Why is this so long? (for me, anyway, haha)

Something that actually has more to do with Tobirama and Mariko than Obito and Madara! -yaaay-

Hey guys, thanks so much for the reviews! You make my day :D -hug- Sorry if I didn't reply to all of them, but it made me happy just to see that you guys enjoy these! And yes, Obitopede shall make his reappearance... I also had fun with Naruto-ception, that was so weird. It was like the time Mariko said "MADARA-ception!" and Mito thought that was just so wrong (it is, if you think about it...-shudders-).

NOTE:I am SUPER aware of the inaccurate timeline in this. NOTHING lines up. Then again, what part of Naruto's timeline really lines up? (laughs) Like when Tsunade is shown with Hashirama, he seriously looks like he's 30. Then again, Tsunade's fifty years old, now, but looks 20 years younger than she really is.

Explanation? SENJU DON'T AGE. Okay.

Besides that, I even confused myself by adding Mariko's second child in there, when I only intended to have her first. Oh well. Now both of them are in there. They're both toddlers/infants, soooo...it's all good, they have very little role.

By timelines not lining up, I mean Hash's granddaughter being older than Tobirama's son. What is that. WHAT IS THAT. Does that make Tobirama SUPER OLD or does that mean Hashirama was SUPER YOUNG when he had his kid? What is a timeline?!

Uh. So, just ignore the fact that my Naruto timeline is an epic fail, and enjoy!

Disclaimer: Naruto's not mine, because DO YOU SEE THIS TIMELINE?!

Chapter 14: Babysitting

If Tobirama thought that coughing and hiding in the bed made for a good "I'm-sick-and-can't-do-anything-for-you" cover-up, then he was wrong.

"Seriously, sensei, please?" Hiruzen begged.

"Didn't Mariko—" cough, "—tell you guys that—" cough, "—I'm sick today?" cough.

"Uh. No." Hiruzen leaned against his old teacher's doorway, staring at the mass that was Tobirama trying to conceal himself under the comforter. Hiruzen was probably twenty something, now, and was tasked with an early team…because Hashirama's kid had a kid early too, and voilà! Tsunade was his job now, along with a pale kid who always wanted to learn new jutsu, and a child that looked more like a human cotton ball.

No, it wasn't a team. It was babysitting. They were like, 6 years old.

"Sensei, Tsunade won't listen to me," Hiruzen explained. "Not since Hashirama-sama…"

"Sorry, Saru. Can't do anything for you now, it's been a year or so already, figure it out yourself."

"You're her great-uncle." Hiruzen crossed his arms.

"Don't make me sound so old," Tobirama snapped.

"I thought you were sick, sensei."

Cough, cough. "I am, Saru." Cough.

"Okay, that's it. I'll call Mito, then." Hiruzen turned and opened his mouth, prompting Tobirama to peek out of the covers. His student began hollering the first syllable of Mito's name when the white-haired Senju burst out of bed and ran over to clamp a hand over the brunet's face.

"Fine, fine! I'm not sick, okay?!" Tobirama exclaimed.

"No one ever thought you were, sensei," Hiruzen deadpanned. "I would've gotten you to help me one way or the other."

"That was dirty," Tobirama hissed, narrowing his eyes at the younger man.

"I was taught by the best." Hiruzen flashed a grin, and then made his way out of the Senju complex.

"Yeah, like, it was that big." Jiraiya held his arms out, his eyes following his hands' example and widening dramatically.

"What was that big?" asked Orochimaru.

"The frog," Jiraiya replied dramatically, emphasizing the "g" of "frog" unnecessarily. Then he added an eye roll, as if Orochimaru should've known that already.

"And?" Orochimaru was not impressed.

"It. Was. Huge!" Jiraiya leapt in the air.

