I just really want to thank everyone who's reviewed this story, it's really great to hear about what you guys think and what you like. Anyway, enjoy!
[-]
9: Laurel Hones Her Lying Skills (aka Bullshitting the Hokage and Other Assorted Ninja)
[-]
When Laurel arrived at their destination, she sent a mental thank you to whomever ruled the universe that it was easier on a girl than wizardly transportation. She didn't feel weak in the knees, or want to vomit, and it was more like having a blanket thrown over herself than spinning off to her doom like with a portkey.
Just like she had been peering through a woven woolen object for about a full second, able to see bits shifting through the holes, and when it was taken off she was in a different place.
She didn't say it, but boy was she thinking it. I wanna do that instead! That was easy!
They were in an open circular room, facing a large wooden desk behind which an old man in red and white formal clothes with a weird triangle hat sat. It looked kind of like the ones kids made by folding newspaper, but with two strips of fabric to frame the face and made out of something more solid than paper. Behind the man there were six windows looking out over the city, starting halfway up the wall and stretching to the ceiling, creating a halo effect.
Dumbledore had used the same tactics in the headmaster's office, and it was one of the first things McGonagall had changed when she took up the position.
The desk was surrounded with piles of paper at its base; completed and uncompleted paperwork, she assumed. The walls were a boring beige, and empty of any decorations other than four photographs, similar to the wooden panels on the floor which were a couple shades darker. There was one other person in the room, a tall woman with boysenberry purple hair in a high ponytail guarding the door. She also had a mask on, a bird one with owl markings painted in green.
The redhead finished examining her surroundings when the hush of falling leaves signalled the arrival of Naruto with… Cat. Seeing as Dog was named for his mask, it seemed likely that was how the naming system worked around here.
She blinked as she realised the falling leaves weren't illusions: she managed to catch a small green one on her palm. How did that work? Where did the leaves come from? Why were they leaves, and not bits of dirt or water, or snow or something? Where did they go when they vanished into nothing?
Focus, Laurel.
Dog announced their presence to the man at the desk, "Hokage-sama?"
That voice, "You were the asshole who laughed at me!" Laurel leveled a heavy stare on him, and ignored the way everyone in the room seemed to stop. "What kind of-"
"Hm. You were right, Dog," The old man interrupted her, presumably the current Hokage and leader of the village. "She's not a normal civilian."
She turned her empty look on the Hokage, "Why am I here?" She pointedly didn't ask what do you mean.
"After your interesting conversation with Dog earlier, I would assume you already know the answer you seek," the Hokage prevaricated. Dog tilted his head toward Cat, and received a shrug in return while Owl snorted from the doorway.
"Right." Laurel's face settled into an expression of displeasure, while she desperately pulled up everything Changeling had told her. "Are you planning to answer any of my accusations, or are we just going to sit here pretending I'm not a foreigner you have no trace of?" Something pushed her to correct herself, and only because it didn't seem anything other than earnest, she followed the directions. "Or no traces you've checked properly for."
Frankly, Changeling seemed to have hit it right on the head that Naruto was somehow very important to the village. Although, if he had such dangerous ninja as his guards, there must be some kind of contention on how to deal with him. That everyone hated him so thoroughly for something the blonde clearly didn't understand…
He probably carried some kind of national secret, something dangerous, powerful and probably with some kind of age limit that had to be passed before he would be capable of using it. Something that had been misused or in the hands of an enemy before Naruto gained it. 'Because of something I'd been able to since the day of my birth' indeed.
The Hokage leaned forward, forearms placed flat on his desk, "Hm?"
"I signed in at the gate, as a foreign civilian travelling alone from Kusagakure. My intentions were recorded as wanting to stay and sort out proper citizenship, while searching for any remaining members of my clan so I could rebuild it."
Laurel knew she didn't do any of this (she'd appeared out of a lamp in front of Naruto. In no way did that count as an official entry into the village) but she also knew that when someone went to check, all of what she had just claimed would be proven true. It would even be written in her handwriting, in kanji, in spite of the fact that she didn't know how to write in kanji. Here's hoping no one asks for a sample, that would just be the icing on the cake.
~Incorrect~
The witch paused, unsure on what was incorrect exactly. The other people in the room, all immune to Death's presence due to being so firmly alive, assumed she'd just spoken what she wanted to since the Primordial's interruption went unheard.
