Sarutobi Hiruzen, Third Hokage of Konoha, felt like repeatedly slamming his head against his desk. It was bad enough that Iruka was in here practically daily commenting on how inappropriately Kakashi was acting towards Naruto but, the man had recently taken to attacking Jiraiya as well, and the fact that Jiraiya is one of the legendary Sannin didn't seem to faze the Academy instructor in the least. On top of Iruka's over-protective behavior was the headache of Jiraiya actually fulfilling his duties as godfather towards Naruto. If he had known it would be this bad, he would have told the man to stay away from him as he clearly had absolutely no idea as to how to properly raise a child.
First, there had been the complaints that came to his office from the owner of the apartment building Jiraiya was renting a unit in, who had objected to Naruto's presence and attempted to evict him. The key word here being "attempted". The poor man soon discovered that the assistance he'd enlisted after the first failure were useless. There were Jounin and then there were Jounin, and if one of the Legendary Sannin didn't want to cooperate...
Then, there had been the angry Kunoichi who had found Jiraiya trying to convince Naruto to peek into the women's baths at the local onsen. After that, had been the bill he'd received from the owner of a local bar after Jiraiya loudly objected to the fact that they wouldn't serve Naruto due to certain laws that had been put in place in order to curb teenage alcoholism and somehow ended up causing a fight that wrecked half the bar (rumor has it that Iruka was somehow involved).
All of these incidents had taken place within the span of thirty-six hours of his former student taking custody of the boy, and more reports kept coming in practically hourly, and naturally, all of these reports naturally added to the paperwork he had to deal with daily, which made his daily headache that much worse. He prayed that Konoha would still be standing by the end of the month. With the way things were going however, it was quite possible that that would not be the case.
Anger roiled in Kakashi's gut as he watched Naruto who should have been asleep at that moment since he would be getting an early start later that morning drag a drunken Jiraiya out of yet another bar. Though he would take Naruto in in a heartbeat, especially now that he saw that even with his issues he'd be a much better guardian than that bum Jiraiya, it was practically impossible a the moment. If his nice little apartment hadn't been smaller than that dump Naruto used to live in, he would have offered to take the boy in on the day he had returned. With his current income though, he couldn't afford a larger place, and he had only barely been able to afford the gifts he had been buying the boy to make up for the twelve years he had pretty much ignored him.
Normally, he didn't know how he felt about Naruto living with Jiraiya. While the man had been his sensei's Jonin instructor and had been named the boy's godfather by Minato-sensei himself, he was highly irresponsible and had pretty much abandoned the boy for the last twelve years as well. Also, while Naruto was with him, he lacked the supervision and support that the parenting book the Hokage had given him said was necessary for a child's healthy development. Naruto seemed happy to be with the man he'd labeled Ero-Senin despite all of his faults though. That, and Iruka's attacks on him had tapered off quite a bit now that he had a new target to focus on.
Fortunately, Naruto was capable of mostly caring for himself as he'd already done so for years, and hadn't missed any training since moving in with the bum a few days before. Today's training had gone as well as could be expected considering the team he had. The fact that Naruto constantly tried to help the Uchiha who repeatedly made it clear that he had no need or desire for assistance had been disturbing, and the worry that history would repeat itself started to gnaw at him as he watched Naruto keep trying to help. If Naruto considered the Uchiha to be more a friend than a rival, he would try to bring him back after he inevitably betrayed the village. This time though, he would try his damned hardest to make sure it wouldn't be Naruto laying dead on the ground in a puddle of his own blood.
Tenzo smiled. Finally, after weeks of searching and several misadventures that he would dearly love to forget and would probably be reliving in his nightmares for years to come, he had found Tsunade. Now to figure out how to get her to put her necklace up as stakes for a bet...
Smiling shyly, he tentatively approached where she was seated at the bar guzzling sake as if it were going out of style and carefully sat down on the stool next to her, trying to gauge her mood and the likelihood of her taking him up on an offer of a game of cards or something rather than pounding him in the dirt. After settling onto his barstool, he ordered a drink to steady his nerves. Noticing that Tsunade's bottle was nearly empty, he offered to order her a drink as well.
