Unedited & Originally Updated: 08/12/2017

Cat's Cradle

Chapter Twenty-Six

Six Waves

"You're a kid, it's okay to depend on me."

It was spoken with a rough timbre and one that, at the time, made her feel supported by some sort of otherworldly power. A chuckle followed soon after, and in a tone that spoke of melancholy and repressed recollections, he added, "children shouldn't look so old as you do."

Yugito woke up with the memory on the tip of her tongue and a warm hand resting against her cheek.

It was disorienting for a moment, waking up with someone beside her.

She couldn't recall very many memories of it ever happening before. Perhaps, back when she was still just a child. For some reason, the thought made her incredibly nostalgic.

In spaces of time, her memory of the night before came back and though she felt herself sinking into the mattress in embarrassment over how emotional she'd gotten, she didn't pull away from Kakashi. She liked him touching her.

"Good morning," he croaked out, his breath ruffling the hair at her ears and making her curl her toes in response. She grinned at him as soon as she got the courage up to peek at him through her loose hair. Almost immediately, she was rewarded with the sight of his canines. She licked her own.

Kakashi growled and before she could register it happening in her sleep-addled state, he shifted their positions and came to hover over her. His hands were rough on the skin of her stomach and his breath was hot as it misted over her throat. Without thinking, Yugito brought her legs and wrapped them around the back of him. Drawing him in closer, she lifted her hands to his shoulders and grinned broadly.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked with an unasked grin forming on her face.

Inwardly, it felt bizarre and somehow incredible, his warmth so close to her own. Strange in the way that she so rarely felt such sensations, and incredible in that she could feel them at all. Her eyes misted but she didn't let herself tear up. It would have been too embarrassing to let him see, and even more so to explain why she felt compelled to cry.

It was not often at all that she felt such gentle hands hold her.

He rested his forehead against hers and quietly asked, "Do we have to get up today?"

She wondered if there was an underlying question in his words but didn't have the courage to ask. Instead, Yugito looked off towards the clock and noted the time. It was already half past noon, the latest she had slept in for a long time.

"I'm hungry," she told him and flipped their positions with her thighs still wrapped around his. He watched her with a heavy lidded gaze with a brow lifted and his lips drawn into a smirk. It was magnetic to watch him, transfixing in that she couldn't look away.

She leaned in and kissed him, feeling her mouth capture his like two puzzle pieces meeting. She meant it to be quick and chaste, but the idea of it changed the moment he wrapped his arm around her waist. She sucked in a breath and in that moment, the kiss was deepened.

Yugito had kissed him numerous times before, and though some of them had been heated, she had never quite experienced anything like she was now. It was difficult to describe, difficult to let herself feel, but the gentle warmth she'd felt so enveloped in earlier was nothing more than a memory of an afterthought.

Somehow the image of a knife heating up under a flame crossed her mind and in the same moment, Kakashi broke the kiss—only to lead a trail of fire down her throat. Yugito felt her breath catch when he began to suck and her fingers curled in the folds of his shirt in response. He sat up then, bringing her to lean into him as she sat in his lap, legs wound around his torso.

She pressed into him, squeezing her thighs and lost in intelligent thought.

He pulled back, beckoning a whimper from her. Yugito met his gaze and watched those once so lazy eyes gaze back at her with heated intent. He smiled at her, swollen lips twisting in a way that made her absent of breath.

"I hope we're hungry for the same thing," he growled.

Yugito had no doubts. She stared back at him for a moment but it passed quickly. Without thinking, she leaned back onto the bed with his arms wrapped so tightly around her. He was positioned so perfectly, watching her from above.

She knew what she wanted. Knew what he wanted.

Biting her lip, she tilted her head and whispered with a coated tongue, "please."

A knock came at the door, completely interrupting everything and if her hands weren't already preoccupied, she would have done something to shut up whoever was behind the door.

But it could only be one person standing there and she could never send him away.