Laurel had experienced this before, Death speaking to her while she was surrounded by others and no one else picking up on it. It had happened twice: in the moment when Voodletort lost his last horcrux, and as his mangled soul was finally on the last journey. In the first, the being had whispered about him having 'Only one foot left outside of the grave', and the redhead had known exactly what they'd meant, and what she could now do about it.
For the second Death had just laughed and laughed and laughed. Laurel had sworn her ears were bleeding. Needless to say, she hoped such a thing never happened again where the witch could hear it.
Though Hermione and Ron had asked her how she knew the Dark Lord had been mortal before she struck, she had only ever said "I just knew", because even her two best friends wouldn't believe her.
No one would want to believe Laurel had Death looming over her shoulder. They mostly just watched, whenever they were actually present, but sometimes interfering if it ran counter to her goals in some 'intolerable' way. Usually a way that ended in blood and unending darkness for the witch.
She hadn't yet finished piecing together all the clues the Primordial had left about themselves floating in her mind after their brief sharing of her body, and honestly she didn't really want to. It was enough that she'd had to sort through essentially a whole new culture.
(The Death-related things were shoved under a loose stone in a corner of the Arena of Unruly Emotions. It would probably stay there for as long as she could get away with it.)
The Third Hokage flicked a finger at Cat, who vanished in another flutter of leaves to get the paperwork.
Naruto took this chance to ask her some questions, fuelled mostly by innocent curiosity but there was a part that said he'd figured out she might be in deep trouble. He knew how she'd arrived in Konoha, and when, and he thought he knew what the green-eyed woman had been doing so far. Nothing inherently suspicious, other than she'd been with him for most of it, and living in the same apartment.
Maybe it was the ANBU turning up that cemented it. He'd probably never had to see any of the other people he interacted with regularly get background checked.
"What clan are you gonna be rebuilding, Nee-chan?"
"The Uzumaki one," she felt the shock spreading through the room's inhabitants like blood in water. "I was just lucky to find you so fast, squishy."
The boy gaped, "You're an Uzumaki too? Why didn't you say so?" He frowned for a moment in thought. "Is this why you know so much about the Uzumaki?"
Time to wing it, I guess. Death wasn't giving any hints, but after her formative years had been spent on pointless wishes, she didn't make the habit of relying on anything but her own skills, and the loyalties earned.
"I didn't say anything because I wanted you to just want to know me, not because we're family of a sort. I don't know how related we actually are, I was born a couple years after Uzushio collapsed. You said your name was honorary, but I don't believe that. You've got the Uzumaki attitude too much for it to be a coincidence. I only recently found records that I didn't have access to previously. In them there was mention of a Kushina in Konoha, Nagisa in Kusa, Roka in Taki, and a couple others scattered in various corners. Most had kids at some point, and I met a few, but they needed a home before committing. I thought Konoha as an old ally of Uzushio and the Uzumaki might be more sympathetic."
The redhead had no idea why the Uzumaki-related information suddenly seemed to to connect coherently enough for her to use it. She thought briefly, maybe those associations finally hooked into the right places. But it was the same kind of thing that made her talk with the same accent after hearing a speaking herself, that let her comprehend the kanji in books and slowly taught her how to actually read.
She would use what it gave her for now, and try not to get caught unaware again. I guess that means more practice. That probably means reading about history… Why couldn't it be a subject I actually enjoyed, or even passed in school?
Cat returned with a sheaf of paper in one hand and gave it to the Hokage to look over, flicking the fingers of the other hand in some kind of communication. The old man hummed as he scanned them before looking back up at the room, "This seems to be in order." He gave Laurel a piercing look, "Why haven't you approached me about this matter before now? The rebuilding of a clan is a serious endeavour."
The witch sighed - ugh, politics - and rubbed a hand over her face. "First, I've only been here for two days. Second, I wanted to figure out Naruto's state of living when I found him. Third, I wanted to experience more of the village before making a decision. It's not just my life to think about. There are a couple under-tens to consider, and one of the couples are expecting. To put it frankly, I had four weeks to look around, and I was planning to use them. Coming across Naruto was pure luck."
She tried to keep her put-upon look hidden, but honestly, she just wanted to go back to Naruto's apartment, cook some food and go to sleep. It'd been a very heart-wrenching day, and although the woman could keep going she didn't really want to.
