Sasuke was more than a little worried when Naruto didn't show at school the next day. Recently Naruto had been very good about turning up to school on time. He used to skip all the time, sneaking out of class every five minutes but now that Sasuke was there to pester him, he could usually be counted on to at least remain glued to his seat for the duration of a lesson. Whether he actually learned anything in said lesson was up for debate, Sasuke had certainly had to poke him awake a couple of times, but all in all Naruto's school attendance had dramatically improved over the course of the last couple of months.
So what was he doing skipping school?
Sasuke decided he was going to be very pissed off if Naruto just didn't feel like getting out of bed this morning, and he kicked a trash can as he rounded the corner of Naruto's street, temper a little bit frayed. He stomped down the road and up the stairs to Naruto's apartment, growing more irate by the second. How dare he skip school without telling him? He had been forced to partner up with Ino of all people today in tactics class. She had practically drooled all over him like he was a piece of exotic candy, not an actual person. Never had he been more relieved in his life to hear the school bell ring.
"Oi! Open up-" His fist almost connected with Naruto's face as the boy wrenched open the door before Sasuke had even finished knocking. Sasuke seriously considered not holding back and hitting him anyway, considering how he abandoned him today, but he refrained in the nick of time.
"Sasuke! You're not going to believe this!" Naruto yanked him into the apartment and dragged him down the hall, practically bursting with energy. "Today I got called to the old man's office and-"
"You ditched me." Sasuke interrupted. "You ditched me and left me to the wolves. I thought you had my back Naruto!"
Naruto's face twisted with horror. "What happened?!" He squawked. "I'm so sorry! Did someone try to beat you up?"
"No, worse: girls." Sasuke told him sullenly.
Naruto shivered appreciatively. "Man... I'm sorry..."
"You should be."
Naruto babbled apologies as Sasuke settled himself at the kitchen table, scowling at his friend. He had been planning on sulking for most of the afternoon to wind up Naruto, but then his gaze was caught by a small pile of what looked like junk on Naruto's table. He wouldn't have given it any thought, but all four items were laid out neatly and lovingly, as if they were precious, even though they were such commonplace items.
A green striped scarf. A rather battered stuffed cat toy. A small framed water colour painting of a seaside town. A slightly chipped yellow cup.
Sasuke reached out as if he was going to touch the cup, then stopped, hand hovering in the air. For some reason he felt like he shouldn't touch these things without asking first.
"Naruto, what's all this?" He gestured to the table.
The blonde gave him a blinding grin. "It's why I missed school!" He said. "The old man gave them to me!"
"How come?" Sasuke looked at the rather ragged collection of objects a little scathingly. None of them were exactly in the best of condition. Surely the Hokage wouldn't have gone dumpster diving for presents for Naruto? The man was not the richest man in Konoha, but he was the leader of the whole village as well as the head of the Sarutobi clan. The Hokage was by no means poor.
Naruto was practically bouncing in place as he caressed the matted ginger fur of the cat with a couple of careful fingertips. "He said they belonged to my parents!"
Sasuke froze in disbelief, staring at the items on the table. When he went to speak with the Hokage, he hadn't really expected anything much to come of it. Even if something did happen, he didn't expect it to happen right away. Turns out that the Hokage had listened to him more than Sasuke thought.
"Hn. Really?" Sasuke looked at the objects with renewed interest.
"Yup!"
"So the Hokage told you who your parents were?"
Naruto's face fell, eyes glazing over and shoulders sagging. "No..." He said dejectedly. "He said it was still a secret for now..." The disappointment in Naruto's voice was unmistakable, and Sasuke felt a little guilty for instantly bringing the mood of the room down with his insensitive question.
"He must have told you some stuff about them though, if he gave you these things." Sasuke pressed, waving his hands at the items.
Naruto instantly perked up. "Yeah! He said that now that I'm nine, I deserve to know a little but more!" Naruto's chest swelled in pride. "My Mom and Dad were both ninja, did ya know?"
