Author's notes: Why yes, Trail of Tears is a prequel, although it's not necessary to read in order to understand Litter of Misfits. Technically speaking, I first posted Misfits in December of 2013. ToT didn't come into existence for another, uh, four or five years.

o-o-o

o-o-o-o

o-o-o-o-o

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

It is the little things that shape and define lives. The little things are often overlooked, in favor of the large things. Who notices the ant carrying a twig when they stand in the shadow of a gigantic tree? But for the want of a nail, the kingdom had been lost. But kingdoms are not always lost for want of a nail – sometimes, kingdoms are also saved for want of a nail.

Countless kingdoms have risen and fell on single little unknown events. In retrospect, singularly unrelated events suddenly look like a string of bizarre coincidences, all designed to manifest greatness – whether good or bad. For this particularly kingdom, this particular world, the string of bizarre coincidences were two bright souls that would be each other's want of nails in many different occasions. In the occasions that they clashed – usually with a dark shadow that somehow managed to get between them – sparks flew.

Shimura Danzo would always assume it was the mark of a large thing that changed the course of his life and radically altered his philosophy and attitude – the blood of a willing twelve year old, coerced into something no twelve year old child should ever have to suffer, smearing his thighs and penis.

Inuzuka Tsume would really never give it any thought – she was who she was, and that was all she was ever going to be, because if she wasn't who she was, then she had to be someone else, and then she'd be right back to being who she was. Everyone liked to think that Tsume was a simple woman and that her thoughts were linear. They weren't. Her thoughts merely preferred the path of least resistance. She might have had the raw makings of a tactical genius…. But that was a lifetime ago, before Tsume exceeded her limits and was found in the Nara forest lying unconscious in a pool of her own blood.

Uchiha Madara… well, everyone agreed that he was crazy and a total ass, so no one cared about what may or may not have changed his path in life. (If anyone had asked, and he was being totally honest, he would have reluctantly admitted that the few morals he retained in the midst of the Curse of Darkness was left over from a time when Inuzuka Natsumi more-or-less herded him and Senju Hashirama and their men cross-country to rescue children who belonged to other clans. But that was over sixty years ago, and everyone assumed he was dead. He wasn't. Well, at least not most of the time. He was just busy cooking up plots.)

For Tsume, her course in life changed when a string of events culminated into – and fell away from – a single question that Danzo posed to her when she was ten years old: "But your puppy, Kuromaru, is male – why did your clan claim him?"

oOoOoOo

Danzo tolerated the suffocating shared presence of a clingy three year old, two full-grown dogs, a robust woman, eleven puppies, a miniature demon vessel, and a gangly (comatose) teenager for better than an hour. Mostly because he was warm and comfortable, and his joints ached even more at the thought of heading out into the cold. He didn't normally participate in the pleasures of bed this late in life, much less share it for a night with a single woman, so it was a bizarre novelty to suddenly be a part of a zoo.

It reminded him of his youth long past, when cold nights on the road meant having to share his blankets with Uchiha Kagami and Akamichi Torifu, and even Sarutobi Hiruzen and his team, after Senju Tobirama assumed responsibility and leadership for Danzo's team. It also meant that Danzo usually lost the rock-paper-scissors on who was stuck bedding with the future Third Hokage. Hiruzen was the worst when it came to sharing because the man had the damn habit of hogging every single inch of the blanket, even if it wasn't his own. Danzo always felt a twinge of remembered sympathy towards Biwako, who deserved to be enshrined alongside the sanctified memory of the Sage of Six Paths. Danzo couldn't stand sharing his blanket with Hiruzen for two nights in a row, and didn't understand how anyone could put up with it for thirty-two years without making quiet arrangements for an assassination.

Tsume didn't hog the covers – she just naturally gravitated to warm bodies instead, until a person was left with just the smallest corner of the bed as they retreated from Tsume's inevitable hostile mattress takeover.

