Why do so many people seem to think that I'll just randomly discontinue this story? I'm confused. I've gotten like ten different reviews/messages about that... Is the update date just not changing or something...? Eh. In any case, I'm just kinda slugging it through my midterms and term projects right now, so... Lo siento.
Also, props to princess-kally for teaching me that it's supposed to be 'Roseate' (didn't know it existed) instead of 'Rosette' (which is not for colors.) I'm too lazy to change old chapters, but I'll include that from here on out.
And BIG props to Angurvddel, who really helped me clear my head and gave me some ideas on how to work this story that I found extremely helpful. Thank you!
Oh yeah. The weird looking chapter titles... Well, in truth, that's just me being a dick. Sorry. Well, no, I'm not really sorry, but still. Meh.
"...Aniki...?"
It was something of an auto-reaction for Jinya to unwrap himself from his blankets and half-mumble, half-hiss for Sakura to close the door before the moonlight could make him any more awake that he suddenly found himself. It was also automatic for him to reach out and pull her up onto the bed once she got close enough, although somewhere in his hazy mind, he noticed that she'd gotten taller. Mostly, though, he was ready to go back to wrap the covers around them again and go back to sleep, as soon as she finally knocked out. "Oyasumi, imouto," he mumbled.
"Niisan, matte," came the whispered plea.
The shift in his established routine made Jinya pause, before he forcibly opened his eyes and tried not to shudder at the patch of moonlight from the window across the room. He focused, instead, on his sister. He awakened a lot more when he realized that her expression was somewhere between frightened and worried. This... Isn't about a nightmare. Nightmares didn't scare Sakura, not anymore. They just made it hard for her to go back to sleep.
"What's wrong, Sakura?" Part of him was hoping that it was about the cave and her presence within it so many days ago, but another part still shied away from even considering it. It was strange to be in denial and recognize it the whole time. "Daijoubu ka?"
Sakura looked up at him with big green eyes full of conflict, and the white haired teen was startled to realize that he hadn't seen her looking so hesitant for almost a year. Almost since the day she first saw Naruto-kun in the library, he thought, torn between surprise and a new set of worries at the revelation. Why...? His attention was drawn back to the present when she finally decided to speak.
"Y-yesterday... Yesterday, okaasan, she..." Sakura faltered. Am I really doing the right thing? She wondered. Niisan is only eleven... Quickly, however, she remembered that she was only six. At least Jinya was already a shinobi. "There was this man, talking to okaasan at the tea shop..."
Something in Jin relaxed at that beginning to the tale, even as something else tensed. Maybe some guy out there is interested in okaasan? He missed his father, still, but he couldn't say that he didn't expect someone to trying moving in on his mother now that she was 'unattached.' It was nothing to worry about, probably.
And then Sakura finished up what she was saying. "...And he was saying that, that, that okaasan has to pass on this paper, and if she doesn't, he'll come hurt me, and, and, he said he's been watching her and us and our house and the school and you and everything and that he knows that we can't go anywhere and that okaasan can't tell anyone, and, and, okaasan told me not to tell anyone but I had to tell you Jinya because okaasan was scared and you have to help her!" She hadn't intended to stumble her words, but every time she thought about the encounter, the fear and guilt and shock rose up again from the tight reigns she'd been trying to keep them under and she ended up panicking.
For a moment, Jin's face was eerily blank as he processed the words she was speaking. And then, with motions that Sakura could only register because she'd been training her eyes back into catching high speed movement, he was out of the blanket cocoon and over at the dresser, changing his clothing with shinobi speed and efficiency. Once she got over her startle, she realized he was speaking: "...stay here and go to sleep, Sakura. I promise I'll be back in a little while. Don't go outside."
Before she could even think to protest, he was strapping his hitai-ate onto his forehead and leaping from the window that was never really closed. She worried, and she wondered if she'd done the right thing, and she prayed that telling Jinya about the day before wouldn't somehow hasten the death of a person she cared about. And then, she lay down, hugged her brother's pillow, and tried to go to sleep.
She had a lot of things to start tomorrow, and no lack of sleep was going to stop her.
Sarutobi Hiruzen had done a lot of things for Konoha in his life, which was exceedingly long for someone in the shinobi profession. Wars, bombings, assassinations, guard duty, cross dressing, cooking, brainwashing, spying... At his age, and with his experiences, he gotten very used to assuming that no matter what came along, he would be able to handle it just fine, because there was almost nothing he couldn't look at and say 'been there, done that.'
Of course, after the year he'd been having so far, the Sandaime was very quick to let go of that philosophy. Between the mystery gift scrolls, civilians turned spy, spies turned children, and everything else, it was obviously obsolete, and really, things were bad enough without him jinxing himself. Somehow though, he thought, I can't imagine anything managing to beat this out...
In his hands, he held two letters. He couldn't decide which one of the two he liked the least, mostly because he couldn't decide which one of the two was more damnably helpful to him in the long run.