Sasuke's mouth twitched. It was somewhat obvious that Naruto's parents were ninja. It would be the only explanation for why the Hokage had taken such interest in an orphan boy. Not to mention that one could often find tiny differences between ninja bred children and children from civilian lines. Clan ninja came from bloodlines that had been selectively marrying for centuries in order to breed faster, stronger, more flexible children. It was just a sad fact of life that children with ninja parents were often more naturally inclined to excel at the shinobi arts. Even though Naruto's grades were often rock bottom, the very fact that he he had managed to stay in the ninja academy this long while causing so much trouble and sleeping through so many classes was due to his own natural talent. Every year up until they were ten the academy tried to root out the unsuitable candidates from each class. When Sasuke had started the Academy, there was four classes of eager six year olds ready to learn. Of the hundred students that started the Academy, only seventy five made it to the second year. Only fifty made it to the third year. Next year when they moved to the fourth year, there would only be one class of thirty left in the shinobi program. Even though Naruto had atrocious test scores, he wasn't really that bad. When he was called 'dead last', he was really being called the dead last of top streamed class. Naruto was still miles ahead of the kids that were probably going to be cut at the end of the year, most of them civilians.
Still, it was nice to have Naruto's shinobi heritage confirmed.
So Sasuke smiled and treated this information the way it should be received. "Cool." He smiled. "Did the Hokage tell you anything else?"
For the next half hour or so Sasuke didn't have to say much. He just listened to Naruto excitedly recount everything the Hokage had told him in great detail. Apparently his mother had quite the temper and was treated very carefully by her peers because of it. She was famous for responding to any bullies with her fists, whether they were picking on her personally or not. She was also a fan of retribution in the form of mischief. The innate pranking talent that Naruto possessed seemed to come from her, if the Hokage was to be believed. Naruto sounded quite dreamy as he told Sasuke of the prank that his mother had pulled off while she was in the academy, dying the majority of the her class' hair bright blue using a complicated system of buckets holding vegetable dyes and ropes. Sasuke knew that this prank was probably going to be recreated sometime in the near future.
Naruto's father, on the other hand, was a somewhat more subdued character. He was the only one that could calm down Naruto's mother when she got a bee in her bonnet. Something like the voice of reason within their peers, he was good at distracting people from their worries and being an all round reassuring presence. However, apparently he was also frightfully stubborn as well, if the story about catching a lost cat for a D-ranked mission was true. Naruto's father and the rest of his team had been tasked with tracking down a runaway cat. The mission was a standing one, having been commissioned by the pet's owner almost six months prior. Belief was common that the cat was nowhere to be found, most likely dead, as sad as it was. There were lots of missing pet D-ranks like that. His father, however, believed that he could find this stupid cat, and wasted a whole week of his spare time combing through Konoha for clues even though his team had already tried, failed and passed on the mission to another genin team. It took Naruto's Dad almost a fortnight, but he finally found the cat and returned it to it's owner, much to his team's shock. His father was also a bit of an airhead at times, becoming so engrossed in a particular task that he forgot to eat or sleep. He had atrocious naming sense as well, and had been banned by Naruto's mother from picking baby names when she had found out she was pregnant. The couple had once owned a goldfish called 'His Highness Orange Bubbles of the Untamed Oceans', a name that made Sasuke wince in pity for the poor fish, but made Naruto cackle in laughter.
"Did the Hokage tell you about this stuff?" Sasuke gestured to the tabletop, curiosity winning out. These objects were probably special in some way. There must be at least a few stories that the Hokage told about them.
"This scarf was Mom's." Naruto picked up the green striped scarf to proudly show it to Sasuke. "Apparently she knitted it for me!"
Sasuke's eyebrows shot up. "Really? But I thought she died before you were born?"
"She was enthusiastic." Naruto explained. "She wanted to do the new mother thing of knitting things for her baby, but she had next to no patience and not a lot of skill in actually knitting stuff. The only thing that she knew how to knit was a scarf, since it's one of the most simple things you can make."
Now Sasuke knew where Naruto got his inability to sit still from.
Naruto put down the scarf and gingerly picked up the painting, staring at the picture sombrely. "This was Mom's too... my Grandmother painted it for her." Naruto's eyes were fixed on the scene in front of him.
"What's the painting of?" Sasuke asked.
Naruto shrugged. "The old man wouldn't say, I think he knew, but he didn't want to tell me. It's probably something that would give too much away about who she was."
