Underlined - English

'Italicised' - Thoughts

In Text Bolded - Tailed Beast

JIRAIYA

Just as I decide that there was no way that I was going to find my godson's possible-girlfriend without resorting to asking the Hime, I see her on the streets.

"Oi!" I call out, trying to get the brat's attention. "Little Feather!"

She stops rather abruptly at the name, and after a moment - that I'm sure was spent convincing herself not to kill me painfully - the little foreign girl whips around.

"Jiraiya," She greets in a monotone, obviously leaving out any and all honorifics. "That nickname is reserved only for Shishou - you are not welcome to it."

I hold up my hands in joking surrender and take a mocking step back. "Oh! My bad, my bad - don't have to get so defensive!"

The chunin crosses her arms, cocking a brow in amusement. Snarky little brat - hope Tsunade doesn't regrets bringing her back from the brink. Speaking of, my eyes catch on the medical satchel at her waist and the telltale chakra burns on her wrists. "Starting your training already?"

Noa nods again, this time with a clear underlying current of smugness, "Of course. I never did like being idle."

Based off what I knew about this kid - that wasn't the half of it. But that's not why I was here.

"You need something, Pervy Sage?" Noa cuts through my thoughts. "You and I haven't exactly gotten to know each other well - and not well enough to seek each other out on the streets."

"Yeah, kid." I concede, giving a jerk of my head towards one of the local shinobi bars. "Care to talk?"

About 40 minutes in to basic get-to-know-you and idle small talk, the little shit finally shows.

"Maa maa Jiraiya," Kakashi utters as he slides into a bar stool on the other side of his student. "I knew you were perverted, but I never thought that you would go after sweet little Noa-chan …"

I choke on my sake and Noa's expression is somewhere between side busting laughter and utter disgust.

"Oh hell no -" She exclaims, although her laughter still comes through. "Sorry, but I get enough of that goddamn porn from Kakashi! I can only handle so much of it at once - don't worry, I can wait as you fight for my hand though. Looser can pick up the tab."

I will never admit for how long it takes me to recover from the sheer ridiculousness -

"Aaaaaaaanyway," the precocious brat drawls. "Now that you both have me properly cornered, anyone want to tell me what this is about?"

Silence. Neither Hatake nor I decide to start, so eventually Noa just beats us to it.

"This about Ruto?"

At our obvious surprise, she snorts and picks at the edamame in front of her - the only thing she ordered. "Oh come on - really? The only thing that all three of us share in common is Ruto. I mean, yes … we also have Konoha. And being unreasonably powerful for our ages. And being kinda famous. And that Orochimaru hates all of us. Or that Tsunade has saved our lives … wait has Tsunade ever treated you Kakashi? OH! Or that -"

"YES." I quench her tirade. "This is about Naruto."

"Lemme guess - you two want to talk to Ruto about something and you want me to help you go about it so you'll a) survive, b) not be seriously maimed, and 3) still have him liking you afterwards?"

A pause.

"Thought so." Noa -suddenly - quick as a flash has my sake bottle in hand and takes a deep swig.

I manage to snatch it back as Kakashi gives some sort of undignified, indignant squawk and Noa flags down the bartender for another drink. "I was going to need that for this conversation." She explains dryly.

"Anyway - Ruto. This about how you want to somehow justify how both his father's teacher and student - one of you being godfather for that matter - left him completely alone during his childhood to suffer abuse and discrimination? Or is it how the two of you are currently locking fist in an argument over who teaches Ruto from here on out? Or - is it that you need to give him the talk and want to know what he knows already so that you don't have to say more than you have to on it?"

The chunin's drink arrives and two thirds of us sit in a sort of shell shocked silence as she takes her first shot.

"Is it the third one? Cuz if it's the third one I'm out."

"No, Chibi-chan." Her sensei manages to get out eventually. "It is not the third one. It's kind of the first two."

I finally find my voice and clear my throat pointedly, my voice coming out rougher than usual. "And how do you know all of that, Chibi-chan?"

