Author's notes: So, yeah. I am pregnant with twins, have had to take a whopping dose of progesterone to support the early stages of their pregnancy, developed gestational diabetes, and have been suffering THE WORST pregnancy brain, ever. My husband moved my computer, and I totally forgot about writing/updating in the last, uh month. To make up for this, I shall post the next chapter of the Delta Years tonight - it's also the last chapter before the Beta Years start, where you all will learn far more about Tsume's circus years, and that man with red eyes who kidnapped the Kiri nin from his family in Rice Paddies twenty years ago. :D

o-o-o

o-o-o-o

o-o-o-o-o

When A decided to check on Killer B's chuunin team and how they were doing with babysitting their Inuzuka diplomat while Killer B and another team took on the Yozora who were raiding a village that three hours away, he should've been surprised to walk in on what was apparently an impromptu lesson on sex education.

A very thorough lesson on sex education.

He should've been surprised. He kind of was. And yet, he also wasn't; Inuzuka Tsume had amazingly poor boundaries, so of course the hands-on demonstration of how to properly put on a condom (with the use of an anatomically-correct carrot) seemed like something she absolutely would do. In a fashion that he suspected was inherent to Inuzuka everywhere, Inuzuka Tsume had commandeered Killer B's kitchen and was using a large white board and scented erasable markers to bullet point her lecture – her artwork and writing still left much to be desired, and he wasn't willing to believe it was all due to using her nondominant hand.

Since Karui, Omoi, Samui, and Darui were all seated at the kitchen table facing her, bent over notebooks, charcoal nubs scribbling away, and even Nii barely acknowledged his entrance with a flicker of eyes before turning back to Inuzuka-san with rapt attention, A decided that he had time to sit and observe. Well, lean and observe. All the kitchen chairs were taken, so he folded his arms in front of himself and rested his weight against the kitchen cabinets. He made sure to keep his expression stern, even though Inuzuka-san ignored him.

"…And if any guy tells you ladies that the rubbers are uncomfortable or they can't feel anything, give him the boot. Remember, if he ain't going to wrap the rod, he ain't welcome to your bod."

Samui's hand shot upward. "What if you're on birth control?"

"That's a good segue into this next part. Omoi, Darui, even if your sexual liaison is on birth control, or is male, it's still a good idea to keep the down and low wrapped. Sexually transmitted diseases are frequently invisible, and you may unexpectedly wind up with a bad case of tertiary syphilis thirty years after a one-night stand with someone who swore up and down they were disease-free. But say it's not a one-night stand – say it's someone you've decided to have a dedicated relationship with. Birth control is not 100% effective. If you ladies are on the pill, you have to take it in the same three hour window every day, or its effectiveness drops. Lots of other medications – like antibiotics you're now on for the syphilis you could've avoided if only you had used a condom – decreases the efficacy of the birth control. When you're on a mission, it's hard to take the birth control at the exact same time every day. Not many enemy nin will appreciate you pausing a fight to make sure you don't lose that window. Furthermore, if the woman has a female disorder wrecking her hormones – like endometriosis or polycystic ovarian disease – the birth control will regulate the hormones in such a way that it could actually improve fertility."

Nii raised her hand this time. "What if you tie your tubes?"

Inuzuka-san's answering smile was razor-sharp. It made a chill race down A's spine. "My grandmother cauterized the tubes of her granddaughter, after she made the mistake of getting pregnant at the age of fifteen by a man Grandmother wanted absolutely nothing to do with. The tubes healed and reconnected, although we don't know when, which resulted in another surprise pregnancy twenty-some years later. Statistically, this occurs in about three or four percent of tubals. It has a very high risk of ectoptic pregnancies. Condom use is very effective, if the condoms are put on correctly, but poor fitting of condom will have a failure rate of up to thirty percent."

Samui flipped through some of her notebook pages. "Correct fit, single layer, intact, appropriate lube."

"Exactly. In a fight, dodging is going to help prevent most injuries from contact, but you can't rely on just that to win the battle, and no one can't dodge everything. Birth control and condom use is the same way when it comes to sex. It helps you dodge most everything, but never expect it to be 100% effective." Tsume wiped away the bullet points outlining a variety of birth control. "And remember, anyone who insists that the pull-out method works just fine to prevent pregnancy needs to be gutted and taken out of the gene pool."