"Pity." Sasuke moaned. He was tempted to suggest they start doing some research into the scene at the library or something, but he knew it was a bad idea. The Hokage was keeping all this secret for a reason, and Sasuke didn't want to stumble across anything that they shouldn't by being too nosy. "Is the stuffed animal your Mom's too?" He changed the subject, fixing his eyes upon the battered toy. He knew that his own mother had kept her favourite teddy bear from childhood. It lived on a shelf in his parent's bedroom dedicated to her sentimental keepsakes. His father had kept things from childhood too, but they were things like his first metal practice kunai, and the armband with the Uchiha clan mark that he'd worn as a genin.
"No, Mr Momo Fuzzles belonged to Dad..."
"Mr. - What?"
"Dad wasn't good at naming things, remember?" Naruto grinned as he picked up the cat to stroke it's matted fur.
"Your Dad kept his old teddy bear?"
"It's a cat." Naruto pointed out stubbornly. "Mr. Momo Fuzzles."
A grown shinobi who still hung onto a stuffed cat called Mr. Momo Fuzzles. Sasuke finally believed that this man who had thus far been explained as a rather calm and collected individual could actually be related to Naruto.
"How does the Hokage know what your Dad called his old toy cat anyway?" Sasuke asked curiously. If he was a grown man hoarding stuffed animals, he would have kept it a deadly secret.
"Mom used to tease him about it." Naruto said. "Something about keeping him humble."
"Ah." Sasuke smirked, and his attention drifted to the final item sitting on the table: the yellow cup. Naruto saw where he was looking and slowly relinquished his hold on Mr. Momo Fuzzles. He gently placed the cat back on the table and gingerly picked up the cup, running a thumb over the chip in it's rim with a sad look on his face.
"This belonged to Dad too." Naruto said softly. "It was part of a set. There used to be a red one that belonged to Mom, but that was broken to pieces when the Kyuubi trashed Mom and Dad's house. They liked to drink tea. Mom hated coffee..." His voice trailed off as he traced a fingertip around and around the cup's rim.
Sasuke didn't quite know what to say to that. Now he knew why Naruto had been given so little of his parent's belongings, and why the few he did have looked rather beat up. Naruto's family home had been destroyed in the Fox attack nine years ago, so there probably hadn't been a lot that was salvageable, if there was even someone left able to scavenge in the ruins for stuff anyway. Naruto was just a baby when it happened, and he didn't have any other family. Who had picked through the wreckage, looking for keepsakes that Naruto may want later on in the future? Was it the Hokage? Or did he order someone to go through the destroyed house on his behalf? Knowing the attitude that most of the village had towards Naruto, Sasuke wondered whether the person that had recovered his parents' things for him had done as good a job as he should have.
"Ironic, isn't it?" Sasuke said instead, startling Naruto out of his thoughts.
Naruto frowned at him. "What's ironic?"
"Ironic means that–"
"I know what it means!" Naruto protested, "Why is it ironic?"
"Your Dad had a yellow cup. Your Mom had a red cup. One would expect that they chose those cups because yellow and red are their favourite colours." Sasuke smiled. "Don't you think it's a little bit ironic that your favourite colour turned out to orange, even though you didn't know theirs?"
Naruto's mouth fell open in shock as his eyes flicked down towards the cup, dumbstruck. "Yellow... and red... make orange..." His voice was a little bit choked up.
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Guess it's the fault of genetics that you insist on wearing the glaringly bright clothes then." He sighed. "Typical." He kissed his hope of getting Naruto to ditch the neon orange clothes goodbye.
Naruto plucked at his orange hoodie, a small smile spreading across his face as he contemplated the co-incidence that Sasuke had just pointed out to him. "Cool." He muttered.
