II. Foresight Is Not 20/20

I hear the little children of the wind
crying solitary in lonely places.


Boruto spends the next five minutes—okay, maybe it's closer to ten—quietly hyperventilating on the rooftop. He probably looks like a complete maniac, clinging to the roof of a two-story building with his knees pressed to his chest and his hands tangled in his hair, staring uncomprehendingly at the unfamiliar streets of a barely-familiar village and worst of all, the wrong, wrong, wrong four-faced Hokage monument.

He's in the past.

Wait, no. Past implies there's a present to go back to, and he doesn't know that. For all he knows, that stupid spiral seal was some kind of History Eraser button, and he's just wiped out the last twenty-odd years of time because of his stupid misguided curiosity. His stomach twists painfully, and hurriedly he leans over the side of the roof in case he really does hurl—but he hasn't eaten since the morning, and nothing comes up.

Sure, he's still here and reassuringly corporeal, but he's also the only one who was touching the seal. Shikadai, Inojin—god, Himawari—they'll all have vanished just as suddenly and irrevocably as the three Hokage from the mountainside. Either he finds a way to fix this, or he's just killed them all permanently—nope not helpful, stop thinking that.

He's gotta believe he can reverse this. He'll go crazy otherwise.

He runs his hands through his hair for the umpteenth time, and scrubs his face dry on his forearms. Grime and sweat streak his skin from his trek through the woods, and he's only just beginning to feel the ache of various scrapes and bruises through the haze of panic. His breath is finally easing when one more physical sensation hits him hard.

Hunger.

"You've gotta be kidding," Boruto groans, wrapping his arms around his middle. They've got a crisis of epic proportions here, and his stomach takes this moment as the perfect time to register its resentment at not being filled since breakfast.

Of course he carries money with him, but he has a sinking suspicion that most restaurants won't accept bills minted twenty years from now. Maybe more—he doesn't know what year this is supposed to be. Besides, starvation is definitely preferable to the look on Mom's face if he ever tried stealing food. A second realization follows this one like a gut punch, making him exhale sharply: if he can't figure this out by nightfall, he won't even have a place to sleep.

He drags a hand down his face. This is such a mess.

Below him, there's a snap of a window being shoved open. A woman wearing an apron leans out from the building adjacent and glowers up at him. Her hands are dusty with flour and she brandishes a rolling pin in one hand. "Oi! Brat! Keep off the roof!"

And this just keeps happening.

"You heard me, you little creep!" She's howling, and they're starting to attract attention from pedestrians. "How many times do I have to tell you to stay away? I'll call the village guard, don't think I won't!"

"Look, lady, I don't even know you—"

She lifts the rolling pin like she's thinking of throwing it at him. "I said get lost, Uzumaki!"

Uh, what?

"Uzu—?" he begins to echo, but then he catches sight of a few chunin heading his way from the east. Probably trying to track down the cause of the disturbance that is totally not his fault. Past-Leaf needs to start public anger management classes or something, if everyone's so perpetually pissy. But it's time to prioritize, and he really doesn't wanna be interrogated by the village guard.

So he sticks out his tongue at the baker and runs for it.

He swings from a gutter down into the alley behind a fishmonger's, and wrinkles his nose at the stench. Yeah, that's rotting fish guts for sure. But he can't keep to the rooftops anymore. They probably be patrolling the market district for troublemakers all afternoon.

If he keeps heading east, he'll eventually make it back to the Shodai's forest. The streets and buildings may not be the same, or even the borders of the village, but the forest has remained miraculously in roughly the same place all these years. Once he gets there, he's gonna figure out what he did and fix it, since contacting the Hokage officially stopped being a good idea when the Hokage stopped being Dad. If he just pops into headquarters and claims to be a time-traveler—potential paradoxes aside—he'll probably get tackled by the Hokage's personal guard before he makes it two steps inside.

His stomach rumbles again.

... and keep an eye out for food on the way.


The forest is bigger than it was before. Or technically, it's bigger than it will be in the future?

Ugh.

If Boruto thinks about it too hard it makes even less sense. But the point is that the forest stretches far beyond the bounds of the Shodai's preserve, all the way to a walled-off public park studded with trees way smaller than the looming monstrosities that lurk in the center. If he'd been paying attention, he would've noticed that on his way out, instead of just being frustrated by the seemingly interminable run. Pity he'd been preoccupied by being panicked out of his mind.