As one, Darui and Karui said, "Little swimmers are impatient and don't wait for climax."

"Right." Having cleared the board, Inuzuka-san made several more bullet points (battle rape, date rape, consent, seduction) with the blueberry-scented marker. As she wrote, she spoke. "Battle rape is not as common as it used to be, especially during the Warring Era, but unfortunately it still occurs with enough frequency that you all probably know at least one person who survived. There is no shame in surviving. Like any other battle, if you live to walk away, learn from it. Live well, become stronger, and make that bastard rue the day he decided to power-play with your sex organs. Date rape is also common; never leave a drink alone or accept an unidentifiable drink from a stranger, unless it's a mission and you're supposed to because you drew the short straw on who's supposed to be the decoy." She underlined consent, and then leveled a stern glare at the chuunin teenagers, and Darui. "This is a big one. Outside of missions, in your own Village, in other places, especially if you get involved with civilians, don't be That Person. Don't use your strength to force an unwilling person into having sex with you. However, missions are entirely different, aren't they, Raikage-sama?"

Until then, the chuunin and Darui had failed to register A's presence. He watched as Darui hunched over his notebook, and Karui and Omoi blushed as red as Karui's covered hair. Only Samui retained her composure as she tossed back her fine hair and leveled him with a steady gaze. "Raikage-sama, Inuzuka-san is appalled at the lack of sex education in the Academy."

Inuzuka-san wrinkled her nose. "Appalled isn't how I described it."

"'Fucking lacked any info on fucking appropriately' is the exact description," Nii supplied. "Raikage-sama, all Karui asked was how a woman has sex with another woman. When Tsume-san learned that Karui had no idea what a clitoris was," Nii ducked the charcoal that Karui lobbed at her, "she declared that you had given her full permission to provide Karui with an appropriate education in whatever manner she saw fit to do so."

A twitched. That was… that was so not what he had said! He glared at Inuzuka-san. She had raised her chin in blatant challenge with narrowed eyes, cocking her hip with one leg slightly forward in a stance that was so masculine in its aggression that he would've immediately challenged her to an arm wrestling contest to assert his dominance. Even if her dominant arm and torso were still in multiple little pieces. "I do recall asking Inuzuka-san to honor the spirit of holding Karui's life in honor, and to be a mentor." The floor rumbled with the depth of his growling voice.

The smile that spread across Inuzuka-san face was like a fire consuming dried brush. There was too much teeth and a wicked glint in her eyes for the smile to be amused. "Raikage-sama," she said in a soft voice, with enough purr that Nii and Darui were wiping away drool, and that was without the use of her infernal siren seal, "no one should come out of the Academy thinking that chlamydia is a pretty flower." And, based on how much redder Omoi's face suddenly became, that had also been said to Inuzuka-san.

Okay, fair enough.

But A still wasn't about to show any form of retreat before Inuzuka Tsume. This was his Village, and these were his nin. "I don't remember assigning you mentorship for Karui's teammates."

Inuzuka-san smile remained unchanged. "The team stands as one, and falls as one. Besides, as a woman, I cannot stand by and just let Omoi and Darui float through life with equal ignorance of what the clitoris is, or how to pet it appropriately. You may have the luxury of ignoring feminine pleasure, because the cock is so much easier to stimulate, but that's not fair to any woman these two manage to successfully bed."

Darui pinched the bridge of his nose. "I do too know," he muttered defensively.

Nii wagged her eyebrows as A. "I like this one – are you sure we can't keep her?"

A growled. "Oh hell no. Not even if her Hokage asked me really nicely, and sweetened the deal with a treaty that he gives me carte blanche to create!" He crossed his arms and glared at Inuzuka-san. "Aside from a string of honeypot missions, what're your qualifications for teaching young, impressionable minds about sex?" He thought her memory was awful – how on earth could she remember what she was teaching?

"I," Inuzuka-san declared with a haughty voice, "run a mandatory sex ed workshop for my clan that's open to all Konoha ninja. I've been putting it on four times a year for the last ten years."

… Why the hell wasn't that in her dossier? A ground his teeth together and thought of what stern words were needed with his Intel. "Since you're so intent on providing everyone here a thorough education, what do you think is most important for a pregnant kunoichi to know?"

