AN: Hello all! Kind of a shorter chapter today. I just started my new job so that's been eating up a lot of my time and energy, on top of scholarship hunting and whatnot. Anyways, thank you all so much for commenting on and favoriting this fic. You have no idea how much it means to a writer. These next few chapters are defiantly going to be lighter and fluffier because after this is the chunin exams. And we all know how those go. So this is kind of a buffer. Anyways, this is un-beta'd because I'm just too lazy to bother with that. Enjoy!
For once in their genin career, Sakura was late to their morning meeting.
Naruto and Sasuke had already convened at the usual meeting spot on the bridge, ready to wait a while for their teacher, but were surprised when there was no pink hair to greet them. About an hour later she showed up, hair in disarray, clutching at her stomach, bags under her eyes, and a storm cloud hanging over her head.
She looked like shit.
"You okay, Sakura?" Naruto asked warily, eyeing her grouchy face with growing unease. An angry Sakura was never a pleasant Sakura.
"I'm fine," she bit out, not sounded fine in the least. Naruto wisely decided not to mention the observation, as he wanted to keep all his teeth in his mouth, thank you very much.
It was another few minutes before their sensei decided to show up, trusty book in hand as usual.
Immediately, Naruto perked up and bounced over to him.
"Hey sensei, what are we gonna learn today?" Naruto asked, excited to try the trick Kurama had told him. Well, it wasn't really a trick, but he wanted to try it nonetheless. But he needed downtime to do it, and weather or not they had downtime depended on what their sensei was going to teach them. Well, re-teach them.
"Maa, Naruto, don't get so excited. We won't be doing any of that today." Not if he wanted a kunai up his ass, anyway. Courtesy of Kurenai.
"What! No training?"
"No training," he echoed, voice chipper. Then, clapping his hands together and rubbing them as if excited, added, "Instead, we'll be doing missions."
"Oh, so like another escort mission?" Sakura asked. "Maybe taking out some bandits?"
"Oh no, nothing like that," Kakashi-sensei waved off. "There's a festival about to start a few towns over, and we've been hired to help set up one for one of the merchants attending. Apparently he has a few cartfulls of wares and needed a few extra hands."
Immediately the atmosphere changed from hopeful and excited to disparaged into the blink of an eye.
"A D-rank," Naruto deadpanned, eye twitching. "Really?"
Next to him, Sasuke looked about ready to summon his mangekyo, and Sakura her fists. Kakashi-sensei seemed to notice this and raised a wary eyebrow.
"You three are still genin, after all," he pointed out. "Besides, I thought you might appreciate a slow paced mission after the last one we did."
"Yeah but Wave was exciting!" Naruto groaned, falling into his old childish habit of whining. Well, whining more than usual. "We saved a town, learned some new jutsu, did some cool shit-"
An elbow in his ribs for swearing.
"And came out completely fine. I don't see why we can't do another C-rank. An actual C-rank, anyways."
"I wouldn't say you were 'completely fine'," Kakashi-sensei noted, a weary look in his eye. "Two of you were unconscious by the end of that fight, and one nearly dead." A sharp look towards Naruto as he said the last bit. "Think of this as an easy, get-back-on-our-feet type mission."
The three "genin" understood that they weren't going to get anywhere arguing with the man, and just accepted their fate, however grudgingly. They couldn't say they had expected to get more C-ranks after Wave, as it hadn't happened last time. But they'd done a far better job this time around, so it wasn't too far fetched to hope for something better.
They should have known better to hope with the sensei they had.
So, grudgingly, the three all went back to their homes to pack for their journey, cursing their sensei all the way.
Honestly, the reason for why he'd picked up a D-rank wasn't just to give his students a break, although Kurenai had been right on that part. It had also been so that he could observe them. Now, Kakashi couldn't claim to know much about child development, but after spending the rest of yesterday observing some of the other teams (unbeknownst to them), he'd come to the conclusion that maybe his genin were a little more mature than their comrades. Maybe.
And maybe he'd also picked up a book on child development just to see what a "normal" child was supposed to be like in their adolescence. Not that anyone would ever know. He'd made sure to use a henge when borrowing it from the library.