Kakashi sighed and rolled off her to open the door while she adjusted the way her clothing sat on her. Looking down at herself was the moment she finally felt the embarrassment settle in at what they had been doing. Without her having even realized, Kakashi had hiked up her shirt over her chest and had been working on sliding off her shorts. Yugito pulled the hem of her shirt over her stomach and tugged up her shorts.

She swallowed any sounds of complaint as she stood up to follow closely behind her boyfriend.

Itachi gave them an amused look as soon as the door was opened and she had to roll her eyes.

"Did you need something?" she muttered, hanging onto Kakashi's arm while she gave Itachi her best annoyed look. She didn't have to be nice about him interrupting what had been years in the making.

"We have a meeting with my father and the Hokage. Or did you forget?" Itachi raised a brow at her and she knew that he would be laughing about this later on.

Yugito groaned, but didn't complain as she left them at the door to get dressed.

Whatever Fugaku had to say, better be worth it.

Six Waves

Sumiye sighed, gazing around herself and hoping the nerves would go away soon.

"What's with the long face?" Kawa asked, settling himself next to her and smiling in that soft way of his.

"It's nothing," she mumbled, forcing herself to give a response when in actuality, there was many reasons for why she looked the way she did. It would only rightly express how she felt in that moment. Haggard, beaten down, exhausted, worried, concerned, confused.

Sumiye didn't know what to do.

They'd been there for a few days, resting, but it didn't changed at all the fact that Sumiye hadn't been exactly sleeping well at night.

She felt sick to her stomach.

"It can't be nothing," Manzo muttered, concern clear in his gaze though it was nearly masked by the lack of care in his voice. Couldn't exactly expose himself and free himself of the suspicion of being an absolute prick, now, could he?

"Just nervous," she told them, and it was part of the truth. She'd at least give them that. Anything else was either too dangerous or too unbelievable to say out loud. Ugh. Even she couldn't believe half of what was happening to her.

Was she hiding it well?

The mark on her neck pulsed with foreign chakra and while she was terrified of it, Sumiye forced herself to remain calm. Like her mother told her to do. Like her father might've told her to do, if he was alive to do it.

She couldn't trust anyone with the information that she knew. Couldn't allow anyone to see it, so she kept her hand rested against her neck. No one would believe her—or worse, they would and she'd be forced to leave the prelims.

But Sumiye couldn't let that happen.

"Do you need something to drink?" Kawa asked, already getting up in advance to get it.

She swallowed, but didn't think she could trust whatever might be in the water he got for her.

It's Kawa, her mind reminded her but her heart wasn't interested.

"I'll get it myself," she murmured, fully intending to do just that.

"Hey, brats," a new voice interjected and she looked up to meet the eyes of a woman she could vaguely recognize but couldn't place. The woman narrowed her eyes at her and it was the barest of seconds that Sumiye realized her hand had slipped. At the spike of nerves in her gut, she prayed her long hair had been enough to disguise it.

At the tightening of the woman's expression, Sumiye felt something in her stomach tighten to an extent that was painful. She didn't know what to do and in that moment, she felt fear. Of the unknown, of the uncertain.

Keep calm, Sumiye reminded herself and took in a deep breath to cool her temper.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Prelims will be starting soon, get prepared," she told them and walked on.

Sumiye didn't allow herself to breath until the woman was out of sight and by the time she was, she had to run to the bathroom. She didn't look back at her teammates, and with tears pressing at the corners of her eyes, she didn't let anyone see her face.

She kept telling herself that she only had to be patient. Soon, she would be able to contact her mother and the rest of her clan. When she did, they would be able to figure out a way to reverse whatever had been done to her and she'd continue on as she had in the past.

This was her test; her trial to prove herself. An added difficulty level that she hadn't wanted but had no choice but to take part in—and she refused to fail.

Sumiye was a smart girl, after all.

Six Waves

Itachi wasn't sure what to think of anything anymore.

It was as if the laws of the universe had been rewritten and nothing was as it used to be. How else could it be that his father, of all people, would be saying such things?