Tsume frowned, but more in thought than in challenge. "Off the top of my head, don't perform your own emergency Cesarean section, unless you absolutely have to, like an enemy crushing your placenta just because they're an asshole who want to cause the worst possible pain."

…wait, what? Not only was that oddly specific, he had actually been hoping for a good lead into how a kunoichi couldn't be pregnant and be on active duty at the same time. Okay, so maybe asking an Inuzuka clanswoman her opinion on being pregnant kunoichi wasn't the best choice. That was when her Bingo picture was taken, after all, while apparently calming the savage beast that had its very own Bingo entry.

Nii raised her hand. "Are you speaking from personal experience?"

Inuzuka-san turned back to the white board to erase it. "I hadn't expected to get to the whole being pregnant while on active duty just yet, but sure. Let me think for a moment." She wrote the bullet points in strawberry-scented red: health complications, chakra control, social supports. After a moment, she added physical activity and duress. "Every Village and every clan does things a little different when it comes to pregnant kunoichi. I'd probably get into trouble if I talk about other Konoha clans, but I'm Clan Head of the Inuzuka, and none of what I'm about to tell you is a clan or Village secret, so whatever. I'm Queen Alpha Bitch. I'll do what I want."

A had a feeling that Inuzuka-san declared herself Queen Alpha Bitch frequently enough that most people just smiled and nodded along. Or gritted their teeth and silently bore it, like he was doing now.

Inuzuka-san sat down on the edge of the kitchen table, and used the capped strawberry marker to punctuate her words, waving it at her audience. "Before we get into what it's like to be pregnant while on active duty, it's important for you all to know how babies are made."

"We already covered the mechanics of sex," Omoi said, flipping through his notebook. "Insert tab A into Slot B, pump until swimmers are released. If fertile, boom, pregnant."

Tsume squinted at him. "In a nutshell, sure. Sperm without known obstacles meets egg ripe for the taking. Fertilized egg attaches to uterus, and boom. Pregnant. Lots of women have problems with pregnancy, which range from little things like bloated, sore breasts and stretch marks across their ass, to really big things like blood pressure so high they stroke out and die. Ligaments stretch, making feet wider and longer, hips widen as the pelvic bones spread, increased weight and pressure around their middle from the expanding uterus, killer heartburn. All of this can throw off a woman's center of balance, and there goes your skill at dodging and throwing punches. And don't get me started on morning sickness – trust me, enemy nin don't appreciate you vomiting all over them in the middle of the fight, because morning sickness is a misnomer – it doesn't stick arpound just in the morning. There's food aversions and cravings, normal and weird. Fatigue, insomnia, weird dreams, increased or tanked sex drive, emotional swings all over the place. I once bawled when I learned that Kakashi had eaten the last of the pickles in our house, because it was midnight and not a single market would be open. We had to do a midnight raid on Minato, and I'm probably the only woman alive who can say that she successfully stole dill pickles out of the Fourth Hokage's panty. Those were the best dill pickles I ever had. And damn it, I deserved them too for having to dismantle his traps just to get into the pantry. Who knew he was so defensive about his food." She scratched under her cast in thought. "Then again, he dated Kushina. So, that probably explains that."

A was starting to suspect that the gods had taken one look at how freakishly talented, strong, fast, and intelligent Namikaze Minato would be, and decided to create Inuzuka Tsume, because someone had to keep the man humble somehow. Even if it was just via dill pickle thievery.

"In short, pregnancies are hard, rough work, and anyone can develop health problems that will require a kunoichi to go on a leave of absence. I won't lie and say that yeah, your career won't suffer.

"But being pregnant doesn't make you any less of a kunoichi. If you're not having any complications, a pregnancy shouldn't stop you from active duty. I didn't have any issues with my daughter. I was nine months pregnant on a supply mission run when I went into labor, and Hana was born in a forest in the Land of Fire, with a random Sand nin that I rescued handing supplies to my ten year old makeshift midwifes, while Minato held my hand and his team acted as said makeshift midwives." After a thoughtful pause, tapping her chin with the marker, Inuzuka-san added, "Don't ever let an Uchiha be your makeshift midwife. You should never, ever, be that desperate in life."

"Duly noted," Samui declared with far more seriousness than A felt was appropriate, and she even wrote such in her notebook.