Now he takes his time, careful not to draw attention to himself. There are a few kids playing in the park, a few parents and older siblings watching from benches, and not one of them sees Boruto making his way along the edge of the clearing. His stealth skills are well-honed after years of sneaking away from Konohamaru's supervision; he is a master of inconspicuousness. Inconspicuosity? Which, okay, maybe he's never evaded Mom, but she has the Byakugan. The Hyuga don't play fair.

He expects it to be tricky, finding his way back to the exact same tree as before. It's not like he had the sense to think of marking the trail before, and now there's even more forest to deal with. But to his surprise, he steps through the glade without hesitation. It's less of a conscious choice, and more of an itch in the back of his mind, guiding him over tangled roots and through low-hanging branches muffled by ferns.

More skeptical minds might hesitate. To Boruto, who's always trusted in his intuition, it's a relief: anything's better than going in blind.

But before he can set off into the forest, he's stopped by the sound of voices.

The words are muffled by distance, but the tone carries. It's an argument, no doubt about it. A person with better judgment would probably keep moving, but Boruto's been reliably informed he lacks any semblance of common sense. (Thanks, Sarada.) He puts aside the itch in his mind, which tells him to keep moving deeper into the forest, and edges through the trees towards the sound. Three of them, maybe four, talking at intervals? He wishes his ears were as good as Uncle Kiba's.

Boruto catches a glimpse of motion in a clearing ahead and ducks behind a tree. Yeah, there's at least four of them. They're standing around with their backs to him, but he can tell even from this distance that they're boys, taller than him if not older. A stream runs past the glade, rendering the earth soft and spongy. Boruto winces and tries to ease his sandal out of the dirt without a telltale squelch when the figures shift. There's another kid visible through the gap. He squints.

In the middle, sandals slipping in the mud, stands a scrawny blond kid in an orange jacket.


Boruto's stomach does a triple somersault and fails to stick the landing.

Of all the clearings in all the forests of Past-Leaf, he just had to walk into this one. He ducks back behind his tree and tries uselessly to—to stop his heart thumping unevenly against the inside of his ribs, to think straight, to convince himself to pick himself back up and keep walking like he didn't see anything.

Except—Dad.

Before he can stop himself, he's twisting back around for a better look. Like this, it's kind of blindingly obvious how much they look alike. Kid-sized Dad is a bit skinnier than Boruto, the shape of his eyes is a bit more angled, his hair untidier, and his jacket is the same eternal shade of eye-blistering orange as ever. Other than that, and the cut oozing blood down the side of Dad's face, they could almost be twins.

Wait, blood?

"Tell you what, Naruto," says one of the big kids. He's got a baseball bat over one shoulder and a clan mark Boruto doesn't recognize in blue across his face. "If you get on your knees and beg, we'll let you go in one piece. Sound good?"

It's painfully cliché. Dad—Naruto—must have the same idea, because he raises his fists and spits, "Maybe if you get lost, I won't have to make you!"

Looks like Boruto gets his sweet comebacks from Mom's side of the family. But it gets the point across, and the big kids start snickering. "I'd like to see you try," sneers one. He's wearing a cap, and there's a faint red patch on one cheekbone, as if he'd recently had a rash. "I guess you can't count, either. There's four of us and one of you."

"Maybe you'd better run and find your friends," adds the first boy. "Except you don't have any, do you, you little freak?"

"Shut up!" It's so bizarre, hearing Dad's crackling voice pitched younger. "I can take you all on myself."

They burst into another round of snickering.

Naruto brings his hands up to form a seal— Ha. And they think they've got him outnumbered.

"Not this again," says the third boy dismissively. "Everyone knows you're as useless at ninjutsu as you are everything else. Give it up."

Then Naruto drops his hands and lunges forward, tackling the first kid into a tree. The baseball bat goes rolling away with a thump, and the sound jolts the others into motion. One of them lumbers over and pulls him off the ground bodily, easily dodging the flailing kicks, and drives a fist into his gut. Naruto lets out a sound like a popped balloon, wheezing as he tries to inhale.

Why isn't he fighting back?

That is, he's throwing punches and kicks, and trying to do something akin to dodging, but he's losing. And that just doesn't compute. He's getting the crap kicked out of him, for god's sake. Where's Kurama? Where are the shadow clones?

Naruto bites off a cry of pain, and—

-god dammit—

Boruto's spinning back around before he can stop himself. He's in the clearing in a heartbeat, lunging at the tallest one with his fist already drawn back. They slam into the dirt like sacks of wet concrete. Fingers yank on his hair hard, and the guy's trying to knee him in the ribs—none of that, you jerk—and Boruto elbows him in the face before rolling away.