Danzo's body and mind were still sleepy, but not enough for him to drift back to sleep. He wondered, as little Kiba wiggled between him and Tsume with one plump thumb shoved into his mouth, how did it come to this? Kiba sighed until he finally managed to find a comfortable spot wedged beneath Danzo's chin.

Well, he knew how it came to that. Sex made babies, and babies were born either vaginally or self-inflicted Cesarean. It's not like Tsume self-fertilized like a flower. Although she was prone to taking in abandoned and orphaned strays by her own accord, or the occasional offered (not-quite) sob story.

He felt in no way threatened by the people surrounding him or the thoughts buzzing in his brain, so he let them play out as his body and mind slowly awakened. He had slept hard for five hours (not long enough – never enough – bah, he'd sleep when he died), able to finally relax his guard enough to obtain badly-needed rest. There was something to be said about the relative safety of Konoha's greatest tracker in the heart of her territory. And that the sex had removed some of the painful tension that kept his body on edge. Kakashi was also sleeping hard, although it looked more likely due to his own self-negligence than the environment. Danzo was going to have to place a standing order that a full squad of ANBU personally – and successfully – escort the brat to the hospital the next time he returned this damaged from a mission.

He could easily imagine the exasperation on Sakumo's face.

Danzo quietly sat upright. He carefully extracted Kiba's tight-fisted grasp from his hair and bandages, and moved smoothly enough out of bed to avoid disturbing the puppies. Kiba predictably rolled over and pressed himself against his mother. Hmmm. Danzo's chest was bare. Tsume was bundled in his robe and if he wasn't mistaken, she had deliberately planted last night's love bite right at the crook of his neck where the robe couldn't cover.

Bitch, he thought affectionately. He retaliated by absconding with Tsume's fluffy bathrobe. He wrapped himself in it before ducking into the bathroom for morning ablutions. As he carefully extracted himself from his pants (Tsume might enjoy 'morning wood', but it wasn't the highlight of his day), he was unable to stop the old, deep-seated relief that his genitals weren't smeared with blood (—twelve years old TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD –). He frowned and dismissed such relief. He cleaned himself carefully before descending the stairs.

Two Uchiha – Fugaku and Yahiko – were impatiently seated at Tsume's kitchen table. Tea sat ignored in front of them. Sarutobi Hiruzen tilted his head and smiled in greeting from where he also sat – no doubt the only reason why the police hadn't already stormed the stairs. Fugaku's expression remained hard as Yahiko's face flushed red, but both seemed to sink a little in their seats.

Apparently, Danzo was more intimidating in Tsume's fluffy pastel-pink bathrobe than his original wardrobe. He ignored them as he moved around her kitchen with a familiar ease. He found his preferred tea stuffed in a bear-shaped cookie jar, cream on the second shelf of the fridge, and homemade raisin muffins in a wax paper-lined tin. The raisin muffins looked a little misshapen, as if an eager three year old had helped in their creation.

"I'd offer you gentlemen some food," Danzo said as he spread his findings before himself before taking a seat next to Hiruzen, "but I suspect you've already eaten."

The police remained silent. Danzo supposed that, were their positions switched, he would have no social clue of how one was supposed to speak to a former captain of ANBU-cum-revered Council elder, and advisor to the Hokage, half-dressed in the kitchen of the kunoichi most notorious for her sexual exploits and recklessness that frequently left her teammates wondering if throwing themselves at the mercy of their enemies wasn't a better deal. He bet he'd given the Uchiha an apoplectic fit if they'd seen who shared his bed with him no less than fifteen minutes ago, because Danzo had a well-earned reputation of being intolerant of puppies, toddlers, and all things cute and sweet.

"Did you stay warm?" Sarutobi Hiruzen asked with an amused gleam in his eye.

Danzo chose not to dignify that with a response. Instead, he said, "Tsume will kill you when she realizes you are smoking in her kitchen." He made himself tea as Hiruzen shrugged languidly and took another deep draw off the pipe.

"Being Hokage allows one certain privileges."

