but worst comes to worst we'll make a play before they cross the borders. Once they're in Ame, our job gets harder.
"Hiro, you get out of here. Hightail it home, and make sure your alibi is solid. It'd be annoying if you caught up in this or marked as our sneak. I don't want to have to break you out of gaol before your execution as well on this mission – things are tight as they are."
Hiro, the informant, grinned just a little and shot out the door. Asuma was moving, pulling on the vest he had shed out of surrender to the intense heat and taking a long draw from a water bottle.
"Will you be here?" he asked when he'd swallowed the mouthful. Kakashi nodded.
"I'm going to set traps up and down the line," he said, "See if I can't widen our net in time. But if we can't make them swing around, drive them down here, we'll lose them."
Asuma nodded his acknowledgement. "I'll find our backup," he promised. "And see if there's anyone else in the area to help us. Good luck."
"And you," Kakashi muttered, already gathering some equipment he would use to set his traps. A wave of heat as Asuma shouldered open the door, and then he was alone. For a few seconds, Kakashi got himself ready, then he too braved outside, and the shelter was empty.
Naruto stuck his tongue out at the particularly tricky mathematics problem he'd just solved. Then he leant back in his chair and looked around the class. He was seated in the back row, with Kiba on his left and an empty chair on his right. To Kiba's left were some of the Inuzuka's friends, Shikamaru and Chouji, and to the empty chair's right was the classroom wall.
The three boys in line with him were still working on the problem, but with his father drumming not only mathematics but the logic required to work through the equations into his skull for as long as the blonde could remember, algebra had so far proved no real challenge to the young Hatake. Looking around the class, he spotted one or two others who had finished – that smart girl with the pink hair, for one – and his blue eyes narrowed as he caught the dark gaze of the kid sitting in the third row.
Uchiha Sasuke. Top of the class in academics and weapon skills, second only to Naruto in shinobi theory and taijutsu. Next year, when the class began learning genjutsu and ninjutsu, there would no doubt be a struggle over who was better in each of those also.
The boy didn't like Naruto, which was okay because Naruto didn't like him either. He said mean things about how old the Hatake was, and about the fact that Dad still picked Naruto up every day, rather than letting the six year old walk home on his own. And he said he was better at school than the blonde. This fact alone had Naruto throwing himself into his schoolwork where he might once have drifted by with the same level of enthusiasm as Shikamaru. The Hatake heir was determined. He would come out top of the class, and beat the Uchiha meanie. He would.
Iruka-sensei soon called for the class's attention and walked them through the solutions to the problems he'd set. Some time was wasted while he bellowed at Kiba – Naruto wasn't sure what the Inuzuka had done, but it probably had something to do with the fact that Iruka didn't get up from his chair until lunchtime.
Naruto scowled at a sum he'd gotten wrong, angrily denoting the place he strayed off-course and the correct steps to take to solve the problem. That was the only one, but it cost him. When he'd spoken through the final question, Iruka-sensei called out for them to tell him their scores out of sixteen one by one.
"Aburame Shino-kun!"
"Fourteen, Sensei."
"Akamure Gin-kun!"
"Nine, Sensei."
"Akimichi Chouji-kun!"
"Six, Sensei."
The class list was thirty-odd names long, but it was only a minute or so before Naruto's name was called.
"Hatake Naruto-chan!"
Naruto twitched at the suffix – Sensei, I'm not that little – but just replied with a quiet (and very hard to get out) "Fifteen, Sensei."
Two rows ahead, a dark head raised at the admission, and all too soon Iruka was calling out, "Uchiha Sasuke-kun!"
"Sixteen, Sensei," Sasuke replied, before turning in his chair to stare at Naruto with a triumphant grin. Naruto stuck his tongue out at the annoying older boy, silently vowing to do better in their next lesson.
Sweat dripped from Kakashi's jawline or trickled down his back as the unforgiving desert sun attacked him as ferociously as any of his nindogs. Despite his discomfort, he couldn't stop or slow – he had to get as many of these traps up as he could, because if they didn't catch the party headed this way, they'd escape into River Country and this whole mission would have been a waste of time.
Kakashi was fast growing sick of this little group that had set up camp inside Konoha's borders. Frustratingly, when Kakashi and his impromptu squad had raided the little hideout, they'd found it mostly-deserted. A quick chat with the last remaining terrorist had led them to this much larger-scale problem on the border of Wind and Rain.
Suddenly, the comm unit he'd stuck into his ear buzzed with noise, the others clearly having come into range of its radio signal.
"Gen, get up! Scare them 'round!"
"Asuma, see if you can't frisk one of them – maybe get them thinking we're after something they have!"
"Split the leader off – that one in the red bandana. The others will follow him if we get him in the right direction."
"We're losing them!"
"Kakashi, I don't s'pose you can hear me?"
"I can," Kakashi spoke clearly, not pausing in his work despite the confusing jumble of shouts that sounded through the headpiece. "What's going on over there?"
"We're not gonna be able to get them to you," the man on the other side reported. "We've swung them a little, but they're pretty damn determined. We don't have the manpower to attack them head-on and win, and backup will never reach us in time. Anything you can do? How're those traps coming along?"
Kakashi finished attaching a weight to the end of a wire and straightened, using his sleeve to wipe sweat from his eyes. "I've set them up from our hideout towards you guys, but I don't think we'll get them. Hold on."
Grabbing his kit, he began to jog, bent low to hide among the sand dunes. Ten minutes later, he dropped to his belly on the hot sand and crawled to the top of a tall dune, looking over the top.
Yep, there the buggers were, dressed in clothing the same exact shade as the sand they were running over, looking like they very much wanted to cross the border and escape the pesky shinobi that had appeared to rattle them.
"Okay, drop back everyone," Kakashi ordered. "I see them. Be ready to grab one or two, though – I'll try to rig something up, but there's not much time. We may have to let this one go."
"Rodger that."
"I hear ya."
"Kay.