She shoots another glare at me before going back for her salted soy beans. "Nicknames, Pervy Sage. First off, have either of you actually looked at Ruto? You have more than five brain cells, read a textbook, and actually care and you know he's literally the Yellow Flash's legacy. Secondly, Jiraiya - you do realize that you got that book published right? Naruto isn't exactly a common name, and everyone knows you taught the Yondaime - and that the Yondaime taught Kakashi."

The medic in training studies the drink in her hand for a bit, finding her words. "Jiraiya - I don't like you. I get you're accomplished and powerful - that you have responsibilities, but I don't like you."

Noa looks up at me, and I give a start as I see true anger and frustration in the young girls gaze. She was serious.

"I do not blame Kakashi for how Ruto grew up - not fully. But I do blame you. The Sandaime was your teacher, yes - but that is no reason not to fight back for what was right for Minato's son. Or have you forgotten your student, like all of Minato and Kushina's friends seem to have?"

The Last Tsubasa's voice is rising, and we're starting to gain notice from those around us - but she doesn't seem to care. Kakashi is being useless and just sitting back. "You were all he had - Kakashi was what, fourteen? You were a 38 year old, perfectly capable shinobi who could've used fuinjutsu to work a R&D job in the village! You LEFT HIM! To these people!"

Noa is standing now, gesturing wildly to all of the shinobi around us - everyone's eyes are on us.

"I hate you because you left! I hate you, because I shouldn't have had to be the one to tell Ruto who his parents were! I hate this godforsaken village because it's people hate indiscriminately," She hisses lowly, her eyes wild. "I have sat back for years doing nothing because I had no power to backup my words - but guess what? I'm a goddamn Clan Head now - and what's the use of the title if I can't put morons like you into your place, huh? You want him to forgive you? Well maybe he won't! But I can guarantee that the longer you put this off the more he will blow up once he finds out on his own!"

I stare numbly as Noa grabs her satchel from beneath the bar and leans over to give Kakashi's cheek a kiss goodbye. "I have got to stop going on shouting rampages - it can't be good for my blood pressure," She huffs at him - squeezing his shoulder, sauntering out of the bar - leaving a bar full of shinobi to stare at her retreating back.
Kakashi leans over to snag both mine and Noa's drinks, pouring himself a generous serving. "Well," he starts, before pausing to take a shot. "You can't say that you didn't deserve that."

TSUBASA NOA

40 hours shifts suck -

I cannot physically feel my feet. Or my hands. Or my chakra systems. Or anything for that matter …

I'm dead.

I trudge through the hospital halls, trying feebly to rub some life into my eyes - and it is then that I run into her.

My shinobi pride is injured by how I tripped - (Over my own feet? Over a chair? Over a cart? Who knew?) - and fell right into one of the civilian medical interns, knocking the poor girl off her feet.

I immediately apologize and reach down to pull her up on her feet, only to freeze dead at the sight of her hair -

Her pastel pink hair.

"Holy fucking shit -" Is all I can get out as I stare at - who is in another life - the final member of Team 7.

"Sakura!" I holler down the hall, searching for my favorite assistant as my shift begins. "Where are you? I need the census on genin chakra exhaustion rates but I can't find them!"

I hear the distant patter of heals on the linoleum floors of the hospital and wait for only another moment before I see a flash of pink locks headed my way - long, glorious locks flowing in the light AC.

"Keep your hitai-ate on!" The Neo Sannin in another life growling laughs, "I've got them right here - no need to get snappy!"

"Oh thank god!" I can't help but exclaim. "I swear, I would lose my kunai if they weren't strapped to my thigh."

"Do you even need them, Fancy-Kekkei-Genkai-san?" Sakura teases, handing me the stack - which I immediately begin to tear through. "Anyway, I didn't expect you to be back in so soon - didn't you have a mission today?"

"Nah," I get out through the pen between my lips. "I had one yesterday - it just was a quickie."

"Huh," the nurse lets out noncommittally - going back to doing the kind of productive things she was supposed to do, which she kindly set aside for my occasional incompetence. We work through those at the nurse's station - me at the counter and Sakura at my side, going through stacks of numbers and papers to get some kind of semblance of conclusion from them until -

"Noa!" A familiar voice calls out from behind me, and a thrill of apprehension about this encounter runs through me. "You got a sec?"

