((A/N: I don't know why I made such a big fuss about 30 chapters in since it's going by so damn quickly lmao. It was big at the time, I guess. Oh well. Reponses to reviews!:

Moonacre BunBun: good for them indeed

Ori Heartlyng: Don't sweat it hon! Work comes before play, I know that very well. I can't tell you whether your theory is true or not just yet, but I can tell you at least one of the points you made is true... Have fun guessing which one though lol. However, I won't be able to write an Omake about what happened to her any time soon, because something important is going to come up in a while that is going to talk about what happened to her and why she is having... memory 'issues'. :)

readthishit: I can write you an omake about Mikoto and Emiko being gossiping mommas together no problemo! I can also do the Coyote Home one, and I'm thinking about doing the Kenta one. I don't know about the Itachi omake because I am god-awful at writing Chuunin exams(seriously, dude, I might cry if I even attempt it) so it'll probably be a no-go, but he'll talk lots about what happened while he was gone, when he gets back.

Ulsindhe- water affinity in the desert? Well, I mean, it's not ... impossible. I guess. You'd just have to be a really talented water user, like Tobirama or something, and be able to pull water out of the air. Even then it'd still be pretty weak so ya I guess I can understand your hesitance at that idea lol. However, don't forget she is the younger sister to the feared White Flame of Konoha! That might have something to do with why she was in the desert :)

SandScorpion- Dang? You and Noahall left such long, heartfelt reviews and it's gonna make me sob. Don't do this to me pls. I'm glad you like the story so much! I'm excited to write it for you! I hope I don't disappoint :)

MrNoahall- As mentioned above, wow, you left such a great review. I don't really have much to say about it, except sorry for making you believe I was going down a cliché road in the beginning? I've read a lot of Naruto fics in my time on FanFic(and I still do lol) so I try to avoid some of the much more taken roads than others. P.S. I'll add in a few more Itachi/Rae scenes, but I make no promises of making the ship real just yet haha. P.P.S. I figured seven new characters might be a bit much for some people to take in at once, but I was trying to keep the Coyotes and their habits/culture as similar as real world Coyotes as I could. Coyotes in the real world usually have litters anywhere from 5-9, so I chose a number in between the two that I thought was good. Although I know I've been focusing more on writing certain Coyotes than others - like Umi, Akio, Kira, and sometimes Tsuru. I'll try to focus more on the others so it doesn't seem like they're just background characters.

This chapter is dedicated to MrNoahall and SandScorpion, who both kicked my ass into shape with some really heartfelt reviews that made my eyes water. As Noahall asked for, here's some more Rae/Itachi fluff later on in this chapter. Enjoy the chapter!))

Another month goes by in relative peacefulness, even if quite a few things happen in that time.

Jirouko turns a year old, first and foremost. He's officially switched from being swaddled in blankets twenty four seven, to now having a miniature wardrobe. It's adorable as all hell. His hair has grown out a bit more since the beginning as well. Where it used to be wild tufts of dark blue hair here and there, it now covered his whole head, and very obviously had a bit of a curl to the ends. Not enough to be considered the same wild intensity as her own hair, but Rae still felt rather smug about it. He still couldn't speak quite yet, nor could he even hope to walk anywhere when he was constantly demanding to be carried by the people around him - not that Rae minded it, of course. She'd have to force him to stay down on the ground eventually if she wanted him to learn to walk, though.

Secondly, Kenta finally came back from whatever hole he had crawled into for the past two months and a half. He had gotten four recommendations from other Jounin, of course, and all the time he had spent away was actually away - out of the village, away. Apparently, there was a 'kind-of' Jounin Exam that nobody really tells you about. The kind where you have to go out on a Jounin-skill-needed mission. Two other Jounin had accompanied him, but they mostly stood back just to watch and examine what he did, how he acted, things like that.

So Kenta is a Jounin, now. He's still technically a 'pending-Jounin', which meant that, within the next three months, if he did anything terrible or childish enough, then the Hokage himself will come out of his hidey hole and kick his rear back into shape. Kind of. Kenta would get his Jounin promotion taken away if he did anything bad within the next three months, so it was like a probation of sorts, really.