Orochimaru, still not impressed, shrugged and turned to Mariko, who was trying to answer all of Tsunade's questions. Somehow, the poor blunette had gotten stuck with babysitting the three by the ramen shop while Hiruzen went to get Tobirama. The monkey had begged her to take care of them, then left without waiting for her answer. Why couldn't he just take care of his team and she could go get her own husband? Her grand-niece had so many questions, it was a wonder there weren't things popping out of her head. Besides that, it seemed like the only one who could get her to behave was Mito, when her parents were out of town. Mariko had no such power.

As for the other two, the human cotton ball and the skinny pale one with hair that covered the majority of his face, Mariko was concerned for them too. The one with white hair seemed to be on a constant sugar high, and he, too, asked too many questions, while the other one with the purple-ish skin around his eyes just wanted to learn jutsu. He was, what? Six years old!?

"Auntie, where's sensei?" Tsunade asked. "Has he gone to buy dango? Or has he gone to buy ramen? Where's Grandma Mito? Where's Tobirama-oji-san? He's funny. Auntie, can I have some ramen? Can you get Jiraiya to shut up? Auntie, can I have a pretzel? Auntie, do you like pretzels? Because I like pretzels. Actually, can I have some dango? Didn't sensei go to buy dango? I hope he got the kind I like, because—"

"Saru, get over here now, unless you want icicle down your throat!" snapped Mariko, interrupting the little girl's incessant stream of questions. Said monkey hauled ass and arrived in front of the blunette without further delay. Tobirama sauntered up behind his student, looking rather sour.

"That was uncharacteristically unpleasant," he commented.

"You would know." Mariko made a face at him, which he ignored, because husbands must learn to ignore lots of things. But then again, wives probably had to ignore more, because if they didn't, they would blow up in their husbands' faces and probably kill something first.

"Tobirama-oji-san! Did you know, frogs have tongues attached backwards?" Tsunade asked. Tobirama told her he didn't, though he wasn't sure if this was true or not. He glanced at Sarutobi, who just shrugged.

"Tobirama-sama! I have white hair! Does that make me cool?" Jiraiya danced around the Second Hokage, who should've been in his office working, but he'd called off sick. That was just perfect, because now it was more like truancy from school, and Mito would have his head for "slacking off on the job to take care of…what are you doing?!".

"Sure, snowflake." Tobirama ruffled Jiraiya's hair, and the boy nearly died of happiness. Orochimaru asked about jutsus, and all of them sort of gave him this exasperated look.

"Teach me…the Edo Tensei," he said solemnly.

Tobirama's eyes nearly popped out of his head, and he guffawed.

"That was attractive, honey." Mariko stared at him. Tobirama rolled his eyes and then straightened, and looked the boy in the eyes. Or rather, more like the one visible eye not covered by his curtain of black hair.

"That's a forbidden jutsu," he explained. "No one is allowed to learn it."

"I could bring your brother back to life." Orochimaru said all of this with a straight face. Tobirama had been expecting a Madara-like evil smile.

"Saru, will you teach your kids some respect?" he said, turning on his student.

"Hey, they're like…six years old!"

"Exactly."

By the time they got their ramen (they finally gave up on training them with anything, and settled on the ramen shop right next to them), Tsunade had asked at least 150 questions, and Jiraiya was on the verge of being kicked out of the shop.

"Tobirama-sama! Did you know…"

"Teach me…the summoning jutsu."

"Tobirama-oji-san, can I have those chopsticks? Auntie, can I have dango? Sensei, didn't you go get the dango? Why did you bring Tobirama-oji-san? I want the dango! Auntie, can you buy me a dress? Grandma won't buy me one, because apparently I'm too little. Tobirama-oji-san, convince Grandma that she should buy me a dress! Sensei, where's my dango? And did you know that Jiraiya doesn't know how to tie his shoes? Isn't that silly? Oh, and the other day, why did that cat have a bow on its head? And why was that lady wearing a coat? It's summer!"