"Who the hell are you?" demands the guy Naruto tackled earlier. He's got a trail of blood dripping from one nostril.

Instead of answering, he swings around and punches the guy. His opponent tries to bring up an arm to guard, but he's not watching his feet. Boruto sticks out a foot, trips him, then grabs him by the guard arm and slugs him in the gut.

"Don't beat up little kids!" he shouts, punctuating his sentence with another punch. "Not! Cool!"

The guy reels back, dazed, and slumps over coughing. Meanwhile, the others have gotten over gaping: one of them goes for Dad; the other two bear down on Boruto. They have some kind of training, but it's not any Academy style he knows—they're lobbing punches and taking hits like they've got some serious muscle mass, and that kind of risky intense training was replaced with strategy-based combat years ago— oh.

Okay, he's blaming that one on distraction.

He drops to avoid a punch, momentarily forgetting the guy behind him, and gets kicked in the ribs for his trouble. One of them grabs his hair, pulling him off balance; Boruto reaches up and jams his fingernail into the carpal nerves. The guy drops him like a hot poker, but the other fills in the gap.

Boruto kicks out, aiming to knock the first guy's knees out from under him; but he misjudges the angle and there's a sickening pop—from his opponent's kneecap or his toes, he isn't sure. He straightens, trying to balance himself and duck at the same time. He sidesteps a punch—oh, yeah, he is so good at this, three on one, no sweat because this is Boruto effing Uzu—

White-hot pain blooms on the back of his skull.

He falls forward, gagging. His head is one huge throbbing mess, and his movements are jerky when he tries to roll over and keep an eye on his opponent—

"You ass," Boruto wheezes. "You could kill someone with that!"

The kid—because it is a kid, older than Boruto but he can't be more than twelve—looks down at the baseball bat in his hand compulsively. For a moment his face screws up in uncertainty. Then he shakes himself and scowls; he's trying to play it cool, instead of admitting he doesn't have a single clue what he's doing. Like a complete idiot.

"Bet you wish you never messed with us," sneers his friend, less shaken. "Shove off already. Everyone knows Uzumaki's not worth it."

"Shut your mouth!"

For a split second Boruto's mind blanks to everything but the pain and then he's staring open-mouthed as the bat-wielding kid gets tackled by a flurry of blond and orange. The last bully is howling over a hand dripping with blood—looks like Naruto bit him—and then he tunes in enough to realize he should be helping. But the other kids Boruto took care of are starting to rise from the ground, and he really should probably not use ninjutsu if he can help it—

Naruto Uzumaki looks up at him with blue eyes under a shock of blond hair. Up close, Boruto can see the whisker marks, half-hidden under a smear of dirt, three on either side. The cut on his temple is already starting to close up under the congealing blood.

"Come on!" Boruto hisses, and grabs his wrist. "Let's get out of here already!"


It's probably lucky the other boys don't seem in a mood to follow them, because they don't so much run as stagger out of the clearing. Boruto's head is spinning, but he doesn't feel secure enough to slow to a halt until they're a good distance away. He leans over and braces himself on his knees: getting clocked over the head multiplied his headache by a factor of a thousand. Then, when he's caught his breath, his disbelief catches up to him.

"What the heck was that?" he demands incredulously.

"What, me saving your neck?" Naruto straightens, brushing off dirt from his orange jacket and shorts. He looks more irked than concerned by the deep gouge on the palm of his hand, and gives Boruto a pointed look. "You're welcome for that, y'know. Whoever you are."

"No, before that! Those guys were beating the crap outta you. And you were—you were just—" His tongue is tripping over air; he can barely find the words. "Why weren't you fighting back?"

"Fighting—what?"

"Aren't you a ninja? They had weapons; it would've been self-defense—"

"Screw you, man!" Naruto yanks his arm away, eyes flashing. "I didn't ask for your help! Also, no! I'm an Academy student, not a genin! Do you see a headband?" Pointedly, he jabs a finger at the goggles on his forehead. "And I told you, I had it handled!"

"That's not how it looked from where I was standing."

"It's none of your business, anyway! What do you care if I get beat up? D'you see anyone else sticking their nose in?" He's spitting mad and just keeps gaining momentum, starting to punctuate every word with flailing arms. "What are you, some kind of stalker? Quit talking like you know anything about me! I don't know you, and I don't owe you!"

"Owe me—don't be stupid!"

"Don't call me stupid!"

