Mostly fluff chapter!
Aurora's View:
Father left with Naruto the next morning, leaving dad and I alone in the new house. The house wasn't scary during the day, but at night...something felt different around it. I felt like something was watching me all the time from the closets. Dad said it was my imagination, but there was something in the closet.
He let me have a flashlight at night to banish them away, but it didn't keep them away for long. I was going to figure this out, even if dad didn't want me crawling into the dusty crawl spaces. I opened the panel in the back of my closet, where all the weird feelings came from. I gulped, not really wanting to go in there. Father would do it...come on! I told myself, forcing myself to go in.
The flashlight wasn't too bright, but I was able to see there were tons of spiderwebs. I hated spiders and hoped none would fall on my head. I kept going, the space wasn't very big but had lots of hiding spaces. So far, nothing showed itself but I heard something in here with me.
"Who's there?" The light trembled in my hands. "C-come out…" Something poked its head out, eyes reflecting red in the light. I froze for a second, before realising it was just a mouse. "Oh...that's all?" Guess dad was right, there wasn't a monster in here, just mice.
I turned around to leave, running into a spider web. It wouldn't have been a problem, but there were spiders in it. I screamed, flying out of the crawl space and leaving my flashlight behind. Dad of course came running in.
"Aurora?! Oh for...I told you not to go in there." I felt him getting the spider web off and shooing the spiders away. "Guess we'll need to get some bug catchers...you ok?"
"Yeah...spiders are gross…" He laughed, getting the last web out of my hair.
"So, what did you find? Was the monster there?"
"No, just a mouse." Dad made a face at that.
"Guess we'll get mouse traps too…" I didn't get why he didn't like mice.
With dad off work until the new academy was built, it gave him more time to spend with me. He and I both helped with fixing the village, but I wasn't a big help. I was too little to lift any of the bigger wood pieces, but I could help point them out and give people water. Most of the workers just thought I was cute and ruffled my hair anytime I came up to them with water bottles, it was really annoying, but dad said to be nice. I was, but I huffed away afterwards. No one was mean about it, I just hated my hair ruffled.
Dad and I were able to gather a few things for our new house too. Since everything had been destroyed, lots of merchants came to the village to help out with low cost things. We didn't need as much as others, so for now dad said we'd only get the basics. Sleeping on the floor wasn't the worst, so we could wait for bigger things like that for later. For now he just got a table and a few pillows to sit on so we had a place to eat dinner.
We did need clothes though, so dad let me try on some things at a tent next door. The lady there thought I was adorable and thought it was a shame I wore masks over my face.
I chose a new lavender yukata top with white butterflies, a dark blue obi and white shorts. New armor and things would have to wait though, this place didn't have any shinobi gear.
Dad joined me as I finished trying things on, rolling up the scroll he used to seal away the new things.
"Alright, what next?" Dad asked me.
"Oh, are you her father? She must take after her mother." The older woman came up to us.
"Oh, er...I-I guess." Dad gave her a nervous smile. I was confused.
"I thought I took after father?" Dad turned red.
"Father? Wait...aren't you her…"
"Uh...well, yes." The woman got a weird look, like it was wrong. "We'll be going…" Dad took my hand and pulled me away after handing the woman the money.
"Dad, what was the woman mad about?" Dad gave a heavy sign.
"Come here…" He lead me to an area with a bunch of logs where other people wouldn't hear us. "You know you're father and I love each other, right?" I nodded, questioning where he was getting at. "Well, some people don't like when two men are in love."
Iruka's View:
Explaining why being gay was considered taboo still wasn't easy. Sure, people were more open now about their sexuality, but some still were stuck in the old ways. This wasn't the first we'd had trouble, but it was the first one Aurora was exposed to.
"What do you mean?" She was confused at what I meant.
"Hm...how do I explain?" I thought out loud as she sat with me up on some logs. "You know how a man and woman can have children, right? Well, two men or two women can't. The old way of thinking, they thought that only a man and a woman should be together because they can make children." I was simplifying it, but it was the jist of it all.
"But...you're raising me." I smiled, she could be sweet when she chose too.
"Yeah." I kissed the crown of her head. "We are. The old ways don't make sense, do they?"
"No, why do people still follow them?"
"No idea. Come on, it's getting late." I helped her jump down. "How does miso and rice sound tonight?"
Aurora's View:
Just because school was out didn't mean I got to have time off. Dad was a teacher after all, so he doted on me while father was gone. While my friends had fun, I had to do kattas with dad in the new training room. I didn't resent him, but I wasn't happy I couldn't play.
"No, your feet are too far apart." Dad corrected me again. "You know this move." I did, I was messing up on purpose to make him get angry enough to get away. So far, he wasn't falling for it.
"Yeah…" I looked away from his angry face.
