Another day, another Village patrol mission. It's boring, sure, but I can still practice some skills while I drift across the rooftops. There are lots of ninja moving here and there, and hiding from them is a good way to hone my stealth. I have a modified chakra suppression Seal on my forearm, dulling the radiation of energy so my signature stands out less from background, and my invisibility and chameleon Genjutsu are getting quite effective.

I have been trying to come up with a more efficient means of avoiding detection, something in the vein of a Somebody-Else's-Problem Field; invisibility is all well and good but to an alert ninja it can make you stand out like a signal flare, clearly marking you as !HIDING! What would the sequence be though? I could probably start with a modified Hell Viewing and work in more elements related to attention... Dog-rat-dog-ram-dragon-boar-sparrow-horse-hare? Or maybe dog-rat-dog-ram-dragon-boar-monkey-horse-ox? Hmm, maybe-

My attention is abruptly caught by a crashing noise coming from the shop a street over; my course adjusts immediately to investigate. It's probably nothing but this is literally my entire job right now so…

A small figure in a white shirt featuring a prominent orange swirl tumbles out the door, a visibly angry man in an apron rushing out after and waving a broom in a threatening way. Let's see: wearing orange? Check. Getting yelled at by villagers? Check. Blonde as a dandelion? Check. Cute little whisker scars? Big check. Well, I had been wondering when I would meet the title character…

"Is there a problem? Is he bothering you?"

The shopkeeper shook the broom at Naruto aggressively.

"I'll say! This little monster was-"

"I wasn't talking to you."

He flinches at my flat tone and blank stare, before I turn to the ensure the security of the Village's largest strategic asset.

"Are you alright?"

Naruto is looking up at me with an expression of surprise and awe, but quickly subsides into excited questioning.

"Oh cool! You came out of nowhere! How'd you do that? Are you a ninja? How do I learn to do that?"

I crouch down slightly and ruffle his hair, keeping my tone friendly.

"I am a ninja, yes. And it took lots of practice to learn to move so fast. You'll have to study hard in the academy, okay?"

Sun bright hair bobs as he nods energetically and I give him another pat on the head. Don't hug him, don't hug him, be professional. How is it legal for a child to be this cute?

"Go play now, I'll deal with this guy."

He's gone in an instant and the brief spark of cheer flickers out in his wake as I turn back to the sputtering clerk.

"But he-"

A sharp gesture with my hand cuts him off abruptly.

"I don't care. It doesn't matter what he did. He could pull your liver out and eat it in the middle of the street if he wanted to. You. Do. Not. Hit. The. Container. You are legally allowed to withhold service from anyone, but you are not permitted to risk damage to Village property. If he comes by again and you don't want to sell him anything, tell him to leave. If he doesn't obey, then flag down a patrol and we'll handle it. Do you understand this warning?"

The subtle pressure building in the air seems to be getting to the little civilian, for he is visibly quailing under my softly spoken words. When he doesn't respond immediately I lean in a bit closer to hiss in his ear.

"Do you understand this warning?"

He almost falls back from me, nodding his head rapidly and voicing his assent.

"Excellent! Your cooperation is appreciated."

With a final polite nod I depart, bouncing back across the rooftops after Naruto. I keep an eye on him for the rest of the day, as I can, and fortunately it appears that the store clerk was an outlier; most of the villagers are wary, and perhaps a little rude, but not at all abusive.

Naruto's home conditions are about as bad as I had feared though; dirty dishes stacked a foot high in the sink, clothes and kunai scattered all over the floor, a pile of instant ramen cups overflowing the trash can.

I ignore the impulse to run an exasperated hand through my hair and instead resume my normal patrol, making a mental note to deliver some supplies to his apartment when I have a free moment. Some clothes, vegetables, books on chakra control and basic techniques… or, rather, maybe just some instructional drawings. Kinesthetic learner, right? And another little orphan boy, added to the list of my concerns.

I permit a very soft sigh to escape as I leap to the next roof.

Wasn't I trying to keep myself removed from the course of events? Oh well, it's not like I really use my pay for anything. Fovea can keep an eye out for them, while I'm busy. But there is no way I'm letting him wear that awful jumpsuit in the future.

. . .

I am sitting and watching my hands.