He never started wearing the Jounin vest he was given - which is no surprise, really, considering he never wore the Chuunin vest, either. His daily wardrobe did change, though. Instead of the usual light grey and light blue yukata he was always wearing, he had changed into something 'a little more comfortable', as he'd put it. It was pretty much the same yukata, except in darker tones and short enough to just reach his thighs. He wore the classic dark blue Shinobi pants, with the ends tied up with white bandages, of course. His sandals hadn't changed, though - still the same wooden geta sandals as before. Other than that slight wardrobe change, he stayed pretty much the same.

Also he took to actually wearing his hitai-ate now. He'd told her, with a raised finger and a smug grin, that technically he'd always worn it, she just could never see it. He refused to answer when she asked where he'd hidden it in the past year that they've known each other, but he never answered with a straight answer. So now he wore it on his forehead, like any good little Leaf shinobi does.

Thirdly, and also one of the more important things, Sasuke's birthday came and went. He's was five years old now, and though he had cried into her shirt that Itachi couldn't be there for his fifth birthday, just one year away from entering the academy, he'd still been really excited and happy during the rest of his day. Rae had taken the time to spend the entire day with him, even if she felt odd about skipping training for the day. The kid needed it, especially since his own brother couldn't be there thanks to the Chuunin Exams.

Throughout the next month, Rae does the Chakra-extensive training exercises every now and again. Not for a full month at a time, like before, but for a few days and then a few days of rest. 'Rest' meaning she spends those few days doing regular training with Manabu-sensei.

Or, well, 'regular training', meaning they added the Coyotes into her training regime now.

"Remember," Manabu-sensei had told her when she'd asked why they needed to be there with her. They knew so many more jutsus than her, too. It was unfair, really. "They are your pack - you train together from a young age so that strong bonds can be formed. That's why they need to be here to train with us today. Get used to their styles, and they'll get used to yours, until eventually, you'll all be a dangerous, functional team together. Got it?"

She had pursed her lips with hidden irritation, but agreed to it nonetheless. However, Manabu-sensei wasn't wrong at all, as she'd figured out in the oncoming weeks spent with them. When it came down to training, most of them actually got serious for the most part, rather than their usual childish banter, teasing, and restless running amock with far too much energy under their skin. Umi still tripped a lot, but with more physical training, he got the hang of getting up quicker, and managed to learn to roll over on the ground to avoid any attacks that might have been aimed at him during this time. Rae had laughed herself silly, claiming that they were pretty much just training a puppy how to roll over.

The broken rib she got when she was pelted with molten hot rocks - a combination of Umi's Earth jutsu and Inu's fire jutsu - was totally worth it.

The majority of that month went just like that. Kenta came back, so her usual water jutsu training resumed from there. She had never stopped her training with Satoshi-sensei, so her fire jutsus were getting pretty great as well, in her opinion at least. Satoshi-sensei always said that she could do better, but he never really talked about how she was currently doing. Uchihas, dude. She drained herself of chakra for three nights out of a week - which was harder than before, by the way, due to her larger chakra stores now, but she still managed to get it done for the sake of getting better - then trained with Manabu-sensei and the Coyotes for the next three days. Manabu-sensei had told her that, considering how hard she was constantly working, she needed a rest day here and again, so on the seventh day of the week, everyone left her alone and she was free to do whatever. She visited Naruto several times on this occasion, which he was glad about(an understatement, she had to scrub his noodles off the wall when he'd thrown it in surprise at hearing that she would be coming over once a week). She even spent a few more lunches with Ino, most of the time she brought Sakura along with her. The two little girls had grown on her a bit since their first encounter, and Rae took to bringing Jirouko with her when she went out to these lunch dates, both so he could meet them, but also so he could get a bit of fresh air.

Emiko was about three to four months pregnant at the moment - she'd been nearly a month along when she first figured out she was pregnant in the first place. Kazuhiko had helped Rae clean out the old room, Keiko's old room, in preparation for the baby. They hadn't painted or decorated the newly emptied room at all, but Rae almost sighed a breath of relief when she knew that those old journals hidden underneath Keiko's bed were being locked away in boxes in the basement of the house. She had never once gone to read them, and for some odd reason, she was terrified of doing so. The thought of Keiko really being there inside of her, the thought of her waking up inside of Rae's mind if she ever read those journals was always there. Always a bad taste on the tip of her tongue.

