Honestly, most of the next few months were basically a gigantic blur. We squabbled less frequently, we trained a lot more, and we went through a bunch of missions. None of our later C-ranks were turned into unmitigated disasters, though we toed that line a couple of times and we got more rank upgrades over time. While Sensei didn't say much about it, I could see a line of tension in his back and a certain twitchiness in his movements that told me, at least, that he was more worried than he let on about the war. I was pretty sure that Sensei wasn't supposed to be handling the bulk of the enemy combatants for a C-ranked mission.

About the only thing that changed for me over that time period, at least in terms of physical ones, was that I had longer hair and my jacket had full-length sleeves. I was also about two centimeters taller and a kilo heavier, which made me suspect that I was going to hit my full size before the boys did. In my old life, it had taken until I was thirteen or fourteen to be essentially finished growing, and I'd been somewhat taller than average. I had no idea how tall I could get, here—mainly because my parents were completely different and I wasn't completely sure if Dad had been really tall. Being nine didn't give me much in the way of perspective.

Obito, meanwhile, had also ditched his short-sleeved black jacket for one with sleeves long enough for thumb-holes and sturdy metal hand guards for the backs of his hands. He'd also gotten around to tying the standard dark blue shinobi pants down with bandages, like nearly every other boy did, and he might have been a little taller than he'd been at graduation.

Kakashi had invested in sleeves, too, though the shuriken-patterned scarf was a bit over the top. I couldn't help but think it was about time—he actually looked more like a boy, now, even if he was practically swimming in his jacket, despite the ninja mesh undershirt. I kind of wondered about the weird trailing half-skirt thingy, though I think I'd seen something similar on Neji when the guy had been promoted to jōnin once upon a time.

One of these days, though, I was going to find out where my teammates bought shoes and go there instead. I could only find the generic ugly shinobi sandals, while Kakashi's looked like a pair of heels I'd probably owned in my old life. Minus the heel bit.

But hey, at least Obito and I were getting better at that whole sync-fighting thing. We weren't perfect, but we were learning and conversations with Kakashi had stopped degenerating into fistfights. I think we'd learn to compensate for our respective growth rates essentially as we went, and maybe all three of us could start becoming an actual working team.

And maybe pigs would fly.

It was after one of those mostly-interchangeable winter training days that Sensei, once again, decided to celebrate our success.

I think Kakashi was starting to learn to hate us and Sensei's indulgence of us and everything else ever.

Sensei brought his hands together in a loud clap, signaling the end of the day's attempt to give Kakashi third-degree burns. He grinned and said, "You're all improving by leaps and bounds. I'd say this calls for ramen. We'll be paid by the end of today for our last mission and it's a couple of zeroes more than we've been getting lately." Sensei said with a smile. "So, everyone know what they want? I can buy this time."

Our last mission had been a bit of a clusterfuck. I mean, none of us kids had been in all that much danger, but any mission where Sensei had to solo a pair of enemy jōnin was the kind of mission that require serious decompression after.

Also, Obito had been getting frustrated with his lack of progress—mostly in the speed department—and with no Shadow Clone workaround I was kind of at a loss as to how to make more headway.

"I'll go with beef this time." I said instantly. I don't know how I'd ended up with shrimp last time but I sure as hell wasn't repeating that mistake. My brain insisted on making a series of connections that went basically like this: a shrimp is an arthropod, which is the same phylum as bugs, crabs, spiders, and lobsters (and I knew that several of the named categories had closer relationships to one or the others, but I didn't care). I had a thing against bugs. Or anything with a texture that was anything like that of a bug.

I think if I went on vacation in the Land of Waves, Rivers, Water, or Rice Paddies, I would starve to death.

Not to mention possible Death by Aburame For Being a Bug Hater.

"Aw, but shrimp was good too," said Obito, who had ended up with my order since I was busy being picky as only a child could be, then.

"Then you can have it." I said. "But I'm not getting it again."

Shrimp is my nemesis.

I could practically hear Kakashi rolling his eyes.

Sensei looked up at the sky, then at the shadows of the buildings nearby. "I think it's about lunch time now, actually. If I remember right, there's a friend of mine who ought to be around Ichiraku right about…"

"Hey, Minato!"

The "friend" in question was a kunoichi Sensei's age with crimson hair streaming out behind her like a flag from the top of her head, and a grin that threatened to crack her face in half. She was wearing a short-sleeved variant of the Konoha uniform, with the more feminine (meaning skintight) pants available for mix-and-match. She had a hitai-tate tied across her forehead, above a pair of deep violet eyes, with two long side-locks of red hair in front of her ears. And she was moving at top speed.