Then again, it wasn't the first time the universe rewrote itself in his perspective.

When he had been a child, Itachi never thought there would come a day where he couldn't implicitly trust his father. Then the tides had changed with the death of the Yondaime and the destruction of homes and countless buildings by the wrath of the Kyuubi. The base of operations for the police changed and the voices of his cousins, uncles, aunts, and parents soon changed as well.

Itachi had been lost in understanding of the universe in that time and of his place in it.

Then the second rewriting, when Yugito first entered his world and tipped it completely sideways. It was when he had come to realize he could never be as he had once been. Could never aspire to be the things he once had or place hope or faith in identities beyond his own. Could never let himself be a thoughtless tool like he once had.

Best put, while the world had changed in that time, he had changed along with it.

Now, a third time, he felt his perspectives twisting and transforming. An attempt towards allowing in new information and adjusting to it like he would have with anything mission status changes.

In this respect, missions were far easier to handle.

Itachi didn't know if he could handle this new universe.

"You've changed your mind about the coup?" Itachi asked in a low tone, unsure of what sort of face he was making. It was most likely blank of anything. In the end, Itachi still held onto his self preservation and such skills had always come easily to him.

Must be from the way he had been raised.

"I never wanted it from the start," Fugaku told him, mouth set into a grim line. Itachi had been accustomed to the expression when he was a young child but it had been years since he had last seen it.

It was bizarre to be standing across from him.

Itachi looked to Yugito to be sure it was real. If she was here, then anything could be possible.

She wasn't looking at him, her eyes trained on Fugaku, but the sight of her let Itachi calm himself. If she was there with him, he would be fine. He'd believed that for too long to let any universal rewrite change that.

"Why didn't you do anything to stop it?" Itachi asked.

Years of never understanding his father weighed on him, and the moments of looking into those dark eyes of his left him feeling the weight of it all the more. Who was he? Who was this man that had raised him into this world and had never explained anything to him?

"You were there to witness the hysteria when it first began," Fugaku told him, tone gruff, "there was no one who didn't want there to be a change in the way the clan was treated. It wouldn't have even mattered if you had been clan head. There was nothing that could have stopped it."

"But why did that have to be the method? Why put at risk the lives of Konoha and the clan?" Itachi asked, and it was liberating to do it. Things he had wondered but never voiced out loud. He felt no hesitation in saying them—had lost that bad habit years ago.

"Because, son," Fugaku sighed, and haggard him a long hard look, "power is all anyone affected with the curse of hatred thinks about and a coup is the taking of it. Anything smaller would not have been enough to satisfy any of them and it still isn't."

"It still isn't?" Itachi echoed, raising a brow in question as if only mildly interested.

"That's what you have been called here for," the Sandaime finally spoke up, looking towards Yugito. "We need assistance in stopping the coup a second time, as you had done previously in your visit to Konoha."

She looked nonplussed at his words.

"You mean, when I abducted Itachi," she summarized and tilted her chin with curiosity in her dark eyes, "how do you know you can trust me? Or, better yet, why must you ask for help in the first place?"

"Trust is an illusionary thing, isn't it?" Hiruzen regarded her with a passive look. "You will never truly know if you have my trust. Just as I will never know if I have yours. So, perhaps it'll better to act in our own self-interests and trust the motivations behind these desires."

"Agreed," Yugito nodded with a grin, and gestured towards him to continue as she prompted, "and why are you asking for my help? What is it you think I can offer you? What do I get out of this?"

"The situation as of late has become...complicated," Hiruzen's expression darkened, "under normal circumstances, I would not call for aid. Especially not without consulting my council first."

Itachi looked to Yugito at the news and the both knew what that meant. Whatever was happening, Danzo was thankfully excluded from.

"The Uchiha clan is planning a coup with the assistance of Suna," Fugaku explained in an unglamourous fashion. It gave little room to even act surprised. He continued on without waiting for response, adding, "it's meant to happen on the day of the final exam, a month from now."

