Consequenses
April 2005

Written for the Jutsus Gone Wrong challenge at LJ's Naruto100 community. Warning: Serious, traumatizing crack ensues. You have been warned.

Title: Consequences

Challenge: Jutsus gone wrong

Rating: PG-13

Bonuses/Warnings: You just had to mention gender swapping, didn't you? I think I'm likely hit several of the others in the process though... you may want to be prepared with some brain bleach, because the plotbunny that just latched itself onto my ankle is on some serious psychotropic drugs...

Set approximately a year after the end of Side Effects (which I really have to finish chapter 23 of one of these days(TM)...) In other words, involves Kakashi and Iruka and shounen ai, so don't read if you don't like that sort of thing.

Iruka had known from the moment that Naruto showed up on their doorstep that when he and Kakashi returned to Konoha, there were going to be Consequences. With a capital C. And likely several other capitals, and many exclamation points in the process. He'd been terrified that the Consequences would cost him his job at the academy; the villagers of Konoha weren't precisely the most open-minded people, as evidenced by their treatment of a certain boy who'd spent his entire life being shunned for a birth-curse that was in no way his own fault... and for almost two full months, it really had been touch and go.

But in the end Kakashi had pointed out far too sweetly that if his family was so unwelcome in Konohagakure, he was happy to take his family to another village such as Sunagakure; and when the council threatened him with missing-nin status, Tsunade had produced a signed and sealed and notarized scroll authorizing the transfer of Kakashi "and his entire family" due to "intolerable prejudice on the part of Konohagakure's Council and citizens," and she'd handed it to him with far too broad a grin and then turned to the council and asked, "Now, what were you saying about missing-nins?"

So in order to get that scroll back from him, they'd agreed to let Iruka resume his teaching position at the academy.

In the year since then, Iruka had come to understand Naruto's position firsthand. As an orphan himself, he'd understood Naruto's loneliness; but only after their return did he come to understand what it was like to be shunned, whispered about behind his back, and/or mocked to his face by the ordinary citizens of Konoha.

Kakashi bristled at them. (And anyone with Kakashi's hair had a built-in advantage when it came to bristling.) But it didn't help during the times when Kakashi wasn't there.

Naruto also bristled at them. (Anyone with Naruto's hair had nearly as much built-in bristling advantage as Kakashi did.) But since Naruto was already an outcast, it didn't really help either. Iruka always hugged the boy for it, though.

Even Sasuke had been known to glare at people who spent too much time whispering about Iruka within earshot of the Uchiha heir. (Surprisingly enough, Sasuke didn't take as much advantage as he could have of his hairstyle-granted bristling-advantages, preferring glares and scowls and monosyllables, possibly to make sure to contrast himself in as many ways as possible with his bristly blonde archrival.)

Iruka would have hugged him too, except that Sasuke would have had to spend the next three hours stalking around glaring and muttering and finding some way to be more-angsty-than-thou again, particularly if Neji had witnessed anything as sappy as a hug; and so Iruka decided it was kinder not to torture the brooding teenager, really. But he appreciated the sentiment.

And so Iruka had decided to live his life in the pattern that it had settled into -- teaching his students, smiling despite the mutters and slurs, and accepting that his public choice had irrevocably altered the way strangers thought of him. It helped that many of the chuunin and jounin were more accepting than the ordinary villagers were.

But, in the end, what finally got the villagers to stop muttering so much about Iruka was something completely outside of Iruka's control.

It manifested itself, inevitably, in the form of green spandex. Because Maito Gai had always proclaimed himself as Kakashi's archrival, of course. And Kakashi's gaining a family meant that Gai was now one down in their scoring contest, which Gai currently reckoned at somewhere around 115 to 116. So Gai had decided that he needed to even the score.

Eight months later, Gai was still walking into Iruka's classroom almost every day after school to ask advice. It was an improvement over the first half-year, when Gai had been showing up at least three times a day, but still... Iruka sighed to himself, and fixed his most polite smile on his face, and asked, "Yes, Gai-sensei?"