"What about the loss of chakra control during the pregnancy?" A asked. If everyone else got to ask questions, so should he. Truthfully, no one had ever bothered to sit down with him to explain pregnancies to him. Not that he ever cared before, because he was highly unlikely to get any offspring that didn't involve the mechanics of a turkey baster. He watched Karui, Samui, and Nii watching Inuzuka-san with a strange hunger for knowledge about what their bodies could do now, or in the future. He was slowly and silently realizing that he was the Raikage to kunoichi. Well, he had always known that, but in his mind, they were always more like, well, shinobi, except with boobs and less physical strength.

His kunoichi deserved every bit of accurate information regarding their bodies as his shinobi deserved information on how to properly care for their weapons. He had been sorely remiss. His kunoichi deserved the opportunity to be the best warriors their bodies allowed them to be, and not because they were good at seduction.

"It's commonly said that kunoichi lose their chakra control when they get pregnant, so it's harder to perform jutsu and to fight." Inuzuka-san shrugged. "It happens often enough that people assume every kunoichi goes through it, but the Inuzuka clan, being strictly maternal, wouldn't have survived three hundred years with no males if we were incapable of taking care of ourselves when half of us adult women were pregnant at any given time. Rarely is the loss of chakra control serious enough to require a temporary stay of duties. However, every pregnancy is different. I said I was fine when pregnant with my daughter. When I was pregnant with my son, I couldn't do any tracking missions. The hormones made me so sensitive to strong odors that it was non-stop nausea. And to an Inuzuka, all odors are strong. I actually did missions as a decoy with, uh…." Her expression mutated several times as she wrestled with uncertainty and doubt, and then finally relaxed as she shrugged. "Whatever, Wicked-Eye Fugaku might appreciate this story better than the Pencil-Dick story, and it's not a state secret." After a pause, she added, "And it doesn't insult the memory of Hyuuga-san, so there's an added bonus."

A was far more curious about any story that had Uchiha Fugaku and Pencil-Dick in the same sentence.

"At the tail-end of the Third War, there were issues with you guys attacking our supply lines, even after the peace treaties were signed. We got sick and tired of it, so Fugaku volunteered to drive a decoy wagon, with some of his younger clanspeople disguised as civilian children. You all know about this."

A huffed an irritated sigh. "In our defense, the peace treaty between Konoha and Kumo was late in getting signed. You've seen how winter weather interferes with travel." Kumo had been in turmoil because of the defeat and death of the Third Raikage, and Raikages are chosen through a string of tests – physical, mental, spiritual – that often last up to half a year, so there really hadn't been a leader to appropriately work on peace treaties. In the meantime the stragglers still causing trouble in the other nations were making last-ditch efforts to make a name for themselves before the war officially ended. The Head Jounin, who had been Head Jounin under the Third Raikage, took advantage of the stragglers' desperation and sent twenty of them off to destroy a single supplies wagon, expecting it to be an easy defeat.

All things considering, it had been an easy defeat – just not in the hands of Kumo nin.

"Sorry about that. If it makes you feel any better, I was too busy throwing up in the bushes to fight back. Just prior to this point, Mikoto-chan was riding along with Fugaku as part of the ongoing decoy. But her pregnancy did mess with how well she controlled her chakra, and after she nearly immolated the horses, it was decided that she needed to take a break from active duty. Most of the time, when people refer to loss of chakra control, they think that the woman loses her chakra, and she gets weaker. That's not it – most women wind up using way more chakra than they normally would, and they can't control the exact power they produce with different techniques. I theorize that the reason men have more yang chakra is because they have more red blood cells. In pregnancy, our blood supply increases by as much as fifty percent.

"So, in this case, Mikoto-chan was too dangerous for a delicate mission. Or at least she was too dangerous to be around horses. And probably small children, since Fugaku was using Itachi and Shisui to help him as decoys. And since the ploy required the image of a happily married couple with the wife being very obviously pregnant and surrounded by children, and all I needed to do was sit next to Fugaku and make appropriate googly eyes at him, Minato figured that the horses and children would survive me, especially when I hitched Juubi up, because Juubi was itching for a good fight. Although I still think we could've aimed Mikoto-chan at the Kumo nin. It gets mighty cold up here. I'm sure you all would've appreciated a good old Grand Fireball."