"Not interested." Tsunade said.
"What?" he asked.
"Whatever it is you're after, I'm not interested." Tsunade said.
Tenzo growled in frustration. After coming all of this way, and suffering the things that he had suffered, there was no way in hell he was going to take "Not Interested" for an answer. He had to get that necklace and he would do so if it was the last thing he did...
Naruto frowned as he watched Sakura practically molest a resisting Sasuke at the end of their mission. Not only had the girl refused to help with the weeding because she hadn't wanted to get her hands dirty but, she had constantly fussed over Sasuke whose body language had practically screamed GET LOST! the entire time. No matter how much he tried Sakura hadn't listened to him, and continued to behave in a manner he found increasingly more annoying with each passing day as he found himself constantly comparing this Sakura with her older self who was a much better ninja, and an all-round better person.
He'd told the girl repeatedly since day one that Sasuke didn't like her actions, and wouldn't be interested in her if she kept pretending to be useless when he knew for a fact that she wasn't as he'd been on the receiving end of her blows enough times. The girl hadn't listened to him though, and if anything her behavior had gotten worse. With the way things were going, he guessed that it would take a serious wake up call to get through to the girl the way the Chunin Exams had done the last time around. It was possible that the fast approaching mission to Wave would do the trick. Getting the mission shouldn't be all that difficult considering how he'd gotten it the last time, and the dates of that mission had been seared into his memory long ago as had the dates of just about every major tragedy or disaster in his life.
"So, who wants to get a drink to celebrate another successful mission?" he said cheerfully after dismissing his irritation at Sakura as it was nonproductive.
He'd asked the question as soon as they were out of Kakashi's hearing range after each of the D rank missions they completed, and so far none of his teammates had taken him up on the offer. After asking the question so many times and receiving negative responses each time, asking had become more of a habit than a genuine offer.
"Like they'd even let us in moron! For the last time, stop asking!"Sakura yelled and attempted to hit him as she did almost every time he asked.
She'd stopped at "Like they'd even let us in moron!" the first time he'd asked and "Stop asking!" after the second. From her tone, he could tell that her response had become as routine as his invitation. More's the pity, since he was reasonably certain that Sakura would have a good time if she went for a drink with him once, as ninja bars weren't all about drinking and more than a few establishments had easily throwable and easily breakable furniture and one bar had afternoon tournaments that were popular with the local Chunin. Such group activities could only improve their teamwork, and if Sasuke had better ties to the village, he'd probably be less inclined to destroy it later on.
He was half way to his new home when he was waylaid by Sasuke. Much to his surprise, it had been because Sasuke had actually finally decided to take him up on his offer. Why, he had absolutely no idea.
"So, how exactly are we going to get into the bar?" Sasuke asked in a conspiratorial tone, or at least one that was conspiratorial for him.
"Meet me in the alley behind the restaurant with the giant chicken on it at eight, and I'll show you." he said.
He hadn't known why the restaurant had a statue of a giant chicken on it considering the fact that that was the one type of meat that wasn't on the menu, until Ero-Senin had told him when they had returned from their three year training trip. Apparently, the chicken - or rooster rather - was the symbol of a former shinobi clan that had fought alongside some seriously vicious roosters the way the Inuzuka fought alongside their dogs that had opted to go into the food service industry instead of joining the ninja ranks after the founding of Konoha. Since they'd been a low tier clan and much better at cooking than fighting, it hadn't been all that great of a loss as far as the shinobi forces were concerned. Out of respect for their former comrades, Chicken was the one food that the clan refused to either serve or eat.
Much to his surprise, Sasuke was actually waiting for him when he arrived at their rendezvous spot. Despite the fact that Sasuke constantly smelled faintly of alcohol for some strange reason that he hadn't been able to discern, going to a bar seemed as out of character for the boy as cross-dressing did. Today, the Uchiha boy would be doing both.