At the end of this hectic, yet somehow peaceful all the same, month - Itachi returned back to the village.

On one of Rae's forced off days, when she was contemplating how odd it was that she'd been in Konoha for well over a year by now and she had no idea when that had happened, she'd heard it in the distance.

Her training with her newly furnished Coyote senses had started almost immediately after she'd signed the summoning contract a month ago. She'd found out with no small amount of surprise that it was not just her smell that had been heightened - all five of her senses were sharper than normal. Where she'd felt the soft fabric of her blankets a month ago, she now felt clumps of sewn together strands of cotton under her fingertips. Where she used to taste the hint of barbeque when she went out to Teuchi's ramen shop with Naruto, she could almost name every ingredient she recognized in his soups. Her hearing, sight, and smell had all sharpened rather drastically, and it was almost nauseating to see and hear and taste so many things at once now a days.

But it was because of this nauseating heightened sense of hearing, that she heard a cluster of women gossiping together in the markets. They talked about how the Chuunin Exams in Kirigakure - and wasn't that a thing, he'd never mentioned he was going to Kiri of all places - had ended a little while ago and that the participants were on their way home. One helpful Uchiha women had excitedly squealed about her precious Clan Heir coming home, and oh how dreamy he was -

Rae left at that point. It was kind of sickening, really, to think that a full grown woman had it out for a ten year old boy.

He'd be about eleven soon, Rae realized distractedly as she made her way to the front gates. She walked at a calm pace, despite the storm of emotions she felt inside. Itachi had been the one person she trusted with everything - her feelings, her secrets, her thoughts and plans. She'd told him how her Clan had tried to keep her away from Naruto, and he'd told her to do what she thought was right. She had told him how she felt so burdened and weighed down by the responsibilities of her Clan, and he'd told her to only focus on one task at a time - think about what you can do, not what you can't do. He'd never told her exactly what to do, but rather, he'd given her advice every time she went over to talk to him, and it always worked out thanks to him. So she walked at a calm pace towards the front entrance to this village, despite the fact that she'd missed that idiot of a boy far more than she had realized she would.

When she arrived there, there were already people at the gates. It seemed they'd been waiting for the participants to return home just as she was planning on doing, as quite a few of them had blankets set out on the ground with plenty of picnic baskets filled with food lying around. Many of the people there were sitting in clumps of groups together, sharing food or recipes on how they made said food, talking together genially while they waited for family or friends to return home after the two month waiting period. One such group of people had a particular platinum blond in the center, being the whole attraction to the entirety of the group, as usual.

When she spotted Rae standing there at a loss, she grinned her usual grin and waved her over.

"Rae-nee! Come over here! You can sit with me and Nao-nii!"

Rae grinned at Ino's excited waving, which had gotten plenty of eyes staring in her direction. Doing her best to ignore the fleeting feeling of embarrassment crawling up her cheeks from all the curious gazes in her direction, she walks over to where Ino is sitting with a group of blondes. They might all be Clan members from the Yamanaka Clan, which might explain why Ino had just called one of them brother. Rae already knew Ino didn't have any siblings - not any blood related siblings, at least. She wouldn't go as far as to say she knew the little blonde girl enough to know she has no other immediate family members.

"Hello, Ino-chan." Rae takes a quick, curious glance around at all the blondes currently staring at her. "Ah, are you sure I should sit here? I can go sit somewhere else..."

Sitting in the center of a bunch of people renowned for being able to pick a person's mentality apart in moments? No, thank you. Rae doesn't really feel as if she has anything in particular to hide from anybody, but it still felt as if she was being scrutinized and judged about something when they all turned their blue - sometimes brown or hazel - eyes in her direction.

Ino, however, does not have the same ability to read how someone is currently feeling as the rest of her Clan has, and instead waves her hand dramatically in front of her face.

"Pft, nonsense! Come on, come sit down!"

She does so, however hesitantly, and keeps her eyes down at her hands as she fidgets. Somebody passes a plate of assorted, cut up fruit, and Rae happily took a few slices of apple.

"So, Rae-nee, who are you waiting for? Family? Friends? Or," she gasps dramatically, hands flying to cover her mouth as a sly grin breaks out on her face. "A boyfriend?"