"So, what you're asking for isn't exactly my help," Yugito pointed out, "but rather what I can do to get Kumo to come in as backup, right?"

"Correct," Hiruzen said.

"Why don't you just put a stop to the clan?" Itachi asked his father, unsure if he was missing a larger piece to the puzzle. "Why don't you do anything to keep Suna away from Konoha?"

"I'm doing my best," Fugaku told him and for a second, there was the trace of a smile. But it vanished with his next words, "With the help of our esteemed leader, I've been trying to minimize the Uchiha clan's involvement in these matters. But progress with that has been slow and years of hatred is not something that can be wiped clean in just a day."

"Think of Kumo's involvement as a contingency plan, in the case anything happens at all," Hiruzen interjected and Itachi still had to wonder why more couldn't be done to stop everything. These men were smarter than they were acting and Itachi knew they could do something else than ask for outside help.

So, why?

What weren't they saying?

"What does Kumo get out of this deal?" Itachi asked, and was internally made more surprised how little he found he could trust the leader of the place he had once called his home. How little more he trusted his father and how suspicious he couldn't help but think of their actions.

"Of course, Kumo will be compensated for any effort in preventing certain tragedy."

What if Kumo wanted to capitalize on that certain tragedy? Itachi wondered inwardly but didn't voice out loud. Not because he couldn't but because he didn't believe in the likelihood of it, not with Yugito soon to lead. The point was that they couldn't know what Kumo would and wouldn't do.

Itachi didn't like it—and he knew why.

"Father, is it that you feel none of this hatred?" Itachi asked, staring him straight in the eye. "You've betrayed the clan in this way. Why?"

And for a moment, Fugaku looked that he might even cry. But it was a glimpse in time and it passed with Itachi wondering if he had been imagining things.

His father, gruff and authoritative as ever, responded to the inquiry as if the answer should have been obvious.

"I learned from you, of course."

"Learned from me," Itachi repeated, not sure how to swallow the words. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Fugaku sighed and for a moment, Itachi thought he might actually get an answer. He was greatly disappointed, when his father shook his head and informed him, as if he was a child, "this isn't the time for that."

When would be? He wondered and knew that it could never be time. Never had been before.

"That should be all for me," Fugaku suddenly said in closing and as he was excused by Hiruzen, he walked past Itachi and didn't pause.

Not even to look back.

Six Waves

The matches were set up weird but effective in the goal.

In their opinion, too many kids had made it past the second stage and for that very reason, they just had to have a preliminary. Which was incredibly awful to have to go through after having just survived the Forest of Death. Sumiye blamed this on the influx of Kumo nin that they hadn't been expecting to show and also on the fact that a whole lot more rookies had passed than anticipated.

Either way, each match was a battle royale of three names chosen at random. Last one standing was the winner who could go onto the final exam and have a chance at promotion. A simple method of weeding out the underdeveloped and unskilled from those actually worthy.

She didn't care much about any of the other kids or how well they were doing. She was much more interested in worrying about her own match instead and just getting it over with. So she could go home. So she could get help.

Sumiye had tied a scarf around her throat—something she acted as if she was pulling off as a fashion choice but was more or less a strangulation hazard if she ended up with the wrong opponent. Whatever—it wasn't such a big deal when she knew she'd beat whoever it was and her neck would go on perfectly unexposed.

She wasn't scared or intimidated. Not at all.

Not at all.

Her little cousin, Sasuke, was first to be called up for a match. Alongside him was some Kumo-nin named Kouji and an Oto-nin named Yoroi. It was kind of a boring fight, but then, Sumiye could never fathom her cousin losing. He was the next to be clan head, after all.

Kawa went next and got completely smeared because of some stupid bug-boy, simultaneously destroying another Oto-nin's chances at promotion. After that, a match between a Suna-nin named Kankuro, a Kumo-nin named Masahiro, and an Oto-nin named Misumi. In the end, the Kumo-nin was victorious with the complete destruction of clown boy's poor puppets. (That match had been kind of funny to watch.)