After teaching Sasuke the clothed version of the Sexy Jutsu, they headed off to a Shinobi bar that he knew had a good enough reputation for being calm, quiet, and most of all relaxing, since he didn't want to start off with too much too soon, and Sasuke might be driven off by some of the rowdier places he himself was fond of. The owners of this particular establishment didn't overprice or water down the drinks, the bartenders weren't too surly, the bouncers didn't carry sharpened weapons, the seats and tables didn't have unidentifiable sticky spots on them or worse sticky spots that were identifiable and made you regret knowing what they were, and everything was bolted down so you didn't have to worry about getting hit by flying furniture during a bar-fight (flying drinks however were another matter).
When the drinks he ordered for them, a potent beverage from Grass that was called Whiskey, arrived, he noticed that Sasuke didn't wince at the taste and didn't show any indication that he was hiding such a wince indicating that this wasn't Sasuke's first experience with drinking alcohol. This of course was rather disturbing since Sasuke was a real twelve year-old as opposed to a time traveling seventeen year old who'd spent a few years with a borderline alcoholic in a twelve year old's body. It also explained why Sasuke had constantly smelled faintly of a brand of alcohol that he'd associated with cooking despite the fact that Sasuke didn't seem to know all that much about cooking and didn't appear to enjoy the dishes it was commonly used in. Being perpetually hung-over could also go a long way towards explaining the Uchiha boy's attitude as well.
"You know, it's never a good idea to drink alone." he said to the boy as he mentally kicked himself for not spotting Sasuke's apparent problem before.
Sasuke seemed to ignore his advice as usual as he gestured for another drink, without asking why he would say something like that or even making a sound of acknowledgment of his comment for that matter. Against his better judgement, he allowed the boy to order another drink and another and another...
As he would discover several drinks later, rather than being one of those people who got angry when intoxicated, Sasuke turned out to be one of the worst sort of drunk for a ninja to be. He was the sort that started crying and spilling anything they were thinking about at that particular moment including his entire life story. During the course of the evening, he learned several things that he never knew about his teammate, and they were that he hadn't imagined in association with Sasuke and had wished that he'd never learned, including the reason Sasuke really didn't like "fangirls". Sasuke's aloofness and seeming indifference towards members of the opposite sex hadn't entirely been caused by the Uchiha massacre, though the massacre had been the incident that had set off part of it.
He knew that in the other timeline, girls his and Sasuke's age had practically tried to molest the boy and that girls that were a little older had been slightly more aggressive in their pursuit of the Uchiha heir but, he'd had no idea it had been this bad. When people thought of that kind of thing happening, they usually pictured males doing it. He himself had had an experience with a caretaker gone bad when he was a child but not to the extent Sasuke had apparently suffered, since that particular caretaker had been discovered and executed before there could be a second incident. Apparently, Sasuke had managed to get a couple of Genin teams with some of the more "aggressive pursuers" on them as baby sitters long before he was old enough to start thinking about such things, as well as two live in caretakers who had decided to take their dislike for the former Uchiha clan out on him in small ways such as forgetting to feed him on occasion and one caretaker who'd turned out to be an "aggressive pursuer" with a taste for paralyzing drugs.
Now that he'd seen under the surface of the Sasuke worship that had been going on after the Massacre, he could see why Sasuke had been so willing to leave Konoha the last time around...
Iruka had recently become obsessed with pedophiles for some strange reason. Maybe, he should point him towards some real ones as well as a few child abusers. With his mind made up, he escorted Sasuke to his apartment and headed out to Iruka's place.
UMINO IRUKA FINDS REAL PEDOPHILES THIS TIME! blazed across the front of the Konoha Times two mornings after the "bar incident". Upon reading it, Sasuke was relieved that his name had been left out of the article entirely. He'd appeared in the newspaper's gossip column often enough already, and he didn't need to see his name associated with something that would most assuredly garner him even more pity, and give his fangirls more reason to want to "fix him". He wasn't entirely sure whether or not he regretted going to the bar with his teammate because he'd run out of booze but, considering the result, he couldn't exactly complain.
