Chapter 36:

Yamanaka Inoichi had a problem.

Well, that was an understatement.

Yamanaka Inoichi generally speaking always had a large number of problems. It came with the position of being the Head of Torture and Interrogation (one of these days he was going to get Shikaku and Chouza back for encouraging him to take up the position, and when he did, his revenge would be freezing cold).

But recently, a suspiciously high number of these problems all seemed to have one common link.

Uchiha Itachi.

Eldest son of Uchiha Mikoto, Uchiha Clan Head and Uchiha Fugaku, previous Uchiha Clan Head and Previous Chief of the Konoha Police (deceased). 17 years old. Chunin. Undergoing ongoing psychological evaluation to decide if he would ever be fit to go back to active service. Devoted older brother to Uchiha Sasuke, who at this stage was remarkable primarily because he was a classmate of darling Ino, who seemed to be held in no little regard by her (and Inoichi was nothing if not a doting father who kept a close eye on anyone who caught his little girl's attention). Heir to the Uchiha Clan (although rumour was that there had been a growing feeling that perhaps Itachi would be passed over in favour of his younger brother, especially since the Orochimaru Incident).

Closest associates – Uchiha Shisui (unremarkable as a close-in-age cousin), Inuzuka Hana (Academy classmates), Mitarashi Anko (a few red flags considering the Orochimaru history, but no more than what were usually raised by Mitarashi herself and somewhat mitigated by the fact that it seemed Inuzuka Hana was the mutual friend), but Inoichi had also recently learned that Itachi had been teaching both his younger brother (not very remarkable), Ino's little friend Haruno Sakura (only remarkable because Inoichi happened to like the influence the studious second-generation kunoichi had on his little girl,) and Namikaze Naruto (son of the Yondaime, and Kyuubi jinchuriki, did he mention Kyuubi jinchuriki? Holy Security Hazard).

But naturally, Namikaze Minato, the Yondaime Hokage, the Yellow Flash, the Terror of Iwa, and one of the few shinobi in Inoichi's experience to have ever earned the "flee on sight" note on his bingo book entry without also being an S class missing nin was the kind of thrillseeker in bed who had decided that the best way to come back out of his long mourning-induced bachelorhood was to get involved with Uchiha Mikoto, aka one of the most terrifying women of Inoichi's acquaintance, and (of course) the mother of the kid who seemed to be the source of Inoichi's currently developing ulcer.

Inoichi's close friend and teammate, Nara Shikaku had been entirely unsympathetic when Inoichi had originally raised this as a potential issue.

"Let it go man," had been Shikaku's sage and ultimately entirely unhelpful advice. "This is a guy who saw a raging jinchuriki and thought that she was the sexiest thing he had ever seen. You are not even a bit going to be able to convince him that her milder-mannered best friend is a terrible idea."

"But, the politics!" Inoichi groaned as he poured himself more sake, "and what happened to her last husband!"

Shikaku snorted into his own cup before taking a sip from it. "Don't even go there, Inoichi. I know you know that Minato would never get caught out like that. If Mikoto wanted to get someone else to kill him, she'd have to somehow entice Kakuzu or Sasori within 100 miles of Konoha, or you know, both of them at once. And I'd still put my money on Minato.

"And frankly, even if the two of them weren't acting like newly weds, Uchiha Mikoto is many things, but stupid is not one of them. Minato is a lot more useful to her alive than dead."

Inoichi thumped his head on the bartop, narrowly missing flicking his ponytail into the sochu of a disgruntled med-nin.

As an experienced shinobi of some decades who was currently head of Torture and Interrogation, Inoichi had done many things in his time that even by ninja standards could be considered to have crossed a few moral event horizons.

Nonetheless, Inoichi could not think what, exactly it was that he had done to deserve this.

"Hey, Yamanaka!"

Inoichi looked up to see Shiranui Genma, one of his lesser headaches, approaching the bar.

"Why are you doing in this dump? Shouldn't you be celebrating? Word is your daughter passed her Academy graduation test," Shiranui expanded.

Inoichi felt a proud grin creep across his face and didn't bother to hide it. "She did. And I already told her congratulations, but my Wife's family has a specific coming-of-age tradition, and as a man, I'm not invited." He knocked back his sake. "Ah, my little girl is growing up!"

"Yeah, next thing you know, she's going to be elbow deep in the blood of her enemies," an ANBU kunoichi listening in enthused.

Inoichi snorted. "Please, you're confusing our family with the Inuzuka. Her victims are the ones who are going to be elbow-deep in the blood of their comrades." His grin grew wider. "She's picking up the family techniques so fast, and she's so determined! I can't wait to see how she goes once she's been set loose on the field," he bragged.