The first one was a short, anonymous note: "Haruno Nadeshiko, civilian, middle class, widow of former council member Haruno Daisuke. Unknown assailant, non-physical threat, go-between and note. Haru no Cha, fourteen-fifty-seven, two days ago... Uchiha Yashiro, chuunin, lower clan member, clan council member. Second in command of Konoha Military Police. And Uchiha Tekka, chuunin, lower clan member, clan council member. Member of Konoha Military police. Three relations, direct contact. Mizu no Kuni, Pad Village and Kusa no Kuni, Bikusho Commonwealth. September 2nd."
It was a simple note with simple information. He'd known about Nadeshiko, from the woman herself, then Morino Ibiki, and then her young son only the day before. He'd also known an inkling of the two Uchiha leaks, because even as spy after spy was removed by Operation Rabbit Hole, a new agent, loyal to Sarutobi, took over each 'identity' in order to expand his own personal spy network. It was fairly easy to do so, as well, because every successfully deprogrammed spy was a new addition to Konoha's forces, which had slowly been rebuilding since the Kyuubi attack.
The problem with the note, which was ironically enough the same reason he trusted it, came in the way that it was coded. Exactly three people knew this code; not including himself, Jiraiya had no need to send anonymous notes to him, and Tsunade, in addition to wanting nothing to do with her birth village, was currently touring Kaze no Kuni, to his knowledge. Seeing as the only student Jiraiya had taught the code to had been dead for nearly six years and Tsunade's only student was also in Kaze, it left him with quite the conundrum when it came to searching out the source of it. Not even Kakashi knew this code. Never mind that he had no idea how it had gotten into the pocket of his robes.
If being stuck on that note wasn't enough to push him to a headache, then the official scroll sitting right next to him was the piece de résistance. It was a long, carefully worded letter from the reclusive Land of Iron's leader, who had been contacted by the several village and country leaders, including the Raikage and the Tsuchikage, who both led countries that were on painfully shaky grounds with Konoha. In the barest terms, it was a meeting to discuss the short, recent crisis and the culprits behind it. Read between the lines, however, it was the next step to an all-out war, and more than a few threats were thrown in should Konoha decide to keep to themselves.
Sarutobi had known that the quickest solution to returning the overabundance of children Konoha suddenly found itself full of wasn't going to have the best outcome. Indeed, sending covert teams to slip past borders and leave children in the squares of the towns they'd come from in the middle of the night was a cheap, problem-ridden response. Still, it took care of the worst problem off the bat; making sure that Konoha couldn't be accused as the ones behind the attack, and more than that, making sure that there was absolutely no proof even if they were accused. So, although there were still more children in Konoha than their records could account for, it wasn't enough of a change to be called on. Not unless someone admitted to deep cover spying and took the blame on themselves.
He'd been hoping that there would be at least a month of time for things to settle before any words like this were set up. Inter-village politics made his joints flare up. Barely any time had passed since the last war, let alone the various minor calamities in different countries; nobody was ready for a movement like this. Still, the number of spies everywhere was jumping to all new highs, border securities were still incredibly tight, and trade was only barely picking up from the complete stall it had been in two weeks ago.
"At least this meeting won't happen for quite some time as we organize..." His sad attempt at self-comforting wasn't particularly helpful at all.
I'm too old for this shit...
"...and, well, that's it."
Naruto stared. "...You're not joking," he spoke up after a minute or so of silence, a slightly awed and faintly disturbed tone coloring his voice. "I... You... You're really not joking." The whiskered blonde wasn't sure he'd ever heard anything so absurd, so fake-sounding, so implausible... And yet, he got the strangest feeling that he was actually being told the truth. "...What the hell?"
"Naruto!"
"Sakura!" He snapped right back at the pink-haired girl in a loud whisper. "You just told me that you're the old man's student's time traveling jounin student who somehow turned into a six year old to try and save the moon from hypnotizing the world because of Sasuke's a-billion-times great grandpa who is somehow alive and you want me to help you with it! What am I supposed to say?"
Sakura flushed a brilliant red color that clashed with her hair, and not for the first time, felt incredibly grateful that Naruto seemed to know every nook and cranny that existed in Konoha. If not, they would surely have been discovered by now in the hollow of the tree they were cramped together in, if not because of Naruto's disbelieving exclamations, then because of the flailing some of her highly-edited storytelling had caused.
"Ano..."
Truthfully, she hadn't meant to tell Naruto the bare outline of everything going on with her at the moment. She'd spent nearly three days deciding who to tell the barest details necessary, and making up all these elaborate plans on how to reveal what was going on, and she'd been practicing everything she needed to know to make it seem like a big joke if she somehow screwed up... And then she'd run into Naruto.
Somehow, the roseate haired girl had gone from trying to make up an excuse about how she'd known about the children they'd found to just blurting out a mass of verbs and nouns and 'please believe me'-type phrases that eventually came together in a fairly misleading but entirely truthful explanation. And she didn't exactly regret telling him. Just... The way she'd told him, and the things she'd let slip, and the sudden uncontrolled outpouring of words... Well, that could've gone better. A lot better, probably. Then again...
