Chapter 5: Enemies, Friends and Family (2,842 words)

Once a long day of thoroughly and satisfyingly trouncing Sasuke with the help of their sensei was complete, Roka made her way back to the SAF dormitories located just a few blocks from the hospital. Normally she would have continued training on her own, but the fact that Ryu had told her he'd see her back at the compound almost assuredly meant he wanted to meet with her. That never bode well for her, but Roka cheered herself up with the knowledge that sensei said that she and Naruto could double-team Sasuke for as long as it took him to accept working with them. She made her way to the familiar room, but paused when she felt Kakashi-sensei's chakra inside along with Ryu. Not wanting to interrupt, Roka sat in the hall to wait and listen in. Ryusuke no doubt could feel that she was there and would tell her if he didn't want her to eavesdrop.

"Now, Ryusuke-kun," Kakashi said, and Roka winced at his choice of honorific. If he were any other person, he would not get away with that. "why don't you tell me what happened this morning."

Roka could feel Ryu's chakra swirl as he contemplated what the right answer would be. Eventually he spoke. "I followed Roka and Dai because I wanted to piss her off."

Roka's own chakra began to stir in irritation at his casual admittance, but she tamped it down when she felt Ryu's begin to feel amused. She would not give him the satisfaction.

"Then she and I sparred; I can only get the coward to fight me when she's really pissed off, see." Roka fumed, her anger only multiplied because she knew he was right. "Sasuke took issue with being on a team with someone from our forces, and I decided to teach him some humility."

Kakashi hummed thoughtfully. "And how did you decide to do that?"

Ryu sighed, and Roka could tell he was doing that head-roll thing he did in place of rolling nonexistent eyes. "I threatened his life a little, held a kunai to his neck and told him to get over himself. Nothing too bad. Roka said you did the same thing after your bell test."

"That was an example hostage situation and I didn't threaten to steal Sasuke's eyes." Kakashi pointed out. "That's a serious offence, you know. Not something that should be said jokingly."

Roka flinched as she felt Ryu's chakra flare angrily. "You think I don't know that?" He yelled. She could picture the way his hands would clench and how he'd toss the hair out of his face to prove his point.

"Then why did you say it?" Kakashi asked calmly.

Ryu's chakra subsided into a smaller roiling mass. After a long silence he said, "I was warning him. Of what he might face in the future. Supply and demand, you know. I hear red and black eyes are all the rage."

Kakashi's voice was stern and his chakra sharp. "Stop joking around Ryusuke. What was really going on?"

Ryu chuckled bitterly. "Fine. He kept going on and on about being the last damn Uchiha. He's not."

Roka raised an eyebrow at that. Maybe her being on the team placement wasn't why Ryu had shown up as she thought. Maybe it was Sasuke's placement.

Kakashi sighed. "Ah, politics. Listen, clan issues aren't any of my business. Just don't let it interfere with either of your training."

Ryusuke paused, "Either of our?"

Kakashi's chakra gave the impression of shrugging. "You're both shinobi of Konoha with high potentials. I'd hate to see something like this get in the way of what either of you can become."

Ryu was silent for a bit but Roka could clearly feel the elation in his energy at being acknowledged by his hero and she wondered if Kakashi's autograph was still on the wall where he had pinned it. That could explain the brief sense of amusement Kakashi's chakra emitted before the conversation. Ryu hadn't given her any slack for the gift; he still beat the shit out of her when he found out Roka got on a team with his hero, angrily claiming 'I'm blind, what the fuck would I want with his signature?' But he had put it on his bedroom wall nonetheless. Roka snapped out of her memory as she felt Ryu's chakra calm into a more typical roil. "Thank you." He eventually said.

She hadn't known Kakashi long, but Roka knew him well enough to picture his typical eye-smile and two-fingered wave as he took his preferred exit out the window. All was quiet for a bit before Ryu eventually moved to open the door. "Looks like someone left their trash in the hall." He snubbed in way of greeting.