"I feel so bad for you," Tobirama muttered. "I think I understand why I assigned you this." He nodded to himself, quite satisfied with himself, but also pitying Hiruzen for his daily disasters. He also understood why Mariko was so snappy now. Their own children at home made them busy enough.

"Hiruzen, explain why sensei is here."

Koharu entered the restaurant and glared at the mall, especially Hiruzen.

"I can't, Koharu. I really can't."

"You called me here!"

"Hokage-sama, aren't you sick?" Koharu glared at her old teacher, mocking him by putting emphasis on "Hokage-sama". Her eyes glinted dangerously, and it seemed like an any moment, she would whip out the needles holding her hair together and throw them at both her old teammate and her old teacher.

"You have dango on your head!"

Everyone turned to look at Jiraiya, who starting laughing hysterically, and was soon joined in by Tsunade, and even Orochimaru. Koharu now looked as if she was about to burn down the ramen shop, and Tobirama was ready to flee, because he'd already paid for the destruction of a dango shop when Hiruzen accidentally burned it down a few years back.

"Teach your cotton ball some manners, Hiruzen." Koharu glared at everyone, then, and turned on her heel.

"Hokage-sama, you should go," Hiruzen told his teacher sarcastically.

"This is all your fault, Saru," accused Tobirama. Meanwhile, Mariko, basically forgotten, sort of just meandered out of the ramen shop to leave the children in the hands of her husband and Hiruzen. To be honest, she would've preferred to have brought them to someone else, because giving three six-year-olds to her husband and his student was probably not the best idea. She worried for the sanity of those children.

Well, Mariko was on the spot for at least one of them.

Orochimaru went crazy-snake on them all and ran away from the village (not to mention trying to destroy it, too). Jiraiya became a big pervert (Mariko sometimes wondered if this came from Hiruzen, but when she thought of how Hiruzen became more perverted than he was already, Mariko would turn to glare at her husband, who would smile at her innocently) and wandered around writing "books" with his "research". Tsunade left the village and gambled her money away, to the despair of Shizune and Tonton the pig. Well, then she became Hokage, and she hated paperwork just as much as her grandfather and great-uncle and her sensei did, so that must've been normal.

"I worry for our grandniece," Mariko muttered that night. She felt Tobirama's chest rumble as he chuckled, running a hand fondly through her hair.

"You don't worry for our children?" he asked, shifting so that she could lay her head in the crook of his shoulder.

"Not as much. Our children have me to protect them from you and Saru, but as for Hashirama's granddaughter and those two boys? I'm not so sure."

"That's harsh, Mariko." Tobirama smiled and wrapped an arm around her wife's shoulders. He felt her shrug, and he also saw a shadow of a smile on her face as well.

"It's true. We'll have to watch out for her, though."

"I agree. I'll defend her from all those nasty boys," Tobirama laughed.

"Too bad no one was there to protect me from you," Mariko told him, smiling now into his shirt. Tobirama lightly pinched her arm, making a face.

"Hey, we were a different story. You had no choice," he responded, trying to defend himself. "I wasn't that bad, was I?"

"I think we've been over this. You were that bad." Mariko smiled and let him press a light kiss to her lips, as if to prove that he wasn't that bad.

"I guess. But at least now we know that the boys won't dare take advantage of Tsu, right?" Tobirama thought of how he would scare away any suitors. He laughed inwardly at this. If Hashirama had been there, he, too, would've made a bat out of his Wood Style and chased all the boys away from his granddaughter. Well, Tobirama had a feeling that the boys would be intimidated by her lineage alone. Either that, or Tsu-chan would grow up to be the most fearsome kunoichi to have ever existed…with the exception of Mito, of course.

"You'll probably hide in every corner, and every time a boy tries to confess to her, you'll be there and scare the hair off their heads," Mariko answered.

"You never know. Maybe Mito will beat me to it," Tobirama mused.

"That would be interesting. Anyway, good night." Mariko rolled over and went to sleep.

"Night," murmured Tobirama, into Mariko's hair as he wrapped his arms around her.

