Big ol' a/n just a explanation about the timeline and missions – since the manga/anime have Konohamaru and his peers going out on 'missions' like cat-finding on their own while still students at the academy – and Konohamaru is said to be 9 or 10 at the time, I have placed Iruka in that same age track, as being approximately 10 at the end of the last chapter (Kakashi approx 13 Asuma approx 17 Kotetsu and Izumo approx 10). I have deemed him old enough to roofie skunks (mission rank: D?) on his own now. The academy kids also went out for training missions in groups as in the episode where Naruto takes Udon, Moegi & Kono and gets them lost and Iruka has to go look for them. Since Kakashi received Obito's eye and made jounin while the Fourth was still alive, and he is said to have made jounin at 12 or so, I have pieced together everyone's ages and activities as they appear in the story using main events to set up the timeline. The death of the Iruka's parents and the Fourth occurs during the sealing of the demon in the infant Naruto, if you subtract 12 (Naruto's age in the 1st chapter) from Iruka's age (anywhere from 22 to 24 in the 1st chapter; Kakashi's age ranges even wider: 24-27) he seems to have been about 10-11 at the time. It is a little contradictory to the way the manga/anime portray him as being orphaned at a very young age – sure, it's young, but some of his contemporaries are nearly living as adults by that age. It seems to be his unique warm personality that makes it so much more of a blow for him. Any and all of this is still arguable, every time I thought I had the definitive answer, there was another 'fact' or argument out there to contradict it… but in the end I had to stop waffling and settle on something in order to drop everyone into the timeline without being vague. Well, that was dull, wasn't it? I hope this chapter helps to wake you up…

Chapter 3

The sky glowed orange and the air was charged with fear, death and destruction. The nine-tails attack had begun as foretold, and the village was in danger of falling to ruin.

Iruka's parents took several minutes to make their decision, and in the end they relied on cold facts for their determination. Iruka was not strong enough to be of benefit. The likelihood was too great that older shinobi would be distracted from fighting by a young boy sacrificing himself to the conflict. It caused Iruka's potential as a disruption to outweigh his benefit as a soldier on the battlefield.

His mother tallied the possibilities swiftly. The boy was a liability and could not be allowed to fight and die with them. It cut like a knife to deny this momentous honor to her boy but in issues of war her loyalties were to Konoha. She called to Iruka and instructed him to maintain the home as was his usual task while they went on this mission. There was no time now for a lengthy goodbye or explanation; she had already wasted too many precious minutes determining his fate. She clasped his hand hard and led him to the edge of their property as they left, one hand on her boy, one roaming to verify her weapons and tags were all at the ready

His father gave him a rough hug, earning him a confused and deeply frightened reaction from his son, and an angry, betrayed glare from his wife as the sight threatened her resolve. "Take care of the house, son. We're counting on you."

With eyes cast away she gave in and hugged him as well, a quick, hard embrace with no pause as she turned and launched into a sprint, matching stride-for stride with her mate.

The tone of finality in the man's voice, coupled with the open show of affection and the looks on their faces, quivered in Iruka's heart even after they disappeared from view. The wall of noise from the raging battle, far too close and frightening, rose and fell with huge inhuman roars and what sounded like the screams of men in terror or pain. It was unlike anything Iruka had ever heard, or even imagined, in his life.

He secured all the doors and windows of their empty home, taking his father's words to heart. He locked, latched, and used all his fledgling powers to properly perform the seals. Perhaps the battle was expected to reach the area here near their house, and Iruka would be called upon to defend their property. He swung up onto the porch roof, then scampered up to the highest point on the roofline. His fighting instincts were taking over at the thought of his parents engulfed in that danger, muting the fear, bringing his kunai to his palm in the urge to join the battle.

From the high vantage point he could see flames, bursts of exploding masonry and what he could swear were bodies being tossed like rag dolls, silhouetted by the red-orange glow.

It looked like the end of the world. His breath caught, and everything ground to a halt as it hit him.

That finality in his father's voice. They were going to face annihilation. They did not expect to come back.

Anger rose up in a black wave and Iruka ran full tilt and leapt the enormous distance to the next roof, abandoning his appointed task. A battle of this magnitude should be fought by every available shinobi, and they had left him out of it. He knew his parents perfectly well, and it didn't even enter his mind to be thankful that their decision would result in sparing his life. He knew the truth in an instant. They did not see him as being capable of making a significant contribution to the battle. Otherwise, they would have enlisted him to join them.