Or rather, I am sitting and watching my Shadow Clone's hands, though since we are the same person the distinction is entirely irrelevant; a fork of myself has no more or less intrinsic personhood than I do, and I and myself are the same thing, so…

To be even more specific, I am watching my clone slowly run through the hand seals for the Body Flicker with my Mangekyou active, paying keen attention to the subtle twisting of chakra as each seal forms and the precise moment when the last seal is made and the technique activates.

The clone flickers (it is in the name after all) and is suddenly exactly one meter to the left of his starting position.

My eyes narrow slightly as I jot down the apparent amount of chakra consumed on a bit of paper. I glance back up at myself, who nods and pushes his hands through the proper pattern again, slightly faster.

Two meters.

The Shunshin is definitely an interesting technique, for all that it doesn't see quite as much use as you would expect. Most shinobi find the near instantaneous transition from point to point far too disorientating to be reliably exploited in combat. Shisui was justly famous, even if he had also gone beyond simple mastery in order to form some sort of bastardization of the technique combined with a clone of some kind to make his solid afterimages.

Four meters.

Getting familiar enough with the rapid movement in his case required the high-speed visual processing of the Sharingan, though it does raise the question of why the Hyuuga don't use the jutsu more often. Possibly an over rigid adherence to tradition, though I find that explanation unlikely. Ninja are somewhat slow to adopt new things, but when they do they tend to be ferocious in their pursuit.

Eight meters.

Among other interesting characteristics of the Body Flicker is the conservation of momentum. If you enter the technique moving at a certain speed, you will exit the technique moving at that speed. Since most ninja use the ability exclusively for high-speed mid-range transportation in mostly straight lines, it is entirely possible that few to none of them have ever realized what this means; we rarely question 'why' when things go according to plan, after all.

Sixteen meters.

However, by far the most useful aspect is that your body can change position during transit. A foot held at waist height while entering the slipstream of chakra may be placed at ground level when exiting, or vice versa.

Thirty-two meters.

I twitch my fingers and the fork collapses. There is only one of me again, and I now remember the experiment from two perspectives. My breathing is a little deeper than I would like; even a single clone is a noticeable strain though with the onset of puberty my reserves have been growing at a consistent rate, the rush of Yang balancing out my modest excess of Yin.

The pen taps against the paper idly as I twitch it between my fingers, searching through the numbers carefully. I will want Kakashi-taicho to check, he is better with math than I am, at least without a calculator, but…

The flat cost is small. This is important. Very important. It might be the secret which motivated Shisui to chase his peculiar brand of perfection in the first place.

Most ninjutsu have a minimum cost of implementation and an additional variable cost depending on how large you want it to be: number of clones, size of fireball, or as in this case, distance traveled. If the initial cost is high, the technique is best implemented at greater magnitudes so that the ratio of costs is more favorable. But if the cost is low…

The chakra necessary to move via Body Flicker doubles every twenty meters traveled, but the minimum cost is almost small enough to be negligible. Using the Shunshin to travel less than two meters is a trivial expenditure of energy; I could likely execute such a maneuver more than a hundred times before starting to stress my reserves. The only hangup would be the speed at which I could execute the technique, the speed I can push my hands through the seals.

My smile is somewhat flat, but not disingenuous.

On the other hand, like I always say, you can't really perform a Jutsu till you can perform it without hand-seals.

"Something funny?"

I blink my eyes off and stare at Otter with a trace of mirth still echoing around my lips.

"I don't know. I tend to find humor in things other people find quite oblique."

Yugao tilts her head at me quizzically.

"Try me."

I pause for a moment, thinking back and back, to when I had ready access to a universe of the abstract and the surreal.

"A monk walks up to a ramen stand and says: 'make me one with everything'."

There is a long pause, my teammates face blank as she thinks it over before nodding slowly, her expression distant and speculative.

"I get it. It isn't making me laugh, but I get it."

The smile which grows over my face is obscenely bright.

Is this that Human emotion called friendship?

Oops, make a note: that giggling freaks out Yugao.

. . .

I am growing moderately fond of my team, though it is clear that everyone has damage. It is apparently the prerequisite to service in ANBU. I already know Kakashi's and Tenzou's; Yugao eventually lets hers leak quite by accident.