Figures Dad would be just as aggravating as ever in kid form. Boruto grits his teeth and puts up his hands. "I'm not calling you stupid! I just—why wouldn't you use shadow clones or something, against that many opponents! Then I wouldn't've had to step in to keep you from getting your butt kicked in the first place!"

Naruto stares at him uncomprehendingly. "Shadow what?"

Crap.

"I mean, clones! Or like a transformation or something, you must know some ninjutsu—"

"Maybe I've tried! Maybe they've gotten used to it, d'you ever think about that?" He growls and scuffs his foot against the ground, sending pebbles skittering along the rocky path. "And I didn't see you trying anything like that when you jumped in in the first place—which, again, does it look like I asked you to do that?"

The realization quells Boruto's retort before it reaches his lips. That fight back there wasn't Naruto holding back or going easy out of some weird misguided altruism. He was just really truly a mediocre fighter, even when he was doing his best. He... wow. He'd heard Dad's speeches about hard work and starting from the bottom, but he'd always taken them as the usual feel-good pep talks he gave everyone. But he'd been trying, and yet...

Naruto's still glowering at him, arms crossed. Strangely enough, Boruto's never seen his dad really angry, really mad at someone because they're being unreasonable. Even when Himawari almost got kidnapped as a kid, and he'd been the closest to furious Boruto had ever seen him, it was still a steady, focused intent, like he'd slipped into a different mode of being. But it looks like once upon a time, he used to get pissed off like a normal person.

Which Boruto might just deserve. He is being kind of uncool.

He runs his hands through his hair. "Shoot. Look, I'm sorry for, uh, jumping your fight. I wasn't planning on dragging you out of there. To be honest, there wasn't really a plan all. I just... I saw you getting beat up. So I did what anyone would do, y'know?"

It's pretty graceless—Boruto's not great at this kind of thing—but something in his tone must come through, because Naruto deflates a little from his righteous fury. He slides his arms into the pockets of his jacket and stops glaring quite so angrily. "Uh, not really?"

"Well, what anyone should do," he amends. "Teaming up on a littler kid, four-on-one? They were asking for a beating."

"I'm no littler than you are," grumbles Naruto, but his voice has lost its sharp edge of annoyance. Now he just sounds bemused. "Fine, whatever. So you just go crashing into other peoples' fights like some kinda hero of justice? And what's with your face, anyway? That's just creepy, man."

"My what?"

He puffs out his cheeks and points from his own whisker-marks to Boruto's impatiently. "Copying me. I know my style's awesome, but that's way overboard. And if you were jealous, you shoulda started with your jacket. I mean, pink?"

"It's fuchsia! And who're you to talk? You look like a pumpkin!"

"Orange is badass!" Naruto informs him staunchly, shoving his hands in his pockets. "It's way better than pink. Orange is the color of fire; but there's nothing pink that's cool."

"That's not the point." This circular conversation is giving Boruto a headache to match the one from the lump on his head. he's never been able to out-stubborn his dad, and this kid version is twice as cantankerous. "I'm not copying you! You're not the only one in the world allowed to have weird birthmarks!"

There's a pause that stretches uncomfortably long. Naruto eyes him so intently you can practically see the gears turning in his head. Better put a stop to that right now—Dad's not the smartest person in the world, but he's got an intuition to beat Kakashi's. Boruto clears his throat. "How come those guys were after you, anyway?"

It's a good chance to change the topic, but his curiosity is real. He's heard stories about Dad's childhood, but none of them ever included 'getting beat to a pulp in the park': for obvious reasons, Mom left that out of the highlight reel. As kids, he and Himawari had always wanted to hear the stories about exciting missions and battles. Mom always said that Dad was really cool in the Academy, the kind of guy who never let anything stop him. Boruto eyes the skinny kid in front of him—scrappy and stubborn, sure, but no one in their right mind would call him cool.

"Guess they were bored? They're kinda jerks." Naruto grins puckishly. "Well, except that guy with the hat. Him, I got with itching powder last week. Only just got rid of the rash, from the looks of it." His tone is almost wistful. "Serves him right."

Boruto stares. "So it was your fault?"

"What? No! Are you even listening? Trust me, they were asking for it. And you should stay clear of them, too, now you've gone and got involved in the mess."

"Yeah, I'm planning on clearing out of this place as soon as I can." It's starting to hit Boruto—both figuratively and literally with the pounding throb of his skull—that 'getting involved in the mess' doesn't begin to cover it from a temporal standpoint. He winces and brushes his fingers of the back of his hair, which is tacky with blood and starting to dry. "I should probably go sooner than later."

"Your head is still bleeding. Are you gonna be okay?