Roka scowled as she got to her feet. "What do you want, Ryu?"

"I'm mad. Let's fight." He demanded without preamble.

She blinked. "You made me interrupt my training for that?" She asked incredulously, "You're always mad."

Ryu huffed and grabbed her arm as he walked passed. "I still gotta pay you back for that shit you pulled this morning. I told you; you only do taijutsu and ninjutsu with me. Besides, dumbass, fighting is training."

"Maybe for you!" Roka protested, futilely pulling against his hold. "All I ever get is beat up!"

"So you admit you're a weakling?" Ryu asked.

"Wha- No!"

"Then what's the problem, Murasaki?" Ryusuke taunted. "Are you scared? I'm flattered."

"I'm not scared of you!"

"Oh, really? Your chakra says otherwise~!"

"I- I just don't like pain, okay? That's normal!" Roka screeched in the way only Ryu could manage to pull from her.

"Nothing about you is normal, freak. You're just a wimp!" Ryu grinned; he was in a better mood already.

Sasuke, however, was in a decidedly horrible mood by the time he made it to the designated meeting spot, or 'secret hideout' as his friend Yuri liked to call it. Venerated genius she may be, but Yamanaka Yuri was still two years younger and her sense of drama reflected that. Sasuke easily dismantled and reapplied the layered genjutsu traps surrounding the area and made it into their shared little nook. She quirked a brow at him from behind her book, taking in his bruised and rumpled form without comment.

"Were you followed?" She asked instead.

Sasuke scowled in offence, well, scowled harder than he already was. "Of course not. Who do you take me for?"

Yuri shrugged, standing from her seat on an empty fruit crate and stretched her arms over her head. "You're Sasuke, same as always. It's your teammate I'm worried about. Got a hold of her file today and apparently she's an incredible sensor. Like, on the level of genius. So it wouldn't be impossible for her to follow you here." She paused, stormy blue eyes seemingly gazing through him, reading his every reaction and expression as easily as she had her book. "But you probably don't want to hear about her." She observed. "What unfair shit did life throw at you to piss you off this time?"

Sasuke scoffed, taking her vacated seat on the fruit crate and stripping off his shirt. "Make any more of that bruise balm?" He asked in way of response.

"Of course."

They stayed in comfortable silence, the minty aroma of herbal salve filling the makeshift hut.

"I'm so mad." Sasuke eventually muttered.

Yuri said nothing, taking the balm from his hands to put some on his back. She just listened.

Sasuke growled softly to himself, memories of the day's events fanning his ire. "I don't even know where to start. I hate everybody. Roka is an over-emotional freak. Naruto is an idealistic idiot. Kakashi is a biased jerk and that Ryu… he's worse than an asshole."

"An asshole with gonorrhea?" Yuri helpfully supplied.

Sasuke snorted softly at that. "He's got some serious issues." Then a sneer plastered itself back on his face as another aspect of the day resurfaced that pissed him off. "Kakashi teamed Roka and Naruto up against me." He laughed bitterly. "As if the world isn't already against me."

"I'm not against you." Yuri reminded him.

"And he helped them." Sasuke continued. "I heard him giving them the plan as I left. My whole damn team is against me and it's not fair!"

"No, it's not." Yuri agreed. "Which makes me wonder why Kakashi-san did it."

"I asked for a transfer." He told her. "I don't want to work with a team that's basically dead weight! Now, not only are they dead weight, but they're actively holding me back!"

"Huh." Yuri thought out loud. "And Kakashi-san did all this just because you asked to switch teams?" She giggled a little in her head, thinking of Sasuke 'batting for the other team'.

"Yeah." Sasuke answered, unaware of his friend's dirty thoughts. "He said that if I wasn't working with them, I was working against them."

Yuri wiped her hands on a strip of spare bandage and took a seat in front of him. "He kinda has a point." She mused.

"What!" Sasuke shouted angrily.

