"Where is my son!"

"Mrs Fukui, you must try to remain calm. We're doing the best we can." Sai said in the most soothing voice he could manage. At parents evenings he'd always found Daiki's mother a most understanding and agreeable lady even if her son wasn't receiving the most favourable comments about his school work. Yet now he could see why everyone else on the other hand, described her rather as formidable when in Shinobi attire. If her son or her village were threatened, she could turn from mother to monster in the blink of an eye. It was as if waves of chakra were radiating off her body ready to drown him and everyone in the office.

"It's getting dark now and no one has even tried to look for him! You should have been looking after him on his first day of training!" she added rounding on Shikamaru who was chewing his thumb nail in the corner of the room. No tears for this woman. There was only fury and unfortunately, Sai was on the receiving end.

"Your son is a Genin Mrs Fukui, training to one day be a Chunin and maybe even a Jonin. He'll be at risk every single second when he's on a mission."

"Don't be absurd! You wouldn't send twelve year old children on A rank missions. Please! And you call yourself a teacher! You have a duty of care! For gods sake let me out of here so I can go and look for him. You're wasting time! Let me at least send him a message."

"Mrs Fukui, please try to understand. We won't be much good to Daiki if we're trying to find him in the dark and any message you send to him could risk colliding with the explosives. The network of paper bombs out there is as extensive as your son said it would be. It goes nearly all the way around the village and if the culprit knows we're onto them then they could blow the whole place sky high at any moment. If you or any of us go out there now, even if someone was using Byakugan, we'd be putting him at more risk than ever. For the good of the village we must think of a logical solution to overcome this problem-."

"For the good of the village? My son is a problem that needs to be solved now, is he? I've gotten too used to hearing that from his father and I certainly won't take it from you! If he dies it's all your fault! Your fault for putting him on a damned dysfunctional team as if he didn't matter as much as the rest of your A grade students, you fault for brain washing him into doing self less things that would get him killed and your fault for not scouting the village properly for such colossal threats like these! It could have been anyone's child who got caught out there-"

"And anyone else's child who would already gotten themselves out rather than bringing the entire village into it. Kai would never have gotten into so much trouble in the first place" Ivan Samato interrupted leaning casually against the desk as if it were his own.

There was a bang and the building trembled. All their heads turned to see the Hokage standing in the door way with his fist embedded in the wall. His face was like thunder.

"Enough, all of you." he said softly, walking into his office. "If I must, I will go and find Daiki myself. Ivan apologise to Mrs Fukui and then go home and piss someone else off. Now." With the grace to look a little humiliated the younger man did just that and left.

"Sai, go and get Mrs Fukui some tea." Seventh continued gesturing to a seat for her to sit on.

"Shikamaru go and see to the rest of your team. Make sure they aren't planning to do anything reckless. I'm sure this has hit them pretty hard." Shikamaru bowed to Mrs Fukui before shutting the door on the two of them. He glanced at the crater in the wall and imagined what would be left of Ivan's head of he had been standing there. Easy to forget sometimes what a powerful Shinobi their Hokage was. Samato really was an odious little prick.

Still... As much as Shikamaru hated to admit it, Numa and Fin probably wouldn't take this as much of a hit. Or at least Numa probably wouldn't and he had no idea where Fin was, though he hadn't mentioned that to Naruto. He had his hands full enough as it was with dealing with the present crisis. After not too much searching he found his student sitting next to Kai in the underground bunker that was most strongly fortified to protect the children and any mothers with babies. He had fallen asleep with his head on her shoulder but she didn't seem to mind. For some reason it reminded him disturbingly of the way Sakura had cared for Sasuke when ever they went on missions together. From the way she was sitting, it was clear to him how much she wanted their friendship to mean so much more. To mean things that this boy hadn't even thought about yet. It seemed cruel to pull them apart but at present Shikamaru wasn't feeling any particular warmth towards either of them. If the boy grew up to be anything like his father then he might as well knock his head against a the wall now to save anyone else the trouble later.

He beckoned his student to follow him until they were safely out of earshot of anyone else.

"Your team. Do you know where they are?"

She shrugged and pointed her thumb over her shoulder at the hoard of children milling around the cramped space.

"Not sure if they're here Sensei. They might be with their families on some of the upper levels if they were stubborn enough."

He nodded slowly and beckoned her further away from the door.

"Tell me again, where do you think they are?"

She frowned confused. "They might be on one of the upper levels like I said. I haven't seen them cause there are so many people-."

"Tell me where your team is."

Her gaze shifted from side to side as if thinking and then shrugged timidly.

"I don't know Sensei. I don't know what else you want from me-"

"God damn it Numa! I've been your Sensei for one day! One day, and do you know what I've see so far?" He was shouting now and he didn't care how much attention he was attracting or how terrified his pupil looked. He didn't care if she had tears in her eyes or how crushing his words would be to her. "Poor qualities to be found in a Shinobi, that's what! Poor anger management, poor communication skills, a dreadful lack of compassion, colossal lack of team work and unwillingness to follow orders. The last one I can excuse but the rest... Does that boy mean so much to you that you wouldn't even bother to make sure your team mates are all safe? Leadership material! So far I've yet to see it. Being in a team is hard. Believe me, I know. But no matter what you do in the future, you're always going to have to work with other people. Be a part of something bigger. If you can't learn that now then go back to school, or better yet, start thinking about a different career path. You may not like them but right now, both of your team mates are missing, perhaps dead. Get your act together Numa and get this into your head. That boy can't give you what you want and I think you know it too. For as long as I've lived, no one has ever changed teams unless the other members are deceased or they join the black ops. Lives are at stake this very minute. Two lives in particular that should mean something to you. If you can't handle all of this then... then you don't belong in our ranks, but theirs." He pointed at the children gathered in the door staring wide eyed at the pair of them and walked away.