"Head injuries do that," he mutters, eyeing the other boy's temple. The skin is unmarked under the drying blood, like nothing was ever there to begin with. That would be Kurama's healing power taking effect. Unluckily for Boruto, he only inherited the Uzumaki bloodline. Quicker healing, sure, but not that drastic. Nah, he'll be nursing this one for a week at least. "Should prob'ly get it checked out, though. Might have a concussion or something."

Except he can't, because the family doctor is Sarada's mom, and Ms Uchiha is—at a guess—nine or ten years old right now. Boruto tries to imagine what she must've been like as a kid. Terrifying, probably.

Naruto cocks his head. "A what?"

"I think it's like, a bruise on your brain?" But that still gets a blank look, so Boruto shrugs. "I'm probably fine. I think if you have a concussion, you start throwing up or seeing double or getting dizzy. So it's really not a big deal."

He's ready with a whole armada of excuses for not wanting to go to a doctor, but apparently there's no need. Naruto only nods indifferently, brushing the dirt from his knees and palms. Fair enough—he's probably never had a bruise last more than a few minutes in his life, if the way Dad heals in the future is anything to go by. In his eyes, a concussion would be a minor inconvenience. Them's the perks of being a jinchuriki.

"Well, I know somewhere they won't follow us," says Naruto. His authoritative tone is offset by the wide, crooked grin spreading across his face. "How d'you feel about grabbing some ramen? I'm starving."

Boruto opens his mouth, then stops.

I can't, sorry. That's what he should say. He's probably already screwed something up in this timeline by jumping in on the fight and then talking to his Dad. Heck, he'd even accidentally let slip about the shadow clones when apparently this Naruto hasn't learned that technique yet. Besides, he needs to figure out how to use the spiral tree to get back home. Home, where Himawari and Mom are waiting for him. They're probably getting dinner ready, with the windows shuttered against the wind, and if he's late it'll just be the two of them.

But Naruto is looking at him with a hesitant, hopeful look in his eyes, and Boruto knows that look. He's seen it on Himawari, who's still enough of a kid to hope that Dad might come home early and take them to the summer festival. He's seen it in the mirror, when he's stupid enough to think that maybe this time, maybe when he shows Dad the new technique he learned, maybe when he dumps paint over the Hokage Monument, maybe for once Dad will actually pay attention to him and only him.

He hasn't talked to his Dad for this long in years. Even when he does, it's all platitudes and everything he doesn't want to hear. This is effortless. Easy, even. This Naruto isn't Boruto's dad, but he's close enough as makes no difference. He's infuriating but comprehensible, and if he actually wants to spend time with Boruto—

"That sounds great." His voice cracks a little, but he's grinning despite himself. "Ichiraku's?"

Naruto lights up. "You know it?"

"Best ramen in the village. How could I not?" A truth universally acknowledged in the Uzumaki family; Grandpa Iruka would probably disown him if Boruto broke tradition. Then he remembers, and his stomach sinks. "Except—oh, crap. I don't think I can. I'm out of cash."

"Eh, who cares— I've got some, and the old man gives me a discount so long as I don't buy too much." He points a finger at Boruto. "You'd better pay me back, though. I told you, I don't owe you."

"I'm starved, man," Boruto says honestly. "If you can get me a bowl of ramen, I'll owe you. I mean, I don't have cash, but anything else? I'm there."

"Ha! I like the sound of that."

As they make their way out of the forest, Naruto musing gleefully over the possibilities of his newfound leverage and Boruto rolling his eyes at the more outlandish suggestions, he looks back only once. Just to reassure himself that the forest is still standing, that he can go back whenever he needs to. And he's going to, definitely, right after they get ramen. What can a few more hours hurt on a scale of twenty years?


They don't pay chunin instructors enough.

If it were just teaching, that would be one thing—sometimes Iruka prays for a day where all he has to do is teach. But then there's the hassle of keeping track of all the kids, and knowing who's doing well, who needs extra help, and who's on the verge of a breakdown. There's the constant task of keeping troublemakers separated in class, not to mention dealing with parents that are still complaining about their kids being in the same room as 'the Uzumaki boy', for all that it's been three years without the slightest incident. And now the kids are starting to get even crazier under the new and disorienting effects of young hormones, and half of them barely know what chakra is. Calling it a Sisyphean task is understatement.

