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Little children

"A formal inauguration eh?" Naruto tossed the piece of parchment carelessly behind his shoulder and flopped down unceremoniously at his bed. His left hand pillowing his head while his right hand raised up facing the ceiling, open palmed and fingers spread apart. He look beyond the spaces of his fingers absently all the while thinking of everything and nothing at the same time.

For six straight years these calloused hands did nothing but destroy and kill. And now I'm not going to be able to do that…well as often as I had before. He thought to himself. He turned his hand so that his palm is facing his vision.

The path to become a hokage. Somehow it doesn't seem to get any nearer. He let his hand fall to cover his eyes. Does he even want it anymore? Now that he had the strength and acknowledgement no longer ranking high at his list, he doesn't know. What left is there?

Iruka-sensei…

For some reason he felt the sudden childish urge to see his old teacher from the academy days. That man… he thought wistfully and bit nostalgia, has all the world's life answers stocked right at his back pocket. For as long as he had remembered him, Naruto always approached the man seeking questions and companionship, he find it quite hard to imagine not to do so even now or in the future. Technically he could but life for him would be terribly lonely if the man would cease to exist.

It has been many years. Will he even recognize me?

Of course he would!

"….."

Well, 70 of him think so but the rest of him is in doubt. There is always a possibility that he wouldn't be recognized or yet, remembered. He has changed. He's the first to admit that. Not only physically but socially as well. He just couldn't hold a proper conversation anymore. He had to get knocked up in the side of his head to answer like he had used to the old hag. Cursing and calling names couldn't be accounted as a conversation could they? At this he was genuinely confused. And just like all subjects that confused him, Naruto shoved this to the furthest corner of his mind either to be forgotten or solved on later.

He hates complicating things. He rolled from the comfort of his bed and stood up picking up an unblemished scroll, a pen and began to write. Maybe hate is too strong for a word. He thought. Strong dislike fits much better.

Meeting the squad tomorrow and having (but not required to) explain himself is a complication. Plus he has an inauguration to attend to. "Inauguration…" he paused in his writing briefly and tasted the word. Somehow he has also found himself disliking the word.

Maybe I should go there today?

He finished the scrolled and rolled it back up, placing his pen down at the bedside table. He looked outside the window to see the sun just about setting. Yeah, he would visit there today, he just have a lot of thoughts needed to be sorted. Maybe later he would pass by Ichiraku and pick up a take out and stop by his old sensei. If he doesn't remember me then maybe ramen would jolt down his memory. I somehow almost always eat up his payroll. At this thought a small smile crawled up to his lips.

………………………………..

He stood unmoving in front of a gravestone with an almost serene expression on his face as he simply let himself think. To say the least, becoming the best and being the best of all the Anbu force isn't much of a big thing. Like a hallow victory or like a strong acidic solution getting dissolved when touched in the water, being the best for Naruto left him feeling empty. Void, numb, lost, call it to whatever poetic form if you will but he could neither feel proud nor disgusted nor any other kind of emotion even if he reminisced his times at the battlefield. Like a passing memory that held no importance, flashes of what was yesterday perfect in every aspect stored inside his head went and drifted in his thoughts like the same flashes of scenery and events on a television.

Naruto uttered a soft prayer as he gazed the gravestone. "Tatsumaru ….Captain…" He touched the cold stone with his hands, feeling the rough edges and letting his warm flesh be cooled.

Back then when he first got the news that he would join the Anbu he was ecstatic. Never minding that he was forced in that position or that he wasn't made to take up the exam because the mission itself was that he was ordered to be put into the squad, he was… happy and excited, to join for the single reason that he found the force just plain 'Cool.' Everything from their masks, to their clothing, to their missions…everything. He found them 'cool' like all other boys in his age. He chuckled at his naivety as he sat down to the ground facing the stone yet not really looking at it instead he just sat and think and remembered.

Captain Tatsumaru alias wolf was his squad leader and also was known for the best anbu at his time. He was… a very brutal man training them who gave no leeway whatsoever, disregarding Naruto's status as a mere child or a vessel like a piece of information not worth knowing or caring about. He didn't know it back then until he had heard it from the hokage herself that the man was also his sponsor and he fought with the hokage to make him an Anbu.

"He would make a exceptional Anbu and it would provide him the cover he needs."