It was just a simple in village patrol, and the girl only tripped a bit. Otter flashed down and caught her, helped her up, just your friendly neighborhood ANBU, nothing to see here.

We hopped back onto the roof of a nearby building, and had to pause for a moment as Otter began trembling almost too hard to move for a bare instant. I glance at her before turning away to scan the area, giving her a moment of privacy to recover herself.

The confidential medical files are open to anyone with a certain level of medic training, which I have managed to acquire in the passing months.

Miscarriage. I don't have access to mission records, but we get sent on all the worst assassination jobs. I can guess. I just had one.

. . .

Assassinate the Wind-Dimayo's second cousin, next in line while his wife is still pregnant with their first son. The Suna-nin subcontract out such jobs to Konoha and we do the same, to avoid possible conflicts of interest you know.

The mission parameters just gave me a location and a general physical description. Not the age of the target.

Just me, no backup needed for a Genjutsu expert coated in stealth seals.

And there he sat, mouthing at some colored blocks, couldn't be older than two. Probably his parents or an advisor that made concerns start creeping up which needed to be 'addressed'.

We Do Not Think, We Just Obey; There Is No War In Ba Sing Se.

. . .

May 28, 9 AK

"See, I had this dream once, right?"

Alcohol doesn't help, not really, but it lets you pretend to be okay, and sometimes that's all you can really do when the world is trying to blind you with the horrible primary red of all your mistakes and failings.

"It was a pretty good dream, though some parts of it were kinda weird, yeah? Fuckin tentacles man, how do they work?"

Spiced rum almost tastes like vanilla, little swirls of cream and cherry and the rich deep brown of old scabs. Vanilla cherry coke. Yum.

"Anyway, somehow, demons were winning the war for Earth. Like, normally there's a balance between the Kami and the Akuma, but somehow they had like, killed off all the gods. Probably hired a fuking ninja to do it, soooo fuggin good at killin' things. So, like, the demons were spreading their curse of despair all over the world. No more goodguys. Like, you'd be on a mission, right? And you'll be like, 'should I stab the babbbie?' And its, like, no that's fukin stupid. But then, you're all, 'nah, I'll stab the baby'."

I finish off the drink and wave for another from the bar, carefully stacking the empty glass onto the small pyramid taking shape in front of me, white-blue ice cubes clinking in their tumblers as the tower shifts minutely.

"It made all the dumb shit seem less dumb, made you prefer the bad options over good ones. But then it turned out, right, that Naruto was the new head of the pantheon!"

Kakashi is giving me a very intent look, or rather, a very casual look that I know he only bothers with when he is actually paying close attention to something. I scowl back at him.

"Wha'? Seriously! I'm not as think as you drunk I am. Shut up fly!"

The stupid horse fly's buzzing is cut out by my senbon pinning it to the ceiling. I smirk evilly at Kakashi's dryly raised eyebrow as the waiter drops a fresh glass before me.

"Yeah! 'S right! I might be drunk, but I'm still a ninja! I can kill shit! Naruto never has to kill shit. He's just, like, fukin magic, like, he punches you in the face and you're all, 'oh wow, stabbin the baby is dumb! Everything' is so clear now!'. Heh, hey, hey, hey… hey! Kashi-sensei! You should have him punch you in the face! It's like, fuckin, therapy! It's like, like, ninety percent safe? Only like, two people killed themselves afterword. Er, three. Three people. Forgot about… him. But you'd feel better."

Half the bar is giving me weird looks, or they would be if it weren't for the powerful anti-auditory Genjutsu scribed into seals etched onto the underside of all of the tables which turns all the noise in the smoky purple interior of the bar into nothing more than a dull buzzing. No one can hear me save for my team.

"He jus', just has to punch you, and, and, and, you're like. 'Nah, don't stab the babby."

I stare at the glass of dark liquid for a long moment, bubbles sliding along and between the angular planes of the ice to float briefly at the surface before popping with a tiny hiss of finality.

"But then th' Hokage says stab the baby, so I stab the baby."

It doesn't taste as sweet anymore, but I empty my drink anyway, tilting my head back, and back, and back, to get every last drop until I fall over, ice spilling out and down my shirt. I wriggle at the sudden assault and definitely don't squeal like a little piglet at the cold wet blobs. Yugao helps me back up and I stare at her pretty hair. So fucking purple!