He'd woken the morning before with a massive hangover and the overwhelming realization that he'd told Naruto things he'd sworn never to tell anyone. That evening, he learned about the earlier commotion near the local jail. Apparently, his former Academy instructor had rounded up all three of the women who had abused him while they were supposed to be watching him, as well as a couple of the former Genin who had done the same while they were supposed to be looking after him while his caretakers were away, and turned them over to the ANBU T&I division early in the morning after his trip to the bar with Naruto. The interrogations had been short, and all three women and both teenagers who were now fast approaching adulthood, but legally adults since they were Shinobi, had been sent over to the jail before the end of training that day. He'd been called to the Hokage's office to give a formal report that afternoon, and had been informed that he would not be forced to give testimony in front of a full tribunal since the women had already confessed to abusing some civilian children that they had been tending to as well as him so, his name could be kept out of the investigation if he so chose. The commotion at the jail had been made by the angry parents of the civilian children were were calling for execution in this case, as in the case of the orphanage staff worker who had abused his charges seven years ago.
After such a trying day, he had naturally used the only method he'd found that kept the nightmares away, the method he'd learned when his first caretaker after the massacre had made him drink until he passed out because she "didn't want to have to listen to his screaming". As a consequence, he would be nursing yet another hangover throughout today as well.
Koharu felt sick as she read the report on the Uchiha boy. Two of the child's caretakers had gone days at a time without feeding the child who hadn't yet known how to fend for himself in that area, and one of them turned out to be sexually abusive and she had allowed that to happen. She had thought his constant requests for new caretakers had been because he was a spoiled brat with impossible standards, and had allowed them to be treated accordingly. If she had known what was really going on...No child deserved this, not even the child of a pair of traitors to the village.
Despite the fact that she didn't want to think such things of her old friend whom she'd grown up with, she had a feeling that Danzo had something to do with this, if only it was just knowing what was going on and allowing it to continue. The man had a vested interest in the boy, and therefore would have had extensive intelligence on who was caring for him. To allow those "caregivers" to be turned loose amongst the civilian populace after they were dismissed from their positions in the Uchiha household was unconscionable, and definitely not in the best interests of the village which Danzo claimed to espouse. She knew that the Hokage was not at fault in this incident, as the only orphan that the Hokage currently dealt with directly was the Jinchuriki Naruto. All others - even the last Uchiha - had a special committee to deal with their needs, and the sad truth was that Danzo most likely had his fingers in that committee as he did almost everything else.
There had been things she would side with Danzo on over her teammate and Hokage, trusting that he had Konoha's best interests in mind. There had been things she had thought Danzo more capable of dealing with because she believed her longtime friend to be too soft-hearted to deal with them properly, such as the betrayal of the Uchiha who themselves had been planning to betray the village, but not anymore. If Danzo could knowingly allow even one of Konoha's children to be abused in such a manner on his watch for a reason that was completely non-productive, there was no telling what the man would be willing to do to Konoha as a whole.
Author's note: as for the whole Abused!Sasuke thing. I got to thinking how the girls his age practically molest him, and how his follower Karin had practically tried to rape him and wondered what the older teens and some women would be like if they "pursued" little Sasuke and realized that they'd probably really molest him. Then there's the fact that there's a good chance that not everybody would worship the ground that the Uchiha walked on considering his relatives had probably pissed off a good number of people, and a few of them might try to take revenge. A younger Sasuke who was taught not to hit women unless sparring or on the battlefield probably would have been unable to fight back, especially if there were paralyzing drugs involved. As for Koharu believing that Danzo knew, it would be logical to assume that Danzo would have thorough intelligence reports on any of Sasuke's caretakers, considering the fact that he had a vested interest in keeping the boy alive so Itachi wouldn't hand Konoha's secrets to just about everybody.
Edited 11-2-12