Danzo remained silent as he poured the cream into his cup, and then stirred a little tea into his cream. Tsume and her children preferred their tea to be strong enough to make hairs sprout off one's chin; he preferred the richness of tea-flavored cream. It was one of the few pleasures of life he allowed himself. Sex with Inuzuka Tsume wasn't so much a pleasure as it was a necessary means of survival against her libido, or to prevent another hare-brained scheme that could potentially insult two of the most powerful and important clans in Konoha yet again. "You're correct," he told Hiruzen. "She will most likely lecture you until your brain bleeds out of your ears."

"Tsume doesn't lecture well when it's not her sex workshop – she had a dreadful habit of repeating herself. I think her children are half-behaved to avoid the lectures, rather than behaving out of fear or disapproval."

"Hence the brain bleeding." Danzo saluted the Uchiha with his teacup. "She isn't the only one who delivers a poor lecture."

Fugaku gritted his teeth. "Reading you your rights would not be a lecture, poor or otherwise. As I'm sure you suspect, we have obtained a warrant that allows us to search the premises, signed by the Head of Internal Affairs himself, although Kagami told us to be sensible, which is why we're sitting here and not actively conducting a search. However, I have chosen not to request a warrant for your arrest for aiding and abetting a potential felon."

Hiruzen spoke. "I would've vetoed the warrant, anyway. I feel, given the involvement of the jinchuuriki and Inuzuka Tsume, we should approach this quietly, with an open mind, and ask more questions."

"It is a felony for a shinobi clan to interact with the jinchuuriki before he enters the-"

Danzo waved Fugaku silent. "Yes, yes. Et cetera, et cetera. I could quote the law word for word; I don't need you abbreviating it for me."

Fugaku's posture was brittle. "You are not above the law."

Ah – so it was about Danzo, with the jinchuuriki being a peripheral matter. Tsume was also a peripheral matter – most likely because she had such a long, personal history of antagonizing Uchiha Fugaku that he had resigned himself to a lifetime of such abuse. Fugaku would probably suspect that a polite and respectful Tsume was nothing more than a cleverly-disguised enemy.

Danzo would be able manipulate the situation more easily now that the jinchuuriki wasn't at the heart of the matter, especially when Hiruzen watched and listened. "No, I've never felt such." He also felt that Konoha came before the law – and before morals, ethics, individuals, emotions, obligations, and many other noble ideals of decent, honorable, modern shinobi. Danzo's very few scruples existed only because of an old memory of (—twelve years old TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD—) bloody smears.

But the Uchiha were going to be very cautious of how they circled Danzo, like wolves lurking outside the parameter and sniffing for any possible weakness.

Danzo hid a grin – he had been working with the canine minds of Inuzuka even before Fugaku was born. He knew how to handle circling wolves. "Indeed," he added casually, "none of us are above the law."

"You said that no jinchuuriki was present on the compound, though we know otherwise. Inuzuka also claimed that no jinchuuriki was present. Both of you harbored the jinchuuriki, and interfered with the police investigation. This is a known felony." Fugaku paused a long moment, looking very unsure of himself, and then added, "Given your… personal activities of last night, it's possible that one might reach a conclusion that someone of Inuzuka's nature is in your personal favor." His next words were so hurried that it was a wonder that his tongue didn't trip. "But you are famous for not allowing personal regard of any sorts to influence your decisions and actions, Honorable Elder, which leads me to believe that the purpose of your involvement with the jinchuuriki is beyond the scope of the felony. But without more information, I cannot close the investigation."

Danzo didn't think he'd ever been accused of nepotism before. Well, let it not be said that the Uchiha – especially their clan leader – lacked balls. Even if Tsume had notoriously ruptured one or two Uchiha testicles during her Academy days.

Hiruzen's eyes flickered to Danzo as Danzo took a bite of the raisin muffin. Mmm. The raisins were nice and plump – just the way he liked them. "This matter seems quite serious, Danzo."

