Boruto and Himawari stood on their tiptoes, safely tucked into their hiding place, sky blue eyes big and blown-out and bursting with anticipation.
C'mon, open the door. Open the door, open the door, Boruto chanted.
This is payback for spilling ramen on my teddy bear, Papa, Himawari thought sadistically. No one who had seen her, except Boruto, would have thought that she would ever be capable of such deviousness.
It was always the cute ones.
Naruto sneezed, hand paused on the doorknob of his office.
"Ugh, I think someone's talking about me," he mumbled.
"You're the Hokage now, there's bound to be a ton of people talking about you," said Shikamaru dryly. "Now hurry up, Naruto, we have to get to that meeting with the Tsuchikage."
Naruto sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I know how she is about showing up on time."
His hand was still frozen on the doorknob, and Boruto's heart swelled to three times its usual size.
Oh my GOD, dad, just open the door!
He scowled, cradling his head against his knees. Dad had overslept...again...and rushed off without breakfast...again...and Boruto had seen him going to Ichiraku...again...and Boruto's mom had made an amazing breakfast and he knew that she wanted him to taste-test her cooking like dad always used to do back before he was Hokage.
And okay, call him a mama's boy. He didn't care. But his mom was counting on him.
Dad's grip on the handle loosened and Boruto swore he saw a light bulb go off in his head. He wrapped his haori more tightly around himself and tossed his hat into Shikamaru's waiting hands.
"I'll be right back."
The two siblings stared at Naruto in alarm. So did Shikamaru.
"Wait, what – ?"
"It's...it's something important, ya know!" And with that, Naruto strode away in the direction of this really important thing, this important thing that was preventing Boruto and Himawari's prank from being carried out successfully.
"More important than the meeting? Hold up – "
"Don't worry about the meeting! I'll send a clone!" Naruto shot him a thumbs-up and a grin before vanishing down a flight of stairs.
Shikamaru stared after his boss, mystified. Then he opened the door to the Hokage's office.
Little did Boruto and Himawari know that Naruto had not in fact gone to Ichiraku in the morning or that they'd be cleaning paint off the carpeted flooring for two weeks.
Boruto had been convinced that the unsuccessful prank in the Hokage Tower had been a one-off, a fluke. Naruto put his shoes on backwards the other day and accidentally stabbed himself in the arm with a knife when he was cutting vegetables for dinner over the weekend. The clumsiest Hokage alive.
He couldn't have successfully foreseen and prevented a prank from happening like he had last week. That was what the two siblings tried to convince themselves of.
And yet...
Himawari growled in frustration as the old Hokage, Kakashi, turned his head up in slow motion, eyes widening for the briefest of seconds as an eraser landed with a quiet thump on his messy mane of silver hair.
Kakashi turned his head this way and that, though since Himawari was hidden in the rafters above, there was no way he could have seen her. She thought. Then he spoke and blew that theory to pieces.
"Kids these days...like father, like daughter, I suppose." The Rokudaime smiled serenely through his mask, eyes crinkling up. He ambled out of the Hokage Tower, hands in his pockets.
The eraser ended up sitting on her bedside table with a bright yellow sticky note taped to its side.
Take care of your things well, Hima-chan! said the Rokudaime's neat, meticulous handwriting, along with a string of cutesy henohenomoheji and a cartoonish sunflower drawing.
Boruto rigged an elaborate Water and Lightning Release-exploiting trap in wait for Naruto one month after that fateful day in the Hokage Tower.
It hit Temari instead.
The resulting bloodbath resulted in a traumatized Shikamaru and Naruto, an awestruck Shikadai, and a deeply puzzled Boruto.
On and on it went. Boruto's carefully-planned hair removal prank hitting Chouji and dewaxing his beard, Himawari replacing mild soy sauce with wasabi in the Hyuuga compound once during lunch, causing Hanabi to cough horribly and rush to get milk and bananas. A giant steel pot getting stuck on Shino's head on one memorable occasion.
The pranks hitting everyone except Naruto, who seemed to be immune to them.
Himawari growled in frustration again.
"This sucks," Boruto grumbled, sitting inside Iruka-sensei's office one fine day.
"I don't want to hear it, Boruto," Iruka said crossly. "Rigging a smoke bomb to go off in the Hokage's office? Really? You thought I wouldn't have seen through it?"
"Well, none of the other adults did, Iruka-sensei."
Iruka cracked a smile at that, ire vanishing as instantly as clouds before the wind.
"Well, I've had a lot of practice, dealing with pranksters like you." He smiled nostagically, taking in the view of the Hokage Monument ringed with early spring cherry blossoms. "Compared to what Naruto used to get up to, your antics are almost cute, Boruto."
Boruto scowled at this. His gaze followed Iruka's out of the window and onto the final face carved into the mountain.
A new idea for a prank blasted through his mind with the force of lightning. His hair stood on end like an agitated cat's.
He grinned.
Naruto paused in his preparations for the Five Kage Summit.
An itch traveled from his throat to his nose, and his sneeze lightly rustled the paperwork on his desk.
"Someone's talking about me again."
A/N: For Day 7: Pranks.
And that's it for Sunshine Siblings Week! Hope you enjoyed these! :)