Disclaimer: Disclaimed

Chapter 4: Night

A cold night breeze swirled through the edge of Konoha, within the verge of the old surrounding forest. As the road leading from the city grew wilder and gloomier and more faintly traced, and vanished at length, there came the sound of two voices borne on the wind. Two muted voices conversing soberly, becoming more prominent as the path drew near. Though their figures brushed the small branches by the wayside, neither was visible, doubtless due to the depth of night.

Through thick cloud cover, the moon peeked through a thin strip of sky among the arching boughs, hesitant, shy.

Like Naruto.

And Takeshi, really, but he hid it better.

"So."

Naruto glanced at the figure seated by him. "Yeah?"

"What was that explosion all about?"

It was common ground, and evidently safe territory. Naruto grinned. "I sneaked out a bunch from the station a couple of years ago when no one was looking."

"Not looking."

"Yep" Naruto beamed. It had been one of his more lucrative ventures.

"How'd you manage to get them not to look?"

Naruto paused. He gnawed on the inside of his lower lip, eyes roaming the gloom and shadows around the two.

"I get into the station a lot. For, uh, a bunch of reasons. After a while, when Shishui-san and his lot see me there about everyday, they kinda start expecting me, see? They start thinking of me as part of the background that they remember to pat on the head occasionally. I become…" He extended a small hand to grasp at an idea he had an inkling of, which he vaguely understood. It wouldn't come. He rocked back and forth in frustration, food forgotten.

"A fixture."

Naruto blinked. "Huh?"

"You become a fixture." Takeshi let the thought process for awhile as the two sat side by side, in silence.

"A fixture." Naruto tried out the word. "Sounds about right. Hey!" He tried to bat away the hand that had snuck into his small take-away bag of onigri. The snack was dangled just out of his lunging reach, then tucked away neatly into Takeshi's mouth.

"So how," Takeshi coughed into his arm. " how come you got blown over my head?"

A scowl. "The tags don't work right. They explode too big."

"Yeah? Lemme see?" Takeshi held out a hand expectantly.

"Don't have anymore." The face stayed serene, the hand steady as it dipped into the bag.

Takeshi flicked they boy's nose, ignored the indignant shout and held out his open palm again. "Lemme see."

"How'd you know?" Naruto rubbed his face, stopping momentarily to deliver more onigiri to his mouth.

"You found a solitary tag sitting around the station, or you've been blowing things up for quite some time now. Wouldn't be making silly mistakes if you'd practiced more often."

Naruto nodded, dutifully digging within a pocket on the inside of his jacket. He drew out a wad of crumpled paper and handed it over.

"That's all I got left."

There was some kind of gunk sticking the pages together.

Takeshi eased open the first tag and took a critical look at the seal array. Naruto munched away in peace for a few moments.

"There's nothing wrong with it." He invested a slight trickle of chakra in the tag, reversed the flow quickly. "Quality make, actually. And there's no shelf life for seals."

He leaned over with the top tag splayed out to show Naruto. "See, you can think of it as a maze, with a trigger at the center." A finger traced the open ended lines of ink at the edges. "These are the various roads that chakra can take. They all reach the center eventually, but the point is to disperse chakra input to delay the explosion. Standard tag has around ten, so theoretically, all mass produced Leaf tags should have the same delay period. But," Takeshi wiggled an admonishing finger, the others wrapped around another onigiri slipped out of the bag. "The amount of chakra you introduce also controls the fuse. Put a bit less, and it'll take longer to blow. Overload the tag, and it'll explode in your face."

Naruto nodded thoughtfully. Then frowned. "What's the fuse for? I mean, why not just have a trigger on a blank piece of paper?"

"A good question." He sucked out an errant strand of seaweed fissured in his teeth. "First off, the whole process of dispersing chakra also helps suffuse the tag evenly, so you get more of an explosion and less fizzing. That's the whole concept of a tag, actually. A sheet of pressed wood strips that retains chakra and dissolves when the center seal eats out the core of the tag. Then all that stored chakra gets released into the environment. Pressure in surroundings goes down, gas volume expands. Boom." Takeshi made an all-encompassing gesture with his hands. "Sec—"

He paused. Played back the question in his head.

Naruto was honesly surprised at the glare he received.

"Waddya mean, 'what's the fuse for?'"

"Well, I can understand getting chakra everywhere so you have a bigger explosion thing. But wouldn't the delay kill? I mean, what if this guy has this enemy closing in on him, and a tag in his hand, but he's exhausted and doesn't have enough chakra to overload the tag? He then has to wait a few seconds," Naruto mimed tapping his foot on the wall and scratching his head in a ridiculous waiting pose. "for the tag to prep, all while the enemy nin is gutting him and raping his wife? Honestly, more explosions are nice, but they aren't worth it if they happen slower."