"Probably dragging my boy along behind her," snickered Shikaku. "By the hair if needs be."

Inoichi rolled his eyes. "Oh please, we both know that she won't need to even touch him, she'll just berate him until he learns how to shunshin away out of sheer self-defense."

"Like father, like son," the two old teammates chorused, to a round of laughter from those listening.

"Ahhh, I better get going," Shikaku said, putting his empty sake cup upside-down on the bar. "Yoshino is probably going to try and murder me as is."

"Shikamaru didn't mind you skipping out after his graduation dinner?" Inoichi asked, rather belatedly all things considered.

Shikaku scoffed. "I finally gave that boy access to the chunin-level scrolls in our jutsu library. If he hasn't been hip-deep in them for hours, then I'll be checking that it's not some imposter under genjutsu." He shook his head. "Kids. It's just as well he catches up on the sleep he misses from reading all night during the day, or I'd be worried about him stunting his growth."

Inoichi hummed thoughtfully. "Yeah, Ino complains all the time about how annoying it is that he sleeps through class but then still manages to answer all the questions perfectly when called on. I kept hoping she'd figure it out, but I suppose we'll just have to wait for the first couple of overnight missions they have for her to clue in."

Shikaku clapped his hand on his old comrade's shoulder. "Don't stay out too much later, I won't be coming back out to peel you off the bartop again."

"Yeah, yeah," Inoichi waved Shikaku off and ordered more sake as his friend left the bar. He was Head of Torture and Interrogation, damnit. If he got too drunk, that was what minions were for.

About fifteen minutes after Shikaku's departure, Inoichi, who had picked his usual spot where he could easily see all the entries and exits via the mirror behind the bar, saw Uchiha Obito and Itachi come in through the side.

Funny, Inoichi would have sworn that Itachi would be by the side of his little brother at this time of graduation. Except… now that he had a moment to more closely examine him, it was clear that the younger of the two Uchiha had been badly shaken by something.

What, Inoichi could only guess without upsetting one of his most respected mentors by going through confidential patient files without what she would consider a good reason. The very slight tension in Itachi's hands, and the way that his hands were held loosely at his sides, conveniently close to his weapons pouches, indicated to Inoichi that the chunin Uchiha was very upset indeed.

And now that Inoichi was paying attention, Uchiha Obito did not seem exactly sanguine either. Something had happened. Inoichi didn't know what, and as a man who's entire occupation was supposed to be knowing everything important going on both inside and outside the Village, an unknown threat itched at his instincts.

Because of this, and because Uchiha Itachi seemed to be a vector for chaos lately, Inoichi decided to keep a close eye on the pair of them. Damage control was always more efficient before the match hit the fuse, and a bar full of ninja in various stages of drunkenness trying to blow up steam was a ready-made powderkeg.

To Inoichi's consternation, it appeared that Obito had decided to try and assuage both of their frayed nerves with alcohol, and a game with Mitarashi Anko of all people.

Inoichi's mental estimation of how badly this situation could go went up a few notches, and he stopped actually drinking his sake. He probably wanted to be sober for this. If it all went to shit, he, as the senior ranking officer, would be the one best positioned to do something about it. (And the one whose ass Minato would kick across the training ground for not nipping the problem in the bud, but that was a side consideration.)

It was just as well that Inoichi had stopped drinking and started paying attention, because it meant that he was listening when the game of Useless Intel (a classic that Inoichi himself was reigning champion at, and encouraged all and sundry to engage in, of course) took a distinct turn.

Uchiha Itachi had not once looked in Inoichi's direction since he had entered the bar, but Inoichi just knew the little shit was doing it on purpose.

Of course Inoichi was read in on the bizarre alternative universe theory. He wasn't sure that it wasn't just a product of how well Orochimaru had scrambled the Uchiha kid's brains, but he knew that Minato at least was not dismissing it out of hand, Mikoto appeared to have accepted it entirely, and Shikaku, when pressed for his opinion, had simply muttered that it was all troublesome. Which, in Inoichi's experience, meant that Shikaku was not happy, because he couldn't come up with a better explanation than the one provided, and the one provided made no fucking sense.

On the other hand, it was becoming increasingly clear that Uchiha Itachi was an untapped aquifer of knowledge when it came to the Akatsuki. Inoichi had been waiting for Sho to tell him when the kid was cleared for an intensive intel-gathering session, but it was looking like the kid was upping the timetable all by himself.

Inoichi wondered why, and by the way his old war scars were aching, he had a feeling that he wasn't going to like the answer.