He was currently reading said book (in the guise of Icha Icha) as they walked down the dusty road away from the village. All three of his students walked in front of him in a lose diamond formation, seeming to all the world idle, slightly bored teens. But Kakashi knew better. He could see the slight tension in their muscles, the kind that only seasoned shinobi had, like him. He could see their eyes flicking to and fro every few minutes, as if scanning the area for threats. Humming in intrigue, he consulted the book for answers.
As your child enters puberty, the book read. They will start to go through changes both physically and mentally. Such changes can be concerns over body image, looks, and clothing.
Glancing up, Kakashi noted how none of them had exhibited behavior like that over the past few months he'd known them. Well, maybe the clothing thing for Naruto, but that was for a different reason.
Sighing, he looked back down at the book and continued to read.
Other changes might involve them focusing on themselves more; going back and forth between high expectations and lack of confidence.
Hm, nope. His kids were all pretty confident in themselves.
They will experience mood swings and heightened emotions. This is due to the hormones in their body, and nothing against you as a parent. These emotions, as wild as they may be, are normal in childhood development due to hormones coursing through their bodies.
Moodiness? Nope. That wasn't to say of course that they didn't often exhibit greater shows of emotion, but it wasn't any as drastic as the book was making it seem. Of course they did sometimes express immature behavior, but it wasn't like anything Kakashi had seen with the other teams yesterday. Because while Naruto was wild and unpredictable, Kiba was even worse. And where Sakura occasionally got angry and shouted about something, Ino had almost torn her teammates a new one just for messing up her ponytail. And Sasuke… well, Sasuke was Sasuke, and that's all there was to that.
But back to the book.
Your child also may start showing more interest in and influence by peer groups.
Nope, not his kids. He skipped ahead past that part.
They might start expressing less affection toward parents; sometimes even seeming rude or short-tempered.
He wasn't their parent, how should he know?
Teens commonly feel stress from more challenging school work.
If anything they thrived off it, if his rigures training was anything to go by. But then again, what Kurenai had said came back to him, and he wasn't so sure if his judgement of them was as accurate as he liked to think. He might be pushing them harder than he needed to, and they would just not be speaking up about it because he was their superior. Well, if that was the case he hoped to change it soon. It wouldn't do anybody any good to run them into the ground. But on the other hand, they really didn't seem to upset or exhausted by it, which only managed to leave him scratching his head in confusion.
His thoughts were interrupted by a groan from Sakura, who had stopped walking and was doubled over in what appeared to be pain.
"Can we stop," she moaned, hair falling in her face.
"Maa, just a few more miles until we get to the inn," he said. "We can rest there."
"No, sensei," she said as she looked up, voice taking on a harder tone. "I need to stop."
Huh? A silver eyebrow rose up Kakashi's forehead as he tried to figure out what she was saying. Then he smelled it when he took a breath.
Oh.
Blood. She was on her period.
Shit. Shit. Immediately he started panicking. What was he supposed to do? What did Rin do? Was this Sakura's first one? Was she panicking? Did she even know she was on it? Did she even know what it was?
"Sensei, I'm fine," she said quickly, noticing his paling complexion (even though she could only see one eye). "I just need to stop in the bushes," she assured.
She seems awfully calm for a twelve year old on her period, he noted absently.
"Why, do you gotta pee or something?" Naruto suddenly asked.
Oh, dear lord was he oblivious.
"Not… exactly," she managed.
Frowning, the blonde cocked his head to the side as if in thought, trying to figure out the puzzle.
"So…?"
"Oh my God, just don't think about it!" Sakura squaked, already mortified. "Just, just stay there." And with that, she rushed off to the bushed, leaving a very confused Naruto in her wake. Sasuke might also have been confused, but he didn't show it.
"Huh?" Naruto finally managed.
After a moment's silence, Kakashi strode up to Naruto and put a hand on his shoulder. "I'll explain when you're older." And that was all that was said about that.
AN: If you check out my AO3 version of this (username dragonpyre), you can see some of the artwork I did for chapters like this one. I promise It's worth your time. Thanks for reading!
