A/N This is meant to be a companion piece so if you haven't read Out of the Dark first it might not make sense. Beyond that it's just a collection of stuff that comes to mind but gets cut from the main story for the sake of brevity and plot.

I always wanted to write a little bit of grumpy Papa Ensui dealing with his kids back when they were genin so here it is XD

Ensui Nara's morning started off with one of his girls screaming bloody murder. He shot up out of his bedroll because no one screamed like that unless they were being attacked.

"Get it off! Get it off!" Aimi Yamanaka shrieked. "It's so gross!"

Ensui's eye twitched. Or unless you were a ten year old girl confronted with a spider.

"Quit screaming or I'll give you something to scream about," he threatened.

Already he could feel the eyes of the shinobi stationed nearby in the trees. His team was currently in the Konoha war camp close to the Iwa border. They had been deployed here for their first series of missions a week ago. Although Ensui felt more like a glorified babysitter than a shinobi these days.

He reached over to squash the offending arachnid.

"Noooo!" Kotori Sorano yanked his arm away. "Don't kill it!"

She carefully scooped up the spider to release it near the trees. He could hear the snickering up above. Ensui ran a hand over his face. This was going to be a long day.

Sorano and Yamanaka had no shinobi instincts. Sorano was too soft. Yamanaka was too prissy. At least Sayuri Uchiha seemed to take it seriously and not act like she was at summer camp. However, they were clan kids with the right amount of chakra control so they were forced through the academy and sent to the front lines of a war. Konoha had been bleeding shinobi for years when the third war broke out a few short years after the second.

Since they were up and moving, he figured it was time to check in and receive their mission for the day. Ensui liked to load his students with as many D Ranks as possible. It kept them busy and too tired to get into trouble. Cooking and cleaning were vital tasks that needed to be done anyway and better for the genin to do it. He usually stepped away on a B-Rank, trusting that Yoshino or one of the other adults in the camp would keep an eye on them. However today was the exception. Minato wanted Sorano to sneak into an Iwa camp and plant explosives on their supplies. Sorano was small for her age and could easily suppress her chakra. Not to mention she was an adorable kid. Minato's words, not his. He personally thought she was a brat. A little bit of dirtying her up and she looked like a lost little orphan. The idea was that Iwa would take pity on her and invite her in for the evening. Ensui would be covering her.

The entire plan made him sick to his stomach. It was one thing to ask him to sneak into an enemy camp, but the kid? There were so many ways this could go sideways.

"Don't touch that fence!" Ensui barked at Sorano. It was just their luck, Iwa had constructed a fence around their territory and knowing them and based on the way it glinted in the sunlight, it was coated with poison.

She grabbed it anyway, climbing up it before he could catch her and drag her ass back down. Ensui didn't think it was possible for him to have a stroke at this age, but these kids were really pushing his limits.

"What the hell are you doing?!" He scolded her as he pulled her off the fence. He immediately began checking the palms of her hands. There were all sorts of nicks and scratches. She didn't wear gloves either. If he told her once, he told her a hundred times to wear protective gloves. Did she think he spoke for the fun of it? Fuck. Poison could definitely enter her system or be absorbed into her flesh.

"I thought I could climb it - aren't I supposed to go into the camp?"

He ground his teeth, he could already feel the urge to pull out the pack of cigarettes from his pocket. The hit of nicotine the only thing that could even begin to help him cope with the stress of taking these three brats into the middle of a war zone.

Instead, he took a general antidote out of his medical kit, applying it to the wounds. Hopefully that would slow down whatever was coated on the fence so he could get her back to a medic. Sorano couldn't weigh more than twenty-five kilograms soaking wet. If he didn't act now, the poison could kill her.

"What did I tell you?"

"Don't touch the fence."

"And what did you do?"

"I touched the fence." He could hear the attitude in her voice. Oh wasn't she a precious gem?

Ensui ran a hand over his face. "Let's get you back to the camp."

"Oh come on! Don't we have a mission to complete?"

"Do you see that shine on the fence? That's poison. We need to get you back to the camp before it sets in or you're in for a nasty night."

And now the kid was wide eyed and fearful. Ensui wondered if he should have sugar coated the truth. He never knew how to handle these girls. He was supposed to treat them like shinobi, but also as children. They were old enough to die for their village, but too young to really understand what that meant. If he was being honest with himself, it bothered him. He never had much experience with kids and now he had three of them. Until recently he had thought and treated kids as miniature adults. But that was so far from the truth. They were immature. They were inexperienced. They were reckless and never listened. They sassed him constantly.