"Got it."
"You're the boss, Boss."
Kakashi tossed himself backwards, tearing open his bag of supplies and rushing to set up the complex trap he and Asuma had rigged last night by himself and in a time frame of maybe four minutes. Sweat that had nothing to do with the sun trickled past his temple as he dug in the soft sand until he hit the harder-packed stuff beneath, chipping away at that to excavate a place to anchor a weight, well aware that this was a fool's errand.
He rolled over on the hot sand to squint at the next dune, rapidly calculating the speed of his opponents and the likely trajectory of the weighted bundle in his hand, tossed in a quick prayer for good measure, and threw.
The long trail of wires was invisible but for glints of sunlight across their length and the carefully-spaced tags that dragged with them as it flew, flapping like washing on a laundry line. Metal struck sand almost thirty metres from where the Hatake was carefully sprawled, and a tag right at the apex of wire that had yet to fall went off with a slight pop. The twin wires separated and fell away from each other to form a near-perfect circle in the sand as something else struck its centre – another small weight, a tag fluttering behind it.
The breeze was picking up, rapidly burying the wires and their accompanying tags in sand. Kakashi sighed with relief as the trap vanished under the movement of the sand dunes, and not a moment too soon – now he could hear the faint, rough footsteps of people hurrying over sand, the faint flitting of chakra as the runaways tried to augment their movement. He shuffled backwards and away from the trap, trying to disappear before the runaways could get wind of what he'd set for them. The soft rolling sand dunes mostly hid him already, and intense control over his chakra did the rest as at least four sets of feet shuffled over the perimeter of the trap.
The chakra they were using for balance was enough to set off the centre tag, and sand suddenly blasted them from all sides as the detonation sent the particles flying in an impromptu sandstorm. Someone screamed. The edge of the trap, marked out with wires, was suddenly cemented by the gravity seals on the activated tags while droves of sand were thrown out of the ever-increasing pit.
Only one of the renegades had been far enough out to escape Kakashi's trap, and he'd fled in a desperate panic with one of Kakashi's kunai in the back of one leg – he'd send Asuma after the blood trail in a minute, but for now he had enough captives to deal with.
The gravity seals had yet to run out of juice, so the four ninjas spitting grit and wiping it out of their eyes were doing so at the bottom of a very solid six-metre deep pit excavated by the weighted concussion seal. They could escape it, sure, but it would be hard to do before his backup arrived. The guy with the red bandana – ooh, got the leader – glared up at him, sand leaking from his ears.
Kakashi smiled, eye curving closed as he did so. "Gotcha," he said brightly.
Naruto grinned, jigging on his toes proudly. Their class held an uneven twenty-seven students, which would work out well when they went to divide up genin teams but meant that when it came to taijutsu class, they had uneven numbers for sparring. Iruka-sensei had sheparded his class outside for their taijutsu session after lunch and told the class that whoever performed the best in the warm-up hour of the lesson would be sent to spar with Gin-sensei's class, the grade above theirs. At that moment, Naruto had locked eyes with Sasuke and known that he would be the one sent away, if he broke his neck doing so.
In the end, nothing so drastic had happened, but Iruka-sensei had chosen the Hatake and sent him running to where Gin-sensei's class were pairing off on the other side of the Academy grounds.
Naruto had lost the spar with the big nine year old he'd fought with, but not by much, and Gin-sensei had spoken a few approving words to him before sending him back to his own class.
Naruto bounced his way back into the fray of his classmates, all of whom were still tussling with one another – in fact, it seemed like Sasuke was taking it in turns to fight three different people, his designated partner and a pair of girls who were always hanging around him. As the Hatake watched, the Uchiha tossed Ino to the ground and held her there until she tapped out, then stood and eyed the boy who he'd actually been assigned to fight warily.
He looks cross, Naruto thought gleefully, running towards Iruka-sensei, who was correcting Chouji's stance.
"Sensei! I'm back!" he announced.
"Yes, keep that arm up, a right angle," Iruka said to Chouji, then straightened and looked at the blonde six year old. "Naruto-chan. How did it go? Did you win?"
Naruto shook his head. "Not quite," he admitted. "But I almost did! I almost got him, honest!" Iruka smiled, neither believing nor disbelieving the claim – he'd get the full story soon enough from Gin in the staff room.
"Did Gin-sensei say anything?" he inquired, and the little boy's face scrunched up as he tried to remember.
"Yes! Uhm… he said… 'Well done, Naruto-chan, you do your family name proud.' Then he said, 'Thank Iruka-sensei for sending you over for me. I don't think Jiro-kun has had such a good fight from anyone smaller than him in a long while." The Hatake scowled for just a moment. "I'm not that little. But I like Jiro! He's cool! And I saw Neji – his uncle and my dad talk sometimes, so I see him around – and he looked weird. His eyes were – weird. Is he sick, Sensei?"
Iruka shook his head, drawing Naruto to the edge of the fighting class. "No, he's not. I suspect he was using his kekkei genkai, the Byakugan. It's a bit complicated – you should ask your father to explain it: he'll know more than I do about how it works and what it does, but it is passingly similar to your father's Sharingan." Naruto looked at him blankly, and Iruka sighed a little. "Ask your father," he said again.
"Okay, Sensei!" chirped the boy.
"Have you stretched to cool down?" Iruka asked next, and Naruto nodded. "Then you may have a few minutes' free time. It is almost time to go inside."
The six year old brightened and raced to the nearby swing hung from the tree in the corner of the Academy ground. He'd finally learnt to push himself on the thing, and quickly worked himself up quite high.
Before too long, he heard Iruka-sensei calling for the class to jog once around the yard to cool down and come inside, and reluctantly let the swing drift to a stop. Jumping off, he trotted back towards the classroom, dodging classmates on their trip around the yard.
Slipping into the classroom, the others trickled in by ones and twos, most looking very much like they had just been rolling on the ground in pairs pulling at clothes and hair. Kiba particularly looked like he'd had a good grub in the dirt as he came in, spotted Naruto, grinned and made his way over.