He hated himself and doubtless his pupil did too. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Maybe he'd been too hard on them for their first day. Asuma had been so cool around them when they started out and remained that way until his death. How would he be remembered? Or would he be remembered? Surely it wasn't just him being cruel... was it? He sat up on the Hokage's roof and put his head in his hands. He was a terrible teacher. Why had he even agreed to do this job?

"Rough night huh?"

He looked up and saw Naruto standing with his hands in his coat pockets staring at the stars. It flapped around him in the light breeze.

"Yeah." he sighed eventually. "Aren't you meant to be doing something... Hokageish?"

Lord seventh actually laughed at that but didn't look round. "What do you think I'm doing right now?"

Shikamaru hung his head."So you heard already?"

"Heard you loud and clear. Didn't realise you could shout though. I thought it was all too much... of a drag."

Shikamaru closed his eyes. He must have made a real spectacle of himself and in front of all the children too. "I'm not cut out for this Lord Seventh. You knew that at the start. Put me out in the field. I'll do anything. On my own if I have to. But teaching? Forget it. Kids hate me. And today, I think I hate kids. You're the people person. Not me."

Naruto nodded slowly. It was hard to believe he was the same guy from all those years ago. That he'd be telling him his problems and asking him to deal with them even when he had a million and one other things he was supposed to be focussing on.

"I understand where you're coming from Shikamaru. Hinata's out on a mission this month. And the kids are off doing their thing. They sure do grow up fast. Makes me look like an old housewife, all this desk work and training on my own. I sometimes feel a bit tied down by all of this...responsibility."

Shikamaru looked up at him and saw that he was still talking to the stars. "But then again... I like the weight of it. I have liked the weight of it. It's been like having thousands of different students all at once. One crazy party every day. Some of them didn't really like me at first and some still don't. But something told me that... I should never give up on a single one of them. And I don't suppose I ever will. Patience really ages you, if you know what I mean."

Shikamaru did. His hair had started getting grey streaks long before other people his age.

"What I'm trying to say is you're used to leading trained Shinobi. Ones that have been moulded and shaped and refined. I couldn't think of a better commander to have in battle. But these kids haven't had the training you or I have. Or experienced war. They're fresh out of school and the future is a mystery to them. That's why they need someone like you. Someone to train them. Kids can adapt if you give them time. Evolve. In your team, you may have the makings of some of the finest Shinobi this village has ever seen. Look at Daiki. He could have been screaming for help for the whole village to hear and we would have all ran right into that trap. But instead he thought straight away of the precautions everyone should be taking. He saved his village. Chakra threads are easy to miss and the number of paper bombs I've set off in my adult life is positively embarrassing. He's made a better start than most."

"I don't know Naruto." Shikamaru sighed rubbing his eyes. "Maybe I was expecting too much of them. Asking them to do and learn things it took me my life time to work out. But I am not really a patient man. I want to go and find my students now and begin taking them on missions this minute."

"Then why don't you?"

He looked up and frowned at his Hokage.

"You're talking about putting thousands of lives at risk. One broken trip wire and the whole village goes up in flames."

"Yeah, but we haven't got forever. And neither has Daiki. Even if those things never get set off, your student will probably die of thirst or hunger sooner or later."

"Don't talk about that so casually. He's only twelve years old and without a day of training."

"And with a mother worried sick about him too, you're right. So what to do?"

Shikamaru only just realised he was munching on a bowl of ramen as he said this.

"I... wait you mean you really don't know?"

"Not a clue. But I thought you might have some ideas."

"I... I want to disarm those bombs."

"Uh huh."

"But it's pitch black in there and even if I could see, I'd probably be unable to get through anyway."

Naruto nodded calmly whilst stuffing noodles into his mouth.

"We could just blow the damn thing. But Daiki is still inside." He rubbed his temples in an attempt to soothe his pounding headache. "Ahhrgh, I don't know what to do. I hate this!"

Naruto drained his soup and sighed. "Or we could have some faith in the boy. He sounded to me as if he was going to do something in his message. Perhaps he can handle it. Either way we're stuck here until it gets light."

Finally he turned and looked at Shikamaru. "I don't condone your actions in case you were wondering. You taught your student a tough lesson. That the people she'll have to work with won't necessarily be the ones she knows and likes. But don't give up on them. Give them all another chance. In fact, screw that, give them a thousand more chances if that's what it takes. And if you think you've had a bad day then... Well let's just say the other three Senseis are struggling to adjust to the new generation as well."

Shikamaru sat back after he was gone, lit up a cigarette and puffed away into the night air. If he ever saw his students again, this was going to be the toughest challenge he had ever faced.