Next match was mildly annoying to bear witness to. It was, surprisingly, between two rookie Konoha-nin and one single Kumo-nin named Yoshikazu. Poor Yoshi was no match to two girls when they formed a temporary truce to take him down and then promptly broke into an irritating to watch fight seconds after he'd fainted. Finally, the conclusion of the fight came to a near tie, with the Yamanaka passing out just seconds before the pink haired girl.

It was at this point that Sumiye worried she would never get to her match.

Which ended up being two matches later, after a Suna-nin won her round against a Konoha-nin named Tenten and a Kumo-nin named Yasashiku. Yasa seemed to be the twin to Yoshi and he lost just as spectacularly as his brother had done. Two peas in a losing pod.

The last match before hers was offset by the disappointing loss by Manzo, the only teammate she had high hopes for. He lost to a rookie, with the only redeemable quality of his loss being that it was by a Nara. Not many could outsmart a foe like that.

It should have acted as an omen for what was to come. Both of her teammates losing and all.

But when her name was finally announced alongside two rookies, Sumiye assumed she had it in the bag. She had been calm when descending to face the brats she'd been assigned to fight. She had no idea what was actually to come in the end.

Not when she'd first seen his name and definitely not when she actually got a good look at the face beyond the orange jumpsuit.

It turns out, when least expected, the impossible becomes possible. The 'never would have thunk' becomes reality, and the ripples thereafter become the start of something incredibly awful.

Sumiye, once emboldened by her high marks and competitive nature, lost to a rookie.

Lost to two of them, on paper.

"You hit like a child," she'd told the brat, just seconds before he'd clocked her upside the head when she'd been distracted by the pain arcing down her throat and coating the nerves in her arms. If she hadn't had the seal on her affecting her reaction time, she would have completely clobbered him before he could even get to her.

Sumiye had made the mistake of waiting for the boys to fight it out before she got herself involved. She'd used genjustu techniques to hide where she was while watching them from afar and surprisingly, the dogboy hadn't won like she'd been expecting him to.

Instead, some wildchild with a flair for long winded and passionate cries of 'dattebayo' ended up walloping him. Like some sort of persistent ghost, he didn't let himself get struck down even when it was clear the odds were not in his favor.

At the time of the fight, she had even had to flinch when watching him take the blows that they'd been exchanging and remarkably, he was still more than prepared to approach her by the time she finally revealed herself.

She expected something different to happen. For him to show at least a shred of hesitancy towards hitting her.

But from the look in his eyes, she knew that there was nothing keeping him from doing his absolute very best to steal his victory.

It had been around that time that the seal had begun to act up even more.

Sumiye struggled with the pain and struggled with avoiding the blows he directed towards her. It was harder than she expected, amazed and confused as to where his sense of fatigue had vanished to. It was horrifying in a way, with each time he shot his fist towards her feeling like she was avoiding the sharp edges of kunai.

The only thing that seemed to keep her at an advantage seemed to be her size. She'd never been so grateful to be so short and slim as she was then. What had been a burden in the past had become one of her greatest skills and it was in that time that she proved it.

She could have won, actually—could have sincerely managed to beat him into the ground or even pull an easy win with a genjutsu technique. But she had chose to wait it out, dodging and deflecting and sending out subtle but powerful hits of her own when she could bear with the pain in her arms.

Sumiye had run her breath ragged in that time of waiting for the seal to calm and that had been her greatest mistake.

Too afraid to let the curse seal take her, she hadn't let herself truly fight at all.

"Go at him already!" Kawa yelled down to her, and the sound of his voice made her grit her teeth.

She didn't need a reminder to know that she was failing miserably.

Sumiye grunted and instinctively held a hand to her throat. All in a poor attempt at easing the stinging pain that sprouted from it. In attempting to deny what the seal was demanding, she was destroying herself.

