"Hey, hey, Kakashi-sensei! Teach me this jutsu!"

"Two things: no and never."

Naruto pouted mightily and whined. "But why?"

"Because I don't want to."

Before Naruto could complain again, louder and with more terrible whining, Sakura butt into the conversation. "You need to sign a summoning contract before you can perform the kuchiyose jutsu, Naruto. Otherwise who knows where you'll end up?" She scratched behind Pakkun's ears and the little pug closed his eyes in grumpy delight.

"A contract?" Naruto's eyes brightened and then he looked toward Kakashi again. "So, sensei, could I sign-"

"No."

Sasuke snickered at Naruto's predicament, but said nothing. He was carefully stroking Bull's head, his small form dwarfed by the mute bulldog's large frame. Naruto let out an exaggerated sigh and fell to the ground, where he was playfully attacked by Shiba and Bisuke. He rolled around on the grass, half-heartedly trying to get away.

"Argh, Kakashi-sensei! This is your fault!"

"Maa, Naruto-kun. My ninken have minds of their own. I don't control them."

Pakkun spoke for the first time since they had been summoned, his eyes still closed as Sakura cooed over him. "That's right, kid. We're not some dumb animals."

Naruto (and Sasuke, to a lesser extent) was openly shocked at his gruff, deep voice and Sakura laughed. "You boys really should go to the library more often! There's plenty of supplementary information on summoning if you just look for it."

"Why would we do that when we have you, Sakura-chan?"

She huffed in mock annoyance and rolled her eyes heavenward. "Why do I even bother with you two?"

They both shot their most angelic look in her direction, appearing as innocent and sweet as babes. She grimaced and pointed at Naruto. "You! How dare you teach Sasuke your bad habits!"

He grinned. "But it works every time! You can't resist us!"

Sakura snorted, but did not refute the statement. Pakkun looked up at her from her lap and said, "I didn't notice it until now, but you … use the same shampoo as me. Floral green."

She heard a muffled sound from her sensei. He had turned away from the children, his shoulders shaking. Pakkun continued. "Though my hair is much glossier."

I knew there was a reason I stopped using this! I still can't believe I use the same shampoo as a dog.

Sakura let out a long-suffering sigh, resolving to switch her shampoo again. "Well, Pakkun, we can't all win beauty contests. You can have the rest of my new bottle. Something tells me I'm due for a change."

Another noise escaped Kakashi, sounding like a strangled cough. She narrowed her eyes and glared daggers at his shaking back.

Pakkun hopped down and said, "You also smell like cats, many cats." She shrugged casually, trying to push down her panic. Damn his nose.

"I like cats. Many cats. Konoha has no shortage of strays." There was a knowing look on his puggy face, but he said nothing. With a short command, Pakkun had rounded up the rest of the ninken and they disappeared in puff of smoke.

By this point, Kakashi had gotten a handle on himself. He turned around and widened his one uncovered eye in false shock. "Why are you all just laying around? I thought my cute little genin team was here to work hard?"

They all shot him a dark look and stood up, brushing paw prints off their clothes.

"You three need to continue to build up your core strength. You're already at a disadvantage by being smaller and younger than all other genin. Today will be all about basic physical training." He rubbed his hands together deviously. "I have many ideas."

Four hours later, the three of them were laying together in a heap at the training grounds, but only because they could not bear to stand a moment longer. Even Naruto had to reluctantly concede defeat in the face of Kakashi's sadistic regimen, which had included carrying boulders back and forth to the Hokage Mountain.

"Is this all you've got?" Their sensei stood towered over them, omnipresent orange book in hand. Sakura could see why Kakashi was always ahead in his rivalry with Gai; he may project laziness, but his physical conditioning was no fluke. "Sakura-chan, you made it back first, you get to choose your next punishment-er, activity."

Sakura knew he had not actually misspoke. She tiredly glared at him from the ground, where she was pined down by Sasuke's heavy leg over hers and Naruto's sweaty forehead pressed against her shoulder. "Kakashi-sensei should join us so we can really be a team. Surely we're interrupting your own training with our sad, pathetic attempts." She punctuated her emphasis with an angry hand movements from her leaden limbs.

He chuckled. "Oh? What did you have in mind?"

She pointed dramatically. "The boys challenge you to a push-up contest!" They groaned in dismay and Sasuke muttered, "why just us?"

"And what will you be doing, Sakura-chan?"