Oh did I say that out loud?

A nod.

"Oops. Oh well. Hey, hey... hey, you know who else has purple hayr? On their head? And maybe other places, wink wink? Anko! Hey! Anko! Oh my gosh! I haven't seen you in, in, like… a while!"

The Kunoichi at the bar turns towards me with surprise clear in her unrecognizing face and I wobble into giving her a big hug. I am just starting my growth spurt now so my head lines up nicely with her torso. It is so nice and soft and squishy. Oh, did I say that out loud again?

"Anko, you're so pretty! Like, 'ugh kunoichi can' be good at anything!'. Nuh uh! Girls are awesome! Wish I was a girl sometimes. Bet I'd have huge tits too. Mom was so purty, and we could do each others nails and braid each other's hair…"

Anko leers at me aggressively, little tick marks appearing on her head. Or they would be if this was an anime. As it is the noise of her teeth grinding is disturbing enough already, but it's okay, I forgive her.

"Well I've got a kunai, I can help you out with the transition if you like, twerp."

Oh, right, the Genjutsu, can't let anybody know who I am. Not the little Genin she knew anymore am I? Just some random shrimp in an ANBU uniform. Her companion pulls me away with a nervous smile.

"He didn't mean anything by it Anko-chan. Did you?"

I blink at the girl holding me by the shoulders, taking a long moment to register who's talking to me.

"OH! Kurenai! Oh wow! Hey, hey, don' ever get married! You're really cool, and then that asshole knocks you up, and you just retire, like, wha'teh'fuk?! No! Make him stay at home, lazy fuggin, chain-smokey dummy!"

Anko seems intensely interested in this line of inquiry. She pulls me back into her lap and squishes me against… something soft and awesome.

"Oh really? Little Kurenai gets preggers and retires? From a chain smoker no less! Now who do we know who smokes a lot?"

Kurenai is stuttering out denials, face highly flushed, and I nod seriously at Anko.

"Yep!" -the p pops explosively- "I can see the Future!" -finger waggles for emphasis- "Or, like, I did. You were gonna get fat!"

She would probably be angry but that the outrage was clear in my voice, so instead she shares my look of affront at such dire insult to such outstanding beauty.

"An' I'm like, wha? Why you gotta be so mean to girls? Anko, you gonna be sexy forever! Ima, I'm gonna be your friend. So soft and squishy and awesome. And if you start getting too squishy, I'll take away the dango, and we can do a few days with Guy, okay? And you never gonna get fat! Super, Sexy, Deadly Anko forever! Murder Bitcheeeeeeees!"

Anko laughs so hard I roll off of her lap and might have hit the floor but that Kakashi caught me and dragged me back to our table with apologetic smiles to the ladies, who have descended into an intense argument in the wake of my announcement of undying fidelity.

Sat back down, our Kunoichi teammate is giving me an odd look.

"You can't really see the future can you?"

I shrug and carefully remove one of the tumblers from the stack which still contains a bit of ice and melted water to sip at.

"Fucking useless. Maybe, might be, never was. Seein' the past! That's, that's useful. Got some of that too. But i's all secrets. Can't say."

My team is giving me weird looks again. Yes! Success! Love me!

"Chou, does the Hokage know?"

I nod wobbly.

"Yeah; like, yeah. But, not so much. Like I said, fuggin... fuggin useless. Don't know w'as, what's going to happen. Does Naruto have the Rinnegan?"

Kakashi gives me a slow headshake.

"Not the last time I saw. Just, regular eyes."

I wave my hands in a 'tada' sort of way but end up knocking a glass off the table.

"Oh, I'll pay for that. But you see? See? Don't know. Guess, maybe, but like; there were only five Hokage right?"

"Four, Chou. Just four."

"Yeah, right, s' what I mant. But, like, Three went twice. But one time; one time he was the… seventh? And Minato-sama was eighth. N' everything was sort of the same anyway, but a lil', a little different. Dreams. And I'm not in any of 'em. So, don't know. See whats happen'n in a few… few years…"

Tables are sooo comfortable.

. . .

I'm flying again, on Kakashi's back. The cold wind brings me back to myself a little, enough that I cling tighter to his shirt, and he shifts slightly in acknowledgment.

"Don' know why you bother."