Danzo hid his irritation well, although it took a supreme act of self-control not to roll his eyes. Hypocrite. Hiruzen was so easily swayed by his emotions, and when he found himself backed into a corner between doing what was right by the law and what was right by the individual, he expected Danzo to bail his scrawny pale ass out of the fire. It was a dynamic decades old in their relationship. "The Uchiha Police Force is an upstanding example and credit to the clan's honorable code of conduct."

Fugaku looked as though he had bit into a lemon. "Flattery will be considered a form of bribery."

"Even if it's true? Ah, my apologies." He focused his gaze on them. Yahiko squirmed uncomfortably; Fugaku was tense but still. "Forgive me, but I was under the assumption that the police force had indeed granted overt permission to Tsume to hold the jinchuuriki." Danzo was pleased at the insulted horror that filled Fugaku's face.

"Hmm. Well, that does change things." Hiruzen sounded far too cheerful for such a discussion.

"Hokage-sama! It most certainly – we did no such thing!"

"Tsume explicitly told you that there were puppies in her kennels."

"Puppies and old bitches. And then that naked whore played with herself in front of my men." Fugaku's cheeks turned red. He hastily bowed in apology to the Hokage. "Pardon my language; I mean no disrespect."

"None taken," Hiruzen replied, his face now filled with amusement. "I'm well-aware of Tsume's provocative proclivities. But she said… puppies?"

Danzo looked at the table and tried to decide if he should ignore the crumbs. "She reported the same to me after the police departed. Only puppies here, she said."

"Ah." Hiruzen nodded his head. "Yes. I can see where one could easily believe that the police gave overt permission to carry on, that no crime was being committed."

Yahiko looked from Danzo to Hiruzen. "But she said there were puppies!"

Hiruzen nodded. "Yes," he said slowly, as if speaking to young children. "Puppies. Exactly."

Danzo gave Yahiko a wry smile, just as Fugaku pinched the bridge of his nose. "The quality of the police investigations must be diminishing if you cannot realize that, in all your various interactions with the Inuzuka, they aren't given to calling puppies children."

Fugaku rubbed his forehead, as if he had a throbbing headache. "To be fair, it was two in the morning, and it was Tsume." Then he frowned, as if replaying the entire string of events last night, accurate to the last detail because the Sharingan captures every detail, no matter how small. "Wait a minute…"

"She told you there were puppies on the premise. You let it slide. A simple woman like Inuzuka Tsume thinks only in linear fashion, so it's easy to see how she would assume you merely granted validation."

Sharingan eyes – no longer dark as they had been when he first entered – studied him. "Danzo-sama doesn't think in linear fashions."

No, he didn't. The War Hawk thought like the Konoha spiral leaf – turning deeper and deeper towards the center just before the trap snapped shut. "I did say that she and I were going to discuss the law. I never specified which law." Fugaku didn't even relax a fraction. "I think we all need a review of this law."

"And what law would that be?"

"The law and discussion thereof can wait until I've finished breakfast."

The raisin muffin had been excellent, especially with his morning tea-cream, so Danzo decided to have a second one. Watching Fugaku squirm impatiently was also delicious, he thought. Hiruzen was content to smoke his pipe, although he got up once to add more wood to the fire in the living room. And since he raided Tsume's raisin muffins, it hardly seemed fair to leave a mess of crumbs, so he made a point of wiping the kitchen table clean.

"Now," Danzo began as he settled back in his chair. Daylight had brightened the kitchen up dramatically in the last few minutes. It seemed far too cheerful and homey to have the likes of the Uchiha sitting in doom and gloom. Or Danzo, come to think of it. Fugaku leaned forward, scarred forearms folded on the kitchen table, eyes narrowed like he suspected a trap. And so the spiral began… "Let us start with a simple observation – you tell it to be the truth, and so I shall accept it at face value. You knew that the jinchuuriki was physically present in the Inuzuka kennels, at approximately two AM."

"That is correct, Danzo-sama."

"Which implies that you knew the jinchuuriki's prior location to the kennels."

Fugaku was a little more hesitant with his answer. "We are aware of Point A, where the jinchuuriki had been previously, and Point B, his present location. The line between them is still under investigation."