"I'm quitting," he says tiredly, looking over yesterday's history quiz— they just went over this in class, and Kiba's still determinedly scribbling down 'the second Hokage Hashirama Senju' without a care in the world. Shikamaru's paper is completely blank except for a dried patch of drool, and Hinata's gone crossing out all her correct answers in a fit of uncertainty. "I swear I'm quitting. There's got to be someone better at this job, but there's no way I can make these kids into ninja. It's just not going to happen."

"You say that every week," says Mizuki tolerantly. He's going through the taijutsu scores, and Iruka can read the tone of his voice without looking up. "But you're always here, aren't you? Admit it, you like the brats."

Iruka looks at him beseechingly. "How can you be so relaxed? We both know it was an easier time in the border trenches. At least then I wouldn't have Hiashi Hyuga sending me strongly worded letters about his daughter's 'unacceptably amateurish taijutsu', when half my work's undoing everything she's told at home—"

"I don't understand why you're still reading those letters."

"—and I don't care about archaic clan laws, obviously Sasuke isn't old enough to live unsupervised if he's just going to come to class with injuries from overtraining on his own; that's just common sense!"

The other chunin instructor stretches his arms behind his head, and sighs. "Maybe you should go home early, Iruka. You seem a bit wired."

Damn Mizuki for being so reasonable. He's always been more easygoing than Iruka—a trait that apparently serves him well in brushing off all the unreasonable demands of working as a teacher. Where Iruka's driven half to distraction trying to make them all settle down, Mizuki just rolls his eyes and carries on with the lesson.

"Maybe you're right." Iruka rubs his eyes. "I'm no help to anyone right now, am I? I'll mark the rest of these at home."

"Don't apologize. You're worn to the bone. Just go on, already."

Iruka gives him a clap on the shoulder as he leaves—honestly, what would he do without a coworker like Mizuki?—and tucks the papers into his bag. His eyes are aching, his shoulders are stiff, and his stomach is a knot of hunger. Better grab some ramen on the way home— Suzume keeps telling him he'll die of a heart attack at forty, but he's long since resigned himself to a bachelor's lifestyle. Then, when he gets home, a shower and tea, and maybe he'll actually get some sleep for a change once he's finished marking the tests? Perish the thought.

Tension seeps out of his shoulders with each step he takes away from the Academy gates. Mizuki's right, as usual—he needed to take a break.

The sun is setting in a burst of color over the forest, streaking the sky in vibrant orange fringed in red cloudbursts that fade to fuchsia. A gentle, warm breeze from the east brushes across his face and billows his sleeves. It smells sweet, like fresh earth instead of the slightly sour tang of a crowded village—a nice change from the stagnant weather they've been having lately.

A few of his students are out with their parents—they wave at him shyly, and he smiles in return. There's a group of chunin in street wear meandering downtown, and one of them flags him down. "Oi, Iruka! We're heading out for a drink! Wanna come with?"

Ah, to be active duty and reckless again. "Sojuro! Looks like you've already been drinking."

"Just a bit," admits the man, leaning heavily against the woman beside him—whether out of actual tipsiness or strategic flirtation, who knows. She's more concerned with her flask, and barely seems to notice. "C'mon! S'been ages. We should catch up!"

"I have to teach a class of ten-year-olds how not to lose a finger throwing shuriken tomorrow," he says dryly. "It'll be a headache either way, but I'd just as soon not have a hangover."

Sojuro groans hugely. "Can't believe you're still holed up at the Academy, man!"

Another of the chunin, a woman with close-cropped dark hair, nods emphatically. "Betcha anything Cap could put in a transfer request if I asked him—it's a damn fucking shame you're off active duty, Umino— best goddamn sensor I ever teamed up with, and not half as fucking pretenshish. Pretentious. Fuck it."

Iruka, who hadn't recognized her before, laughs. "Ran! You cut your hair!"

"Lost a bet," she says thickly. "Come on, let's get drunk—drunker—an' I'll tell y'bout it."

He gives an apologetic smile and shrugs. "Wish I could. You know how it is—papers to grade, lessons to plan. Another time?"

"Nah," Sojuro says mournfully, slinging an arm around his female companion. "We're heading back to the fuckin' swamps tomorrow afternoon. S'why we're takin' this opportune moment to get ourselves hammered with some decent booze."

"Let me know when you're back in town, and we can celebrate with a round of drinks." Iruka gives a crooked smile, inwardly lamenting for his withering wallet. Between constant takeout dinners and Naruto's occasional insatiable ramen binge, finances are a bit tight. But for old friends, he can make it work. "I'll foot the bill."

"Oh, shit," says Ran worshipfully. "I fucking love you, Umino."