A waved a beefy hand at her. "No worries. Our ego was no less damaged for experienced Kumo nin to be thoroughly trounced by a seven year old Uchiha Shisui instead of by a pregnant kunoichi unable to adequately control her chakra."

He should've demoted his Head Jounin when he became the Fourth Raikage. Huh. Maybe he really did owe Konoha a medal for killing the man. If it weren't for Inuzuka Tsume being here as a diplomatic envoy to deliver the Hyuuga's body, there was no way the sex education in his Academy would be receiving a badly-needed makeover.

A wondered, as Tsume went back to blathering on the importance of social supports, so kunoichi wouldn't have to do a lengthy maternity leave spanning years to cover childcare at the expense of their skills and talents, what the hell was Konoha feeding their nin? Between a seven-year-old Uchiha Shisui using a D-rank jutsu to trounce multiple squads of enemy chuunin and jounin, a two year old Hatake Kakashi with enough developed chakra and control of such to successfully summon, and a twelve year old Inuzuka Tsume ripping out a grown man's spine, A was beginning to suspect that someone was dumping illicit steroids in the Konoha water system.

Which would probably explain why Orochimaru got run out of town – even though A's Intel didn't get all the details on the man's human experimentation, he was beginning to wonder if Orochimaru hadn't been tinkering around with trying to create a bunch of superhuman ninja. Then again, why would Orochimaru even bother? The man just needed to be patient and wait for Konoha to produce some kind of new overpowered genius.

oOoOoOo

"I've never seen anyone with wings before," Yamato said breathlessly, pausing beside Kakashi to give him the wooden kunais that he had just made to replenish diminished supplies.

Kakashi eyed their attackers. "And they seem unusually pissed off against us, and I don't think it's because of the forest they can now roost in. You'd think that winged people would actually be grateful."

"Probably had a run-in with Mom. She does have that effect on people. Or maybe it was you bringing out your one original technique. Good job on that, by the way." Yamato's trees slapped its branches together and pinned a flying shinobi within its tangled limbs.

"Thanks. I thought it might surprise them that a Konoha nin uses lightning techniques. Watch your head."

Yamato whirled around and stabbed a swooping enemy. He used his foot to slide the body off the length of his sword. "You fill my life with fun and excitement, brother, but sometimes I could use a little less."

"Yeah, because trying to hunt down my father all day is such a boring and tedious task. Is it true that he once led you through Danzo's gardening quarters?" Kakashi made a few hand signals, and a wave of snow swirled up like a tornado to snatch two more flying nin out of the sky, before the shards of ice within the tornado shredded the trapped nin. Thankfully the rushing wind blocked most of the agonizing screams.

"I like Sakumo," Yamato said defensively. His narrowed eyes and stubbornly set jaw reminded Kakashi of Obito, even though their faces weren't similar… although Obito was the same age when he died as Yamato was now.

("Oh yeah? Your dad is a better hero right now, with his reputation all in tatters, than you'll ever be! If he were here now, he wouldn't hesitate to go after Rin, and you know that! Your soul is rotten to the core, worse than anything Hatake Sakumo ever digs around in!")

Hotaru, balancing upon an ice-slick boulder that the winds had exposed, unleashed a wave of kikaichu against the remaining shinobi. The skies overhead blotted black and screams echoed on the wind.

Kakashi slapped a hand on Yamato's shoulder and grinned, though his cheeks stung from the cold and his heart felt like a blackened lump. "You have to be the most rotten soul to dislike my dad. Anyway, think we should stuff a body into a scroll and bring it to T&I?"

"That depends on whether Hotaru-san is going to leave us enough of a body to stuff in a scroll."

oOoOoOo

"What are you sniffing about?" Karui asked as she showed Tsume how to use her chakra to balance on the snow. Snow had a lot more air molecules and lower density point than water; it was proving to be an excellent chakra control exercise.

Tsume turned her nose from the wind. "Nii finally managed to seduce the Academy Teacher. They're having fun right now."

"Oh good," said Samui. "Your suggestion on the sign and nudity must've worked, then." They had helped Nii paint the sign that afternoon so the characters were nice and pretty. Nii had then snuck into Mina's kitchen before she returned home from teaching. Nii had brought along a bottle of massage oil, and left behind her clothes.

Omoi grunted as he demonstrated how to do cartwheels on top of the newly-fallen snow without falling through. Show off. "I hope this means she'll finally move out of our apartment."

