Umino Iruka was quite comfortable with her lot in life. She was a chunin of Konohagakure who split her time between teaching at the Academy and working the Missions Room. Iruka was not pretty or even cute; she had square shoulders and curves you would only see if she emphasized them, and she was fit and toned. Her facial features were foreign, more befitting of those lands outside of Hi no Kuni's borders, so her fellow Konohans could not tell from a glance her gender. In fact, the only people who knew that she was female were her previous genin team, Morino Ibiki, the Sandaime, Yamanaka Inoichi, her doctor, and now one blond little boy. Who was staring up at her earnestly with a slightly wilted and worse-for-wear flower gripped tightly in his small hands.
"What've you got there, Naru-kun?" she asked the six year old kindly. It was an hour after she had let his class out for the day, and he had barged in with that poor plant while she was grading papers.
"'S fer you, Ruka-sensei!" he replied and thrust the flower at her.
She smiled in confusion but took it anyway and ruffled his hair. "What for, Naru-kun?"
With all the innocence of his age he blurted sincerely, "'Cause yer pretty, Ruka-sensei, an' guys're 'pposed ta give pretty ladies flowers, dattebayo!"
Iruka froze, brown eyes blinking in shock. No one's… guessed correctly, she thought. But there was Naruto gazing up at her with wide, honest blue eyes. Warmth suffused her body, and a gentle smile graced her features; she knelt in front of him and placed her hands on his shoulders. "Thank you, Naruto," she said softly. "That means a lot to me. What do you say we go get some ramen?"
His eyes lit up, and he lunged forward and embraced her all the while squealing in excitement.
She returned the hug, the warmth in her chest growing more potent. When they pulled back, she took the flower in one hand and his hand in the other, and together they made their way to Ichiraku's.
Iruka was glad she had stayed to grade.
Hello! Welcome to my first published Naruto fic :) This is obviously Iruka-centric, but we'll see a bunch of other characters (I just couldn't add them all in the tags; Kakashi and Naruto just happen to be the most important to Iruka, at least later on). Like I mentioned in the summary, all warnings will be posted in the fic itself, usually at the beginning of each chapter. I will warn you that, so far, of the story I have written, there will be trigger warnings for: mentions of rape and torture, mild language, depression, and slavery. Sort of on the last one. It will make more sense as you read. But I'll have specific warnings for each chapter as they come, so no worries. This fic does deal with the darker side to shinobi politics, so be forewarned.
More on the story itself: I'm not really into yaoi, but I love the KakaIru pairing. Sadly there isn't a whole lot of fem!Iruka fics out there (I'll suggest my favorites if you guys want), so I decided to go ahead and write my own. This is totally inspired by Swiss Army Knife's version of Iruka, so go check out their fics; they're absolutely amazing. If you have or will read those fics, you will recognize a bunch of stuff, but don't worry: I already got permission to use Swiss's ideas. I have plans for a bunch of branch-offs - mostly one-shots - from this fic, so be prepared for those in the future, too.
Oh! Please like, follow, and/or review as you see fit. Thank you so much! :D