"Good job today, kid!" he grinned, sharp-toothed, banging the younger boy on the back with a friendly thump. "Sent off to Gin-sensei's class! You're not gonna ditch us for them, are you?"
Naruto shook his head. "Nah," he replied casually. "Dad says that 'cause I can't graduate early anymore because of that new law, there's no point in putting me up. He'd rather I stay where I have friends to play with and a teacher who can 'handle my quirks', whatever that means."
The blonde looked in askance at his older friend, who grinned more. "I think he means that both you and Iruka-sensei are one of a kind," he said diplomatically.
Sasuke, who had wandered in after Kiba and was standing nearby, frowning at his usual federation of female followers, scoffed a bit. "I still can't believe anyone'd let a baby like you in, Hatake. But I guess you make a nice mascot."
Naruto instantly riled. "I beat you in taijutsu today!" he half-shouted. Sasuke turned to face him fully rolling his eyes.
"Sure you did," he returned bitterly. "You're a spoiled little brat with the teachers wrapped around your fingers! And I beat you in mathematics. Again, you dumb baby!"
"Don't call him names!" Kiba leapt to Naruto's defence, ignoring the way the entire class was staring at them. Sasuke looked at him angrily.
"Shut up, stupid-head," he retorted, giving the ultimate in eight year old insults.
With an angry cry, Kiba leapt at the Uchiha, surprise letting him tackle the more skilled boy around the middle, bringing them both crashing to the floor.
"You're a stupid-head!" the Inuzuka screamed as the pair rolled over and over, classmates fleeing to avoid getting dragged into the brawl.
"Am not!" Sasuke shouted defiantly, getting a good handful of Kiba's hair and pulling as hard as he could, hearing Kiba's squeal with a bit of wild pleasure before shouting himself as Kiba poked him in the eye in retaliation. This led to Sasuke working an arm free to punch Kiba's nose, and things degraded from there, dissolving into a writhing mess of screaming, pinching, pulling, kicking, biting arms and legs and teeth.
The girls (and one or two of the boys) were squealing for the boys to stop, for Kiba to leave Sasuke-kun alone, while friends of Naruto and Kiba shouted encouragements to the brunette and slurs at the Uchiha. Naruto danced about on his toes, shouting instructions for Kiba and generally getting in Sasuke's way as best he could. The remaining portion of the class was taking no side, withdrawing to stand on their desks and holler for the chaos to cease.
Then, quite suddenly, everything ended with Iruka-sensei appearing above the squalling boys and grabbing a collar in each hand, yanking them up and then down to smash their skulls together, which stopped their struggling, before hoisting them up until they were dangling just off their toes above the ground.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?" the teacher bellowed. "Everyone SIT – DOWN – NOW!"
There was a scramble, and soon everyone except for Kiba, Sasuke and Naruto (who stayed standing right where he was) was behind their desk. Iruka took a deep breath and lowered the brawlers to stand on their own before they suffocated – he was not having that conversation with Fugaku.
"Okay," he said in a more level (and somehow much more deadly) voice, brown eyes scanning the classroom for a reliable tattle-tale. "Sakura-kun, tell me what happened."
The pink-haired girl immediately launched into the telling. "Sasuke-kun came in with everyone, and Kiba and Naruto were talking – and they weren't exactly being quiet, Sensei – and Kiba said something that made Sasuke sort of laugh, and Kiba shouted at him, and Sasuke said something back, and Kiba attacked him."
"That's not what happened!" Kiba shouted indignantly.
"He called me a baby and Kiba a stupid-head!" Naruto shouted just as indignantly though he clearly had no real understanding of what about the whole situation had caused Kiba to actually attack the dark-haired boy. "He's a big, fat meanie!"
Sasuke's eyes flashed and he took a step towards the blonde, but was cut off by the teacher before he could speak.
"Okay, okay, that's enough. Everyone out. School's over for today," Iruka snapped just a few minutes ahead of schedule, one hand firmly on Sasuke's shoulder, half-afraid the bigger boy would do some serious damage if he and Naruto were to come to blows – two eight year olds brawling was one thing, but a fight between an eight year old and a six year old was something else altogether.
"Kiba-kun, you stay," he added as the rest of the class began to trickle out of the door, giving the irate teacher a wide berth. "Sasuke-kun, you didn't start the fight so you can go, but I'm going to warn you that if you are involved in this sort of thing again, I will have to contact your father."
Sasuke's dark eyes widened a fraction – that would be bad: he'd never earn his father's admiration by acting up in school! The Uchiha ducked his head. "Yes, Sensei," he said as the adult let him go, silently vowing not to fight with anyone anymore, no matter how annoying certain idiots were.
At least until he proved to Father that he was just as good as Itachi, at any rate. Then he'd teach Kiba a thing or two. And maybe the blonde know-it-all baby, too, though Sasuke felt slightly uncomfortable with the idea of beating up a little kid. What if he just scared him a little?
Sasuke glared at the Hatake as he slid out the door and set off home. Naruto watched him go resentfully, then cast a regretful glance at Kiba and slunk towards the door himself.
"Naruto-chan!" Iruka-sensei called. "You stay too, please."
Naruto winced, but froze near the door, examining his sandals minutely as Iruka proceeded to rip into Kiba, detailing exactly how disappointed the teacher was in him for his conduct, and where such behaviour would lead him, and what would happen if he ever dared to use his fists to settle matters on school grounds again. After assigning three days of detention to be spent with Mizuki-sensei cleaning whatever the assistant teacher found that was suitably filthy, he was sent out of the room. Kiba left, looking like a whipped puppy, but the look his sent Naruto on the way out of the room was 'don't worry about me, kid' with undertones of 'Sensei's dumb' and 'I'd do it again'. Then Naruto was alone with the angry teacher.