In addition to the pheromones that Nii and her partner were exuding, Tsume also smelled Yamato's blood. But there wasn't a lot, so that was good, and it wasn't like there were any living enemies anymore. Probably just slipped on something.

oOoOoOo

"Shut up," Yamato said, his face red, before Kakashi could say anything. "Yes, I slipped and fell on my own branch. It was icy. So yes, we're going to have to practice on ice when we get back home so this doesn't happen again when we're fighting enemies, even though there were currently no enemies to be fighting when I slipped on the branch. And no, you're not going to go easy on me, and I know that you're not going to let me forget about this for the rest of my life."

"I didn't say anything," Kakashi said, looking annoyed that he didn't get to say anything.

Hotaru smiled sadly. "You guys make me miss my Genin team."

oOoOoOo

The little village, barely more than hamlet, was named Obihiro. It was two days' travel in good summer weather from Shikotan. Pushing hard, the team reached it in three and a half days. In order to avoid suspicion and not alert the locals, Kakashi and Yamato had left behind the gear that identified them as Konoha ANBU with their other two teammates, who were busy accompanying two rambunctious toddlers, a cranky old mednin, a talking ninken, and a legendary Sannin back to Konoha. Everyone wore their forehead protectors, and carried the missive from the Raikage that grudgingly granted them permission to come closer to the Hidden Village.

This particular valley received more wind than the others, which blew the snow away to occasionally expose the dried grass that the herders wintered their yaks on.

"So, now we just park ourselves and wait for Tsume to join us," Hotaru said.

Yamato looked disdainfully at the cave that Hotaru had selected, after alerting the village's mayor of why they were in the vicinity. "I could make us a more comfortable place to stay." Yamato really didn't do well in caves – too similar to Orochimaru's secret layer, Kakashi figured, even if the layers of earth kept the sky far away from Yamato. He sidled up to his brother and draped a heavy arm around Yamato's shoulders.

"We don't want to scare the locals. Why, what would they think if they saw a towering tree where none stood before?"

Yamato narrowed his eyes in challenge – he knew Kakashi's weak spots. "I can make the floor really soft to sleep on."

Kakashi hesitated. He scraped a booted foot against the rough stone, and then looked at Hotaru. "The locals will get over their scare," he said. "We really should be in the best shape when Mom gets here, because who knows what shape she'll be in." Although he was aware of her current shape, given that he could smell her just fine, and there were too many pheromones and fun being produced for Kakashi to believe she was in any particular danger.

oOoOoOo

Tsume's arm and torso had been healed enough by the medics that she could enjoy the sex with Killer B. As they rolled together on the sleeping mat, sheets tangled around sweaty limbs, as pleasure swirled with chakra and a presence of another creature – just beyond the realm of touching – Tsume felt happy and wholesome.

She arched her back as she rode him hard enough to make her hips ache. His hands never stopped moving as they roamed her skin, caressing and stroking. Killer A was as attentive a lover as he was a fighter. He wasn't as experienced as she was, but he learned fast and listened well, touching her where she asked, moderating pressure if too much or not enough.

It was a rare opportunity for her to share physical intimacy without it turning into some sort of head game or mission. The nights in Kumo were simply about enjoying a fun romp with a handsome, well-built man with admirable stamina and an eagerness to make her enjoy herself as much as he clearly enjoyed her.

oOoOoOo

"I think we need more blankets," Kakashi grumbled, trying not to shiver.

"I think we need to build a bigger fire," Yamato said, even though they wouldn't.

The two men sent Hotaru a resentful glare, since she was using her circulating kikaichu to stay warm. She was seated in a corner of the tree hollow not too far from them, almost in a meditative state, with her face relaxed and content. After a moment of no reaction from her, the two shifted their seats until they were pressed against each other. After a moment, unsatisfied still with the inability to get warm, Kakashi summoned Pakkun.

"Want to share warmth?" Kakashi asked.

Pakkun looked even unhappier than he normally did. "You brought me unwillingly to this frozen wasteland because you want a hug?" He pointed a paw at Yamato." Isn't that why you have him?"

Yamato shifted his seat, looking uncomfortable. "I don't want a hug."

"Sure you do," Pakkun said. "And if you really wanted to be warm, you'd've invited Bull, not me." He narrowed his eyes and studied Kakashi closely.