They were small, bright eyed and innocent. And his job was to crush that and turn them into shinobi. Assuming they survived and didn't fucking poison themselves.

He could really use a smoke.

Sorano swayed on the spot, her eyes going out of focus. "Sensei, I don't feel so good."

He managed to catch her before she hit the ground. He got her back to the base camp in record time.

Ensui was chain smoking when Yoshino finally emerged from the medical tent.

"Well?"

Yoshino crossed her arms, levelling him a look. "She's fine. We had the antidote on hand. A little rest and she should be good to try again tomorrow."

"Again?" Ensui scoffed, the tension dissolving at the news his brat would live to terrorize him another day.

"Genin get injured all the time, it's your job to teach them to recognize danger."

He could hear the disproval in Yoshino's voice. She was always lecturing him on how to handle his team. If she thought she knew so much she should try doing it. Unfortunately, Yoshino was a chunin otherwise she probably would have been asked and not him. Ensui had only been a replacement when his cousin, Suzuka, died on a mission and Shikaku offered him up as a last minute sacrifice - sorry, sensei - for the team. The girls hadn't even met Suzuka, which was a shame because he thought she would have had more success with them. They certainly liked Yoshino and she was just as bossy as his late cousin.

He ordered Sorano to rest for the day, explaining in simple language why bedrest was important when injured. Sorano had crossed her arms and pouted, muttering that he didn't need to treat her like a baby. Ensui didn't think he did either, but she hadn't listened about the fence so why would he trust her to listen about resting? He then checked in to make sure the other two had enough chores to keep them out of trouble. With nothing to do himself, Ensui stepped out on a quick messenger mission, completing the roundtrip journey to the outpost and back around midnight. He checked in on his team after his return... only to find none of the girls were in their bedrolls like they should be. In fact, he couldn't find them anywhere in the camp. Ensui could immediately feel his heart start having palpitations again. Where the hell did the three of them go in the middle of the night?

He found Yoshino sitting at the camp fire with Kushina Uzumaki and Hinoki Sarutobi - the thought that the three of them were friends was a terrifying thought he filed away for later.

"Yoshi, have you seen my kids?"

She sat up, her body rigid. "They're not in bed?"

"Would I be asking if they were?"

"They couldn't have gone far," Uzumaki brightly said. "We'll help you look. You have the three little girls right?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yes."

After what felt like an entirety - but was in reality the longest ten minutes of his life - he found Uzumaki sitting on a log with Uchiha, Sorano and Yamanaka. The four of them looked like co-conspirators and were giggling over something.

"Hey, Ensui! I found your girls. Aren't they the cutest?" She wrapped an arm around Uchiha and Sorano and pulled them into a tight hug. The girls preened at the attention from the older kunoichi.

Now that that ordeal was over, Ensui lit up another smoke. "Yeah, really fucking cute. Where were you three?"

"Washroom." Uchiha crossed her arms and issued him a challenging look.

"All three of you?"

"Aren't you always saying there's safety in numbers?" Sorano piped in.

Ensui narrowed his eyes suspiciously at them. He knew his girls weren't that innocent.

"Next time, get a kunoichi to take you or tell someone where you're going."

"Were you worried about us, Sensei?" Yamanaka brightly chirped.

"No. I was not worried."

Sorano was hugging him. What in the -

"Thank you for rescuing me today."

"Yeah, yeah," he awkwardly scratched the bridge of his nose. "Just don't do anything stupid ever again. That's an order."

He was rewarded with a shy smile. Alright so Sorano could be a cute kid. When she wasn't being a brat. "I'll try not to die."

Ensui rolled his eyes while he pulled out his pack of cigarettes. He mournfully looked at the last remaining one. How had he gone through them so quickly?

Elsewhere in the camp...

Kakashi sat up in his bedroll as Obito approached. "Your cousin and her friends stopped by."

"What did she want?"

Kakashi shrugged. "She took something from your pack."

Obito didn't think too much of it. It was Sayuri's first time away from home and she probably forgot something. She was a brat, but she was also his little cousin so he watched out for her.

He spread out his bedroll next to Kakashi and it felt - wet? Obito stuck his hand inside only to pull out a pile of frogspawn. Oh, he was going to murder her!