Tsunade slammed her fist to the table making it break into two. "He's just a child! He's a…"

"A shinobi and therefore should not be confused as anything else just by his features and his age." Tatsumaru smoothed in. "Excuse me for my lack of respect Hokage-sama but you had heard him earlier. He wants this."

"He had no idea of what he wants. He hasn't even killed yet" The Godaime raised her chin and looked down on the man her eyes flashing dangerously.

"And he would learn to do so in what maybe a few years or a few months, or in a few hours. Time would not change anything, He. Will. Learn." Tatsumaru remarked unusually stern. "Godaime-sama, he is an asset not reaching his full potential and left to mold and eat dust." He added dryly yet still somewhat politely.

Tsunade raised an eyebrow, "Making him a killing machine would do so?" a rhetorical question, though loathing to admit it, putting Naruto into the force would answer a lot of the current problems.

At this Tatsumaru chuckled lowly without humor. "Aren't we all"?

"Che. Why am I even listening to you anyway." She waved a dismissing hand. "Go torture somebody or something. I'll send him to you anytime this week."

Training to become an Anbu was hell even for Naruto who most often would pass out due to fatigue from over training. But on the battlefield where all training was either put into use or risk death was worse.

Naruto had no illusions of death, in fact it was put back in the farthest corner of his mind. He was a vessel of a demon, he had unlimited charka, he heals in seconds and he had his almost inhumane stamina. No, he had no illusions of death but when it was in the battlefield everything became different. Different when he was a genin fighting bandits, different when he was fighting alongside his genin team, and different when Sasuke had tried to kill him once.

It was a mission gone dreadfully wrong, one stumble and misstep from the other rookie anbus and it led them to their down fall. They were sent to spy enemy territory growing in rapidly in power. Though it had been a long time, Naruto could remember and continue to remember like it was mere hours ago. The year was 87 S.U, the 15th of December and it was the incident that largely contributed to what he is today.

Everything had started okay, it was his first mission and it was also his exam. He was restless, a bundle of nerves with too much nervous energy. They had worn white clothing in contrast to their usual black suits and cloaks to blend in with the season. Tatsumaru aka wolf is their group commander leading them to their mission. To gather information and find weakness at the enemy defenses. It was a time of war but to Naruto he had yet to feel it.

Maybe it was his fault, maybe it was other's but how everything came spiraling down was pure accident. Paper explosives concealed expertly beneath where they tread, outnumbered by overwhelming numbers, he was reminded of his mortality when one of the squad members mistakenly triggered the explosive making them lose several members from the squad as well as setting an alarm for the enemy shinobis.

It was crazy and chaotic, it was war. It left him rattling to his very core seeing pieces of bloody and burnt limbs flying around him. When what resembled a body landed on top of him he had screamed his head off. "get of me! Get off me! No. NO!" He had always pegged himself as the most courageous of his age group, but seeing and being landed upon bodies of the people he had became friends with in short amount of time made him, Uzumaki Naruto flee. Honor, pride, and all other bravado he had expressed years, no, hours and minutes before are sapped away. He would be a fool if he said that he wasn't scared when Tatsumaru turned him by his shoulder and barked an order for him to fight. With every swipe of the kunai, every body that would fall, every jutsu that he would make, every rasengan he would bury to his foe's chest, he screamed and screamed and screamed like a horrified and terrified child that he was until his voice grew hoarse and faded in the background mingling with all the other noise. It was far too easy for him to forget his assets, the fast healing and all the other stuff about him that made him different from others, he was vulnerable and all too human. Naruto had no illusions of death, they are reality and he was reminded by the fact time and time again.

It was also then through the haze of blood and gore he had managed to stumble upon a technique that managed to end the war and made him known as Konoha's killing puppet. Not that he's boasting. (definitely not.) It was a technique he had used almost a million times yet improvised a hundred fold. The already powerful rasengan had evolved unconsciously that day. By compressing the sphere of charka till a size of a small marble and yet continue exerting and adding more charka and covering it with a layer of the demon's energy to stabilize and enable him to actually hold the sphere like an inanimate solid. Naruto had created a charka based bomb that wiped out 3/4ths of the village. (like an A bomb) the slightest release of the charka inside the sphere, like the thin layer of red charka covering the blue breaking or disturbed would cause an immediate and definite large scale explosion. Naruto hadn't meant for it to happen yet in the end it didn't really matter, they had managed to win the war on their own.