The next morning, Tobirama was back in office, earning a few skeptical looks from some of the building workers.

"Weren't you ill, Hokage-sama?" some asked.

"Ah, it wasn't that bad. Just a short migraine," he answered waving it off. On the inside, he grimaced, and hoped that no one had seen him outside the day before.

Meanwhile, somehow, Hiruzen had thrown the children in custody of Mariko again. Now the blunette was really pissed, because she was in charge of three overexcited six-year-olds, and at the same time, was toting her blue-haired son. The little blue baby watched her with his father's eyes, showing his pity for his poor mother with his giggly baby voice.

"BLUE BABY!" Jiraiya started laughing. For some reason, this was extremely funny, because now all three of them were squirming with laughter, the cotton ball boy rolling on the ground, clutching his stomach. Tsunade kept giggling, and then Orochimaru abruptly stopped and asked some more "can I learn THIS jutsu" questions.

"Teach me…the Ice Style," he said bluntly.

"I can't, that's a bloodline limit," Mariko informed him, a bit exasperated. He didn't seem to understand, and Mariko didn't really feel like explaining. Also, Tsunade had started off with her questions again. She had, in addition to her nonstop mouth, also accidentally swung her arm and somehow made a hole in the fence.

Jiraiya began laughing again.

"Teach me…the Wood Style," Orochimaru said this time.

"I wrecked it!" cried Tsunade, eyes widening in horror as she stared at the broken fence. Jiraiya came over, wobbling a little with his six-year-old gait, and patted her shoulder.

"I can fix it!" he exclaimed, and pretended to board up the fence.

"This is why I must learn the Wood Style," Orochimaru insisted.

"Tsunade, it's okay. Let's get a bandage for your hand. Jiraiya, stop running around. Orochimaru! Only the First Hokage can use the Wood Style, and—"

The blue baby started crying.

"See what you guys did? You made Auntie's baby cry!" Tsunade crossly put her little hands on her hips, narrowing her eyes at the two boys. Jiraiya giggled, and Orochimaru considered something that sounded vaguely like "learn to summon a funny animal so the baby will stop crying".

"Tsunade, hush!" Mariko snapped. She turned to her son with a softer voice. "There, there, shhh, quiet now. It's okay, shhh."

In the Hokage Tower, Tobirama felt his nose itch. It was as if another reason to send Team Tobirama on some D-rank missions for the sake of punishing Saru by forcing him to do boring tasks with his old teammates had appeared.

"Auntie, do you like horses?"

"I do."

"Auntie, do you like bugs?"

"I don't. Why? Do you like horses, Tsu?" Mariko smiled down at her grandniece, but the blonde girl was too fixated on her bug question as Jiraiya knelt to study an ant.

"Summon a bug no jutsu," Orochimaru stated.

"I once ate one of these," Jiraiya said, rather amused.

"EW." Tsunade made a face, then turned to her great-aunt again. "I like ponies, but why don't you like bugs, Auntie? You know, I don't like bugs either. Did you know that an ant crawled up my arm one time? It was gross. So why don't you like them?"

"They're creepy and crawly," Mariko supposed, shifting her son's weight so that she could hold the baby easier. He had been getting so heavy, recently. Maybe she should use one of those baby packs, or even better, have Tobirama carry him for her!

"Yeah. I saw a nasty one today. It was this big!" Tsunade exclaimed, holding out her arms. It vaguely reminded Mariko of Jiraiya the day before, and Hiruzen when he was younger.

Jiraiya agreed, nodding vigorously. It seemed that he and Orochimaru had also seen the bug Tsunade was telling Mariko about, and they gestured with their arms excitedly. Orochimaru whispered darkly about "evil no jutsu" and "summoning bugs" while Jiraiya displayed that the bug was as big as his hand, or even bigger.

"It was…changing shape!"

"Changing shape?" Mariko glanced at the snowflake doubtfully.