"I didn't do anything!" Naruto protested instantly when Iruka turned to him. "I didn't fight with no one, and Sasuke called me names first! And he said I was a baby! I'm not!"
"I know, I know, Naruto-chan." Naruto bristled at the suffix, hugely irritated by it on principal, but didn't say anything, childish intuition warning him it was a bad idea given how much obvious effort it had taken Iruka to gentle his voice, and how that vein in his forehead pulsed in a way that belied the anger still boiling beneath the surface.
The teacher turned away for a long moment, calming himself. It wouldn't do to just scream and holler at the six year old. That would accomplish nothing. When he felt he was sufficiently in control once more, he turned back to the boy and, with a sigh, sat on the first of the low stairs that granted access to the back rows of desks.
"Naruto-chan, I know that you and Sasuke-kun don't get along very well," he began. Naruto huffed angrily and plopped down beside Iruka.
"He's mean an' he thinks he's better'n me when he's not," the blonde said stoutly. Iruka carefully held his tongue – in truth, Sasuke probably was a little more talented than Naruto, but there was a reason Naruto was in this class, and Iruka would lay money on the fact that if the current Naruto were to go up against Sasuke when the Uchiha had been six – or even seven – Naruto would win hands down.
"I want you to try and get along with Sasuke-kun," the teacher said sternly. "You're both excellent students, top two of the class, but you Naruto-chan are much younger than your classmates. There's more to being a shinobi than intelligence, and if you don't seem mature enough to cope with a rival, I will remove the strain and have you placed back in Akemi-sensei's classroom." Inwardly, Iruka doubted he could actually do that, given how influential the boy's father was and the fact that Akemi still muttered darkly about blonde prodigy brats who threw sharp and pointy objects at unsuspecting Academy teachers.
Taking Naruto's half-afraid expression, though, Iruka knew that Naruto thought he'd do it, which was all that counted. "You can go," the teacher said simply, and stood to usher the boy out of the classroom, before moving to collapse in his chair.
It had been a long day.
Kakashi sighed as he exited the Hokage Tower and wandered down the street right through the middle of Konoha's nightlife. It was late, so late that Naruto would be well and truly asleep by the time he got home (or else Pakkun would be dining on dry kibbles for a full week as punishment for failing as a babysitter) so there was no real need to rush.
Ambling along the road, he almost didn't dodge in time to avoid being tackled by a slightly pink Genma.
"Kakashi! You're back! We're back! Everybody's back!" he crowed.
"Feeling a little randy, Gen?" Kakashi asked dryly as the man slung an arm around the masked man's neck and leant most of his weight there.
"A little drunk," corrected an amused female voice, and the Hatake glanced at its source.
"Ah. Long time no see, Kurenai."
The woman smiled prettily. "I've been around. You've been the antisocial one." Kakashi shrugged that away without a thought.
Later, Kakashi would swear up and down (silently, in the privacy of his own mind because doing so out loud would only encourage the tossers) that his 'friends' had used some form of black magic to coerce him into what happened that night. Surely Hatake Sharingan Kakashi (a new name cropping up here and there) could never consensually sit in a bar with Anko, Asuma, Genma, Kurenai, Raido, Yuugao and Hayate (who had finally gotten over his latest cold and was not coughing) drinking sake and exchanging stories.
Somehow, though, it happened, and Kakashi found himself with more alcohol on board than he'd consumed in one sitting in a long time. Eventually, the bar kicked them out, and the group stumbled out into the street at around two in the morning.
As the crowd dispersed, Anko sidled up beside Kakashi. "I don't s'pose you want to come home with me, do you?" Kakashi removed his arm from Anko's and pushed her away, rolling his eye at her blatant pass-throwing – naturally, he wasn't drunk per se, and certainly more than sober enough to deal with this situation.
"I have a kid at home, Anko."
The woman was unfazed. "Okay, rephrase: I don't sp'ose you want to invite me home with you, do you?"
"Kids wake up early, Anko." Kakashi dodged an attempt to fondle some part of him and swayed a little. "I am not having the 'Daddy what are you doing with that lady' talk with my six year old. It's not happening."
Anko stopped attempting to molest him to grin, a glint of evil amusement in her eyes. "Methinks I smell childhood trauma. Have you had one of these conversations before, perhaps?" she half-fished, half-teased.
Kakashi shuddered. "I don't want to talk about it anymore," he said stoutly, vaguely aware that he was saying more than he normally would anyway and not finding it in him to be terribly concerned. "All I'll say is that I am determined not to have a repeat, especially if I'm the one doing the explaining."
"Sooo… raincheck?" Kakashi sighed. Incorrigible.
"Anko, you know what a monster my kid is. Why would you want to risk an activity that may give you one of your own to deal with? Especially since I've clearly proven my own…"
"Idiocy?" Anko suggested. "Ability to knock some chick up entirely by accident, even when being careful?"
Kakashi sighed. "Go stalk Aoba instead," he suggested. Anko considered, before brightening.
"Okay! He's more of a tightarse than you – he'll be a real challenge!" She left abruptly.
"Have fun," Kakashi called after her. Success.
Waking up after drinking oneself into a moderately-thawed state was never fun for anyone, let alone a usually-pristine shinobi like the Copycat Ninja. Kakashi's eye opened a slit, and he groaned before giving up the very idea of getting up today. Continued existence was hard enough.
"It's your own fault," said a female voice mildly.
"Akino," Kakashi mumbled, groping for the large, reddish dog. "I didn't think I summoned you…"
"You didn't," the dog said pleasantly, kindly not reacting when her master's half-blind fumble to pet her resulted in a clumsy finger jabbing her in the eye. "Pakuun panicked when you stumbled in at three am and decided that the rug was a good place to have a nap. He couldn't get you up and moving again, so he called me." The dog was blessed with a painful amount of common sense, and would have been the best choice in such a situation. Kakashi nodded blearily, rubbing his aching head and thinking that at least he knew how he'd come to be in bed, soaking wet. A pair of canines had clearly attempted to sober him up before just deciding to let him sleep it off.
