A/N: I'm not quite sure where the plot is going so you get this to explain some background. It's kind of rambly. Sorry 'bout that.

Also: today's my birthday. Now that I have entered the fourteenth year of life, does that mean I'm immune from cracks about my writing due to my age? Or do I have to wait until I'm seventeen, or twenty, or indefinitely? Should I stop asking you guys random questions?


Kakashi sighed as he sipped green tea in his apartment. The medic had said he would be fine as long he sustained no further head injuries within the next week and didn't exhaust himself.

Now that he wasn't as dizzy, he felt slightly guilty. Sasuke didn't deserve to see him threatening his teacher like that.

It wasn't that he hated Anko. He wished he could like her, really. She was fun and daring and certainly quite attractive, but he couldn't. He couldn't like a traitor.

Fuinjutsu, the art of sealing, could be used for both good, bad, and neutral purposes. Seals were everywhere in a ninja village. Kakashi had a storage sealing scroll, for when he needed to bring a lot on a mission. Suna's Chiyo could, or so he had heard at any rate, use a seal to block a target's chakra. Fuinjutsu could also-as he was very well aware-trap a demon inside a person. All of these could be cast by people with very different motives.

But juinjutsu, the art of cursed sealing, was different. Very different. Superficially of course they were similar, but to one who understood them, they were not. Fuinjutsu could counter, somewhat, juinjutsu, but so could a blade plunged into oneself counter genjutsu. Kakashi was not a sealing master, not at all, not like-

In any case, he was…proficient in their usage, at least at the low level. If he put a storage seal on a rucksack, he could not affect that seal anymore than another capable of creating storage seals. Juinjutsu, on the other hand, could only be affected-not sort of countered, but removed or changed- by the creator. Which in the examples he'd had to study, was Sannin no Orochimaru. And his cursed seals could let him control, at least to a degree, those upon which he had placed it. He knew that; they had captured some random Kiri chuunin who bore that seal, and while they were interrogating him he began activating some kind of elaborate jutsu, before stopping abruptly with no apparent cause, and his curse mark appeared…not quite inflamed, but there weren't any other words he could think to describe it.

In short: he didn't trust Anko. Not at all. A small part of him realised it wasn't her fault, but the rest of him, including that mostly-buried bit of subconscious from when he was young who was a ninja that even Shimura Danzo would approve of, pushed it away. The seal also appeared to cause random fits of rage, a bad thing for a teacher, especially of an eight year old.

Some might muse on his motives, especially if they didn't know much about his background from before he was a jounin. It was not that he had been particularly fond of the Uchiha. Some of them were exceedingly arrogant, but it was mostly their general emotionlessness, their stiff postures and rigidity. It was a reminder of what he'd been. Also it was annoying.

Nor was it that he liked any of the boy's immediate family. Uchiha Mikoto had been insufferable and overly giggly. Uchiha Fugaku had been on a genin team with Hatake Sakumo, and Kakashi always got the feeling that the man despised him not because he had Obito's eye, but because he wasn't his father. Which was kind of strange, considering. And Uchiha Itachi was screwed up six ways to Sunday. A few shuriken short of a full set. There'd always been something…off about the boy. What he wasn't quite sure, but definitely something. He was frequently kind and then suddenly cruel, spacey one moment but overly attentive the next.

No, it was none of those things that his acquaintances might suggest. It was because he saw himself in the boy. Kakashi remembered quite well what it was like to walk into his father's study and see the man's body lying on the floor, dead, dark red blood staining his white clothes. That was something he'd never forget. And to see not just your father, but all your family dead? He'd heard from a former ANBU medic who now worked in the hospital's psychology department that Itachi'd made Sasuke watch, too, using some sort of genjutsu. Illusions left no physical scars but that didn't mean they left none at all.

He was undecided whether having no one to blame but a dead man who took his own life was better or worse than a very alive killer off in some far away land. The only hint of tracks they could find had ended about four kilometres from Konoha's gate.

Although being left alone until he was became a genin would not end well, being guided by Anko was even worse. If she hadn't had the cursed seal he'd have left them alone, but no matter what you thought about said cursed seal you couldn't deny she wasn't the sort of person who should be teaching a traumatised impressionable child. She drunk like Sannin no Tsunade, swore like a sailor and dressed like a woman who bore her bedding at dawn. Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration. The basic facts of her character were nonetheless undeniable. Mitarashi Anko did have an extreme fondness for drink. She'd carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleeding. Her flightiness was well known.

In other words, she was the exact opposite of the stolid pillar Minato-sensei had been for him. Then again, Minato-sensei had been perfect. Brilliant and kind and the best teacher anyone could ever hope for. He'd never seen the man with alcohol; he'd never even seen him with coffee. A child of civilians who pulled himself up by his bootstraps.

The jounin tried to imagine what a boy taught by Mitarashi Anko would grow up to be like. Silly and cackling and with a shirt barely buttoned, no doubt.

On the other hand-the part of his brain that believed in Anko's trustworthiness was pushing back now-what if Sasuke was left alone? Hatred, after all, is both addictive and destructive. That boy would be far more acceptable in the eyes of his Academy teachers and the Hokage, but on the inside he'd be worse, somehow, and probably run off to the first fool to offer him power. The Sharingan in some evil's hands…not good.

Suddenly the bright red numbers on his clock drew his attention. It was that late already? Oh dear…Homura was going to kill him.