She chokes on her apple.

"No! No, Ino-chan, it's.. nothing like that, really! It's Itachi-kun, you know the Uchiha Heir?"

Ino blinks once, twice, three times, and then gasps again.

"You're boyfriend is the Uchiha Heir?"

"No, he's really just a friend, Ino-chan. He should be coming back today, I think."

Ino nods her platinum head of hair along with Rae's words, placing her hands on her hips in thought. She mutters under her breath, "I ship it", and Rae doesn't even ask what that means. She doesn't want to know. She doesn't want to know how a four year old girl can be so mentally scarring, either. Maybe it's just a perk of being born into the Yamanaka Clan.

"So who is your boyfriend? If it isn't Itachi-kun, who could it be? Do you have a secret boyfriend you're keeping secret from me, Rae-nee? Is it that grey haired guy? Is it the boy at the market that stares at you? Or is it that guy over there?"

Red steadily creeped up her cheeks.

"What? No, I don't have any boyfriend! There's no boy! What grey haired- you mean Kakashi? What the hell do you mean by market - there's no boy in the market that stares, and what guy 'over there'-" Rae turns around to see where Ino was pointing at with her chubby, childish hand.

Only to promptly scream when Kenta's face appeared less than an inch away from hers.

Immediately back peddling right into a laughing Ino, Kenta's face broke out into a sly smile. He sits down beside her spot, legs crossed over each other in a delicate, very feminine looking way, and Rae scowls. Her face felt like the sun at that moment, and she really wanted to punch everybody.

"Hello, Kei-sama."

Ino perked up.

"Kei-sama? Oooh, yeah, the heiress," she mumbles to herself under her breath, one hand to her chin as if deep in thought. She looks down at the scowling Rae sprawled out on the ground, then up to the smiling boy in front of her. She grinned. "Yeah, I could totally see it!"

Kenta's mouth twitched, and Rae has the brief thought that perhaps he understands the psycho babble coming from the younger girl's lips, but she doesn't bother asking. See no evil, hear no evil, right? Whatever the hell they were talking about was definitely, one hundred percent evil, for sure.

She lets out a gruff sigh that reminds her of Manabu-sensei, then brings a hand up to run it through her hair. It was shorter now, now that Kenta was back and could cut her hair for her again. Honestly, though, Rae had pretty much given up on the whole 'pretend to be a boy' scheme a while back. Not that it wasn't fun or ideal, for sure, but really, everybody was just confused about her right now. Some people called her Kei-kun, some people called her Rae-chan, and others just called her Nee-chan. Everybody who has been around her is very, very confused about what her gender is.

It's hilarious, and Rae doesn't intend on correcting anybody. They can all discuss what's in her pants on their own time.

No, wait. That sounded wrong.

Her scowl deepens.

"Oh wow, you're a Shinobi, too! Are you a Chuunin?" Ino's excited voice breaks Rae out of her thoughts, even if the scowl stays on her face. Kenta looks up at the childish look of wonder on the younger girl's face and smiles a pleasant smile that has her melting on the spot. Rae immediately feels the need to protect poor, innocent little Ino from falling for Kenta's boyish charms. She doesn't deserve that awful fate. Also, it's weird considering the age difference.

"No, I'm a probation-Jounin at the moment. My probation ends when I get my official promotion in two and a half months."

She grins and leans over Rae to get closer to him, eyes positively beaming.

"That's so cool! You look so young, too! How old are you, fourteen?"

"Fifteen, actually. Though I'll be turning sixteen this month."

At that, Rae's eyes snap open again from where they had shut themselves in the shade of Ino. She lifts her head to look at Kenta, and purses her lips. He'll be turning sixteen this month? Was it really October already? Her blue-red eyes widen when she gets another thought. If it's October, then it's got to be around Naruto's birthday too. No wonder he'd been so excited the last time she'd seen him.

"What day is today?" She blurts, hoping to hell and back that it isn't past the tenth just yet.

Kenta smiles.