"So, why are you doing it wrong?" He crossed his arms over his chest. I chose not to answer, which just made him more mad. "Aurora…" He sighed.
"I know all of this already…" The earned a very stern look from him.
"Prove it. Show me you can do it right, and I'll let you go." He knew putting pressure on me made me mess up.
I aimed to prove him wrong, pulling it off without slipping this time. He just smirked at me. I hated when he did that…
"Now for the other ones." I sighed, completely done with his tricks.
Iruka's View:
I knew Danzo was acting Hokage now, but I didn't expect him to have ROOT waiting around in the bushes of the house. Kakashi had allowed his ninja hounds to stay here, unless summoned, to keep an eye on things. Bisque alerted me to them.
"Hey, you! Kakashi's mate! There's someone in the back…" He rushed back out, growling out the door.
"Stay here." I told Aurora, who was learning to sharpen kunai correctly at the table.
The Owl masked man was now in the open, standing outside of the ward around the property. All the hounds were getting ready to jump the fence, holding back until he moved.
"What are you doing here?" I glared, knowing there was no way I could take him down. As long as we were in the barrier, we were safe.
"Only here to watch...don't worry, we don't want her, yet." I heard the sneer at the end.
"You're not welcome...get out of here…"
"Or what? Kakashi isn't here. You're no threat." Bull growled low, hoping the fence. "Calm down mutt…"
"I wouldn't call him that…" Ūhei warned him, the others growling, haunches raised.
"Tsh...you aren't worth my time…" He disappeared in a poof of smoke.
"Sons of bitches are out here now…" Bisque was sniffing around to see if he smelled anyone else.
"They can't get through…" I told them, but I felt the same way. They were far too close for my liking.
Kakashi was gone for almost a month now. It took a long time to travel to the Land of Iron. In that time, Danzo's men made their presents more known. Aurora stuck closer to me, not wanting them to take her away again. I couldn't keep an eye on her all the time, so I told her to go find her friends to play for a while. She'd be alright with them, the ROOT tended to stay away from construction areas. She was warned to be very careful and to stay close.
Aurora's View:
Sora, Yuri and I explored some of the leftover rubble near dad to see what we could find. So far it wasn't anything cool, but Yuri found a book with a torn cover and Sora...he disappeared.
"Psst…" Yuri and I looked up to see where the sound came from. I saw a doll head poke up from behind a pile of rubble. "Guys...over here…" The dolls jerky movements told me it had to be Sora controlling it. The dolls mouth fell open in a weird way as it disappeared back behind the pile.
Yuri and I looked at each other before deciding to follow the weird boy. Once we made our way there, we saw what Sora was doing. There were an alarming amount of broken toys in a pile, thrown away in the aftermath.
"Woh!" Yuri dove in and found a bunch of headless barbies and busted dolls. The one that caught my eye was under a ripped up teddy bear.
"Ningyo?" I picked up the now hairless wooden doll that Tenzo had given me. An eye was missing and she was cracked, but she still looked ok. The eye suddenly snapped to look up at me, making me drop her. She stood up and took shaky steps towards me.
"Wow! That one's really cool Aurora!" Sora said, making Ningyo fly through the air to him. He had taken control of her, making me think she was alive.
"Sora! That's my doll…" I pouted, but let him play. "T-er...Yamato gave it to me."
"Oh...sorry." Sora handed her back. "Here…"
"It's ok, you...um...scared me is all." No one had scared me with a doll before, now I had a new fear of dolls coming alive. I took her anyway, still wanting her back.
"Why are these all here? The other kids would love them!" Yuri had her arms full of a variety of broken toys.
"Cause they're broken." Sora told her. "Some of them don't work any more or...well have no heads. Normal kids would be scared of them."
"Why? Most of my toys don't have heads." Sora and I looked at her funny. "My older brother used to take them off of my older sister's toys and I got her toys when she grew up. Then my twin brother set some of them on fire and my little sister chewed on the feet."
"Oh…" I see now why they didn't bother her, all her toys looked like this.
"Well...like I said, normal kids." Sora shrugged. "I think you can take them if you wanted. Here." He gave her a barbie head.
"Wow! That's what the faces look like!? So pretty…" She then found more to match up with the bodies she found. A lot of them didn't match their skin tones, but it worked. Sora found a bunny head and was joking about putting it on a doll.
"No! Get that away!" Yuri backed away from him.
"It's only a stuffed animal…" Sora tried.
"No! It's a bunny!" Yuri was nearly in tears. "Get it away!"
"Yuri-chan, it's ok. It isn't real." Who knew she had a fear of cute little bunnies. Sora would never let her live that down.