Another chorus of dying screams rose in the near distance and Iruka now armed himself with kunai in both hands, unsure what he was going to come up against but determined to make his mark. His parents were heading straight into this and he would surprise them, maybe save them, maybe make the pivotal difference in the battle, who could predict? His parents had taught him the ripple effect, the value of the smallest contribution. Damned if he would hide and do nothing to aid the village in this horrendous attack. Determination manhandled his fears into the back seat and pushed him straight into the fray.

He changed direction, hitting the ground with a slightly heavier impact than he'd intended. His speed picked up again as he rounded the corner of the last building standing before the conflagration. He had to stutter-step to line himself up and went to launch himself into a tall tree to gain a vantage point on the deafening battle. The heat radiating from the orange light singed his lungs and he was already dotted in sweat. It didn't break his concentration; with the raging chakra licking the air made it impossible to focus on anything but preparing to meet this onslaught.

That was how the older shinobi was able to catch him unaware. A powerful arm wrapped around him, snagging him out out if the air in mid-leap. He was gripped tightly to his captor's side, pinning his limbs as it caught him and began hauling him backwards, back in the direction he'd just come from, and he cried out in surprise and anger.

Someone was shouting to get the kids back and Iruka screamed in the jounin's ear, fighting to get loose but not inflicting any injury. It was a Konoha jounin, not an enemy, after all.

"Let me go!" he screamed, eyes starting to stream tears from the sting of the burning air. "My parents are fighting, I'm supposed to be fighting along with them! Let me go, let me fight!"

The jounin said nothing; he just let his iron grip and continued path away from the cataclysm speak for him. The struggle in his arms turned desperate, then despairing, then silent and unresisting.

By the time he deposited the boy with the other youngsters he appeared to be in shock. The sensei from the academy charged with overseeing the temporary shelter shoved Iruka back and gave him a quick, appraising look. He didn't look like a flight risk at the moment. The shinobi that delivered him here had already darted away to continue his urgent round-up. The sensei returned his attention to the very small children that were huddled and crying for their mothers.

He was wrong about the risk. Within minutes Iruka was sprinting away again.

The sound had lessened considerably. He traveled in a wide berth around the village proper to avoid being re-captured and finally made it back to his home. It took a while to get there and the faintest hope that his parents would be there waiting tweaked at his chest. He found it was still locked, empty, untouched. Even the sound of the fire was quieting steadily. Slipping from shadow to shadow he moved to follow his parents' path once more, approaching the ravaged battleground paying careful attention to his surroundings to remain undetected.

The glow now was from the dying fires, slowly being extinguished in the wake of the battle. Whatever force had attacked, had either been soundly defeated or forced to retreat.

But the carnage that Iruka came upon, under the portable lights being brought out to help deal with the aftermath, was beyond anything he'd ever imagined. Even the fantasy carnage from his mother's gruesome storybooks paled in comparison to the scenes his dark eyes absorbed that night. The stark glare and blackened shadows from the glaring artificial lights revealed a mural of death and horror painted in charred strokes of demonic holocaust.

He searched every face in the mopping-up operation, darting to see clearly any shinobi that might even vaguely be the right height, sex, hair-color…none of them, with their expressions ranging from horror to completely blank and everything in between, were the faces he desperately sought.

With the wish repeating over and over in his head that this next search would be fruitless as well, he began to look to the ground instead. Everywhere the dead and dying dotted the scorched landscape. He couldn't be sure if he would even know them if he saw them. Stomach acid fried his throat, rising from within, as the smoke stung his eyes and the stench assaulted his nose.

The flash of something familiar caught the corner of his eye. He did not want to look. He did not want to see. The corner of his eye told him just enough that all hope drained away. He turned his head to take in the sight and confirm what he already knew. There was no other option.

The horribly burned and twisted bodies of his parents lay at the base of a fallen tree. Iruka fell to his knees and his hands wrung over them in disbelief. He knew the boots, the rings, and the sword by heart – otherwise, he would not have connected these wretched corpses with any living thing he'd ever seen. Their faces were all but gone.

The inability to decide whether to touch them or not completely took over his conscious mind, and time came to a standstill. There were crews about, stripping the dead from the ashes and signaling frantically when a survivor was found. A crew came upon him, and he didn't react at all.

Careful hands were trying to lift him away, but he hadn't made his decision yet. Suddenly realizing they were making the decision for him, taking him out of reach, he lunged forward and his hands plunged through his parent's bodies instead of allowing him a final embrace. The burnt offerings that coated his hands and face made him freeze in horror; the once-gentle hands now grabbed him firmly and jerked him away before he could defile the dead any further.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" shouted a nameless voice in his grimy ear. Iruka clutched his face in his streaked hands and tried to twist away. Someone else was grabbing at him and he fought harder. "Kid, knock it off!"