Naruto launched another hit at her, this time going for her stomach. She twisted out of the way, like a dancer on ice, and glided a few more feet away from him. Her movements had been fast enough that she might as well have disappeared on him, as he clumsily looked for her.

"Get back here, dattebayo!"

"You, shut up!" she yelled, snapping as she pulled out the jutsu for a fireball. Naruto turned towards her with surprise in his gaze and as he struggled to take a step out of the way from her flames, she tossed out a kunai towards his feet. In his own way, it looked as if he were dancing like a drunken man on air.

He fell onto his back and Sumiye rushed towards him, hoping to end things before he even realized what was happening.

It didn't work out that way at all.

Just as she took a step forward, as the heat in her face reached the pitch of a fever and her panting made breathing into a challenge, she tipped over. Falling onto her knees and hands, Sumiye grunted against the pain of the seal and found saliva and tears running from her face and onto the stone floor.

She couldn't spare a second to be disgusted—she began to heave.

In front of everyone—including the boy that she had let exhaust her—Sumiye threw up what little she had been able to eat that morning. Then, as the shame and embarrassment crept up to muddle with the confusion in her head, Sumiye found herself slipping into the dark of her mind.

And that was how she'd failed her mother and clan for the second and most embarrassing time in her life.

Six Waves

"Nice," Yugito said with a grin as she held the winnings report on the preliminaries that she hadn't glimpsed much of. Kakashi had gone to see it, as a teacher ought to, but she'd been far more interested talking with Itachi and adjusting their plan of action.

"What's nice?" Itachi asked, looking over her shoulder at the paper in her hands.

"Three Kumo-nin got through to the final exams. Masahiro, Omoi, and Karui. Plus, it appears Sakura-chan is doing fairly well not being on Kakashi's team after all. She beat one of the twins to win her round."

"Everything else is fairly what we expected to happen," Itachi noted.

"Thank god for that," Yugito muttered, "I'm sick of weird shit happening."

"Seconded," Itachi firmly agreed.

"At least we have a month to prepare for the madness that's about to come," Yugito said, trying to remain optimistic.

Yes, an entire month spent with your dogbreath boyfriend as well.

Yugito brightened at the thought and paid no mind to the obligatory dog-hate spewed by the cat demon.

"I don't want the madness to come at all," Itachi muttered, and his expression looked thoughtful. As if he were trying to puzzle something out. It was similar to the way he'd looked yesterday when they'd been in the meeting with his father.

"You think there's something else going on, don't you?" Yugito guessed.

"We can't take them at face value," was all he said, surprising her.

"Note taken," she said, just before a knock sounded at the door.

Kakashi entered seconds later, not waiting for someone to come to let him in. A sharp contrast to the polite nature she was accustomed to seeing in Itachi.

Yugito jumped up nevertheless and like a magnet pulling her in, she went to his side to give him a quick kiss on the cheek over his mask.

"Is this when I'm supposed to excuse myself?" Itachi asked in a dead, uncaring tone.

"Glad you got the message before I had to send it," Kakashi told him in a droll tone but held out a hand when Itachi went to leave. "First though, an update on the situation with Orochimaru."

Yugito raised a brow at that and Itachi stilled.

"It looks as though we have been short of sight," Kakashi padded into the conversation with a look of mild regret and bitter annoyance.

"What do you mean?" Yugito prompted impatiently.

"Orochimaru didn't just aim for Itachi. He went after another Uchiha," he explained. In the room, Itachi stiffened but before he could open his mouth to ask, Kakashi rushed on with a sigh, "it wasn't Sasuke."

"Who was it then?" Itachi wondered, a grimace crossing his expression.

"Sumiye, I heard her name was," Kakashi scratched at the back of his head, looking about as finished with everything as Yugito felt in that moment.

"Shit," she muttered darkly and though she had never met the girl in question, she couldn't help but feel the guilt of having been too late to do anything sink in. She had been there for one thing, after all—to make sure Orochimaru didn't get his way.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

What a way to fuck up so badly.