She wasn't at war, she wasn't fighting some bad guys or against sucking wounds, or playing with toys liable to blow up. There should be no need to push herself beyond normal limits. A tired sigh escaped from behind her lips before she could catch it, the only sound in the room other than shuffling paper.
"Look, I get that Naruto's got some kind of bloodline or inherited power that freaks people out badly enough they wanna kill him, but I don't know about it and frankly I don't really care. As long as he's not going to kill me in my sleep - which is honestly a big step up from most people who know me - I'm good. Is there anything else you need right this instant, or can we leave? 'Cause I get the impression you won't be answering any Naruto-related questions properly, and I just want to sleep my headache off."
An aura of deadly calm seeped from the old man sitting behind the desk, and though her instincts demanded she straighten up and take this seriously right-this-instant, Laurel pretended she didn't feel anything, and faked a yawn. I'm sick to death of controlling authority figures. Let's see how far I can push before he snaps. With Naruto here he's unlikely to do anything truly terrible, since the kid has a serious case of hero-worship, and he's been actively encouraging it.
The pair spent a minute staring each other down before he deigned to speak. "There are factors at work you cannot comprehend. Naruto's ignorance is for his own safety."
"Yeah, no. I call bullshit. He should at the very least have the names of his parents, and someone has to be alive who knew them even in passing. If they were ninja, some people had to work with them for missions. If they were civilians, they had to have jobs, and support networks, and social circles. It's impossible for everyone who ever knew them to be dead, unless he's not actually a Konoha-born citizen. If that's true, it's 50-50 odds you stole him, or he was rescued from some cataclysmic event that somehow wiped out a town but didn't touch this one baby. And it wasn't because of him, or he would know about his power and be trained to control it, if it could happen again. If it couldn't happen again, he wouldn't have people ostracising him everywhere he goes."
She didn't ask any questions outright as she wanted to see how he responded without a direction being prompted. The Hokage's face darkened, and the aura deepened, causing Naruto to curl into her side and shiver. When Laurel wrapped an arm around his shoulders, the sensation cut off abruptly and Dog shifted his weight from one foot to the other where he was standing behind her, fabric rustling as he crossed his arms over his chest.
"You should have more care to how you speak-"
"-How about you take a moment to actually think about it from Naruto's perspective? From that of an orphan?" She cut across him, only hearing the same phrase Dumbledore fed her over and over again. Nowadays she asked herself 'for whose greater good' instead of following blindly.
The witch sounded out each syllable of the name very carefully, "Hiruzen Sarutobi. There's a rich history in your name. You know who's line you hail from, who your parents were, why they named you. You know you were named in love, and expectations of success. You might have even had siblings, which are a good ruler to measure progress against. You were taught clan techniques, and secrets, and traditions, and have the ancestral Summoning Scroll from what I've heard."
Laurel paused to rub a hand comforting up and down the blonde's arm, hoping he wouldn't take the next part too hard. "Naruto has none of that. He doesn't know his parents names, what they looked like, who they were as people. Whether they were good, and want him to succeed at life, or whether he was discarded like trash for being born at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, or to the wrong people. He doesn't know who named him, or why. He doesn't know if 'Uzumaki' is honouring a people long-ruined, or sacrificing him to the village through a brand that marks him as something 'special'. It's certainly not a blessing, yet. He knows only what techniques he can copy, scrounge or create, and every day is a struggle against the inevitable collapse.
"You have not suffered what he has suffered. Do not preach to me about safety in ignorance. Safety is in knowledge, in being able to build a foundation, creating bonds to connect you with who you are, who you could be, and who you should not be. You were born with these roots, they were given to you by the people around you. Naruto, and every single orphan like him must instead bleed for them."
She wanted to stomp out of the room in a dramatic exit to punctuate her words, or something stupid like that. Instead she drew herself up to her full height (sadly only a little taller than the man sitting down, and everyone else aside from Naruto towered over her) and watched steadily, expression wiped blank. Let's see him squirm out of that accusation.
The village leader simply returned her look, inscrutable, "You sound as if you speak from experience."
Her voice was level and unemotional when she said, "I do, of a kind. I was orphaned when I was barely more than a baby, but also a foundling later on in life after my initial guardians spent their time convincing me I was a burden." -Freak, worthless, useless- Laurel blocked out the litany, and refocused on her surroundings. I am tired. I know better than to lapse among hostiles.