"I can invite the whole crowd," Kakashi offered.

"And clearly you haven't been eating like you should." Pakkun turned his eyes to Yamato. "You should make Kakashi eat more. It would make Tsume-san very happy."

Yamato gave pause to that, then he glared sideways at Kakashi. "Wait a minute… that's right! You haven't been sneaking bites off my supplies like you normally do!"

Now that the focus of Yamato's fussing had shifted from the currently-distant Tsume in all her unknown glory to Kakashi in the substantial here and now, Kakashi was beginning to regret summoning Pakkun.

And then Hotaru piped up from her corner. "He doesn't even finish his rations, Yamato."

Kakashi tried to sink through the floor. Yamato just tightened his control over the wood, and leaned forward to study Kakashi critically. "I haven't noticed anything because we're both wearing extra padding with the cold, but you do look like you've dropped weight."

"He has," Pakkun said. "He told Hana-chan just three weeks ago that he only weighed fifty-nine kilos."

"You told her that, not me. I never confirmed that was my weight. And you are no longer my best friend," Kakashi told Pakkun sternly.

Pakkun's sad expression didn't change. "You didn't deny it was your weight, because Hana-chan would've smelled the lie. And having personally raised you myself for the last fifteen years, I like to think of myself more as a father figure. Fathers aren't meant to be best friends." Pakkun scratched behind an ear. "The Inuzuka clan always seems to have a surplus of extra mothers, so I figured there was nothing wrong if you had any extra father."

Kakashi was unable to fit in a retort about the fathers in his life, because Yamato started fussing up another storm, just as Kakashi knew he would.

oOoOoOo

Tsume was beginning to realize that Omoi had the greatest imagination ever. "And then, the oceans would dry up, and what would happen to all the sharks and whales and the people living on tropical islands?"

He was also living proof of what happened when someone would make a mountain out of a molehill. In this case, he actually seemed to make an entire mountain range out of an innocent pile of slug poop. It was an impressive trait.

"Gosh, you might as well wonder what would happen if all the stars fell out of the sky." Tsume ignored the glares that Samui and Karui gave her, as Omoi began speculating on what would happen if all the stars did fall out of the sky. Tsume was making rice balls one-handed, and Omoi was wrapping them with bacon, which Tsume had never tried before. They were too far away from the sea to have supplies that Tsume was used to working with, but she'd always been able to figure out which ingredients paired well together because of her olfaction. In another life, she figured that she'd make an awesome chef if her career as a ninja had never panned out.

Nii and Killer B were off sparring – although it felt more like a near-constant earthquake underfoot – and had left Killer B's team to supervise her. Mina, sadly, didn't have the same level of energy as Nii, and had decided that an eight hour sex marathon was more than enough for her, so now Nii was burning off excess energy with Killer B. It had the added bonus of knocking loose potential avalanches before people wandered across the high-risk fields.

In the twenty minutes that Tsume had been left in the cares of the three teens, she had commandeered their kitchen once again, and gave all three of them various tasks that she couldn't perform. Karui had been chopping the vegetables as ordered, but Tsume was beginning to realize that maybe arming Karui with a sharp, pointy object was probably not such a good idea.

"Once these are wrapped, we'll pop them into the oven." Then Tsume looked sadly at the mushed up pile of turnips and rutabagas. She wasn't even sure how Karui managed to mush them up when they hadn't even been cooked yet. Turnips were dense.

"I'm not good at cooking," Karui mumbled, holding the knife defensively.

The cabbage rolls that Samui shaped looked and smelled edible.

Tsume scratched her head and reconsidered Karui's plate. "I think you're holding the knife wrong. That's a good way to get your wrist broken if you tried to stab someone in the torso, because the blade could deflect and kick back if it hits a rib." Teaching Kabuto and Kakashi how to cook hadn't been all that difficult – Kabuto simply thought in terms of chemistry and how to balance the different components so it wouldn't blow up in his face, and Kakashi soaked up information like a thirsty little sponge, using his nose to find the most flattering pairing of ingredients, just like she did. Yamato and Hana had to be taught differently, and they became more successful in cooking when Tsume eventually figured out how to explain cooking in terms of killing, like the Academy.