"Hell, man, you don't know what you've gotten yourself into," warns Sojuro. "This woman could drink a Senju under the table. She's a menace."

The other woman—the one Sojuro keeps unsubtly trying to cop a feel from- tips her flask upside-down over the ground with an air of dissatisfaction. "I'm dry. Are you gonna talk all night, or are we gonna find some good stuff already? I don't want to feel my teeth tonight."

"I'd better get going," Iruka says, chuckling. "Have a drink for me."

Ran winks. "I'll have two. Go home an' grade some fucking papers, teach."

He laughs again, waves, and turns to keep walking down the street. The sun is dimming behind the cover of trees, now, and the light is fading fast. Restaurants all down the streets have begun to turn on their lights, and street vendors are bolting their stalls. Iruka quickens his pace, but unnecessarily so. When he turns the corner, light is still streaming out through the breaks in the cloth partition, together with the heavenly smell of simmering broth.

Iruka reaches out to push the cloth aside, when a familiar voice stops him short.

"So then I rigged up an explosive tag with a whole bag of red chili dust and snuck it into his classroom during lunch, right? So when he sat back down he triggered the wire and bam—you could hear the sneezing all the way outside!" The unmistakably gleeful cackle of Naruto Uzumaki accompanies this proclamation. "And they tried to pin it on me, but I was in the middle of taijutsu practice and they couldn't prove a thing! I got off completely free!"

The familiar muscle tic in Iruka's eyelid takes up residence like it never left. They'd been cleaning up that mess for days, it sent all their lesson plans completely out the window, and Sachi Inuzuka still bursts into tears when anyone brings it up. Got off completely free? Not anymore, you didn't.

He's readying himself for the lecture of a lifetime. Not that he expects it to stick, god help him, but someone has to corner Naruto with the consequences of his actions.

"You're kidding!" says another young voice wistfully, and Iruka pauses. "Whenever I do something like that, Mom half kills me. Her lectures are the worst."

That voice— there's something both familiar and strange about it, but Iruka's almost certain it's not a voice he recognizes. Who could it be? He doesn't remember Naruto mentioning any new friends lately. If anything, the children of the village are still treating him with a steady mixture of contempt and indifference, the watered-down product of their parents' revulsion.

"I don't have a mom." Naruto doesn't sound especially troubled by the admission. "Or a dad. Just the old man Third, and he's not much for lectures, anyway."

"I might as well not have a dad," says the other boy sourly. "That loser doesn't care about his family at all. He's never home, and he makes Mom worry and doesn't even care, and half the time when he is home it's just a clone. Even when I get in trouble he barely reacts."

There's a pensive pause.

"That's stupid," comments Naruto. "If I had a family I'd always wanna go home."

The other boy's laugh is oddly bitter. "Would you really?"

"Well, duh. I mean, I could stay out all night and no one would even notice!" He hesitates, for a moment, then continues: "And even if I was missing, it's not like anyone would care. If you— if you have a family— you're lucky. You can't just—"

"Take it for granted?" The second voice twists into something both petulant and miserable. "Try telling him that. I don't think he understands. Even when he says he's sorry, he's always apologizing for the wrong thing. And he never changes. Everyone just says I'm being selfish, I shouldn't distract him from his work." He clears his throat. "It's not like— I can handle it if he's never around. But my mom and my sister..."

Iruka shakes himself, feeling his ears redden. It's rude to eavesdrop, and especially unbecoming of a teacher to listen in on one of his students having a personal conversation. He came here for ramen, and his time would be better spent fetching it- a lecture can wait.

He pushes his way past the divider, schooling his expression into something more impassive. "Evening, Teuchi! Think I could get a bowl of miso takeout?"

As expected, Naruto spins around in alarm to stare at him. "Ah! Iruka-sensei! What're you doing here?"

"I don't live at the Academy, you know." Iruka slides into his chair, turning to look at Naruto over his shoulder. If this also coincidentally puts the other boy into his line of sight—well, it's not his fault, is it? "And I do, occasionally, like a bite to eat."

Then he blinks. Seeing double?

No. Not quite. Two spiky heads of blond hair, two sets of sharp blue eyes, and two whiskered faces, but there are slight differences. Not to mention, he's never seen Naruto wear a color besides orange voluntarily, and the boy beside him is clad in a loose-fitting black-and-pink jacket.

Iruka has about three-fourths of a second to process this.

The instant the other boy hears Naruto's say Iruka's name, the color vanishes from his face. He stiffens, eyes wide in panic, and then ducks his head so fast it's a miracle he doesn't crack his forehead on the counter. Iruka then has another half second to realize with a jolt that the dark patch on the back of the boy's head is dried blood before the kid mutters something under his breath and bolts.