Sasuke was right. The hair dye prank reared it's ugly head mid-November. Luckily Sasuke managed to avoid a dye job. In fact, he maaaay have been guilty of actually helping Naruto set up said prank. It was good revenge against the girls who had been bothering him. They looked utterly miserable with their green locks for the remainder of the week, and that satisfied Sasuke immensely. Ino's hair turned out the brightest green, rather like a lime, while Sakura's pink hair had clashed rather splendidly with the the dye and turned a muddy shade of booger. Everyone else seemed to range between those two shades, all except him, Naruto, Shikamaru, Hinata and Shino. Shikamaru avoided the humiliation because he always knew exactly what was going on in the classroom around him and when he should take a conveniently timed bathroom break. Hinata was able to avoid the dye because of her uncanny vision and Shino had been warned by his bugs. Kiba almost managed to avoid turning green when he smelled the dye at the last moment, but still got splashed, and now had some rather interesting green spots in his hair. Sasuke and Naruto, of course, managed to avoid the dye because they weren't so idiotic to set things up so that they pranked themselves.
Iruka-sensei was not impressed once he managed to get the initial chaos under control.
"I want to ask 'WHO DID THIS?!', but I feel like it would be a useless question at this point." Iruka sagged against the teacher's podium. "But in the interest of being fair and avoiding jumping to the obvious conclusion, I'm going to ask anyway." He paused, looking around the room. "WHO DID THIS?!"
Naruto just broke out into laughter, falling out of his seat in glee. Sasuke shook his head. Naruto was a master of stealth when setting up pranks, but he had no idea how to make a clean getaway. He always took credit for every single one of his pranks.
Well. Sasuke felt like shaking things up today.
"Sorry Iruka-sensei." He said quietly, raising his hand as Naruto just kept laughing like a maniac in the seat next to him. "It was me."
Dead silence greeted his confession.
"No way! Sasuke-kun!" That screech was Ino's. Sasuke thought she sounded rather like someone was strangling a cat.
"Sasuke-kun wouldn't do something like that!" Another girl protested, much to Sasuke's amusement, considering that he had just personally admitted that he did. Denial much?
"I bet Naruto made him take the fall for his prank!" Yet another girl piped up.
"Sasuke-kun is just such a good friend that he'll take the fall for the Naruto-baka!" That was Sakura, and her screeching was even worse than Ino's. It made Sasuke wince and cover his ears for a fleeting moment.
Meanwhile, Naruto had sobered up and was now looking at Sasuke in horror as he realised that Sasuke was taking flak for the prank that he had set up and roped him into. Sasuke would have to reassure him later that he didn't really care about what the rest of the class thought of him, and he actually really enjoyed the prank. In fact, the rush of pranking the whole class had felt so good that Sasuke finally understood why Naruto was such a troublemaker. He wanted in on whatever Naruto plotted next as well.
"Um... no..." Sasuke corrected the girls trying to prove his innocence. "I really did do this." He showed the class the palm of his hand, unfortunately dyed bright green from when he and Naruto were setting up the prank.
Naruto also held up his palms sheepishly, displaying his own green hands to the room. "I guess we're been caught... green-handed!" He broke into a fresh wave of laughter as Sasuke groaned at the dreadful joke.
Iruka just face palmed. "You two. Hallway. Now."
One half hour lecture from Iruka-sensei later, Sasuke still didn't feel all that bad about what he did. It was only a weak vegetable dye; it would wash out. The class would have green hair for a couple of days, but it wasn't the end of the world. Iruka must have sensed their lack of remorse, because he dragged Naruto off to go complain to his guardian the Hokage, but not before giving Sasuke firm instructions to stay put in the hallway because his older brother was on his way.
Sasuke began to feel a tiny bit guilty when he heard that his brother was getting involved in this mess now too.
When Iruka came back, sans Naruto, he was leading his brother through the Academy. Iruka-sensei still looked annoyed, but Itachi's face was unreadable. Sasuke kept his own face carefully blank as Iruka explained the full consequences of their prank to his older brother, and what he wanted Itachi to do about it: namely to discipline his little brother and make sure it never happened again. Itachi thanked him for the explanation once he was done and calmly assured the man that he would be having a talk with Sasuke. Then he bowed politely to the teacher, dragging Sasuke's head down with him as he did so, and apologised on Sasuke's behalf. Seemingly satisfied with Itachi's sincerity, Iruka said goodbye and turned to leave. Since the school day had finished while Sasuke and Naruto were waiting out in the corridor for Iruka to come out and deal with them, Sasuke was now free to head home with his brother.
The walk home was very quiet.