"So I'm really gonna be Hokage, right? I bet I kick ass."
...It was Naruto.
"You... Believe me?" She asked, blinking rapidly.
The boy tilted his head, and gave her that familiar squinty-eyed expression that said he was thinking deeply. "Ano... You're really smart, Sakura-chan. Really smart. And you know all these funny medical jutsu. And you can tell the difference between Neko-san and Cat-san, even though they have the same mask in ANBU. And... You say some strange things sometimes. And you kinda seem to know everybody before they meet you. And..." He paused, suddenly looking down and growing shy. "Friends believe in each other no matter what, right?"
Sakura couldn't stop the large smile from spreading across her face, so wide that she could feel her goggles shifting on her head. How many times had she heard that exact phrase from him in the future? "Hai... We believe in each other. No matter what."
"Then, since you're my friend, I'm going to do my best! ...Only, what am I supposed to be doing? Except when you made me slip that note in the old man's pocket the other day, I don't think I've really been helpful." He tilted his head to the side, squinting once more. "How come you didn't tell the old man all this stuff, anyways?"
"Well... Hokage-sama is a ninja," Sakura explained with a slight grin. "And as any ninja knows... There's no such thing as a real secret in a hidden village. Somebody always knows something about what's going on. One of the hardest parts of being a ninja is finding a way to use the information before the other guy can figure it out. And this information... I don't think I can give it to just anyone. Hokage-sama will do what's best for Konoha, I know, but... What if he decided that the best thing for Konoha was to erase all the information from my head and let things run as close to events as possible, or something like that? I don't need someone to make decisions for me. I need someone to make decisions with me. And I think... I think you're the best person to trust for that."
There was a long, silent look between them, before Naruto finally let a smile light his face. "I guess I'll just do whatever you say then, Sakura-chan. What's first?"
"First? Well, there's this boy named Yakushi Kabuto..."
Hating things took an awfully large amount of effort. To hate something, you had to pay it a whole lot of attention, and glare, and mutter, and actually spend time thinking up insults and reasoning and justifications to back up your original reasons. Not to mention, you had to be unhappy enough to feel hate, which was draining in itself. Hatred also seemed to make people act stupid and ignore logic for no good reason, which tended to inspire even more hate from new, more vindictive places in an unending cycle.
Shikamaru was tempted to say that he hated being such a smart child that he was actually pondering on hatred... But that also seemed like a waste of effort. If only he could convince the girl in the living room that hatred was way too tiring...
"No! Damn it, I said no! What the hell is this? How many fucking times do I have to ask to just be put in the fucking orphanage with every other fucktard my age? Shit! I don't want to be here! There's a bunch of fucking weird looking animals all over you fucking lawn taking dumps and chewing the same fucking grass they just shitted all over and I'll probably have to touch it or something if I stay here! Take me back, you ugly piece of shit! Fuck, I already hate it here! Why is this whole fucking village full of fucking retards?"
The brown haired boy wished he knew the answers to her questions. Particularly the reason she was being placed in his home instead of the orphanage. Somehow, he just knew that his life was going to become even more unnecessarily complicated because of this girl...
"Tayuya, huh? Che... Troublesome."
Itachi hadn't been on a mission outside of Konoha for what felt like months. He didn't notice how freeing it felt until he was half-way to the border of Hi no Kuni, subsisting more on pure adrenaline than any sort of nutrients. It wasn't even an ANBU designation mission, not this time. This time, he was playing courier. Surely, the contents of the scroll were extremely important for relations between Konoha and every other delegation that had contacted the Land of Iron as a neutral point, but the mere fact that he knew what the scroll was for said something about how rapidly the information was spreading between the masses.
In truth, he was apprehensive about what the scroll really meant; not the words printed on it, so much as the meaning behind it. The messages being relayed, the number of shinobi being reassigned to different teams and designations, the rapid changes being made to the Academy curriculum that resembled his own pre-genin course load much more closely than the current or even the one they'd been attending... He wasn't stupid. He knew what his village was preparing for. Again...
Stopping on a high branch in order to rest for a short while, the obsidian eyed boy glanced around himself, and then looked at the sky, where the moon was hanging full and heavy against the star-sprinkled darkness.
"Beautiful, isn't it, Itachi-kun?"
The kunai was flying out of his hand before the boy's mind caught up with his body. But that wasn't quick enough, because he'd been trapped before he'd ever reached into his kunai holster. He gritted his teeth, and then froze as a cloaked form appeared in front of him like a mirage.
"Now, now, that's no way to treat your dear ancestor, is it?"
A single Sharingan eye peered lazily at him from behind an orange, swirled mask. The Sharingan!
"Indeed, indeed, you have almost the same eyes as me." Madara chuckled at his little rhyme. "And now... Now, it's time for us to have a little family chat."
Family chat? Who are you...?
A/N: I think I'm almost physically incapable of publishing a chapter at a respectable hour. Ridiculous. Also... Madara, again. For some reason, I just cannot write him. What the hell. Meh.
And this one's kinda short... Sorry. (For real this time.)