He is silent for a moment, a long leap through the air from one roof to the next.

"You're my student, and my teammate."

I sniffle a little and clutch even harder, chuckling a little tiredly.

"Not the one you liked. What, what's Nikkei doing these days? She get promoted?"

Another moment of silence, longer than the first.

"Yes. Six months ago. KIA on her first B-Rank."

I can't muster up the energy to properly cry, not after so long and so many missed chances. Just silent tears leaking out and making the back of Kakashi's mask wet as my body twitches with uneven breath. He doesn't complain. Kakashi is the best.

"It's just you 'n me then. Fourth time in a row, sort of. If you count Jiraiya. Fukin' cursed. 'Cept I'll never be famous for anything but bein' your student. 'Oh look, student of the Rokudaime, what's he up to? Fuck all? Ah well...'"

I still don't know exactly how Kakashi gets past my Security Seals, I know almost anyone else would get liquefied the moment they touched the window frame, but somehow he slips through just fine to let me slide onto the tiny couch in the closet which has the audacity to call itself a living room in the ANBU issue cover apartment, standing desolate, messy, and mostly abandoned save for my precious kit-cat. I don't think crazy-cat-boy is a trope, but I'll do my damndest.

Kakashi's white hair is blaring into the dark as he tries to give me a slightly humorous look, but I can see other things lurking behind that particular mask. I'm getting better.

I can't name any of those things though, so obviously not that much better.

"Rokudaime, ey? What was the Hokage thinking?"

I'm still leaking a little from most of my face holes. Gross. But I wipe the majority of it off with a sleeve and shake my head.

"Nah, see, that's what I mean. Things were different. You never had my squad, they failed for some reason. And now, I told you, so will you try to get it? Or try not to get it? Will you become Hokage because I mentioned it, or avoid it because of the perdic- predica- future thing? I don't know now. Better to just be quiet."

It is silent enough for several minutes that I start to think Kakashi might have left, until a soft voice breaks the stillness.

"You're wrong, you know. You weren't my least favorite student."

I snort and sniffle at the same time which leads to my sinuses doing very unpleasant things. When I reorient myself I laugh properly a little, though tears are still trickling slowly.

"It's okay, you don't have ta lie. Fukin creepy kid, don't know how to smile right. All my fault. Tried to be strong and it didn' work, it never worked. Tried to cheat on the bell test a little, you know? Knew what you'd do, knew what you'd look for, but I couldn't make it work, and then you passed us anyway, and now Wasabi and Nikkei 're dead 'cause of something that didn't even matter. 'Tachi didn't care about how strong I was, just that I begged, 'n the other guy didn't care about anything at all. All my fault. So fuggin useless."

Kakashi sits next to me on the couch making me tip over a little at the sudden weight pressing down on the cushions, and when I try to right myself he pulls me down, my head in his lap and his hand in my hair. I wiggle a little bit because it's a tight fit, but he doesn't let me get away, and I am just so tired of everything.

"There's nothing anyone can do except their best. You weren't useless Hiroki. It wasn't your fault. Sometimes things just happen."

I shake my head, making a mess of his pants with all the goop on my face.

"Strength is Life, and I wasn' strong enough. If I was better-"

"Nothing would have changed. You did what you could, Hiroki, and that's all anyone can ask for."

We sit in silence for a few minutes, Kakashi's hand lightly petting my hair while we both marinate with our thoughts. Eventually, Taicho tilts my head a bit to smile faintly at me.

"Hey, your birthday is coming up right? Twelve years old! Want to have a party?"

"Three months ago, Sensei. Hate parties."

I shake my head and nuzzle deeper into his chest, chill air of the apartment giving me shivers as I clutch just a little tighter. The tears have stopped, and now I just want to not think for a while, relaxing in the warmth of a teacher who finally cares.

"Nah. Just… stay with me a little longer."

His hand keeps up its soothing strokes as he hums quietly under his breath.

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Hiroki, happy birthday to you…"

. . .

A/N: Even more feels!

Anyway, I think it is implausible that Naruto would be genuinely mistreated; in this instance he did actually bump into something in the guy's shop and break it, so it wasn't unjustified anger, just overblown by Naru-chan's position in the village. Being mean to Jinchuriki is hells of dumb though, so that shit is getting nipped in the bud hard.