"Hey, hey, hear me out." Yuri told him, hands up in a placating manner. "You wouldn't want to be on a team with some people much better than you, right?"

Sasuke eventually shook his head.

"And if they suck as much as you think they do, sure, helping them out might feel like a waste of your time but not helping them just leaves them as the dead weights they are. Though," Yuri said thoughtfully, "I'm not entirely sure they are that bad. Roka's file said that she was above average in everything except ninjutsu. I'm guessing she's where you got most of those bruises? There was one on your back that kinda had a weird impression. Wooden sword?"

"Umbrella." Sasuke corrected. Then, to get the topic of conversation off of his humiliating defeat, asked, "So how the hell'd you get your hands on Roka's file?"

Yuri smiled sneakily. "Oh, you know. My biological father got demoted to social work within the clan when my existence came out and brought shame on his head. He's in charge of making sure the SAF kids are all mentally stable and-"

"Hold on," Sasuke interrupted, "you knew Roka was cripple corps?"

Yuri shrugged, dirty blond locks just brushing her shoulders. "It's kinda all everybody talks about. If you listen to the right people like I do."

"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded.

"I thought you knew." Yuri rolled her eyes at his frown. "Fine. I'll make sure to tell you aaall the gossip I pick up around town… though I assume you only want stuff that's concerning you. If I had to list all the people I know are banging who, or which men fuck my mom-,"

"Okay, okay!" Sasuke interjected.

"-then I'd need a very long piece of paper." Yuri smugly finished.

"That's disgusting." Sasuke deadpanned.

"No, it's blakmail material." She primly corrected.

"You're insufferable."

"You know you love me~!"

Sasuke shrugged. "Sure, but only if you find me that Ryu kid's file. He's blind, looks like he got his eyes torn out."

Yuri gave him a blank stare. "You know- just-," She sighed melodramatically, "leave the manipulative shit to me, honey. I'm way better at it. Though the fact that you

tried means you're learning." She encouraged. Yuri laughed at Sasuke's rolling eyes. "Little pointer there? The fact that you couldn't even say the word 'love' in your attempted emotional bribery clearly showed you were lying. Now, repeat after me: 'I'll love you for all eternity Yuri-hime, if you'd only find me Ryu's file~"

She broke off into giggles at the sound of Sasuke's disgust. "Ugh, stop that. Now you're starting to sound like a fangirl."

She only smiled and batted her lashes. If only you knew…

Sasuke grimaced. "Seriously, stop that. It's gross."

Yuri laughed again. "Alright, alright. So you want this guy Ryu's file, right? If he's blind then he'd be in the SID, but I'd still need to narrow it down a bit. You got a family name?"

He shook his head. "Sorry, no."

"Age?"

Sasuke tilted his head and thought for a moment. "He looked older; around fifteen or sixteen I think?"

The both of them startled when someone unexpectedly entered the hideout. Sasuke grabbed a kunai and Yuri put her hands in the clan's signature seal. Purple frizzy hair poked through the door, followed by stony grey eyes.

"Ume?" Yuri asked, dropping her hands. "What are you doing here?"

"Ume? You mean your teammate?" Sasuke hissed incredulously. "And you ask me if I'm being followed?"

"I didn't follow you, I followed the plot bunny." Ume corrected, pointing at an empty space on the ground.

"And how did you get past the genjutsu traps?" He asked warily, by now somewhat used to the girl's strange hallucinations.

The purple pig-tailed girl smiled in response. "Oh it's easy enough to ignore them if you just follow a bunny. Anyway," She continued more seriously, "I just have one question to ask you and then I'll forget all about your secret place. I'll even have Amnesia to birth me a baby plot to merge with and it will be like this never happened."

Sasuke finally lowered his guard glancing sideways at Yuri. It was no doubt the visitor was actually Ume now; not even a henge could copy her particular brand of crazy. Was Sasuke paranoid? Maybe. Were fangirls wily and unpredictable enough to try to impersonate the crazy girl to get close to him? Probably. Would Sasuke defend his one little sanctuary of sanity with the threat of violence? Definitely.