"The eight of October. Two days away, I believe," his eyes narrow, and Rae knows he's on to her train of thought. The thought doesn't matter much to her, as she sighs a breath of relief. Thank Kami, she hadn't missed his birthday. Time had flown right out the window during all of her training, and Rae would have hated herself like nobody's business if she had forgotten to, at the very least, wish him a happy birthday in person. She knew as a matter of fact, however, that that was not what's going to happen on his birthday. She knows she'll get him a gift and spend as much time with him as she can. In two days she would still be doing her chakra exercises, but there's no reason she couldn't take him out for the day as well. Hell, she could consider it part of her training - walk him across the water on her back or something, or do some sneaking around with him. She knows how much he loves his pranks. Considering her stealth lessons with both Kenta and the Coyotes, she could definitely give him a few pointers.

Not that he'd need it, the kid was talented enough to somehow be able to hide from ANBU when they came looking for him. He always snickered and said it was all just fun and games, but anyone with that much talent needed to be praised for it.

Suddenly, Rae hears clamoring and excited laughter, and she looks up from her spot where she lay with her head in Ino's lap still. Her eyes widen.

The gates were opening, and groups of people were coming through them. The crowd attempting to come in through the gates was immediately blocked from Rae's sight when the crowd in front of the gates began their frantic search for family members or loved ones - hoping to every Kami that would listen that they would be there in that crowd, alive and well. Rae feels a sudden swell in her chest, and she clenches her teeth together. There was no way Itachi would have been badly injured or killed during the Chuunin Exams, right? He was the smartest, quickest, and most talented ten year old boy that Rae knew. Nobody could outshine him, right?

...

She still got up from Ino's lap and began searching through the crowd. She attempted to smell him or spot him out with her new, sharpened senses, but there were far too many people talking or laughing or crying for her to be able to search through it correctly. She passed the sight of the elderly woman clutching a bandaged little boy in her arms, ignored the sight of the crying parents standing in front of a grim faced Jounin-sensei, and pushed right into the thick of the crowd in an attempt to find the boy with the shoulder-length black hair.

When she couldn't find him in minutes, she began to panic. No, there really was no way he would have died. He promised to come back in two months, didn't he? It's been two months - over two months, actually. She'll find him in this crowd, and she will yell at him for taking longer than he promised he would take, then she would probably hug him because she missed his sarcastic comments. Probably.

A hand landed on her shoulder, and Rae whirled around on her heel, rigid body tense and ready to punch whoever it was right in the face-

-Only to come face to face with a surprised looking Uchiha Heir.

Rae doesn't even waste the time to look him over, instead taking the step toward him and wrapped her arms around him tightly. He tenses under her touch, but he eventually relaxes and places a single hand awkwardly on the top of her head, the other one patting her back in an attempt to calm her down. She was calm, though, so she has no idea why he was doing that.

"It's okay, Rae-chan, I'm okay, please don't cry."

He's an idiot if he thinks she would really cry for him.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve anyway.

"Shut up, you idiot! You said two months, didn't you? That was more than two months, so I have to be angry at you for lying to me, and you better have gotten Chuunin rank for all the time you've been away, and what the hell? Who gave you permission to grow taller than me?"

Taking a half step back so she could look up at him, she narrowed her eyes at him and attempted to scowl, but she was a little bit excited to see him and it turned out more like a childish pout. True to her word, he had definitely grown while he was gone. He was an inch and a half taller than her by now, and she sniffed haughtily at his smug expression. He still looked a little bit worried and kind of confused from her spontaneous hug, but he still grinned at her when she mentioned their different heights. She used to taunt about how she was two inches taller than him all the time before he left.

She kind of feels like perhaps she wouldn't have.

...No, it was definitely worth it.

((A/N: So, ta-da! Itachi is back, Sasuke is five, Naruto is almost five, Kenta is almost sixteen, Emiko is three and a half months pregnant, Kazuhiko is probably stressed to hell and back between work, Clan shit, a rebellious daughter with amnesia, a baby son, and a pregnant wife. Poor babe. I need to give him a break, huh.

..maybe in the next chapter.

Question!: If you could throw my OCs into any other fandom, which would it be and why? How do you think they'd fare in that world? I've been writing a lot of little one shot stories for a lot of different fandoms lately, so the idea of swapping worlds with OCs has been on my mind a lot lol. Might make a few stories for it in the Naruto Tidbits. Especially Fallout 4, something I've been playing a lot of lately...

See you next time! Leave reviews, reviews are love!))