"I will be your handicap!" She smiled triumphantly. "I'm going sit on your back. The boys can combine their numbers against your one, plus my weight. I'll be like the monkey on your back."

Kakashi hummed thoughtfully and tucked his Icha Icha away into a pouch. "Sounds like you have this all planned out. Naruto, Sasuke, are you ready to lose?" Sasuke groaned and feebly twitched, but Naruto had already bounced up in outrage at his words.

"We're gonna beat you so bad your ninken are gonna be ashamed of you!" He dragged Sasuke to his feet and they all arranged themselves to Sakura's satisfaction, the two boys facing their sensei. She jumped onto Kakashi's back and ignored his grunt of disapproval. She sat crosslegged and made sure to dig her bony knees and shin armor into his spine as she pretended to get comfortable.

"Okay, the first to complete five hundred or the last one to stop, whatever comes first, wins!" At hearing the challenge's limit, Sasuke's face regained the mulish look she knew so well while Naruto just yelled enthusiastically. "…. And go!"

The boys immediately dropped to the ground, counting aloud. Kakashi hadn't moved. "Kakashi-sensei? What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing. I just thought I would be nice and give them a head start."

She snorted. "I didn't know you and "nice" were on speaking terms, sensei. Don't underestimate my disruptive potential!"

"You can't feel it, Sakura-chan, but inside I am shaking with fear." She leaned forward, knees pressing harshly against his shoulder blades. He didn't react and just started his own set of push ups, movements steady and swift. She had started this contest knowing that the boys would probably lose terribly, but she wanted to include Kakashi in their team as something other than the insane taskmaster he had appointed himself.

As Naruto and Sasuke neared their seventieth push-up, they started to falter. Sakura shouted encouragements to them, right in Kakashi's sensitive ears. She knew he had very acute senses, so she took advantage of it whenever possible to distract him. He tensed at her loud tone, but never faltered.

Kakashi had already broken two hundred and fifty by the time the boys had gotten to their individual one hundred marks and she was getting tired of poking at his ribs with no reaction, so she tried another tack. With a nasty grin, she opened the pack attached to the back of his belt and removed his garish orange book. Kakashi could tell she was rummaging, but probably assumed she was looking for weaponry to continue venting her annoyance. She looked at the "over 18" warning on the cover with amusement.

Hah! It's probably a good thing I'm actually thirty …

"Listen up, boys! I'm going to tell you a story." Naruto and Sasuke didn't reply, too concentrated on huffing through the challenge she had imposed on them. Kakashi passed three hundred without breaking a sweat and she tried not to think about the muscles of his back bunching attractively under her negligible weight.

Don't be gross, Sakura. You're technically ten. You have plenty of time to hit on your sensei later, when you're sure everyone will live through the coming war.

With that mental slap, she opened up the well-worn book and her grin returned. She thumbed through the pages, looking for the scene she remembered as being particularly lurid when she had purchased her own copy to meet Jiraiya years ago.

She cleared her throat. "Hmm. 'Oh, T-toshiro-san! We can't do that here!' Kimiko flushed prettily, the pink of her embarrassment running down her swan-like throat and spreading over her lush-" Sakura was cut off as Kakashi nearly threw her off his back in panic, his fingers plucking the book out of her hand. He was as shocked as she had ever seen him and she burst into giggles from her spot on the grass.

"Hah! Kakashi-sensei, you lose! You stopped before you got to five hundred!"

He carefully tucked his precious volume away again, eying Sakura rolling around in the grass, chuckling to herself. "So I did. I should have known you would cheat."

Naruto gasped in indignation and Sasuke scoffed disdainfully before he said, "A good shinobi uses all resources available to him."

They all looked at their pink-haired teammate and he continued. "Or her. Nice job, Sakura." She stood and bowed with a flourish, still grinning. "You couldn't have used that trick fifty push-ups ago?"

"Eh, you boys needed the exercise. I already did five hundred push-ups with Gai-sensei this morning." Kakashi let the words sink in for a moment.

"You trained with Gai this morning? When? We met at the bridge at seven."

She rolled her eyes at him. "No, Kakashi-sensei, the three of us met at the bridge at seven. You met us at the bridge at nine."

"You know how those black cats can be, it's not good to cross their path …"

"Yes, yes. All those cats haunting the path of life, it's a wonder you get anything done the way you carry on about them."

"Maa, Sakura-chan, you shouldn't be so mean to your poor sensei. I'll die of a broken heart."