"Ah. So somewhere between the orphanage – I assume he was in the orphanage, yes? Good, at least we know your men aren't completely incompetent. So somewhere between the orphanage and the kennels, there is an unaccounted three year old child who somehow managed to elude your adult police. I assume that he also managed to elude the ANBU, as someone like this should never have left Point A." Standards in ANBU had certainly fallen since Danzo's forced retirement. Might be time for some surprise inspections and surprise trainings, especially since the aches and grumbles of his last surprise seem to had quieted down.

Danzo paused to sip his tea and risked a quick glance at Hiruzen. The Hokage's eyes were hardened, like a pair of matching flints. Watch, old man. See what your emotions and desire to put the individual above Konoha has wrought. The spiral tightened. "This brings me to the question that Tsume brought to my attention while we were discussing the law. How does a toddler wander through twenty centimeters of snow, naked and barefoot and unsupervised, eight blocks in the dead of a winter night that is colder than anything Konoha has experienced in all of my lifetime?"

The silence was deadly, Hiruzen's killing intent even more so.

"She tracked a pair of bloody foot prints into her kennels, and found him eating the dog food." That made the killing intent flare up more. "Naturally, Tsume expressed concern for the child's wellbeing and safety in light of this criminal negligence. The purpose of outlawing ninja clan interaction with the jinchuuriki was to minimize undue influences towards Konoha's weapon, to prevent bias or manipulation of the jinchuuriki's impressionable mind before it was mature enough for training. Interaction from the Uchiha Police Force was a necessary evil to enforce the law, but not one I feared, as you are a force bound by honor and duty."

He had deliberately created the law as such so all eyes could watch the one clan that couldn't avoid interaction with the jinchuuriki – not when they had been so questionably absent during the Kyuubi's invasion three years prior. "However – and I admit this was an oversight on my part – there is nothing in the law that addresses what should be done if civilians fail in their care towards the child."

Fugaku's Sharingan gaze swept between Danzo and the Hokage. "Inuzuka-san's dogs eat better than most of my police force, and no doubt the orphanage itself."

"True. And while I have limited experience with children, I understand that they habitually stuff all matter of things into their mouth not meant for human consumption. That is not the point, gentleman. The child cannot be sent back into an environment that may very well be the driving factor to the events of this morning. I therefore propose that the child's care be turned over to the Inuzuka clan."

Sharingan eyes began to spin - it's possible that one might reach a conclusion that someone of Inuzuka's nature is in your personal favor.

Hiruzen's killing intent decreased, simmering slowly. "Why the Inuzuka clan?" Hiruzen's eyes were as sharp as his question. His eyes were always sharp whenever Danzo and Tsume and children came up in the same sentence. Probably because all five of Tsume's children were, in some large manner, due to Danzo – particularly last year's acquisition of Kabuto.

And the trap slammed shut as the spiral ended within itself. Danzo's smile was tight. "Tsume has already fostered three orphans – we all know her weakness for them. And she found this orphan – naked as the day he was born – in a pile of her puppies, on a winter night that no mother would want her children wandering. No doubt he wore their stench well, marking him as one of them. I, for one, am not reckless or suicidal enough to pry this newly-discovered pup from Inuzuka Tsume's possessive claws." He shrugged. "You're welcome to try," he told Fugaku, knowing full well that Fugaku didn't dare. "But warn me before you do – I'd like to sell spectator tickets first." His smile was unchanged as Tsume interrupted their conversation by stalking into the kitchen with Naruto balanced on her hip.

oOoOoOo

Tsume's nose, memories, and heart were at war as she lay unmoving in bed after the departure of Kabuto and Hana, and she rather resented such – it was complicated, and she didn't like complications.

Her nose told her this was the Kyuubi.

Her memories reminded her of the stark, near-total destruction of her Pack, how there were so many bloody and burnt partial corpses of clan women and their ninken… The Hokage had personally assured her that the seal was strong, but he couldn't explain why the stench of fox was so overwhelming if it was supposedly sealed completely within the newborn babe.