With the mismatched dolls and a few other pieces of stuffed animals, we headed back up to the side of the rubble pit. Sora was sewing together what he called a "franken-stuffy," while Yuri and I played with the broken dolls. Ningyo was currently the ruler of broken toy land and helping the dolls put their heads back on. Sora ruined it by making his creepy mismatched monster doll tear through the tiny town. It had the bunny head with a cat ear to fill in for the missing piece, a body of a teddy bear, tail of an alligator and one white arm and one brown from two different teddy bears. The legs I think we're from baby doll and sewn on crewdly.
"The monster attacks the town! Oops...their heads came off…" Sora had the monster stuffy holding a doll when the head came off.
"Aw, she was recovering!" Yuri pouted.
"Yuri!" I heard her mom call. All three of us groaned, having to go home.
"Let's play tomorrow!" Yuri said, gathering the three dolls that stayed together to take with her. She waved as he mom came over the ridge.
"There ya are." The blonde woman looked like her, just shorter hair that was more yellow that Yuri's.
"Sora! Let's go!" Sora's auntie was on the other side, arms crossed over her chest. She looked mean, but Sora said she was nice once you got to know her. She had the same hair as Sora, but her eyes were nearly black.
"Aurora!" I looked back to where Yuri had been and saw dad. "Come on, time to get home." He smiled. What the woman at the shop had said made sense now, I didn't look like dad, or father for that matter. So, who did I resemble?
"Dad?" He looked up from dinner. "Who do I look like?" He looked confused at first.
"Is this about earlier today?" I nodded, making him sigh. "I see. Does it bother you that you don't look like us?" I had never thought about it before.
"No, not really." He smiled softly. "But then, who do I look like?"
"Maybe your mother? We don't know, sweetheart. Do you want to look like someone?"
"I don't know." I guess it just bothered me that my friends looked like others in their families. I guess I was just feeling weird about it, but I don't know why it bothered me.
"Just because you don't look like us doesn't mean anything. We're still your parents." Dad assured me. "We still love you."
"I know." I was just overthinking it all again.
It was almost two months now that father was gone. I just hoped he was home soon, the men Danzo had out were acting weird again. I'd seen them, but they never tried to hide themselves from me. It was like they wanted me to see them. The mark tingled each time too, letting me know they were nearby.
Today I didn't see Yuri or Sora, so I stayed with dad as he finished up the last house on this block. I was impressed on how fast everything was going and how everyone seemed to be getting along.
"Aura-chan!" I heard Yuri call out, nearly tackling me into a wood pile. "There you are! I missed you!"
"You saw me yesterday." I was able to squirm away.
"Far to long! Come on! Sora found another cool pile!" Yuri pulled me away, I head dad laughing and say to stay safe.
"Tada!" Yuri was on the edge of another pit, this one held more toys mixed with other neat things. Sora had found another doll with no eyes and was currently putting googly eyes on it. "Cool huh?!"
"You guys find the weirdest stuff." I told her as we lept down towards Sora. I found a spring and a pretty fan with a tear on the way down. We had to avoid broken glass in this area, but otherwise it was safe down here.
"Boo!" Sora tried to get us with the googly eye doll, but it looked to goofy to scare anyone. "Aw...you aren't supposed to laugh at it…" He pouted and put the doll down.
A bit further down, we found an old mattress that was perfect for jumping on and played on that for a while. That was before Sora got the idea to race to the top of a pile of broken things.
"I'm not sure that's safe…" I told him as he climbed an old couch and onto an old cabinet. "What it you fall?"
"It's stable…" Sora sounded annoyed that I was telling him this. As he reached for a busted pole, the pole loosened in his hand. He fell back, the other stuff falling with him.
"Sora!" I put my hand out, unsure of how to stop it, when ice started weaving its way around the falling furniture and catching them, freezing it all together.
"Woh…" Yuri said as Sora got back up off the mattress. It was dumb luck he landed on it.
"Come on." I grabbed her hand, Sora following as we got out of there. The ice released once we were safe, letting everything crash down and created a horrible noise.
"How did you do that?" Sora asked as all of the adults came running to us.
"I...I don't know." It didn't feel like my chakra was locked away anymore.
"Aurora?!" Dad landed in front of us.
"Iruka-sensei! Aura-chan saved us from the falling furniture!" Well, Yuri just admitted our guilt, might as well just confess it all.
"Sora wanted to race, but it fell and I caught the furniture with my ice." Dad was as surprised as me, but others were not as happy as we were that no one was hurt.
"Mama!" Yuri ran to her mom, who looked angry.
"What wer' ya doin' up on dat damn pile o' trash!? You atta know betta…" She pulled Yuri away, telling her to be more careful. She was nice about it, Sora's aunt however…
"Sora! What did I tell you?!" She pulled him away the same way Yuri's mom did, but what she said broke my heart. "I told you to stay away from her…"
"Aurora…" Dad made me look at him. "Don't listen to her. She doesn't understand what happened."