"Yeah. Not shape, really, but it was getting smaller, then bigger! Then a little smaller again, then bigger again, until it decided to be one size."

"Auntie, did you know that it had lots of legs?" Tsunade wiggled her fingers, as if mimicking the creature's many limbs. "It was so gross! Do you think that's gross?"

"I think it's really gross," Mariko agreed. She just wanted to get off the topic of bugs now, because Jiraiya began describing how its feelers were going this way and that way, and he then started mentioning how he saw a cockroach the other day, and an earwig, and this one beat them all…

"How many legs do you think it had?" Tsunade asked Jiraiya, who stopped to consider. She asked Orochimaru, too, but the dark-haired boy just shook his head and muttered "bunshin no jutsu on its legs".

"One hundred!" Jiraiya announced, nodding confidently.

"What? Me too!" Tsunade laughed. "Do you really think so? Do you think we're right? I think we're right. I mean, we've counted the legs on a spider. How many again? Oh yeah, eight. And an ant has…six? Auntie, do ants have six or eight legs? But this one had so many! I think it was a hundred. What about you?"

"Wait! I know what this one's called…" Jiraiya squinted hard, as if pressing his brows together would help him think. "We learned this one in school!"

Was the academy teaching them about nature, or something?

"Oh! Oh! I remember this one too!" Tsunade copied the cotton ball head's expression, furrowing her brows and squeezing her eyes shut, even pressing her fingers to her temples in order to concentrate harder. Mariko worried she would get wrinkles when she was twenty, or something strange like that.

"I can't think of it! Wait, don' tell me!" Jiraiya stuck his tongue out comically.

"Ahh it was so gross, and I can't remember it!" Tsunade hopped in a circle. They looked ridiculous. It seemed like Orochimaru thought so, too, because he sort of just stared at them dubiously.

In the meantime, the blue baby grabbed his mom's hair, and giggled. Mariko had wanted to direct the subject away, but they had insisted on continuing this bug conversation. It was too bad they didn't know that she still screamed when she saw one. One time, she was on her way to Tobirama's office when a spider was on the wall, and she hollered "TOBIRAMA!" as if a crazy Kiri nin was attacking her.

The Hokage had busted out of his office as if his life depended on it, knocking over some foreign affairs officers in the process (was that the Stone ambassador?) and sped down the hallway. When he found his beloved perfectly fine, cringing at the spider on the wall, he sighed and nearly passed out. In the end, he slapped the poor arachnid with his shoe and directed Mariko out of the building. By then, Mariko had forgotten why she needed to see Tobirama in her fright. Tobirama, who nearly had a heart attack when he heard her scream, took a few minutes to calm down and return to his room, where he apologized to the guests he'd bowled over just before.

When Mariko walked past the Konoha hospital, she remembered what she had gone to see Tobirama for. It was too bad, because the spider had just ruined her courage, and she returned to Mito, who slapped a hand to her face, exasperated.

It seemed as if Mariko could never tell Tobirama when she was pregnant by herself. That was okay though, she could just say she didn't know while holding their first child and putting on an extremely shocked face.

"I know what it is," Orochimaru said seriously.

"You do?!" the two others exclaimed, gaping. Tsunade pushed, and the boy fell backwards, grumbling sourly. Tsunade jumped up and down excitedly.

"What is it? I remember it, but I don't, but didn't the teachers teach us this? Jiraiya, why don't you remember? I thought you remembered everything? Or was that Orochimaru? Or was that—"

"Of course I know it!" Jiraiya retorted. They waited expectantly. "Uh…"

"Spit it out!" Tsunade demanded. Mariko worried that the girl would have an excessively hot temper. Maybe, when Tsunade got pregnant one day—hopefully, Tobirama and Mito wouldn't go Katsurou on her and threaten her future lover with death threats—she would be so moody that Konoha risked destruction. Oh, would Hashirama be rolling in his grave then.