"Argh… why did I let them sucker me into drinking, again?" Akino just sniffed, torn between amusement and disapproval. She didn't ask who 'them' was, rightly guessing that Kakashi's age mates had caught him at a weak moment, and managed to convince him to act human for a scant hour or so.
Then, a noise in the hallway made Kakashi wince and Akino chuckle. "Uh-oh," she said in her mild voice. "Looks like you forgot something. You're going to have to get up today after all." Kakashi groaned loudly, pulling his pillow out from under his head and smashing it over his face in a half-serious attempt to smother himself.
There was a clack-bang-thump noise sequence as the bedroom door was opened with such gusto that it was slammed into the adjacent wall and bounced off of it with enough force to swing it shut again after the figure that had rushed in.
"DAD! DADDY! You're HOME!"
Something collided with his stomach, and Kakashi groaned again, more quietly. "Naruto," he sighed. "What time is it?"
There was a pause, and Kakashi didn't really resist when two small hands curled around his right wrist and lifted it away from the pillow still firmly covering the adult's head. For a moment, Naruto chewed his tongue, squinting at the tiny clock that was only as wide as the diameter of a screw sewn into Kakashi's sleeve
"The little hand's on the six and the big hand's on the nine," he said after a pause.
"Ugh… remind me to teach you to read time," Kakashi mumbled, reclaiming his hand and using it to toss his pillow in a random direction. Akino yelped as it hit her with enough force to make her slide backwards off the bed. Naruto giggled, then began to tug on Kakashi's arm insistently.
"Dad it's soo cool you're home I missed you did you do lots where were you what was your mission like didja meet anyone cool was it cold did you get the bad guys Pakkun's not a very good babysitter because he's always letting me stay up and eat ice cream before breakfast which is cool but I don't think you'd like it much and you don't have to work today, do you, it's Sunday – let's do something! Let's go to the park! Or – or – or swimming in that lake you can get the Hokage to let us out of the village to go to it! Yeah! Okay, you pack lunch, I'll grab my swimming shorts!"
The kid left at a run, and Kakashi groaned yet again, half-wishing he'd followed Anko home after all – she'd at least let him sleep away a hangover. Akino snickered most unhelpfully.
"Well, good luck," she said brightly, and poofed out of existence. Kakashi glared at the spot she'd last been, silently promising retribution to be doled out at a later date.
In the meantime… He rolled and sat up groggily, before reaching for his kunai pouch and digging through it until he found his little first-aid sachet. Inside, he quickly unearthed a few painkillers and his last hydro-pill, which was a good quick-fix for a dehydrated shinobi in a hurry. He'd need to restock: he'd used almost his entire hoard in Suna, and now he wasted his last pill on the banishing of a hangover.
By the time Naruto bounced back into the room, he was feeling vaguely human again, and he stumbled into the shower in the adjacent bathroom, more or less ignoring his six year old running in and out of his room, beside himself with excitement.
Eventually, he had to drag himself out of the lovely hot shower water, a fact compounded by the small child that had started thumping the cubicle's tinted glass sides and hollering wordlessly like someone trying to herd sheep from a pen.
"Okay," the man sighed, flicking off the water jet. "Okay, okay, Naruto – get out of here! Go on, get! You go make us up a lunch, then – shoo! Let me get dressed, you weird child."
While the blonde was occupied in the kitchen, Kakashi dressed quickly and made a beeline to the Hokage Tower, putting in a request for a day's leave to explore the forest outside the village walls. While his request was being processed, he wandered over to the hospital and bullied one of the medics into flushing the rest of the alcohol from his system, then stole a cache of hydro-pills while the poor kid wasn't looking. Feeling a hundred percent better, he returned to the Hokage Tower, collected his yellow ticket of leave, and ambled his way home.
Naruto was still in the kitchen, having a shouting match with the orange juice, which seemed to be too high in the fridge for him to be able to fetch the heavy glass bottle down. Kakashi leant over the blonde's head and plucked the bottle from its shelf before things escalated any more and smiled blithely as he filled Naruto's waiting water bottle. "All set?" he asked, taking in the pile of instant ramen packets and mess of what appeared to be some kind of sandwich approximation. Naruto shouted an affirmative, and a few minutes later, the small Hatake family left the house.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of recurring precious moments. Naruto, the energetic child that he was, babbled non-stop, bouncing around in his excitement that Dad was home! Kakashi, once cleared of the hangover, was much better able to participate in and even enjoy his son's exuberance, and spent the day alternately egging him on and regaling (edited) tales of his mission.
It was dark before Kakashi got the first bad feeling, like something was going to happen – something horrible. It was just the slightest twinge in the back of his mind, and he quickly dismissed it, focused on shooing Naruto away from the little bonfire he was building up before 'helping' hands accidentally-on-purpose touched the dancing flames. Later, years later, he would look back on that instant and wondered if maybe, had he not ignored the prickling feeling of foreboding, could he maybe – maybe – have made some difference to the horrors that unfolded that night.
"Okay! We're ready for them, Naru!" he called, and Naruto cheered, running over with his bag of carefully-hoarded cheese sandwiches and plopping down on his knees next to his father. The fire was crackling nicely, and Kakashi smiled as he helped the blonde skewer a sandwich with a cleverly sharpened stick long enough to hold it over the flames without burning small fingers.
Why the boy had wanted to do this, Kakashi had no idea, but Naruto had opened those blue eyes at him and pleaded, forsaking his grown-up 'Dad' for a much more heart-wrenching 'Daddy', just as he always did when he wanted something. And the jounin didn't see the harm in letting the kid burn a few things – he supposed it might have something to do with ingrained instincts to catch and cook one's own food that this open-fire, food-on-a-stick setup appealed to.