"My fair blushing Iruka-kun!" the green-clad jounin declaimed, since (s)he was still incapable of simply 'saying' something when it could be declaimed or announced or pontificated instead. "I have a question of great import! Since it is apparent to all that you have regained your strength and your muscle tone admirably, and I understand that it is unwise to push one's body too far in such a youthfully resplendent condition, tell me: how soon can I resume my usual training schedule? Because I confess that I find myself distressed at the shape I've become, and although I understand the necessity of supporting the very beginnings of youth's springtime--"

It wasn't fair to stare. It really wasn't. Iruka fixed his gaze firmly on the bridge of Gai's nose and tried to stammer out something more or less coherent about two or three months after birth.

Gai thanked him grandiosely, and at some length, before (s)he waddled back out of the classroom with a hand propped to the small of the back and with the mound of eight months worth of blooming youth curving the front of the green spandex. (The green spandex had thus been demonstrated to adapt itself to anything. Inspired yet again by his mentor's example, Lee had been trying to start up a home business selling green spandex body suits to pregnant women. Mercifully, Lee hadn't succeeded yet.)

Iruka sat back down in his chair very carefully, shaking all over, face propped in his hands.

There was a rustle at the window, and a familiar shaggy silver head peeked through. "Is it gone yet?" Kakashi asked in an undertone.

"Gai-sensei just left."

"Thank God." Kakashi swung himself in through the window and sat down with a sigh next to Iruka. "I don't know whether to nominate you for sainthood for dealing with him-I-mean-her, or to flay us both and wear sackcloth in penitence for having helped inspire that. I mean, I could try to claim it's your fault, except that you just provided the example; it was Naruto's sexy-no-jutsu that started all this, but Gai's fixated on me and that stupid rivalry, so there's more than enough blame to share around, and it takes a lot of blaming to account for that... and if I ever figure out who must have gotten drunk enough to father that child--"

"Let's not think about it," Iruka begged, gathering up his books and papers and putting them in his backpack in order to follow Kakashi out through the window. Since Gai had begun to gain weight in such an unbalancing direction, taking to the roofs was much safer than taking to the streets. Most of the town's ninja had taken to the powerlines in order to avoid a too-close encounter.

The ninja near-evacuation had left the ordinary citizens of Konoha with nowhere to escape a proudly blossoming Gai-sensei and his proclamations of the embodiment of flowering youth. Given the loud green evidence on a daily basis... well, there was only so much scandalized gossip-space available in people's minds, and Gai seemed determined to corner the market. (Maybe he thought it would boost the score to 117-116 from what would otherwise have been a tie.)

So although he felt furtively guilty about abandoning the admittedly brave and in fact far too courageous soul who had followed Iruka's example and thereby saved Iruka from the brunt of the village's gossip, the academy teacher still followed Kakashi through the window. Because Gai was almost too unique to bear in ordinary circumstances, and now he was... extraordinarily unique. Undeniably, unmistakably, and terrifyingly... unique.

"Race you home," Kakashi said, grinning.

"Hmm?"

"Naruto's been speculating about how old a kid has to be in order to learn how to draw graffiti. Apparently he's taking his big-brotherly educational duties a little too much to heart."

Iruka's ordinarily tanned skin took another step towards green. "No. No, no, no, no... once was enough, I'm not raising another incorrigible prankster!"

Kakashi blinked after the cloud of dust raised by Iruka dashing off at top speed. Motherhood was certainly inspirational when it came to perfecting some ninja techniques, notably the ones involving moving at high speed. Even some of the villagers were picking up on it, when the alternative was being faced with Gai. So maybe it wasn't such a bad consequence after all...

...no, scratch that. Penitence was still owed somewhere, Kakashi was sure of that much.

And the sanity-saving alternate ending...

Iruka woke with a scream, clutching at the blankets, shaking all over.

Beside him, Kakashi rolled over sleepily. "Bad dream?"

"Bad dream?" Iruka managed, all but whimpering. "It was... it was... there was... spandex, and Gai, and Lee was selling more spandex, and... and... it was a nightmare!"

"There, there. Roll over and go back to sleep," Kakashi said.

"But you don't understand," Iruka whispered, trembling. "It was... there was... GAI-SENSEI...!"

"Go back to sleep," Kakashi said again. "I'm only two and a half hours late."

Shivering all over, Iruka hid himself under the blankets and hoped if he just wished hard enough, he could get the image out of his brain again. And he was going to be praying until the next time he did run into Gai-sensei, just in case.