Karui's expression seemed to lose some of the look of wounded pride as she reconsidered the way she held her knife. "Well, its balance isn't the same as a kunai."

"Kunai won't always be available, especially in a pinch." Tsume hefted an empty wok in her left hand, waving it slightly in the air. "My Aunt Natsumi once taught me how to kill a grown man with a wok, just in case I was caught flat-footed at a campsite." And boy did that demonstration entertain the Swords(wo)man of the Mist. The Swordsmen hadn't been as impressed, since it wouldn't produce enough blood for their liking.

Omoi eyed the wok with interest. "How do you kill a grown man with a wok?"

"Apply enough force when whacking him in the skull. But you need to turn the wok sideways because air velocity will catch and cushion your blow. You want to cave in the bone with the first strike."

"Brute force, then," Samui said. "There's nothing really special in killing a man with that. Now, if you told me you could kill someone with embroidery floss, you might be on to something there."

"It's made from silk, isn't it?" Tsume asked with a shrug. "Easy enough to form a garrote."

All three of the chuunin exchanged a look. Samui regarded Tsume with narrowed eyes – she wasn't alpha, not like the way that Nii struck her in a rather feline manner, but Samui definitely seemed to be the one that the other two deferred to when Nii or Killer B weren't around. "Tsume-san doesn't appear to have any problem making weapons out of anything that's available."

"I am a weapon," Tsume said as she set the wok down. Different voices that told her different things over the years flitted through her mind; most words were blurred and indistinct while some voices were very clear and uniform, but the feelings remained the same. She briefly wondered if this was the sort of thing that was a Secret, but eh. This could still be an acceptable conversation with someone that she was kinda-maybe-sorta unofficially apprenticing long-distance. (Trying to think through what the Raikage had pulled on her was headache-inducing in all its confusion, so Tsume figured that she was better off trying to play along with the matter until she could speak to the Hokage.) She was already in pretty deep after the Raikage snatched up everyone's notes from her impromptu sex education, and hurried off to have a discussion with his Academy Board. She also briefly wondered how such could be worked into her Bingo Book entry. Best captured alive and placed in an academic role surrounded by easily-influenced teens who haven't completed transition through puberty yet.

"That's what being a kunoichi or a shinobi is about. Each of us is a weapon for our village, ready to be used at a moment's notice. And anything that I use becomes an extension of myself as a weapon."

"But," began Omoi as he got that look on his face that indicated he was going to go into another mountain-range-out-of-slug-poop, "if you're a weapon and you're broken, how good is the secondary weapon? What if that breaks, too?"

Tsume flicked the edge of her finger against his nose – not enough that the claw drew blood, but it did leave a stinging welt that made Omoi cover his nose protectively and angle his shoulders away from her. "Haven't you heard? Inuzuka are animals, and the wounded, cornered animal is the deadliest and most desperate of all. Never underestimate your opponent even when they appear to be wounded and down for the count."

And that, Tsume supposed, as she turned back to the cooking, was something that many ninja appeared to be willfully ignorant of. All ninja were weapons – bred, born, created, and otherwise – as much as the jinchuuriki were. The only difference in them was that the jinchuuriki could cut deeper, wider, and faster with their tailed demons. Dead was dead, though – whether a person died when their skull was bashed in, or exsanguinated by a thousand paper cuts. "Let's get these finished up," she said over her shoulder. "That way we'll have a decent lunch when we leave Kumo tomorrow." Tsume's final healing was scheduled for later in the evening; the medics estimated that she would be well enough for long-distance traveling without worsening her current condition. With fully restored chakra-levels, Tsume felt ready to undertake the journey and do her own extensive healing. Anything would help the constant plague of burning/prickling/crushing pain that constantly wrapped around her entire hand and forearm.

But she wasn't going to think about the pain. She also wasn't going to consider how very easily she could slaughter the Kumo chuunin she was surrounded with if they met on a battlefield and they interfered with her mission, or how they were young enough to be her own children. Samui and Omoi were still beloved by their parents, while Karui had struggled to find a family that she could accept before getting placed with Killer B's team.

Tsume was much a weapon as any of the jinchuuriki (although slightly less devastating), and she went where her Hokage ordered and instincts guided her.

Right now, in the warm, homey kitchen where she could see the white-blanketed surroundings with beautiful glittering statues from the window, Tsume was only going to think of today.