That, or Naruto just wanted to light stuff on fire. Heavens knew Kakashi had been fond enough of the same at Naruto's age. Sure enough, it didn't take long before Naruto's sandwich was burning away cheerfully, and Kakashi chuckled as Naruto shouted in dismay and flicked the flaming mass into the nearby lake they'd both paddled in earlier that day.
"Shoving the whole thing right into the flame is going to set it alight as well, Naru," the adult said while Naruto attempted to affix another sandwich to the end of his stick. "Try holding it a little above the fire and turning it over and over. It'll take longer, but you won't get a hands-on experience as to what fire tastes like."
Settling back, he watched fondly as Naruto set a second and then a third sandwich on fire, before tugging out a candy bar of some description and forcing that onto the stick instead.
"Naruto, are you sure you should cook the candy bars-that-I'm-going-to-pretend-I-can't-see-because-if-I-saw-them-I'd-confiscate-them?"
Naruto waved the adult away. "Quiet, Dad! I know what I'm doing."
Kakashi backed off, and chuckled when the chocolate burst into flames before it could melt. To his surprise, Naruto retracted the candy, blew on it to put out the fire, and began to eat the charred remains happily. His expression told Kakashi that it wasn't pride that made him do so: no, the little blonde had actually wanted scorched chocolate.
Weird, Kakashi thought, watching with fascination.
The moon was high and swathed in clouds by the time Naruto returned to attempting to toast his sandwiches. Kakashi leaned back and watched the white glowing circle, wondering if it was going to rain. But no, those clouds were all wrong for rain – they'd just hang around, drifting over and off the moon again and again, alternately plunging the land into shadow and light. A perfect night for all manner of shinobi escapades, perfect for theft, perfect for assassination-
That train of thought was cut off abruptly as Naruto shouted in triumph and snatched a perfectly toasted (read: not on fire) sandwich from his much-messed and charred stick. "I did it!" the six year old cheered.
Kakashi smiled as he watched Naruto. "You've got it!" he praised. "Well d…" he stopped abruptly, trailing off as a shiver passed over him, leaving him cold to the core, and he knew.
Something had happened.
Something terrible.
"Naruto!" he called to the boy, "We're going home!"
He didn't know what it was, what was happening, but he felt the overwhelming, all encompassing pressure to get Naruto to safety – he was acutely aware that here, out of the village, they were as vulnerable as it got.
Naruto squealed a protest as his father snatched him up, slinging him onto a broad back and setting off towards the village, taking to the treetops to save time.
They reached Konoha to find most of it still asleep. Kakashi moved towards ANBU HQ instinctively, brushing in right past all the security designed to keep non-ANBU personnel (like him) out.
"U-Uhm, excuse me, shinobi-san," began a first-year guarding the room immediately inside the HQ doors, but Kakashi just pushed past him.
"Stow it, rookie," he grunted, dropping Naruto on the ground and grabbing the blonde's small hand. Naruto had to trot to keep up with his long strides as he made his way to one of the common rooms – the one his squad had shared with five other squads when he'd been part of the corps.
People in white armour were milling there anxiously, each one feeling the same as Kakashi – something bad was going on. Boar, a squad captain, was attempting to organise a patrol, but the other spooked captains were gathering their squads around them and refusing to offer the manpower needed.
"Dog!" yelped a voice. Kakashi turned towards it to see a member of his once-squad and was instantly surprised to see that he'd survived this long – the life expectancy of an ANBU was nowhere near the six years it had been since Kakashi had been rooted out.
"It's just 'Kakashi' now, Owl," he said lightly. Owl grinned at him through his bird mask, looking down at the boy who was attempting to pry his hand out of Kakashi's so that he could run and explore.
"'Otou-san' too, I hear," he commented. Kakashi grunted, sliding to the bulletin board on one of the walls, searching for any hint as to what had every high-end shinobi's senses screaming.
He turned from the board, unsurprised by its uselessness, to find Boar approaching. Since he seemed to be one of the more controlled ANBU in the room, he asked, "Boar. Do you know anything about this – disturbance?"
Boar grinned tightly, white teeth flashing through a chip in his mask (should report that – no, wait, not my problem, I'm not ANBU anymore) and ran a hand over his cloaked head. "Takes guts to openly admit a shinobi's schizophrenic tendencies," he said, his voice strained. Then, "I dunno – everyone's just jittery. I was half-thinking that maybe the T and I guys had let a neuro-toxin into our aircon again as a prank, sparking some paranoid delusions. But you're here, and that in itself worries me more than anything."
Kakashi nodded, not even noticing the way the ANBU was deferring to him like he still had any authority in this setting whatsoever, despite the fact that Kakashi had left ANBU long before Boar had even been considering joining. "Okay," he said, "Then we should-"
He cut himself off, and all noise in the room dropped just as suddenly, as an alarm blared through the headquarters. The Hatake's heart leapt in his throat, and all of a sudden everyone was in motion.
The alarm was a complex system through the entire village, designed to be able to rally defences at a moment's notice. Any shinobi could trip it, and all of chuunin rank or higher were instructed in how, when and why to do so. It was only to be used in the most dire of circumstances, with terrible consequences for all who misused it. The last time it had been sounded was the day the demon Kyuubi had appeared outside the village walls, literally howling for blood.
The standard response time allowed to ANBU was ten seconds, and the corps wasted at least three of those freezing up before with a flurry of movement everyone rushed to be battle-ready while Boar was joined by three more captains and a tech rookie.
"It's an internal alarm," the rookie gasped, looking moments away from panic, a fact which was effortlessly ignored by the five men gathered with him. "Within the Uchiha Compound!"
That was it – the room was emptied before he registered that a small blonde child had been shoved into his arms, let alone comprehended the growled words, "Lose him and I'll accident you."
A beat or two later, when everything had filtered through his mind, he blinked dumbly at the child (how old? Six, seven maybe?) who was looking up at him.
"Hi, ANBU-san," the boy said into the silence. "My dad was in a hurry, wasn't he? What are we gonna do until he gets back?"
The rookie swallowed.