"So..." Itachi began as they started to walk along the river, about halfway home. "Green hair dye huh...?"
Sasuke couldn't stop the grin spreading across his face. He was going to get into trouble again, but he didn't really care. "Worth it." He said bluntly.
"The girls finally got to you, didn't they?" Itachi asked wryly.
Sasuke pulled a face. "Maybe."
Itachi's blank face now cleared up, and Sasuke could now see a small smirk growing on his brother's face. "It was a good prank." He admitted.
"Naruto's good at coming up with pranks." Sasuke said. He wasn't really sure why his own chest was swelling with pride as he boasted of Naruto's strengths to his older brother, but the feeling wasn't unpleasant, so he just went with it.
"Are you going to do this again?" Itachi's voice took on that steely tone that Sasuke took to mean that he was now doing the disciplining that Iruka-sensei had requested of him.
Sasuke thought about lying for a minute. He also thought about backing down and meekly agreeing to never team up with Naruto in such a way again, and meaning it. Neither option sounded too much fun.
"Probably." He admitted to his brother quietly.
"Good." Itachi said firmly. "I'd much rather you had fun at the Academy than run yourself ragged trying to be the perfect little Uchiha every seems to expect."Itachi grinned down at him. "I trust you won't go too crazy?"
Sasuke stared at him, mouth hanging open. He knew that his brother was more than a little strange, but this was just...
"You're giving me permission to pull pranks on my classmates?" He asked suspiciously.
"Yes."
"Why?" Sasuke didn't get it. Itachi was supposed to be the one in charge. The parent. He was lord of bedtime and chores now, why was he giving him permission to put mix up all the dust jackets on the books in the library and balance buckets of water in convenient high places?
Note to self: suggest to Naruto that we switch up all the dust jackets on the library books ASAP. That sounds fun!
Itachi didn't say anything for a long moment. His eyes drifted past Sasuke to the sight of the river bathed in the orange light of the setting sun. The he gave Sasuke a small smile. "You and Naruto are really good friends, aren't you?" He asked suddenly.
Sasuke sighed. His brother had slipped into cryptic mode once again. Now he would be lucky to get anything of sense out of him at all. "Yeah... I guess..." He said slowly.
"I'm not Mother or Father Sasuke." Itachi said simply. "I'm your big brother, and I never cared about your good behaviour at school or your grades. I don't plan to change just because I now have to be a surrogate parent too. Your happiness means more to me than upholding the dignity of the clan or anything that Father used to waffle on about." Itachi paused, and his eyes sparkled at Sasuke in a look that looked a lot like mischief. "Stick with Naruto. Keep having fun."
Sasuke looked at his brother in growing wonder. "So... if, say, Naruto was planning on wrapping every item of furniture in our classroom in old newspaper sometime in the next couple of weeks... you'd be cool with me sneaking out in the middle of the night to go and help him?"
"Just try not to wake me up. You know the twins always get me up far too early." Itachi grinned down at him. "You know... next time I might be bribed into helping any would-be pranksters out a little."
"Really?!"
Two fingers reached out and poked him playfully on the forehead. "Yes... maybe next time Sasuke..."
The rest of the walk home was not quiet at all, and was actually rather enjoyable.
A/N:
Hey! This update happened a lot faster, didn't it? I think I finally got past my writer's block for this fic, and this chapter practically wrote itself. While I was writing it I also found that it's actually a lot harder to write about Minato's personality compared to Kushina. Kushina was such a 'louder than life' kind of girl, and her personality is supposed to be quite similar to Naruto's, so she was much easier to describe in a way. I thought Minato would be too, but when you get down to it, all we really know about Minato was that he was an amazingly talented shinobi, he was somewhat quieter and more sensible than Kushina and that he was very, very loyal to Konoha. The bad naming sense is canon, it's slightly touched upon a couple of times. I had a lot of fun with that: I just found it hilarious that the fierce fourth Hokage might still hang onto one of his old stuffed animals called Mr. Momo Fuzzles...
Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter too. Thanks for reading. Special thanks to those that reviewed. Shout out to those that reveiwed the last chapter: thanks WolfCoyote, Sweettsunamii and davycrockett100!
Still looking for that Beta reader if anyone's interested :)