Her own heart felt heavy at his words, remembering her Kakashi, the last of their team to die on her, alone. She looked away from his teasing face, knowing she couldn't quite affect the same genuine cheerfulness now. Sometimes it was easy to forget her mission, when she was surrounded by her team and those she loved most. She just wanted to enjoy them being here and alive and happy, or their closest approximation of the emotion.

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto's tentative voice reached through her dark reminiscence. "Are you okay?"

She tried to smile at him, but she could tell he wasn't convinced. "I'm fine, Naruto." The rest of her team raised their eyebrows in disbelief and she laughed at their identical expressions of skepticism. "Really! I'm just thinking about dinner, I'm starving."

As if on cue, Naruto's stomach growled loudly. "Me too! Kakashi-sensei, please tell me we're done for today! It's almost dark!"

"Fine, fine. We'll meet here again tomorrow at the same time." He was about to form the seal for shunshin when Sakura latched onto his arm like a limpet.

"Nope, Kakashi-sensei! You're having dinner with us." Her eyes gleamed. "Think of it as team bonding."

He looked at her apprehensively. "This isn't another ploy to see under my mask again, is it?"

"Sensei! I am ashamed of you! To be so suspicious of your own cute little genin." He said nothing and she slumped against his arm. She muttered, "I promise we won't try anything. Plus, I'm already making dinner for these two black holes." Sakura waved vaguely toward Naruto and Sasuke, who were not at all insulted by the nickname. Once upon a time Sasuke might have put up a token protest, if his teammates hadn't once seen him inhale an entire basket of cherry tomatoes. "You might as well join us!"

Kakashi thought about his empty apartment with its even emptier refrigerator. He meant to go grocery shopping, but time kept running away from him, first with ANBU and then his current assignment. These kids had wrecked his routine already, it wouldn't hurt to have dinner with them just once. It saved him from having to pay for dinner out, anyway.

"Are you sure this will be okay with your parents, Sakura-chan?" The boys immediately looked away, clearly uncomfortable with the mention.

She smiled at him and just said, "My parents will not be home, Kakashi-sensei, so I'm sure it will be just fine."

After a quick trip to the marketplace, where she forced all the boys to carry her groceries, Sakura led them to a small two-story house near the edge of the civilian district. She made an unusual combination of hand seals at the doorway, running three fingers over a blemish on the brightly painted red door. The blemish became an overwhelmingly large seal that glowed with chakra and disappeared again in the space of a few seconds. Kakashi blinked as Sakura then removed a key from her pack and opened the door traditionally, ushering them into the front room.

"Ah, Sakura-chan …?"

Naruto jostled him from behind and he looked over his shoulder at the boy, who loudly whispered, "Don't ask, Kakashi-sensei. She won't even tell us what that is." He wondered if he should be insulted at the idea that he was less trustworthy than two ten year old boys, but shrugged it off. His surprisingly mature little girl was allowed her secrets. For now.

He raised his left arm, indicating the bag she had pressed him into carrying for her. Kakashi wasn't sure how it happened, but he was sure there was blackmail involved. He had to speak to her about saving that sort of leverage for more important uses. "What should I do with this?"

"Bring the food in here!" Sakura called from the next room, which he assumed was the kitchen. They all trooped in and and laid down their packages and the boys immediately left, to his confusion. Sakura laughed and offered him a knife, handle first. "They have been banned from the kitchen after one too many 'cooking competitions'. I only allow them to wash the dishes now." She handed him three eggplants. "Make yourself useful and chop this."

Sakura had removed her weights and weaponry and tied on a garishly loud orange apron covered with little narutomaki swirls. It clashed terribly with her pink hair and the red vest she had on underneath. The entire combination was a little hard on the eye.

"I didn't realize that I would be drafted as scullery maid when I agreed to come here, Sakura-chan." Nevertheless, he set to chopping the vegetables, wondering if she knew it was his favorite. Something told him that she had a way of knowing these things. Women's intuition? How did it work? His student was younger than Rin had been, but her emotional depth reminded him of her occasionally.

"You certainly would make a terrible servant with that lip, sensei." She busied herself with setting up the rice cooker, her movements practiced and at ease in the kitchen. He noticed a worn little blue step stool on the floor in front of the open counter, the small red and white uchiwa painted on the side nearly faded with time.

"How often do you have Naruto and Sasuke over for dinner, Sakura-chan?"

"On average? Every night. They don't have anyone to look after them." She was picking the bones out of the broiled tai, tongue stuck out in concentration.