He started paying even closer attention when Itachi dropped the intel about a seemingly random missing-nin.

"Deidara's favourite animals are birds," Itachi said, entirely deadpan and very, very slightly listing to one side. If Inoichi hadn't known any better, he would think that the kid was utterly schloshed.

(As it was, he had been paying enough attention to see when Itachi had engaged the minor genjutsu around his eyes. Itachi was a very good actor, and Inoichi would have snapped him up in a hot second for undercover work if it wasn't for the whole "unfit for duty" thing. Oh, and the Uchiha thing. The whole Clan were showboats and drama queens with explosive tempers.

Especially the quieter ones like Itachi. He took after his mother, and people tended to die when Mikoto decided to vent her feelings.)

"Deidara who?" Obito asked whilst downing a shot.

(Inoichi supposed he could forgive the elder Uchiha for not being across the latest bingo book intel from Rock. He had after all just come back from a long mission in Water Country, which was on the other side of the world.)

"Rock-nin, likes explosions," Anko explained before taking her own shot.

"Deidara likes art," Itachi corrected her flatly, before flicking his eyes towards Inoichi's.

Little shit. Inoichi had known the kid knew he was there.

There were currently three people in the village privy to the information regarding Deidara's desertion. The kunoichi who had happened to be in the right place to watch as events unfolded, her handler, and Inoichi himself. His report about the renegade Rock-nin hadn't even hit the Hokage's desk yet, as Inoichi had wanted to wait until he had a few more sources to fact-check the data.

Okay, Inoichi could take a hint.

"Okay, fuck the rules," Anko demanded, leaning over the table and making a grab for Itachi's shirt (he neatly dodged, making it look like she was simply uncoordinated), "how the fuck do you even know that?" Oh shit, time to intervene. "I only even know that guy's name because of-"

"That's classified," Inoichi interrupted in his brightest voice.

Obito, who apparently had not been aware of his presence, turned to look at him and somehow managed to increase his Uchiha pallor, and Anko (although she at least had seen him when she came in, he knew because she had waved) didn't exactly look comfortable either.

"Uh, hi Boss!" she squeaked. "We were just, uh…"

Inoichi pasted on his friendliest 'you kids are in trouble now' smile. "Oh don't mind me! Carry on! The game is just starting to get good! Though that said…" he frowned in an exaggerated fashion to Itachi, "I'm impressed that you know intel about Deidara, since he only very recently went Missing. And unlike the rest of the people you seem to have intel regarding, he's not related to Akatsuki."

The flicker of expression that crossed Itachi's face was small, but Inoichi caught it all the same.

"They'll try pretty hard to recruit him," came the response.

"Uh huh," Inoichi drawled. It wasn't often that intel came giftwrapped, but no shinobi was fool enough to accept mysterious packages. Explosive tags were far too easy to hide under wrapping paper. "I'll take that intel under advisement." Inoichi flicked his pony tail over his shoulder, a signal to his subordinates that he was taking this very seriously. "Is there anything else that you're aware of about Akatsuki that no one else here would know?"

Itachi nodded in response.

Inoichi motioned for him to continue, mostly just to see if he would. Thankfully none of the "useless intel" Itachi had been spouting was actually sensitive, but he had dropped enough crumbs that Inoichi wanted a better look at what he was cooking with under that impassive face.

The silence stretched.

Good. Seemed that Inoichi had judged right, and the kid actually had discretion.

Still, no reason why he couldn't use this as a teaching moment for the others.

(It was, naturally, an important part of his role as a senior member of command.)

Inoichi let the silence stretch until Obito was almost visibly twitching, (bad habit that,) and decided to mess with the elder Uchiha a little. "You're not as drunk as you appear, are you."

Itachi obediently dropped the genjutsu that was making him seem impaired. The change was subtle, but obvious to the trained eyes.

Obito was appalled by how he had missed this, Anko was impressed and pretending to be appalled, and Itachi… was shunshining out.

Shit. He had better not have gone far. Inoichi was not in the mood to chase an errant chunin of high Clan standing over half of Konoha.

Anko theatrically took the opportunity to follow Itachi's example in skipping out on the bill, leaving a stunned Obito behind. The audience of ninja who had gathered whilst the game had been ongoing, began to disperse, both because two of the players had left the bar, and because Inoichi was increasingly unimpressed with how Uchiha Obito had handled this situation.

"I'm telling Aunt Mikoto," he grumbled into the wood of the bench, like a giant child (just what had Minato taught his team about proper decorum, Inoichi wondered). "And Kurenai. That will teach them both."