Naruto looked expectantly for Takeshi to sympathize with his theory.

Takeshi looked as if he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Hold the tag? What's he holding the tag for? Do you even know how to use a paper explosive?"

"Er…point and blow, right? The three P's? Point the tag. Put Chakra. Pow."

It was an interesting point.

Takeshi chewed the thought over, waving distractedly as Naruto grew gradually impatient with his reticence. He recited the Academy's textbook definition from blurred memory, both to himself and to Naruto.

"Tags are part of every resourceful nin's arsenal. With the expansion of the Leaf's economy, and the growth of shinobi trade, the explosive tag has become widely available as the tool of choice in any trap or snare." Takeshi paused. "Notice, trap and snare. Not hand-held explosive. Not that your application doesn't hold water, but you're using the wrong tool for it. I mean, it's viable, using seals to obtain an immediate effect. But tags were designed to supplement ambushes or be paired with kunai. Thus the delay period. You'd need something else to shape a blast." He turned to look at Naruto, who had snuggled up against his side. The leather jacket draped comfortably over Naruto's smaller frame.

"Nice thought though. But the three P's? Someone teach you that?"

"Nah. Thought it sounded better than the 'blow shit up' technique."

"Hah."

The two fell silent, as their topic dried up and it became too cold to talk.

Takeshi felt as if he was missing something. This had, in equal parts, something to do with his rusty instincts burdened under years of a hard drinking lifestyle, the natural sneakiness Naruto had shown so far, and the tendency adults had to skim over what children said. Prepubescent thought was spotty and jumped around a lot, taking mighty leaps of logic where the experienced mind could not follow.

Thus this alien prickling on the palm of his hand, this prodding discomfort that hounded him. A decade ago, he could have easily isolated the flaw in Naruto's reasoning, and turned it around before the kid nodded off to sleep in the warm curl of his arm. Ten years ago, he wouldn't have had a kid cuddling up to him at all, unless it was dead or something. That sounded suitably badass.

Let's see. They were talking about explosive tags, something he was familiar with and felt comfortable talking about. It got Naruto's attention, and, Takeshi liked to think, made him seem a bit more impressive in the kid's eyes. That was good. Hell, the snuggling would be a sign of success then, nothing to be embarrassed about.

There was Naruto's interesting idea about using tags as a primary weapon. Could be useful to look into later.

Here's one. Takeshi hadn't set the groundwork in their new relationship as guardian and … guardee? There was no plan yet, where they'd stay, how he'd support the two of them, how he was going to raise a child in general. Maybe that was it. He hadn't been thorough enough, and his obsessive, detail-oriented mind wasn't pulling punches to tell him that.

He stretched out his back, raising one arm straight in the air while the other supported his stiffened elbow. Against his new posture, Naruto wiggled to adjust and murmured something soft and unintelligible.

So, maybe they were going to get along just fine.

Takeshi paused.

Son of a bitch.

He slipped an arm around Naruto's neck, tightened his biceps, and proceeded to launch a furious knuckling against the boy's skull.

"Wahhh! Whats that for!" The boy startled awake, tried in vain to pull his head out of the chokehold.

"Why'd you try to blow me up, huh? Little fucker, almost got away with it this time, but HAH! Can't get anything past the Take when he's sober. When he's SOBER!" He punctuated that last bit by trying to scrape the skin off Naruto's scalp.

"Sorry! Sorry! JUST A JOKE, I swear! I was angry! I WASN'T SOBER! WAHH!"

Takeshi let his eyes flutter close in bliss. Screams, curses, and someone wiggling around under him.

All was right with the world.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

"Anyway, our Anbu liaison wants you to contact them with a preliminary statement on the scene, and since we won't contest their jurisdiction, there won't be need for anything beyond that. Fugaku'll want a full report, of course." Shishui watched the young Uchiha patiently.

A bored medic prodded around the wound, declared it harmless, sprayed it with some piss-scented gel, glued it shut, and taped a dressing to it. The new cadet sat through the process with remarkable poise.

Shishui nodded thanks to the medic as she reassembled her kit and wandered around to a chair in the corner, then turned his attention back to boy. "Did you catch his face?"

He sat against the wall and propped the clipboard against his knees.

For the first time during the briefing, change broke through Itachi's stoic features. It was a simple flicker in his eyes, as the pupils grew stained with dark red.