Kakashi's chakra was suddenly directly behind me, and then I was flying forward because he'd shoved me square between my shoulder blades. I was almost instantly swept up into a crushing bear hug that had probably been meant for the unrepentant coward behind me.

It didn't save him, by the way. It might have bought him like, thirty seconds, and he wasn't allowed to run.

"Minato, how could you hide your cute little students from me?" Kushina Uzumaki—seriously, who else could she be?—shouted, one finger wagging under Sensei's nose. I was swinging from her other arm like a rather large plush toy, both because I was kind of running out of air and because resistance was futile. "I demand reparations in the form of ramen and foot massages!"

Okay, getting dizzy.

"Kei's turning blue, you know!" Obito said loudly.

Oooh, pretty colors.

Kushina promptly dropped me. On Sensei.

Okay, so she kind of threw me in his face. Details, details.

Anyway, right after Sensei caught me and turned me upright again, she rounded on Obito and I was pretty sure Obito went almost a whole step backward when he flinched away from her.

She followed, and pinched his cheeks once he was in grabbing range. Obito squeaked, too.

"So you're Obito! Minato told me that one of his students was an Uchiha, but I can kind of see the resemblance now that we've actually met," she said sagely. "You look a bit like Mikoto, though she's a kunoichi and prettier and doesn't get out often enough even if she's going to be a jōnin sometime."

Bwuh?

"And you don't look like Fugaku because he has a funny face and huge stress lines and you don't." Kushina went on. "Who are your parents, again? I've met pretty much the whole clan at this point even if I'm terrible with names sometimes."

I wasn't entirely sure Kushina stopped to breathe at all during that rambling mess of a statement.

"This, by the way, is Kushina Uzumaki." Sensei said over the top of my head.

"Oh, I never did introduce myself to you two, did I? Whoops." She let go of Obito, who scrambled behind Sensei and me for safety. "Kushina Uzumaki, chūnin of Konohagakure! People also call me the Bloody Red Habanero when they think I'm not listening, though."

"Uh." I said.

But Kushina's attention was already off on an adventure.

"Kakashi-chan, what are you doing all the way over there?"

I could practically see his expression morph into the perfect example of a nonverbal "oh shit" in the history of this lifetime. I say "practically" because, technically, I still couldn't see half his face.

Eh. It was a riddle for another time. And maybe adulthood and alcohol and stuff.

And the next thing I knew, Kushina had Kakashi in a bear hug.

I was starting to realize that Sensei's tendency to manhandle us kids had to have come from somewhere. I just hadn't realized that it might have been his girlfriend.

Then again, Jiraiya doing the same thing would have ended in a sexual harassment suit or something. Jiraiya was like thirty-seven or something close to that number, while Sensei was still a teenager.

"Anyway, is the plan still to get ramen?" Sensei asked, finally setting me back on the ground. I promptly hid behind him with Obito, leaving Kakashi to his fate.

Some teammates we were.

Actually…

Since Kushina was apparently ignoring Sensei in favor of giving Kakashi the Lennie treatment (Of Mice and Men, 1937), I squeaked, "Uh, Kushina-san?"

"Hm?" Kakashi was looking distinctly like a pissed-off owl—though his hairstyle made it a bit hard to tell, sometimes—but Kushina's smile was kind of…intimidating, over the top of his head. Basically, if I was given the choice of being glared at by a tiny chūnin or being given a mischievous smile by Kushina Uzumaki, I'd choose to invoke Kakashi's wrath instead.

But hey, what were frenemies for?

"I think we're all getting hungry…" I said.

Obito's stomach gave an obliging grumble. He winced.

"Oh? Sure, we can go get ramen." Kushina said, as though she wasn't still squishing Kakashi like a plush toy.

She let go of him eventually. When we all sat down for ramen, all of us kids were planning on sitting together on the opposite side of Sensei from Kushina, just to be sure we had some kind of barrier. We didn't exactly talk about it, but the intention was there and we'd planned for that, sort of. Or at least we tried to—Sensei grabbed the end seat and Kushina took the one next to that, leaving the three of us to have a quick Rock-Paper-Scissors duel over who got to sit furthest away.

Kakashi won the first round—which I attributed to the constant duels with Gai—and Obito beat me, which meant that I had to sit next to Kushina and be the sacrificial lamb to her affections.

I barely remembered what to order in the face of her overbearing personality.

"So, you're Keisuke-chan, right?" Kushina asked, slinging an arm around my skinny shoulders.

"R-right, Kushina-san." I didn't even really want to correct her when it came to my name.

"I've never seen you this quiet before, Kei-kun. Are you feeling all right?" Sensei asked from Kushina's other side, looking curious.

The Dreamer said dryly, This is our submissive state. It helps us not get eaten by bigger and badder things.