The answer was exactly as he had expected. In the past month of his acquaintance with the team that had been shoved upon him, he realized that Sakura was fiercely protective of "her boys". She trained obsessively to protect them, she healed their wounds (a talent that had surprised the hell out of Kakashi when he had first witnessed it) and she was their emotional crutch. Sakura was an adult in a little ten year old body; her devotion inspired some deeply buried feelings to emerge in him, emotions he thought he had died with the last of his original team.

"They are lucky to have such a little mother hen as a teammate." She glared at him half-heartedly and grabbed the sliced eggplant from him. She slid the foot stool over in front of the stove, where she deftly placed them in a large saucepan to cook.

Kakashi turned and leaned against the counter, listening to the vegetables sizzle as she prepared a miso glaze. The silence was not uncomfortable, but it made him think …

"It's too quiet for Naruto and Sasuke to still be alive in this house. What do you suppose they're doing?"

Sakura looked unconcerned, flipping the eggplant and covering the pan. "They're probably passed out on my futon. You pushed them pretty hard today, Kakashi-sensei."

"But not you? You're still cooking dinner for all of us."

She had finished shredding the tai and washed her hands, wiping them on her apron when she couldn't find a towel. "I am tired. I did wake up at sunrise for training with the dulcet sounds of Gai-sensei bawling in the background. I swear he creates genjutsu out of sheer emotion."

Kakashi barked a laugh at the idea, surprised at himself. She grinned to herself as she brushed the miso mixture over the eggplant slices and slid them into the oven to broil.

Oh, Kakashi. You can be happy sometimes too, you know.

"Gai is a most unique individual. How do you even know him?"

"That is a long story, Kakashi-sensei, and it involves me narrowly avoiding death at the hands of an enormous leech."

"… what." The only enormous leeches he knew of were in the Forest of Death and he knew that his sensible little Sakura-chan would never go in there by herself. Unless she considered it a training exercise or she read about it or the boys were in danger … okay, there were many reasons she would actively go into that death trap. Kakashi sighed in resignation at the tangle that was his current life.

She waved it off. "I'm fine, Gai-sensei was there. He really showed those leeches who was boss! Though I think the Aburame Clan might have been a bit upset …"

"That reminds me - as the one who is outwardly considered the responsible one on our team, I feel like I should ask where your parents are today."

He could see her freeze for a second as she reached for the oven door, but continued on to take the pan of eggplant out. Sakura tossed the oven mitts on the counter and turned toward him with shadowed eyes. "My parents are shinobi who take long-term missions together. They are rarely home due to the demand for their infiltration skills."

"I see." He did, really. Sakura didn't really have anyone to take care of her either, but she turned those feeling into constructively taking care of the boys instead. Kakashi wondered if this dinner was her way of adopting him too, like a lost puppy.

She smiled at him sadly. "It's hard to be lonely with Naruto and Sasuke around, sensei. I'm fine the way things are." She slid her footstool over to the rice cooker and started spooning it into a large serving bowl. "The food is just about done, can you go make sure those two aren't silently breaking things?"

Kakashi gratefully escaped the room, slightly miffed at himself for ruining the light-hearted tone that had pervaded their conversation until he stuck his foot in his mouth. He was just being the responsible one, that's what a jonin-sensei was supposed to do, right? I have no idea what I'm doing. But I'll keep trying.

He wandered through the lower level of the house, finding them dozing together on a futon in a sunroom that faced a heavily neglected garden. He stared out the large picture window at the sunset and then noticed a small new plot that was nearly hidden by the weeds encroaching on the rest of the backyard. Kakashi would bet his next mission pay that they were medicinal herbs, carefully and meticulously tended.

He turned on his heel, quietly snuck up on the boys and crouched down to ear level. He drew a deep breath and bellowed, "DINNERTIME, BOYS!"

There was a confusion of movement as both Naruto and Sasuke jerked bolt upright, going from dead sleep to panicked awareness. The blonde rolled of the futon with a thump and Sasuke held a palm over his own heart, trying to slow his frantic breathing. After a moment they realized the source of their trouble and pined him with twin scowls.

They grumbled irritably as he herded them toward the table with a sense of amusement that was slowly growing to be familiar again. It had been so long since he had dealt with a team, with all the complicated emotions that came with it.

These kids were worth keeping, for now.

Note: Thank you for all your comments. I'm actually pretty amazed that anyone kept reading past the first short chapter. I appreciate any and all reviews.