"Huh?" Naruto turns, his face falling to confusion. "What d'you mean, you're leaving—?"

But he's already gone.


The electric display of the clock on Naruto's laptop has just flickered from 9:59 to 10:00, and he still has seventy-four folders stacked in the tray marked 'Urgent'. It's tempting, so tempting to just sign through the lot without reading them, but there's always someone trying to slide a shady council proposal under the radar. The last thing the village needs is their Hokage approving the renewal of ROOT or something just because he couldn't be bothered to read the fine print.

Instead, Naruto thinks longingly of the dinner Hinata's probably long since tucked away in the fridge, takes another gulp of black coffee, and grimaces. Old man Third had his pipe, Tsunade had her booze, Kakashi had his porn, and here Naruto is with a burgeoning caffeine addiction. It's probably fate.

The door opens without a knock, and he barely has to look up. "Hey, Shikamaru."

If there's anyone working hours longer than Naruto, it's Shikamaru. And isn't that the worst kind of irony? Naruto, who never did his schoolwork, and Shikamaru, who never wanted to work at all. Now they're the two gainfully employed figureheads of the village.

"You heading home?" Shikamaru asks, thumbing through the tabs on the folders. "It's getting late."

"Like you're one to talk."

"Nah. Temari's still in Sand." He rubs the back of his neck with a long-suffering air, but there's the driest hint of warmth in his voice. "Thought she'd give me an earful about leaving the kid alone, but it turns out Shikadai's over at Ino's place on account of the weather."

The implication is obvious, but Naruto chooses to ignore it. He loves his family, just as much as he loves his village. As Hokage, he looks after both of them. He doesn't think he could distinguish between the two if he tried. "Weather?"

"Gale-force winds since this morning. There's a storm warning on the radio; the Academy let out an hour early. You didn't notice?"

"Mph," says Naruto, draining the rest of the coffee from the cup. "Had work."

"You seriously need a secretary, man."

Yeah, Kurama's been complaining along the same lines for months. Maybe years—it started to get repetitive after a while. Which, yeah, makes sense. The big guy gets a little stir-crazy without the chance to stretch his, uh, chakra legs? But it's not Naruto's fault they're not always needed on the battlefield these days.

Isn't it?

Naruto brushes that unnecessary remark away with a wave of mental exasperation. Okay, maybe it is his fault, but it's definitely not a problem. He's been working day and night to keep building the structures of peace among the allied nations. If the power of a jinchuriki isn't needed, that's just a sign he's succeeding in fixing a broken world.

"S'fine," he says to Shikamaru. "I've got shadow clones. Pretty much the same."

The man gives a skeptical snort, and tosses the folder back on the table without opening it. Which means he totally just came in here to check on him. Naruto hides a laugh. Shikamaru can deny it all he likes; it's absolutely Temari's influence. "Don't pass out at your desk again. Last time the chunin clerk thought you'd been poisoned."

"The guy's too jumpy, anyway," he jokes tiredly, and reaches automatically for the next folder in the stack. "He could use a bit of a scare every once in a while. Keep him on his toes."

"Seriously." Shikamaru glances over his shoulder just before closing the door. "The village won't suddenly fall to pieces in your absence."

"Not impossible." He yawns so widely his jaw pops. "It has happened before."

"Good night."

The door closes with a quiet click, and Naruto chuckles briefly before looking back down at the report. A request for construction permissions; why do these forms always get filtered through Headquarters? Isn't there a division for that? He really should figure out a way to delegate this kind of thing. He yawns again, and rubs his swimming eyes.

Two folders later, and no amount of blinking will keep his eyes from blurring. He squints to make out the last few lines—diplomatic report from Mist, they've been arguing over territorial concessions on the mainland for months now—and signs to approve it for Council deliberation. It can be someone else's problem for a while, until the cycle of paperwork comes around to him again whenever they make their decision.

Then the door slams open, and his pen skids off the page. "Shikamaru-?"

But it's Hinata. Her Byakugan is active, and she's holding Himawari on her hip with one arm. Their daughter clings to Hinata's neck tightly, even though she's gotten altogether too big to be carried around casually. She's sniffling quietly, and Hinata's face is pale and bloodless, her mouth a flat line of worry. Behind them, Shikamaru enters the room silently, face grave.

"Hinata!" Naruto's out of his chair in an instant. "Hinata, what's wrong?"

"It's Boruto. He's missing."