He never did say who the babe's parents were.

Her heart, long marked by the likes of Kakashi sleeping the sleep of the ill beside her, told her that no pup should ever feel the pain of being unwanted and abandoned, especially no pup of Uzumaki Kushina. (As far as Tsume was concerned, only Kushina-chan would have the audacity to name her offspring after a ramen topping. Tsume liked ramen as much as the next gal, but Kushina had made a small religion out of her love for the national Uzu dish.)

And even if this wasn't Kushina's child, Kushina-chan never would've wanted any child – even a host to the nine-tailed demon fox – to ever be forced to seek warm refuge in a pile of puppies and food from a dog dish.

But for the tears he cried last night, there wasn't anything human in Naruto's scent. The stench of the Kyuubi was overwhelming – even enough to almost drown out the Hokage's foul tobacco smoke. But, she considered, if the thirteen dogs keeping them warm in bed weren't bothered by it, then there had to be something else going on. Was she just smelling the Kyuubi more keenly because of the flashbacks? Scent was the most primal of all human senses, and the one most closely linked to memories. Perhaps, if she could catch that human scent once more, then she wouldn't feel so brittle and torn.

Mentally, emotionally, and physically bracing herself, Tsume channeled more chakra at her nose. The sense of smell that was normally a hundred times greater than a ninken's became two hundred times greater than a ninken's. Scent was nothing more than the detection of molecules in the air, and if it existed, it had a molecule. It helped that the Inuzuka, like so many other clans, had a genetic mutation that their clan techniques and secrets were built around, but it didn't technically qualify as a Bloodline Limit – everyone had a sense of smell, no matter how poor or how great it seemed. The Inuzuka had a much larger cluster of sensory cells in the nose and tongue, thus allowing for greater detection of molecules even without increasing chakra to enhance sensitivity, as well as increased brain matter dedicated to interpreting the odors.

Five hundred times that of a ninken. The limits of her olfaction were truly unknown – the first time she had pushed beyond the limit, it took years to partially recover from the brain damage, and that was even after Tsunade had done her best to heal what she could, and Yamanaka Yuu had shifted neurotransmitters around to stimulate Tsume's short-term memory processes. It wasn't that increased chakra at the nose was a particularly hard talent to master, but that few had the mental capacity to deal with being bombarded every second with thousands of different scents and messages. And the stronger the sense of smell, the more messages pounded at brain cells.

One thousand times that of a ninken.

Two thousand…

Three thousand…

Fire burned behind her eyes and scorched her lungs. It felt like the top of her head had been shattered with a well-placed explosion tag. Trillions of scents – too many to identify – overwhelmed her. She could detect molecules from a passage of a monarch butterfly three months previously in a field of dandelions that lay a hundred kilometers north of Fire's borders. She could trace every single step and encounter second by second that Kakashi and Naruto experienced in the last two weeks –months, even. Years. And every single step and encounter of the people that Kakashi and Naruto had crossed second by second. And the people they had crossed. On and on, until it seemed like she could track the entire world, for the last hundred years.

Far beneath it all, she found a faint scent that triggered a memory – of more burning and bleeding and raw hope.

("Promise me, Hokage-sama… if I die, you'll take care of my children, yes? My puppies. I don't… He doesn't understand puppies."

"Ah, Tsume-chan. You're far too stubborn to die, but very well. I promise that I will look after your children should anything happen to you – but only if you return the promise. That you will look after my own children should something happen to me."

"Yeah, that's fair. But… you don't have children, Mooncalf. Do you? When did this happen? Wait, you lucky dog – you finally did the deed with Kushina, and I didn't even notice!")

A defining moment – a major event in her life just occurred. And it had the same result as the want of a nail – a kingdom would rise and fall.

She used the corner of Danzo's sleeve to dab away the blood from her eyes and ears. And then there was no hesitation or fear as she drew Naruto close to her chest – only tenderness. I'm so sorry I broke my promise, Minato. But now I'll never let your son go – I swear this to your spirit with all that I hold dear.