Owl felt sick as he slipped quietly through the eerie streets in the Uchiha Compound, treading carefully and hopping from rafter to streetlamp to rubbish bin in order to avoid stepping in the blood of his comrades. Every few feet he'd reach another body, jump to its side and check for a pulse, for some hint of life. There was none, so he'd grit his teeth and bite the inside of his cheek hard to keep from vomiting and move the body onto its back, crossing still-warm arms over its chest as a notification that this body had already been checked.
His chakra was every where. Uchiha Itachi, rising star of the ANBU. Thirteen year old wonder. As the eldest current member of ANBU, Owl had (naturally) crossed paths with the youngest current member, and he was horrified to realise that he hadn't seen the warning signs, had seen no hint that the kid would do something like – like this! The thought that every man, woman and teen looking through the chaos with him was thinking the same self-damning thoughts in no way comforted the bird-masked ANBU.
Another body – this one a young girl, probably fifteen or sixteen. Owl rolled her over and sighed when he realised that her throat was torn right out. Dead.
A little under half of ANBU was making their sad way through the massacre grounds, checking person after person. A skeleton crew had been sent to secure the village, and the rest had set of in pursuit of Psychonut McScrewedup in the hopes of catching him. Every tracker in ANBU was on the trail, as well as the famous Ex-ANBU Hatake 'Dog' Kakashi, who could reportedly track a mole from a hot air balloon.
They had found the man who'd tripped the alarm – he'd managed to drag himself a few feet into an alcove, leaving a significant volume of his blood and innards behind him, and used the last of his chakra to set off the village alert. He was just breathing his last as the first ANBU arrived to help – so far, he'd been the longest surviving Uchiha they'd found.
Owl left the girl where she was and continued on his way, eventually wandering into a specific darkened house with the door ominously ajar. At a glance, it was empty, untouched, as if its inhabitants had just stepped out to go to dinner, or see a friend. Shoes were lined with varying levels of neatness by the door, coats were tossed randomly over the backs of chairs and hung neatly on hooks, and in the kitchen a pot was boiling over, the smell of burning rice filling the room. Owl sighed and switched the stove off, glancing at the half-cut vegetables on the board nearby. The meal maker had been caught by surprise, but there was no body in here.
For a moment, there was a tiny glimmer of hope that Itachi wasn't quite that psychotic – perhaps his own mother had been spared? – but gloomily reminded himself of the stench of blood in this place as he strayed further into the house.
He found them in the drawing room, and Owl slid the door open gently and quietly dismissed any lingering shred of faith in the weasel-brat's sanity – there lay his immediate family, slumped together on the floor, pickling in their own blood. The woman – a pretty thing, he saw when he turned her over to check her for life – had from her position been reaching out and down, as if to pet the cheek of her son, welcome him home. Had he killed her before she touched him, or had he cut her down while feeling her caress?
The father had been kneeling where he still was, the ANBU decided. He'd been the second in this room to fall to the blade of his heir. The expression of surprise and anger was eternally etched into his features, frozen there by death, and Owl retreated and left him to it.
With a heavy sigh, the middle-aged man dropped to his knees beside the last body, this one pitifully small and sprawled forwards on the floor, eyes glazed and staring with terror at what must have been a horrifying last sight.
"Ah, hell," the masked man said, laying a hand on the small dark head, ruefully feeling the last lingering heat that used to be life. "Poor kid."
Just as he had been doing with all the others, Owl moved to roll the tiny corpse over and lay him on his back, but before he managed it, the child made a whimpering noise and jerked twice, sporadically.
"N-no," came a broken, pitiful mewl. "N-nii-sa-"
Owl jumped back in surprise with a girly scream. "Aah!" Then, recovering almost instantly. "You're alive! OI! THERE'S ONE ALIVE IN HERE! WHERE'S BADGER?"
He placed firm hands on the boy, keeping him still, and looked him up and down, searching for injuries. Surely, they didn't have much time – Itachi was an assassin, he knew how to murder people effectively. So this kid must have gotten insanely lucky – still, if he waited for the medic, the kid could die of his injuries now and all would be lost…
To Owl's very great surprise, his examination found no gaping, bleeding wounds, though the boy was soaked in life fluid – his parents', of course – but that meant that Itachi had left this kid alive to see, maybe even made him watch what the teen had done to his own family.
"That sick fuck," Owl mumbled, scooping up the boy and running with him, meeting two different medics outside who'd been fetched by those who'd heard his shouts. "They better damn well catch him."
The official leader of the tracking party, codenamed Bloodhound, swore and slammed a fist into the nearest tree with enough force to shatter his knuckles. With a cry that had little to do with the injury, he sank to his knees on the tree branch they were balanced on and leant his masked head against the main trunk. "Fucking damn it…"
"Nothin', Boss," a small pug informed the only member of the party without a porcelain mask. "We lost him. The kid's a ghost."
Kakashi sighed heavily – he knew. Itachi had been well trained in covering tracks, and he was good at it – better than most. He knew how to walk lightly, how to stick to ground that wouldn't keep his scent for long, and how to keep his chakra from sticking to his surroundings and leaving a trail. More than that, he was small and light, allowing him to fit places his pursuers couldn't and leave even less of an indent in the ground he trod on than any other ghost.
"It's no use," Deer, another tracker, said bitterly. "We lost him."
Kakashi nodded, placing a hand on their 'leader's back. "Let's go back," he sighed. "This is a fight for another day."
There was a pause, then Bloodhound nodded miserably and stood. "I trained this freaking kid myself," he mumbled. "I should be able to find him."
"His teacher did him credit," Falcon commented softly, and Kakashi dismissed his dogs.
"Come on, this way," he said, leading the way home.
It was a sorry troop that trickled back into Konoha, their rage ebbed away to make room for guilt and sadness, neither of which they as ANBU were allowed to show. Kakashi turned to Bloodhound when they reached ANBU HQ.