Speaking of bigger and badder, as long as I was sitting this close to Kushina and not being occupied with the possibility of imminent suffocation, I could sense the Nine-Tailed Fox.There was no bigger and badder (chakra construct/beast/person/individual)…thing in the world at the time.

And no, I couldn't sense it as well as I might have if it—Kurama—had been actively throwing its weight around, but there was definitely an undercurrent of this thing wouldn't even have to chew to eat me and danger danger DANGER.

All wrapped into the five-foot-something frame of a woman who, if she killed me, would probably do it by accident.

"I'm fine, Sensei." I forced out.

"Kei-kun…" Sensei said warningly, but Kushina cut him off, saying, "If he says he's fine, let him be. You don't need to hover, Minato."

Actually, yeah, he kinda did. The thing with raising superpowered ninjas was that you kinda had to get them to that point and not get anyone killed in the meantime. Well, anyone you gave a shit about, anyway.

Also…

"Kushina-san? I'm a girl."

"I thought I told you about this." Sensei remarked into the sudden silence.

Kushina, for her part, seemed to have finally discovered a social faux pas she actually cared about. She blushed, embarrassed, and mumbled, "I was a little distracted."

Too distracted to notice that we're a little girl?

I guess most kunoichi wore skirts at my age.

"It's okay. Just about everyone makes that mistake." I said reassuringly, as Obito coughed and Kakashi looked pointedly away.

"Still." She patted me on the head, which was considerably less suffocating than just about anything else she'd done. "Anyway, your birthday is July tenth, right?"

Um. Yes. It's the same day every year and we'd just about gotten to Sensei's birthday (January something or other) without actually discussing birthdays once. I was planning something for Obito's, which was the month after, even if I had no goddamn idea what.

I nodded.

"Then we're birthday buddies! I mean, sure, you don't know me all that well yet, but I think you're adorable and it's always fun to celebrate with more people."

Okay…personally, I would probably be happier if I could just get Obito and Rin and Kakashi all in the same room with Hayate and Mom and blow out candles and then go back to training, without any unannounced fights or catfights or Mom hitting people with a shinai. Partying with Kushina seemed like an unspeakably exciting idea.

And at this time, in this place, "visions" weren't much of a guarantee that someone would live to celebrate their next birthday anyway. It was kind of why shinobi stopped caring after age fifteen or so.

Kushina is an extrovert.

I am not. At all. I scored a thirty on introversion in my last attempt at Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, at least back when I'd been an adult and had a non-ninja job and stuff. Introversion does not generally come any more blatant.

The only reason I kept hanging out with people in my free time was because I was scared of what would happen if I didn't.

I was all too aware of how short our lives could be.

"Kushina, I think they might be a little young for that." Sensei pointed out.

"Well not now, obviously, but I can get like, a cake and stuff."

"My—er, our—birthday isn't for seven months, though." I said.

"Then we can practice on everyone else who has one in between, obviously!"

I think Obito might have winced again.

"Don't get too ahead of yourself." Sensei said.

"Says the guy whose birthday is next." Kushina said, pouting.

Obito heaved a sigh of relief.

Sensei gave her an amused look. "Not what I meant. It's just that…well, I was planning on entering them in the Konoha Chūnin Exams this month."

Wait.

No.

Slow down, hit rewind. What the fuck?

The Dreamer squeaked, What?

How did I not know about the Chūnin Exams?!

"Really, Sensei? You think we're ready?" Obito was almost shaking from excitement. His eyes were huge.

He nodded.

"YES! Kei, we're going to be chūnin by this time next month!"

"Who's going to be our third teammate?" I asked, because even Obito's normally-contagious exuberance wasn't making much of a dent in my attitude. "Kakashi can't be—he's been promoted for longer than we've been shinobi. It would be unfair to the other teams."

"Oh, right! Hey, that means I don't have to deal with you for a month!"

Whap.

"Shut up, you useless idiot."

"Why'd you hit me, you bastard?!"

To me, Sensei replied, "Oh, you'll see. I've been in talks with another jōnin sensei for a while and we'll be doing drills with your temporary teammate in the next couple of weeks."

…Oookay.

On one hand, I was pretty sure that I could come up with something to pass, if the exams were anything like they'd been in the future (and wasn't that just a mess of tenses). On the other, we weren't ready. My chakra capacity was still shitty and Obito had consistently failed our shuriken and kunai throwing tests and we'd only been shinobi for about five months…

This was going to suck.

And then the next day…

"Obito! Kei-senpai!" Rin called, running up to us in Training Ground Three, "We're going to be taking the Chūnin Exams together!"

Funnily enough, I wasn't quite so worried anymore.


A/N: Can I just say that this next arc is going to be a pain?

Anyway I'll get to review responses later tonight, so keep an eye out! :D