"What, that you skipped out on her son's graduation party in favour of getting her other son drunk in public and playing a drinking game that could cause him significant problems? And that you were dumb enough to play a drinking game with Anko?" Inoichi wanted to know.

Inoichi took the opportunity to tell Obito off for acting irresponsibly, but in the end, let him go home without direct punishment. The indirect punishment was already enforced- there had been plenty of witnesses to Obito's humiliation, and Anko, bless her black heart, had been drinking from the top shelf before the boys had joined her. Obito would have to take a B-rank just to cover her bar tab, let alone the drinks he and his cousin had knocked back. (In Itachi's case most of the booze had ended up in his cousin's cup, a slick little trick that he had somehow managed with sleight of hand alone. Inoichi had questions.)

Fortunately for Inoichi's blood pressure, by the time he finished embarrassing Obito and exited out the back of the bar, Itachi was waiting for him like a good little minion. Inoichi hadn't even had to send out others to drag him back.

It wouldn't have taken a Yamanaka to figure out that there was something on the kid's mind, and as their Head, Inoichi considered himself fairly well-versed in such things.

"So I take it there are a few things you want to share with me," Inoichi said.

Itachi nodded mutely, his eyes politely focussed on Inoichi's chest. (Eye contact from a Sharingan-user generally meant that they either saw you as a threat, or someone worth crushing underfoot. Inoichi was pleasantly surprised by Itachi's deference.)

"Come to my office, and we'll talk."

….

A few hours later, Nara Shikaku snapped awake at the sound of a knock on his window.

The only people to have the balls to do that were the sort of people who generally warranted Shikaku's full attention, so he resisted the urge to groan, and stretched out his shadow to pull back the curtain enough to see who it was.

Pale blonde hair glowed in the moonlight.

Inoichi. Shit.

It was probably important then.

(It had better be important, or teammate or not, Shikaku was going to take it out on Inoichi's hide.)

Shikaku tried to extricate himself from Yoshino's unconscious hug without waking her.

It didn't work, but since she simply drew his pillow to herself and rolled over and went back to sleep, Shikaku had a reasonable chance of not hearing about it in the morning. Good.

Dressed in his habitual loose sleeping yukata, Shikaku slunk towards the window, and then slipped out onto the roof.

"What," he demanded, absent-mindedly attaching himself to the rooftiles with a little chakra.

Inoichi looked grim.

"Uchiha Itachi decided that we were being too slow in getting around to questioning him about his 'other world' knowledge, and so took it on himself to get my attention."

Shikaku yawned. "And?"

"Best case scenario, we have about three years before we're going to have S-class missing-nin up our collective asses trying to get their hands on the Kyuubi."

Shikaku blinked. Well. That was indeed concerning.

Wait.

"That's the best case scenario?"

"Worst case scenario is that Suna and Sound invade us during the chunin exams and catch us with our collective pants down. Orochimaru is apparently still a bit upset about being passed over for Minato," said Inoichi, with his usual gift for understatement.

Hmmm. Nope. That was indeed not good at all.

Yes, Shikaku could understand why Inoichi had decided to wake him up for this, but…

"We'll talk about this in the morning."

Inoichi blinked. "But…"

"Is the potential invasion still going to be there in the morning?" Shikaku asked rhetorically.

"Well yes, but-"

"And can we do anything immediately about it that is timesensitive before tomorrow morning?"

Inoichi shook his head reluctantly, looking a little chagrined.

"And more to the point, is it worth waking up Minato, and by extension Uchiha Mikoto up at this time of night?"

Inoichi blanched.

Shikaku nodded sagely.

"Then in that case, I'm going back to sleep. Tomorrow morning, we'll send our kids off to their new sensei, then talk about it, and get Chouza to provide appropriate sustenance."

Inoichi visibly deflated.

"…Fine."

Shikaku patted him on the shoulder.

"We'll both handle this better in the morning. Alright?"

Inoichi nodded, and shunshinned away.

Shikaku sighed, and slipped back inside his room.

"What is it, darling?" Yoshino mumbled.

"Nothing for you to worry about, dearest," Shikaku replied as he slipped back into bed. "Just Inoichi being dramatic again."

Yoshino grumbled something incoherent into her pillow and went back to sleep.

Shikaku on the other hand, spent quite a few hours staring at the ceiling, sleepless that night, his mind whirring as he mulled over the possibilities, already forming contingencies to improve the defence of Konoha at large, and the Hokage's son/its jinchuriki in particular.

This would take some doing, to work out all the appropriate strategies to tackle this problem, but there was one conclusion he was already certain of.

This was going to be a pain in the ass.

...