"I'll go give the report to Hokage-sama. You can give yours tomorrow. It's too late for him to listen to the both of us."
Bloodhound just nodded absently, not even registering that he should be saying that exactly to Kakashi. Who was going to argue with Dog, anyway, retired or not?
Kakashi double-timed it over to the Hokage Tower, where Sarutobi was waiting for him. If he was surprised to see him instead of Bloodhound, he didn't let on, instead starting right in with, "Did you get him?"
Kakashi shook his head. "No, sir."
Sarutobi wilted, sinking down into his chair, looking decades older. "Oh."
"How bad was it?" the jounin asked. "How many casualties? How many injured?" The Hokage hesitated.
"There… was one survivor."
A pause.
"One?" Kakashi echoed, thinking of the hundreds of Uchiha he knew, or at least knew of. "Just… just one?"
"Just one," echoed Sarutobi sadly. "The last Uchiha."
The words resonated within Kakashi, and he closed his eye for a moment, letting the grief for dozens of Konoha shinobi wash through him, embracing the feeling, accepting it, and letting it go. The thought that if he'd managed to save Obito, his friend would have died in this massacre too was harder to swallow, but he managed to tuck it away and open his eye again, having found his balance for the time being.
"Is the survivor critically injured, or is he likely to survive?"
"He is unharmed, but very young. The medics are with him now, and are afraid the shock may kill him. It appears that Itachi tortured him via the sharingan before abandoning him to die." The old Hokage either didn't notice or didn't care that Kakashi really had no business knowing this, or that in a debriefing, he was supposed to ask the questions and the shinobi was supposed to answer.
"…Who?"
"A boy by the name of Uchiha…" Sarutobi checked the sheet before him, a copy of the doctor's notes. "Uchiha Sasuke. Itachi's younger brother."
Kakashi blinked, and for a moment his brain threatened to explode as this bloody world collided with the happier world he shared with his son, and he was reminded that both aspects were one and the same reality. "Uchiha Sasuke?" he repeated softly, speaking the name Naruto had so often whined after a day competing with the kid at the Academy.
Sarutobi watched him with calculating eyes, and Kakashi felt a chill as he realised exactly where this was going. The Hatake quickly put his feelings aside and bristled as he prepared for a fight. "I wonder if-"
"No." Kakashi cut him off with a resounding firmness. Sarutobi looked at the man in surprise. "No," Kakashi said again. "I am not taking on the Uchiha whelp." Sarutobi frowned and tried again.
"But surely you of all people could understand-"
"Yeah, I'm painfully, personally aware of what he's going through. I also know he's Naruto's bitter foe. There is no way I'm inviting that headache into my home – if I did, Naruto would be driven out inside of a year. I am sorry for the kid, but Naruto comes first. He has to come first." The way Kakashi spoke clearly communicated that he would not waver about this in the slightest. "Would you have asked Minato-sensei to adopt Gai when I was nine?"
Sarutobi winced at even the suggestion, knowing what explosions that would have caused. Kakashi spotted the gesture and nodded knowingly. "Imagine that, only worse. It's not happening."
The Hokage sighed and waved a hand in defeat. "Alright, alright. I had hoped… but never mind. Perhaps another solution with present itself." Then, seeming to realise something, "Speaking of Naruto, where is he? What happened to him while you were tracking Itachi?"
Kakashi stared back blankly. Did the old man really think he'd forgotten his kid? That he'd left him out and vulnerable while the village was under possible attack? When a psychopath was on a killing spree?
"He's in lockdown," he said simply. "I put him in ANBU HQ."
Sarutobi's eyes widened. "Is that wise?" he demanded. "What if he remembers?" Kakashi shrugged.
"I've been in and out of there often enough, sir. He knows I was in ANBU when he was born, and he'd believe me if I told him he stayed there once or twice, or even that we bunked there for a while when I first brought him back to Konoha. What's the worst that could possibly happen?"
Naruto watched with wide blue eyes as an armoured man cleaned blood off of a variety of instruments the child had never seen before, talking all the while.
"Now, this little baby is extremely useful, because they never see it coming," the adult chattered, enjoying the attention. "See how it looks like shears, with these little braces to stop an interrogator from cutting too deep and killing the suspect? Well, it does do that, but the beauty of this sucker is that it also gives an extremely painful electric shock. See here, on the handle? That's the battery. You just snap the shears into someone's flesh, and flick this button here, and all of a sudden they've got unexpected, excruciating pain, with no chance to brace or prepare for it! One hit works better than hours of methodical cutting."
The little boy nodded, hands carefully behind his back in the universally taught position that parents implement to help kids remember not to touch whatever shiny or (in this case) lethal item they really, really wanted to pick up.
"That is cool," he said solemnly. Then: "Can I try it?"
Twin1: Okay, long chapter. I probably should have split this up or shortened it, but I had to get everything in there, and I'm loathe to break my 'chapter by age' habit. A lot happens when Naru's six, it turns out. I hope everyone liked the chapter. I tried to fit in all the things everyone asked for and make this extra-long as a HAPPY CHRISTMAS! I wonder if it says something about me that in my Christmas chapter, Sasuke gets his whole family brutally murdered by his brother. Hmm. Merry Christmas, Sasuke!
(Also, someone yesterday informed me that the Massacre actually happened when Sasuke was seven, not eight. For the entirety of this chapter – heck, this story – I'd been labouring under the impression it happened when Sasuke was eight, so… please forgive me, and pretend Itachi held off on becoming a psychotic mass-murderer for a year?
Twin2: If you've had that impression for the whole story, I've had it for my whole Naruto-aware life! I could have sworn it was when Sasuke was eight… Itachi was thirteen, right, and he's five years older than Sasuke, so… what?)
Twin1: Anyhoo, this chapter is my Christmas present to you. Your review is your Christmas present to me. Okay? Merry Christmas, everyone. Here's a cyber-cookie for Santa if he reads my story (which would be totally awesome): (::)