That just reminded Mariko of Mito, who had been moody and violent when she was with child. At one moment, she was perfectly tranquil and pleasant, and then the next, she was demanding Tobirama's famous Banana Bread—yes, that famous banana bread that requires capitalization of letters—as if the world was ending. Hashirama had hauled ass over to Mariko's room, where the blunette was trying to clean up after the white-haired Senju (then still her fiancé), and then demanded to know where his younger brother was. Then Mariko had gotten into an argument about how Tobirama should add things to his banana bread, which he refused to do, and began going off about how Hurricane girls must be strange, and somehow they reached the topic of craisins.

"Are you done?!" Hashirama would ask constantly, dropping in every ten or so minutes, each time sweatier and more frenzied than the last. At one point, he'd changed into his armor and his hair was sticking out at odd angles under his hitai-ate.

"Why are you wearing that?" Tobirama asked, looking rather bizarre with his oven mitts on. Mariko kept herself from laughing, then, because the tall shinobi looked absolutely ridiculous when he was baking.

"It's a battle…all of this is a battle…this is war," Hashirama was muttering, causing the two others in the room to worry for his sanity. He then switched back to a normal tone, cleared this throat, and said: "Help me. Please."

They would continue to give Mito her "effing Banana Bread, you idiots!" when she demanded it, as well as dodge any plates she threw when she was done with her banana bread, or even the unfortunate lamp. Hashirama had been appalled by the profanity that came out of his beloved wife's mouth, revealing the insanely extreme Uzumaki personality that must've been hiding inside of her (and was pushed out by the growing child). Afterwards, Mito herself was shocked that she had said such ludicrous comments, and covered her mouth in embarrassment. Nothing like that ever came from her mouth again, after she had her child.

Well, after she had her child, she had yelled something unrepeatable when Kumogakure tried to steal the Kyuubi and her child both at once.

Nothing like that had come from her mouth before she was pregnant either…except the time when Madara tried to steal her heart, and she kicked him in an extremely painful place and threatened to cut his throat out.

And after that, Hashirama chased him to the Valley of the End.

Mariko blinked. She kept having these flashbacks…

Tuning back in, she glanced the now arguing children. Jiraiya had refused to answer, and was now facing Tsunade's wrath, while Orochimaru watched on. Mariko's blue baby whimpered, clutching his mother's neck.

"It's okay," she told her little son. At least he wasn't as noisy as his younger sister, who bawled upon being startled…and she was startled easily. Hopefully, she was sleeping peacefully at home for now, with one of their Senju nannies watching over her…

"Just tell me its name!" Tsunade exclaimed.

"I don't know it!"

"You said you did!" Tsunade grabbed Jiraiya by the collar and shook him back and forth. Wow, violent, Mariko thought. (If animated in an anime, she would have sweat-dropped.)

"So, this is why you must teach me the Lava Release," Orochimaru said, turning to Mariko. Mariko just stared at him incredulously. Lava Release? The boy continued, "So that they can quiet down, and I can learn new jutsu."

"Tell me!" cried Tsunade.

"Ask Orochimaru!" wailed Jiraiya, who was currently having the living daylights shaken out of him.

"Orochimaru!" now both of them wailed.

"It is…" Orochimaru began. He made some random hand seals, then pressed his fingers to his forehead. He muttered a chant, and the blue baby glanced at him, his curiosity piqued and his crying ceasing. "It is…"

"THERE IT IS!" Tsunade screamed, pointing at the hole she'd made in the fence. Crawling out of the fence was a very large, very dark, very shiny, very menacing, hundred-legged creature. All three of the children shrieked then, in their high, terrified voices.

"CENTIPEDE!"

The centipede cackled, clicked its front legs together a few times, and scuttled away.

(Tobirama heard a scream all the way from the Hokage Tower… and it sounded suspiciously like Mariko.)

Bwahahaha.

That was amusing. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Questions, comments, burning concerns?!

Obitopede cackes...