"I didn't know anything about my own parents before a family friend came when I was 11. Speaking from my own experience, it doesn't matter if anyone else knows where you come from, as long as you do. If you're worried about Naruto bragging because of who gave birth to him, he already knows who he is, and frankly neither of his parents have had anything to do with that beyond genetics. He never even had a shadow of a hope turning out like them, with knowing nothing about them." She frowned, trying to channel Minerva McGonagall at her most severe, "You can't blame a newborn child for the sins of parents never known." The way the Hokage was acting, it was clear Naruto's parents had either been the most revered heroes or the most reviled of villains. Nothing less would inspire this level of paranoia.
She held in another yawn, and wished for a cup of tea and some fluffy blankets. Shame I can't be my own genie.
[-]
Kakashi as Dog was intrigued.
It was a new feeling, since mostly only Tenzou, his ANBU squad, Gai and the Hospital inspired more than indifference (amusement and antipathy respectively). Curiosity was fairly rare, and happiness was so far out of reach that it might as well be one star in a million. The source of his current interest was looking displeased with being the centre of attention in the Hokage's office, and annoyed with him in particular.
Strange how she only recognised my voice now, though. Theoretically, if this civilian is actually that good at identifying voices she only needs a laugh and a short sample of speech, that whole conversation in the apartment could have gone quite differently. Did it only just connect for some reason, or did she just want to bring it up in front of witnesses?
"Are you planning to answer any of my accusations, or are we just going to sit here pretending I'm not a foreigner you have no trace of... or no traces you've checked properly for."
Either she was brave, stupid, or powerful. Accusing ANBU of negligent fact-checking? He'd never met anyone who did that that wasn't a member of the council, or the Hokage at the time. Otherwise it was assumed the source was faulty, or there had been an info leak somehow, and they adapted accordingly.
When clarification was requested (ordered), she complied easily enough. "I signed in at the gate, as a foreign civilian travelling alone from Kusagakure. My intentions were recorded as wanting to stay and sort out proper citizenship, while searching for any remaining members of my clan so I could rebuild it." She stopped suddenly, and looked as if she was focusing on something outside of the room.
Maybe that's got something to do with her nightmares?
The Hokage indicated Tenzou as the one to retrieve it, and he shunshinned to the gate to find the paperwork. After that was sorted, she returned to being the centre of focus, though this time Naruto helped dig deeper.
"What clan are you gonna be rebuilding, Nee-chan?" He chirped, twisting his unguarded face to look up the short distance at her own.
"The Uzumaki one…" Kakashi froze, unbelieving. That's not possible. How did she find him? "...Just lucky." There's no such thing as luck. She has to be lying. Has to - If she's an Uzumaki, why wasn't she here earlier - I thought Kushina said she was the last-
The ninja's thoughts splintered, trying to chase three different threads at once and just ending up tangled in each other.
Lying. Got to be lying.
The boy gaped, "You're an Uzumaki too? Why didn't you say so?" He frowned for a moment in thought. "Is this why you know so much about the Uzumaki?"
What an interesting cover. Sneaking in by pretending to be a long lost family member. He'd never let her go, not willingly. (But she didn't tell anyone what she was. Not until she'd already been found out.)
How can we make her prove it? She doesn't look anything like an Uzumaki, not really. I only thought so because of her chakra. (Neither did Naruto. He looked so much like Minato-sensei it hurt.)
The ginger-haired woman rattled off reasonable excuses for her knowledge. Things like wanting to be wanted, born after Uzushio collapsed, and a couple names in different hidden villages and she didn't have others with her to support her claim because they needed certainty before giving up all they knew.
"I thought Konoha as an old ally of Uzushio and the Uzumaki might be more sympathetic."
Kakashi suppressed a sarcastic laugh: another victim of the rumour that Leaf Shinobi were soft, sympathetic suckers. As if they'd survived as a hidden village by being nice. That wasn't possible, not with more than half of their citizens being capable of defending themselves physically and with at least two jutsu under their belts.
The teamwork Konoha so treasured was at least half practicality. When you had teammates you trusted to cover your weaknesses, there was a higher chance of mission success. A single ninja didn't have to be capable of everything, they just had to be aware of what they couldn't do, and what their teammates couldn't do. It allowed for more flexibility when missions inevitably went south.