"Sure Sasuke," I call back over a shoulder, barely tearing my eyes away from very detailed graph in front of me. "I just gotta -"

"Sasuke-kun?" Sakura blurts out, cutting me off. "I didn't -"

An awkward silence permates, and I look up to see Sakura blushing furiously at my kinda-brother as he looks on the situation with something between confusion and comprehension. I raise an eyebrow and clear my throat pointedly, "Sakura, is there a problem? Sasuke here was just going to ask me about … ?" I trail off - giving Sasuke a pointed looks to do something …

Ever resilient, he complies. "Harano-san, I have not seen you for some time, hello." He greets perfuncitonally. "I need to borrow Noa for a moment, would you excuse us."

He practically drags me away from the desk - I stomp down forcefully on the laugh rising in my chest, 'Now is not the time to make fun of Sasuke.'

"What's wrong, Sasuke-kun?" I finally get out through the building humor, "I thought that you would've wanted to catch up."

"Oh hell no." Sasuke grits out, shivering unconsciously. "Haruno may have quit well before the worst of the fangirling started, but she was still very bad."

I can't hold that particular snicker, doing the best to crush down the what-ifs running circles through my head. "Don't be mean," I chide gently, determined to make sure that Sakura could at least be on speaking terms with as many of the Rookie 12 as I could. "She's an amazing medical student - on the way to being a great civilian medic and doctor. She's grown - don't write her off, you know how much people can change."

The Last Loyal Uchiha grunts noncommittally, before shaking himself out of his head. "That wasn't why I came," He suddenly seems to recall - (honestly, the entirety of Team 7 was dysfunctional to some degree - Kakashi was late and perverted, I was foreign and too old for my body, Naruto was (I'm pretty sure) either ADD or ADHD, and (as rare as it was) when Sasuke got of topic, he got off topic. It was kinda funny - guess what they say is true: the more powerful the shinobi, the crazier they are. Or maybe it was just Konoha …).

"And … ?" I trial off, waiting as patiently as I could as he tried to remember what he came for - my boys were such idiots. "You were saying?"

"Oh, yeah. I need you to fix my shoulder." Sasuke finally remembers - finally, about time he -

Wait -

"Fix. Your shoulder." I deadpan, silently counting to ten to resist running him through on a freshly made Sai.

"Yes."

After ten minutes of forced regulated breathing and lots of convincing - from both parties - I managed to drag the stubborn idiot into the on-call room for treatment on the conditions that he would be paying for the supplies out of pocket and I would keep it out of his charts.

No one told me being on a genin team with a possibly-traitorous, definitely-avenger Uchiha (but only in an alternate reality that may no longer exist) would be so weird -

I take one look at the wound and I cannot physically repress the strangled sound that came out of my mouth.

"What the hell hit you?" I demand, examining the bladelike slice running from my teammate's collarbone to upper back. "These chakra burns can't be from a blade - not even one of mine. What did you do?"

"Sparred with Naruto." Sasuke confessed warily, and again I make another noise - although more feral.

"Stupid men and their stupid destructive training sessions -" I growl low and fierce as I begin to knit his cells back together, brow furrowed in concentration. This was going to take a lot out of me.

"That's it," I decide after I feel my reserves drop below half. "You owe me chakra - that's a new, additional fee. Call it the cost for keeping this from me for so long."

He groans, but I have no sympathy. "You have huge reserves, Uchiha," I remind him. "You're going home to sleep - I have an entire five hours of my shift left. Gimme."

He sighs resignedly, and without letting me even finish healing him he gathers chakra into his palm and beings pumping it into one of my tenketsu - the one on my waist, the closest he could reach - and I double time my healing, reusing Sasuke's own chakra to speed his own healing process.

"You're getting better at that," Sasuke comments absentmindedly as he feels his chakra returns. "First couple weeks you could barely take it in, much less push it back out again."

I snort derisively, "A couple of weeks ago if I had used my chakra I would have died - literally. I'm amazing."

At my shameless hubris, he laughs - a sound few people have ever heard - and I can't help but smile myself.

"Yes," Sasuke agrees, humor lacing his words. "Yes, you are."