"But it was…"
"I know, it was an accident." He brushed my dust covered hair back. "Some people just don't want to listen to that. You're not a fault, in fact, I'm proud of you. You saved your friends." He and I smiled, at least he understood.
Kakashi's View:
It took all my years of training to make myself seem calm in the counsel's office. They were just about to appoint me the title of Hokage. Right as I was to be sworn in, someone saved me by coming in to say Tsunade was awake. Oh thank gods…I had said I was ready, but honestly I was not ready for that kind of pressure.
"Aurora please, the floor is slick enough!" Iruka yelled from down the hallway when I go home.
"But it's fun!" She came down the hall, freezing the floor in front of her as she skated around. "Father!" She stopped, deciding to run to me instead of continuing to damage the floor. They had needed replaced, but I guess it would be sooner than later. I ruffled her hair a bit, which made her pout.
"Seriously…" Iruka hadn't heard her clearly and was surprised to see me when he rounded the corner. He had been looking at the floors. "Oh, you're back." He smiled that beautiful bright smile. "Welcome home."
"Maa, I see you're able to use your ice again." Good...that meant the bastard really was dead. On our mission, we saw the aftermath of Sasuke's fight with Danzo. Sai revealed later that all of the seals the old man had placed were gone, he really was dead. I was a little angry I wasn't the one to do it, but glad she was alright. Sai revealed what the seal had been for when I got back.
"Kakashi-sensei, about the seal on your daughter…" He looked ashamed that he couldn't tell me before. "It was meant to trigger her chakra, turning her into a weapon. If anything got really bad, she could be set off like an ice bomb."
"Anything else?"
"I believe it also had a reverse summon on it, but I'm unsure what for. I'm sorry…"
"It's alright. In the end, you protected her instead of giving her to Danzo when you had the chance." I put a hand on his shoulder. "You did good."
I really wanted to be the one to kill the old fucker, but sadly I didn't have the chance. Thought Sasuke's killing of the old man was a blessing, it was also a curse on him. He technically killed the acting Hokage, solidifying his missing-nin status. Though...I wasn't sure what hope there was left for him now.
"You look tired…" Iruka had shooed Aurora off of me. "Do you want any tea or do you want to just go to bed?" I needed to talk to Iruka without little ears listening in.
"Bed sounds good…"
Apparently Aurora had conquered the monster in the closet, it had been a mouse in the crawl space. This meant she was no longer in our room and I was thinking of all the things we could have been doing. However, I was too tired with everything that happened.
"You're not trying to hump my leg, what's wrong?" Iruka asked, sitting with me on my sleeping bag as he let his hair down.
"I'm not always trying to get you into bed…" I pouted, letting him pull my mask down to kiss me. "Besides, you start it."
"Do not." He pouted. "So, what's wrong?" He quickly changed the subject.
"Long mission…" I explained everything about our mission to the Land of Iron. I didn't believe that the man who called himself Madara was really Madara. But the question was, who was he? He clearly had the Sharingan, but Sasuke was the only one left. Or was he?
"How's Naruto taking it?" Of course Iruka was worried about our blonde boy.
"As well as expected...he doesn't want to believe that Sasuke is completely gone." Iruka made me look back up from looking sadly at the floor.
"Don't put this all on yourself…" He knew me too well. "I know you, you're going to blame yourself for him going into the darkness."
"Maa...I also learned something else. Apparently Itachi wasn't who we thought." Iruka's face slowly turned into the stunned shock I had felt upon when I learned the truth. Everything finally connected as to what happened to him, I had always known he was too kind hearted to think of it all on his own.
"So...this Madara person has twisted his mind then…" Now he understood my despair. "It makes you wonder what else was hidden in the Leaf…"
"I think things are about to implode on the Root...I'm worried about the backlash. The ROOT has agreed to follow the Hokage for now, but that could change in a second." I worried someone would come after Aurora, despite ROOT being uprooted...so to speak.
"That explains why they stopped watching the house." Iruka told me what happened while I was gone. "They knew you were gone, I don't know how...but as soon as they found out they were watching."
"You're gonna hate me, but I knew that was going to happen." Iruka glared. "They were even following Sai and Naruto, they didn't trust their spy any more. I figured it meant they might be guarding our house too, sorry." He pushed me down on my back, hovering over me angrily.
"Tell me you're kidding…" I felt sweat forming on my brow. "Kakashi!" I got my pillow shoved in my face. He got up to leave to sleep in the living area.
"Hey, I'm sorry, you're right, I should have warned you…" Too late, he was gone. So much for cuddling tonight.
Yuri's Mom has a southern accent. Thought I should clarify. R&R