Tenzou returned with the sign-in papers, and handed them over to their leader with his hands flickering in ANBU signs. -Izumo doesn't remember her, but it had apparently been a busy day,- The brunette said to the room in general, and settled into his 'waiting' stance behind Naruto while the Hokage flipped through the pages and pulled out the interesting information.
-Name?- Kakashi asked behind the redhead's back. Naruto was at the wrong angle to see anything, and the windows didn't reflect images well enough even if the 12-year-old understood the code.
-Gekkei Uzumaki. Although her last name was omitted, it was under 'intentions' as the specific clan.-
-Gekkei? You sure? That's not a name any parent would call their child.-
-No, not like that.- Nobody else would have seen the put-upon sigh in his kouhai's body language, but Kakashi delighted in it. He also wanted to know the answer to his question. What kind of mother would let their daughter be called 'menstruation'? -The characters mean Laurel, it's probably short for Gekkeiju.-
-That's also an unfortunate name for nicknames. Kaijuu. I'd pick 'gekkei' over that, too. Maybe her and the Kyuubi are a matched set?- The ninja internally winced at the bad joke, but he wasn't called an insensitive asshole for nothing. Just because it bothered him didn't mean he wouldn't say it.
Another example of this was his Icha Icha reading. Though that was also something he enjoyed, but the frustration and outrage were fun enough he wasn't going to stop now.
The old man hummed as he scanned them before looking back up at the room, "This seems to be in order." Hiruzen gave Gekkei - Laurel. Laurel was less likely to make him want to snigger purely from reflex - a piercing look, "Why haven't you approached me about this matter before now? The rebuilding of a clan is a serious endeavour."
The woman sighed, covering her eyes with a steady hand. Apparently she wasn't even the tiniest bit nervous, covering her line of sight like that. "First, I've only been here for two days. Second, I wanted to figure out Naruto state of living when I found him. Third, I wanted to experience more of the village before making a decision. It's not just my life to think about. There are a couple under-tens to consider, and one of the couples are expecting. To put it frankly, I had three weeks to look around, and I was planning to use them. Coming across Naruto was pure luck."
Her tired exhale punctuated the flutter of shuffling paper before she picked up the thread of conversation again, and addressed what she thought was the source of their suspicions.
"Look, I get that Naruto's got some kind of bloodline or inherited power that freaks people out badly enough they wanna kill him, but I don't know about it, and I don't really care. As long as he's not going to kill me in my sleep - which is honestly a big step up from most people who know me - I'm good. Is there anything else you need right this instant, or can we leave? 'Cause I get the impression you won't be answering any of Naruto-related questions properly, and I just want to sleep my headache off."
I still don't believe she doesn't know about the Kyuubi, but she's a very good actress. Convincing. But 'big step up'? She honestly has that many people after her head? How have we not heard of anything about her? There's not a lot of civilians with bounties that aren't part of some kind of crime syndicate, and they have lists and descriptions of all key members anyway.
What is going on with this woman?
The Hokage started leaking a low level of Killing Intent, just enough to make any civilian's predator instincts wake up and hint towards fight or flight. It was enough to make a ninja take the situation seriously, usually. To everyone's astonishment, Laurel didn't react at all aside from a bored yawn.
Kakashi wanted to dig inside her head and figure out what made her tick, because he'd never seen anyone do that before. The closest anyone else had ever gotten to doing that was the three Sannin, and they had been the most formidable Konoha shinobi in the Second and Third Shinobi Wars. Completely aside from being his students.
Kakashi himself had done similar rule-flaunting, but as one of the most useful ninja the village had currently paired with his history, he got a lot of slack on the leash.
She was a foreign civilian, with no chakra skills aside from a strange immunity to genjutsu, and here she was staring down the most powerful man in the country and yawning in boredom.
What in Kami's name is this madness.
The pair spent a minute staring each other down before the Hokage rumbled out a rebuttal. "There are factors at work you cannot comprehend. Naruto's ignorance is for his own safety."
If anything, she only got more irreverent. "Yeah, no. I call bullshit. He should at the very least have the names of his parents, and someone has to be alive who knew them even in passing. If they were ninja, some people had to work with them for missions. If they were civilians, they had to have jobs, and support networks, and social circles. It's impossible for everyone who ever knew them to be dead, unless he's not actually a Konoha-born citizen. If that's true, it's 50-50 odds you stole him, or he was rescued from some cataclysmic event that somehow wiped out a town but didn't touch this one baby. And it wasn't because of him, or he would know about his power and be trained to control it if it could happen again. If it couldn't happen again, he wouldn't have people ostracising him everywhere he goes."