"Is she safe?" Itachi asked, bringing Yugito back into the moment and away from the siren call of self-loathing.

"Safe as she can be," Kakashi responded, moving with Yugito on his arm to the bed in her room. "The Hokage and your father have been made aware of her circumstances, but because of the way the news got out, so has everyone else that had been around for the preliminaries."

"Meaning?" Yugito asked, lifting a brow.

Kakashi winced, as if recalling something physically painful.

"Her match against Naruto and Inuzuka Kiba got...bad."

"How bad?"

"Something went off in her head when the victor of the match had been announced. I suspect that even more, as the fight had been ongoing, she had been struggling to keep the curse seal at bay but eventually she couldn't hold on anymore."

"What did she do?" Yugito hesitated to ask, feeling like she was hearing about some sort of horror story.

"We thought she'd be violent to everyone else but it was the exact opposite. She started hurting herself and very nearly ripped out her eyes. Naruto was very shaken up after seeing it happen, but then, so was everyone."

"Poor thing," Yugito murmured, almost thankful she hadn't gone to see the preliminary fights for herself.

"Will we be able to see her?" Itachi wondered, hand on his chin, "Maybe we can investigate more into the situation with Orochimaru if we do."

Kakashi looked thoughtful at the idea, "I'll ask the Hokage."

Itachi stiffened slightly before turning his gaze towards Yugito and the hesitation was clear in his eyes. Even she wasn't so sure how to feel about looking to the Hokage for permission, but in the end, if worse came to worse and they were caught sneaking around, she knew it wouldn't end very well for any of them.

Hiruzen was a warhawk, after all. He didn't get to his age being a complete moron all the time.

"You do that," Yugito clapped his shoulder and tried for a smile, "In the meantime, where is your team? Maybe we should get them together for a celebratory dinner?"

"They haven't technically won anything yet," he pointed out to her.

"Yeah, yeah, but they sure have worked hard," she reminded him, "having to compensate for having a shitty teacher and all." Yugito winked at him.

"I'm not a—" Kakashi paused, turned his gaze heavenward, and sighed, "Okay, I guess you're right about that."

She grinned at his admittance, "are we having barbeque or ramen tonight?"

"It isn't even a question. There's no way Naruto would eat anything other than Ichiraku ramen."

"Unfortunately for our wallets," Yugito chuckled, looking off towards the door and bracing herself for being surrounded by kids. Of course, she would need to invite her own Kumo kids to join and while she was at it, she could ask someone to ask Sakura to join to satisfy a few of her curiosities.

And wonder just how many other things had changed due to her actions. Each thing she did lately seemed to accrue waves upon waves of a ripple-effect chain of events. While she could still recognize certain things still having chances to happen in the near future, more and more it was blurring more and more into the realm of uncertainty.

She'd been far too shortsighted as of late. After all, she should have at least suspected Orochimaru going after other Uchiha clan members but she hadn't. More and more, she needed to actually consider such things that she had never expected to happen. Things that others might have once thought impossible.

Yugito wasn't in a dream anymore, she had come to realize.

A thought that should have been grim to her but gave her the oddest feeling of excitement for what the future could bring.

But that was for thoughts for later. For now, she looked to Kakashi.

"Well, Ichiraku's isn't open twenty-four-seven. Let's go."

"Right after you," he agreed.

Six Waves - End

(Pretending I didn't just summarize all the fight scenes cause I'm bad at them.) You're welcome for not rehashing the shit we've all seen been done to death!

My friend L1mey drew cover art for this story! She has an awesome OC!Hana story too, so check it out if you haven't already. (She is also the reason why Itachi cock blocked Kakashi and Yugito lol)

Thank you for reviewing—hentai18ancilla, oxygenate, fluffpenguin, ewebster123, UmbreonGurl, Goldregen, Yarikoi, The Almighty Pyro, tabjoy13, Ulsinhde, GalaticBatMegan, ivegotpurple, KirikaAndo, and Guest(s).