They threw him hard, slamming his back against a tree, and he slid down, sitting in silence and staring at his hands. In his peripheral vision he was all too aware that they were removing his parents by shoveling them up into the cart, their mortal remains so immolated that they no longer held together in any meaningful way when lifted from the scorched earth.

They were on his hands, his face, his arms, under his fingernails, in his nose…the realization heightened until he was afraid he would scream.

His mother would never forgive him if he did that.

As soon as they finished excavating the dead couple, the crew moved on, ignoring the boy they'd left against the tree since he no longer interfered with their task. The lights for the search moved along with them, and Iruka sat in the dark, reeking from the burnt flesh.

He couldn't bring himself to go home. Instead, he staggered in the direction of the crumbled marketplace, watching the flashlights searching the rubble. A thin hope rose to the surface of his mind and his feet, tripping on bricks and timbers, took him to the herbologist's store.

Or rather, the expanse of knee-high rubble where it once stood. Little was left of the historic old shop. Anxiety built again in Iruka's heart, and in the dim glow of the searcher's flashlight, the area was unrecognizable. His foot slipped on something that rolled, and he reached down and tugged at the thing he'd stepped on.

Partially crushed, it was a beaded chain with one earpiece from a pair of glasses still attached.

Too much had happened that night already, he had seen too much. This seized his gut with a final twist of sorrow to add to the shock of having his world vaporized in just a few hours time. He dropped the item and staggered away, ignored in the confusion and massive destruction.

He walked aimlessly, past the freshly-crumbled buildings and leveled pines, the burned apartments and flattened section of village wall. He finally reached a point beyond the destruction, where the forest remained unscathed. He walked even deeper, finally coming to the cold, clear water of a creek. Unmindful of the icy cold and the sharp rocks, he plunged in and scrubbed frantically with his fingernails until his arms and face were clean and free of that smell. He crawled out on hands and knees, over rocks and rough overgrowth, unable to feel the scraping and bruising.

There was nowhere to be, nothing he could conceive of to do. He was cut loose and set adrift, normal life disassembled.

He should be crying, grieving, concentrating on getting control of this new situation and perhaps even pulling himself together to go assist in the aftermath. Instead, he had overloaded and shut down as soon as they scooped up his entire family like so much manure from a stall. The glimmer of hope that came up when he thought of Mikoko-baachan had been crushed as well, his only other familial connection.

He gave up on the effort of hands and knees and wobbled down flat on his stomach, face nestled on his arm in the damp weeds. He lay still, staring into the dark night, mind mercifully blank.

By noon the next day, feeling the bugs crawling here and there in his abused clothing, he began to have a random thought or two again.

The first and most pervasive thought was that this was proof that he was completely alone and uncared for now. There was no one to miss him. No one to realize he hadn't gone home, that he wasn't where he was supposed to be. Not a soul. When he got up, it would be up to him to make it happen. If he was injured and unable to get home, he might die before someone ran across him by accident. If he called for help, strangers would be his only salvation.

So it was up to him. He had to get up.

But he didn't want to. To go home to an empty house, to face the loss in the cold light of reality, or normalcy…no.

Just…no. Not now, not yet…maybe not ever.

o0o0o0o0o0o

His stomach was screaming like a brat and the sun was tracking down preparing to set when he gave up and stood, stiff and sore and itchy and thirsty and hungry. He stumbled back slowly, retracing his steps, too numbed and dazed to remember there would be security to deal with. The result was a close call, nearly getting his head knocked off by the guards when he approached the fallen stretch of wall.

The elder Aburame had to look three times before he recognized the Umino kid. Once he did, things added up quickly. He'd witnessed where the Uminos fell, faceless numbers among the dead.

"Iruka? Where are you headed, son?" Shibi eyed the boy closely.

But Iruka kept walking without reaction. The jounin's firm hand swept down to catch him by the upper arm. Prevented from moving past, Iruka stood with arms and head hanging down heavily.

"Iruka…" Did the boy know already? The senior bug jounin realized there was insect life in the young man's clothes, so much so that he couldn't possibly be unaware of it. He didn't seem to be injured, but his mental condition…yes, very likely the boy knew.

The dark head remained bowed and silent.

"Do you know, boy?"

Iruka's head nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly. His voice was small. "I saw."

"You saw…" Aburame swallowed. "Well, then."

"Going home." Iruka pulled away, not struggling, just making his wishes clear.

In the aftermath, a boy with no serious injuries and a safe home to return to was hardly a priority. The jounin reluctantly let him go. "Sorry about your family."

Iruka, free to move on, nodded again as he trudged away.

tbc