The Hokage's face darkened, and the KI nearly doubled in his genuine anger. He felt the wave of it roll over him, but Naruto started shaking and it was only Laurel's actions that stopped him from freaking out worse. She looped an arm around his shoulders and reminded the Hokage who else was present in the room enough that he cut off the Killing Intent completely. If it wasn't going to help with the interrogation, there was no point in any of it.
Kakashi shifted his weight so he leaned toward Tenzou in silent support. The younger male was not a big fan of pissed-off authority figures, and he'd probably mentally and emotionally shut down in self-defense.
"You should have more care to how you speak-"
Again, this tiny ginger woman shocked him to his core. She interrupted the Hokage, not even caring about the Killing Intent for her own sake, or even the power he wielded over her fate. "-How about you take a moment to actually think about it from Naruto's perspective? From that of an orphan?" She went on to tell him about all the information he grew up knowing, and how much of that Naruto knew. It sounded very personal, something she'd understood by experience and knew inside-out.
One sentence made Kakashi - actually everyone in the room - flare their chakra in shock. "He doesn't know if 'Uzumaki' is honouring a people long-ruined, or sacrificing him to the village through a brand that marks him as something 'special'." The comment about sacrifice burned, especially in how it hit home. Uzumaki might have been his mother's name, but it was also given to him because of his role as the Kyuubi's Jinchuuriki. It was a mark of his sacrifice, of his status as being that sacrifice. Only an Uzumaki could contain the beast and survive, and so his lineage was proven twice over. Another point in favour of her having knowledge of the Kyuubi.
And then she paraphrased the Will of Fire. "Safety is in knowledge, in being able to build a foundation, creating bonds to connect you with who you are, who you could be, and who you should not be. You were born with these roots, they were given to you by the people around you. Naruto, and every single orphan like him must instead bleed for them."
The ANBU had the uncharitable thought that this woman couldn't be human.
He would have said 'real' but she was speaking from a point of such obvious pain that she wasn't someone just speaking the words. She clearly felt them, had lived them, and survived well enough to articulate this to both people who did not understand, and those who did inside their deepest corners.
She cannot be human.
"You sound as if you speak from experience."
Her voice was level and unemotional when she said, "I do, of a kind. I was orphaned when I was barely more than a baby, but also a foundling later on in life after my initial guardians spent their time convincing me I was a burden."
She hugged Naruto tighter, and Kakashi thought maybe they could cut things off here and examine all she'd actually revealed, and what they were going to do about it. When he started signing this to the man behind the desk, the Hokage spoke up and changed everything entirely.
"Well, that about answers all the immediate questions. You have a few choices for your stay in Konohagakure. You may consent to an ANBU watcher and stay with Naruto, working as my new secretary during the week. You may discuss terms on the resurrection of the Uzumaki clan with me tomorrow, and then go collect your clan members so we can assess you all at once, or you may leave permanently."
Kakashi went quiet, as still as a tree in the dead of winter. Tenzou was quietly freaking out beside him, while Yuugao was suppressing twitches in front of the door like she'd been licked by Anko in public again.
The Hokage usually had more sense than Jiraiya at the onsen rather than less, so it was a bit of a surprise. It was commonly accepted knowledge that the more powerful a ninja, the more eccentric, but he'd never seen evidence of it in their leader.
Admittedly, it was kind of amusing when the woman's jaw unhinged just a little bit, and her eyes seemed to open to the size of the moon, but she just squeezed the boy in her arms, resettled her expression into a less-offended arrangement, and gathered her wits. "That depends on what kind of hours we're looking at. I want to be able to help Naruto, and I can't do that if we never see each other."
The tension in the room relaxed enough that Yuugao was allowed to guard from outside while Laurel and the Sandaime bartered back and forth. Kakashi retreated with Tenzou, just absorbing the background noise until he heard the Hokage address them directly. "ANBU Cat, you will be assigned to watch Gekkeiju Uzumaki, and ANBU Dog you are in charge of organising the other members of your squad into appropriate shifts. I will discuss things with you further after you take these two back to Naruto's apartment."
They nodded, and returned the sleepy Uzumaki boy and the wary civilian to their apartment in a shower of leaves.
[-]