"Go ahead and ask, Ume" Yuri told her teammate, "but Sasuke doesn't have to answer."

Ume nodded sagely. "Okay, but if you don't answer or say no then the bunny will just want to merge with you anyway. I'm trying to act as proxy so the rabbits can get consent, but there are so many of them, and just one me, and very few people will actually talk to me about what they want in life and I guess I could try to get the others who see the rabbits to help as well, but they mostly stay away from them and they don't-,"

"Ume." Sasuke growled. "Get on with it."

She blinked, smiling apologetically. "Sorry, I don't talk to many humans these days." She cleared her throat and picked up an invisible object. "Okay the question is this: would you enact your revenge even at the cost of your title as Clan Heir and Head, possibly losing all semblance to the Uchiha clan as you know it and remembered it, only to be the same in name and blood?" She asked in one long breath, staring deeply into the imaginary object she held in her grasp.

Sasuke gawped at her, once again surprised whenever the girl decided to form coherent sentences that did not involved the words 'plot', 'bunny', or 'rabbit' at all. Then he shut his mouth to consider her question.

"Quickly," Ume encouraged, "this one's getting impatient and no answer means yes to these little critters."

"Yes." Sasuke decided. "I would do anything to get my revenge."

Ume instantly stumbled back, as if the thing in her arms had kicked her aside in favor of jumping to Sasuke, and had he not blinked in that next moment, Sasuke might've seen the world shift, his vision blurring at the edges, changing so fast it was as if it never occurred. But as it happened, Sasuke did blink and when he opened his eyes it was merely to Ume dusting herself off and giving him and Yuri a beaming smile. "Congratulations Sasuke-kun! Your revenge is as good as done." She bit her lip and glanced around the empty room. "Though saying you'd do 'anything' has attracted quite a few more of them…" She looked worriedly at Yuri, "some you may not like." And with that ominous warning, Ume walked out of their little abandoned hut quietly calling out, "Amnesia? Amnesia! I need a baby bunny to forget what just happened!"

Once the purple-head was out of earshot Sasuke turned to his dirty blond friend with a bemused smirk, which for him was like bursting out into laughter. Yuri however, wasn't smiling. At his raised eyebrows she managed a half-assed grin and shook her head. "Being on a team with that girl has made me superstitious." Reaching down she knocked her knuckles on the worn wooden slats of the fruit crate. "Here's to you not doing anything stupid."

Sasuke rolled his eyes with a cocky smile. "Please. Who do you think you're talking to? I don't do stupid."

"I'm talking to Uchiha Sasuke, the boy who'd do anything for revenge, and also my very best friend." Yuri told him seriously.

He scoffed, turning away so she wouldn't see his reddened cheeks and pleased smile. "You're such a sap." He told her, but Sasuke, like Ryu had found company that could lighten any mood.

Notes:

So a few new characters in this chapter, we meet Sasuke's friend Yuri, and my personal favorite, Ume! Don't'cha just love her? I'm a fan of cute and crazy. She's like my own personal blend of myself, Luna Lovegood and Gairano Raiku from the fic 'Untold story of the Inconspicuous'. Leave a review to let me know what you think!

P.S.

In case you're a stickler for classifications, I guess this story leans more towards AU than Single-point-divergence since I have more than one OC added to the mix. That said, this is an OC driven story and I'm not gonna be randomly changing the plot because it suits me. Y'know, in case that kinda stuff bothers you. Peace!

Acronyms to remember:

SAF= Special Accommodations Force

MAD= Medical Anomalies Division

PID= Physical Impairment Division, sometimes shortened to Physical Division or Physical

SID= Sensory Impairment Division, sometimes shortened to Sensory Division or Sensory

NMP= New Military Police

KonStan= Konoha Standard (referring to sign language)

Next time on, Welcome to the MAD House: Leaf blower no jutsu