Out of the many rookies only three had been left. Him, the squad commander and another veteran. It was the saddest and bloodiest inauguration he had and probably will ever receive in his entire life.

The whole thing he did, was kept in a hush. Instead it was told that the village leader, the kage was a crazy man that had led the village to ruins. Maybe it was a favor, or Tsunade took pity on him but he was grateful. He had clutched his cloak tighter around him with the hood covering his head as he cried silently behind his mask and tried to be invisible.

The aftermath was the worst, when they got back and reported to the hokage he could not tear away his thoughts of death and the invisible blood that coated his hands which was washed furiously away before. He was only granted a night of restless slumber by the next day they have another mission to hunt a band of wayward missing nins. Over and over again, it was a cycle that back then he could do nothing but feel the guilt, disgust, fear, self loathing and increasing loneliness as the numbers of his comrades/friends dwindled and be replaced by the next day by a new batch of rookie Anbus . He could not understand why his squad leader, Tatsumaru, would keep on getting this kind of missions when the man himself seem bone tired of doing them. And it was later on that he understood why in a very Narutoish fashion.

Killing is like a plate of broccoli that you must consume every dinner. Nobody likes it yet over the time either you start liking it or you get used to it. You put cheese on it, you garnish it, you cook it. Killing is the same, no matter what method you use it would end up with the same results. There's no need to be poetic or be idealistic about the issue. There's no, "you shouldn't get used to that. It's bad." Or "It's so horrible that you should get used to such thing at that age." It is almost an unspoken rule to kill when you take up the profession of a ninja. There's no age limits, no matter how one's conscience would tear you apart on such thing you would get used to it. It was reality.

But he's straying off the story. Naruto's captain is the kind of man who would kill their own squad member if the said so member would put the entire squad in risk. If killing almost the whole team of anbu would hasten the war then so be it. Despite the man's harshness, Naruto always held Tatsumaru to his highest regard, he was a man who always thought for the good of the whole squad and also maybe because the man treated him no different than the first day they had met. He had respected him, honored him but he felt no love for him. But as time passed, it was almost inevitable that he would not form some sort of admiration to the man like a young boy to his older brother. It was the tight nit camaraderie forged through many trials that led him to visit the man's grave today as well as every month.

I guess I'm going to do this more often now that I have more time in my hands.

Naruto stood up and gave a final glance at the grave before leaving. The sun has already died and a few stars dotted the already dark skies. The street lamps just starting to come to life giving illumination at the road he treads, Naruto silently contemplated what kind of ramen he would get.

Iruka sighed as he put his pen down and slumped down to his seat simply melting on it. He pinched the bridge of his nose and cast a fleeting glance at the papers still needed to be graded.

The other chunins had already left leaving him to sort out the paperwork. Not like they made him to, it's just the task he willingly took on himself. He caught himself smiling. As much as how the children make him experience head aches, sleep deprivation, and often times the case of losing his voice. He wouldn't change it any other way. Teaching is a job he grew to love.

He held a steaming cup of coffee at his hands and took a sip his vision zeroing on the picture frame at the edge of his table and made a smile of nostalgia. From there, a largely grinning face of a young whiskered blond and his own imitation answered him.

I wonder how he is…

He placed the cup down and shook his head cutting himself from his reverie. He shifted the documents and returned back to work. Or would have if not for the soft three knocks on the door pulling his attention. "Yes, come in." He called though internally wondering who could be possibly be it, coming at the academy at this hour of the night.

The door opened revealing an achingly familiar blond with a neutral expression. "Yo. Iruka-sensei." The chunnin rose up to his seat. "Ano…can I help you?" He asked at the same time furiously trying to figure out why the blond seems so familiar.

The neutral face broke to a small smile bordering to a smirk. "Your age must be catching up to you sensei for you to forget me."

"Excuse me!"

The blond only tilted his head to the side as he brought up a plastic bag with two containers inside into view. "I brought some ramen. Though you're paying next time."

At this the brown haired chunin blinked and suddenly something clicked. He finally took notice of the almost faded scars on the blond man's cheeks, the seemingly glowing blue eyes and the yellow whitish hair. Unsure and almost unbelieving, "Naruto?" He asked softly almost scared to hear the man's answer.

"It's been a long time sensei."