"I was the closest to respond, but the man was halfway through a second story window by then. I caught a glimpse as he pulled himself back to resist."

Shishui nodded. For a Uchiha, that was enough.

"Dark hair, strong features. Lanky. Estimate between thirty or forty years of age. No scars, abnormalities." Itachi paused.

"His eyes were sunken, maybe from sleep deprivation or substance abuse, or both. But they never met mine. Sharp jaw, and unshaven."

It took a while longer for Shishui to finish jotting down the description. He read them back to the boy, but paused before the end.

Shishui met Itachi's stare. "He never met your eyes. Was that significant?"

"Only to me."

The two held the gaze. Shishui was the first to break it off.

He nodded once more and signaled the medic to leave the room. She looked slightly offended, but didn't make too much of the gesture. She was the medic. Nobody wanted her around unless someone was bleeding to death.

As soon as the door shut behind her, he broke out in laughter.

Itachi blinked.

"You're not gonna win every one, Itachi. Better to learn this now then later."

The boy sighed, rocked back on the table.

"No damages." It came out at the end of exhaling, a comment to himself.

"None to the building" Shishui agreed. "Well, none that couldn't be repaired. Would've been much more of an issue if our guy targeted the basement floors. This seems more of a warning than anything else."

Itachi looked thoughtful. "Or- a" He stopped.

His senpai had tensed. It was subtle. Real subtle. If Itachi hadn't known Shishui for as long as he did, it would have been fair indistinguishable. Limbs remained tucked in where they were, and senpai's overall posture hadn't changed. But one of Shishui's vices, one of his small indulgences, was that his clothes were vainly formfitting. And now the cloth limned all the wrong muscles.

His eyes widened. "Naruto?"

Shishui nodded, slower this time, as if chewing over the name.

"We haven't been able to find him. The kid's why Sarutobi pulled us back and sent in Anbu."

Itachi straightened smoothly out of his seat, sending the chair scrapping back against the floor.

"You're letting them?"

A deep exhale. "We don't know what's happening now. We had control of the scene for less than ten minutes before the first masked man showed up with the right papers-"

"It's our roof." Itachi didn't growl. His words were stony. A stony growl.

"It's on the roof but it might as well be…" Shishui waved vaguely with a hand. "somewhere else. All we have is a face, Itachi, and pretty soon, they're gonna have that too." He tried from another angle. "Look, they know Naruto as well as we do. They have the same stakes we'd have, and they'll use the same kiddy gloves we'd wear. This isn't a hostage situation with them, Itachi, not with Naruto."

He glanced at the chair meaningfully. There was no response for awhile.

Then Itachi deliberately set himself on the floor in a half crouch. He made halfhearted looks to the door, but recognized the stubborn set in Shishui's bearing.

They maintained the impasse until his leg began cramping. Itachi pushed through the pain and thought about other things. Like a hot shower, a nice dinner later at home. Like hearing his mother laugh happily, and his little brother pestering him about his day. Like Naruto.

Fuck.

"That guy mopped the floor with me." He admitted ruefully into the silence.

"Face it. There was no mop. You didn't even have the luxury of a floor. He took you down." Shishui made an emphatic chopping motion with his hand, the blade of his right smacking down into his open left palm.

They stared at each other.

Grimly, Shishui was the first to nod. "You're right, this is fucked up. We're going after him. Grab your stuff."

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

AN :?

Rough Chapter. I scoffed at it when I went back to proofread. But the plot winds on and there's no glaring mistakes.

So yeah.

And, Seriously. Someone say something. Am I doing Ok so far? Or are we following chap 4 from a morbid fascination with how this story's gonna crash and burn?

Either way is fine.

And a simple timeline summarizing what's happened so far:

First Chap: Flash Forward. You know, as opposed to Flashback. It's pretty much a self sustaining scene, and won't be mentioned again until I write my way over there. Just a glimpse at what Naruto turns out like. And Haku. Yeah, I copped out. Shoulda faced the fire and kept him a guy.

Second Chap: I vaguely remember writing this. Something to do with Tsume and Kiba. And Tsume's dog. I had to wiki it for the name.

Third Chap: The first action scene after the chap 1. Hell, it wasn't even that elaborate. Just Naruto messing around with explosives. If I put it that way though, then I haven't really written a fight scene at all so far. I mean, I thought the pursuit in chap 1 was cool, but rereading it, I realized that pretty much nothing happened.

Fourth Chap: That's this one. I don't think I need to summarize it. But Naruto's stunt wasn't just a stunt. There's gonna be repercussions.