CHAPTER 7

PARTS OF US

As the weeks passed and the Uchiha hadn't attacked the village yet, Sarutobi seemed to remember he wanted successors. The successors who weren't entirely pleased they'd been chosen, still dutifully showed up for their training when the old man summoned them.

At 4:00 in the morning Kakashi and Gai trained under the Shinobi no Kami, a warrior so strong other shinobi called him a god in fear. He was old, but he still beat them till they bled with that monkey powered staff of his. That staff wasn't normal. He just hadn't had it so close and connecting with the side of his face before now. It hurt. However, Kakashi and Gai agreed getting hit by it was better than the paperwork and international negotiations training they had from 5:30 - 7:00.

That was enough to incentivize Kakashi to go sleep in the middle of the morning market's cacophony. Which he did with three hidden clones watching and the orange book of Jiraiya over his face. He picked a tree limb to nap on. It was marginally safer being out of reach from anyone simply walking below. They'd at least be visible to his clones if they tried to throw a weapon his way. Gai, pent up from the paperwork and polite discussions training would follow him every morning at 7:03 as they left Sarutobi's office and to the early morning crowd of ninja and civilians it appeared his jumpsuit got stretchier and greener. His teeth shinier and his bowl cut sharper.

The identity of successors remained an S ranked secret. If someone was going to assassinate the village leaders it was a lot harder if they didn't know who to target. The two of them were more than adequately prepared to follow their orders. Although it bothered Kakashi that he slipped into it so easily. He sometimes forgot to drop the Obito persona when he wandered into his apartment. Only to see it still clinging to him when he went to brush his teeth. The distraction of all the more serious things in his life were less painful, to the point he began to welcome them. Like the inordinate amount of time he'd been guarding the kid.

Having a pink haired little girl disrupting the dynamics wasn't something he'd planned and wasn't something he knew what to do with. Beyond making sure no one killed her, he didn't know how to make any of it better. Thus for a month he hadn't done anything more than prod Genma and Itachi, get them to spend more time there, kids closer to her age. However, between the gifts of illicit adult reading material and half eaten boxes of dango she hadn't spent a lot of time with them. Maybe that was for the best. ANBU exposure at such a young age probably wasn't doing any favors for her future psych evaluations. It's why he'd personally stayed far away. He couldn't even help Shisui, the kid he'd known for years and who looked up to him. How was he supposed to help a little kid not miss her home?

Shisui still avoided him and Kakashi felt so inadequate in the face of the younger boy's depression, he didn't know what to do except keep sending ninken to sniff him out. Pakkun and Bull had been tasked with carrying notes and tea coupons. He'd never met a pair of kids who liked expensive, traditional tea shops as much as the two Uchiha prodigies. He just hoped Shisui would accept one of his invites soon. Fretting over it made him feel worthless. He'd even sent a clone to speak with Mouse about it, and the Commander promised to speak with the boy. This left Inu prowling the ANBU facility in the middle of the day, still in his mask and gear. He should sleep, but his legs kept moving. It was only when a small, recognizable voice called out that he stopped.

"Excuse me?"

He looked down. It was the pink haired girl who was simultaneously distracting and cheering his team with her presence in the dour underground compound. The Mitarashi and Uzuki families with their purple hair were the closest thing to this girl's exotic hue he'd ever seen, but even theirs was subdued and easy to lose track of in a crowd. Hers was just so bright.

"ANBU-san, do you know where I can get something to eat? Someone usually brings me something, but I haven't seen anyone all day."

The ration bar had been pulled from his storage scroll before he'd truly thought of it. He held it out, right under her nose like he'd do for one of his ninken. Her eyes went cross as she stared at it, obligingly smelled, and quickly wrinkled her nose. The expression had his smile appearing under his Inu mask.

"ANBU-san, a well balanced diet has vegetables."

Ah, he forgot he was dealing with a child. She was verbose and tiny, but she wasn't the first tiny person he'd trained in these halls. She was just the first who hadn't yet graduated from the academy. Hadn't gone on a D rank let alone a C or B rank requiring longterm food rationing. But she was apparently well trained enough to follow him when he glanced back at her, seeing he hadn't just brushed her off she scampered forwards.

"Is that what you eat all the time ANBU-san?"

"Inu."

"What?"

"My ANBU identity is Inu. I have dogs, so when they want my identity to be known they call me Inu." Sometimes he wasn't sure if he preferred Inu or the hidden ops standard henge. People didn't relax around Inu.

"I like puppies. Do you have puppies?"

"A few."

"How many?"

"Eight currently. They're all under two years old. All training as ninken."

He glanced down to see her eyes had gone wide. She had the most adorably innocent look when she was fascinated. Her quick little brain working through something and coming to silly conclusions he'd never have thought relevant. Maybe it'd been so long since he'd had someone innocent talk to him he just didn't know what to expect.

"Do you have eight different dog dishes? Eight dog beds? Eight leashes?"

He huffed, amused. Inu answered her questions as she continued to rattle them off. Yes he had more dishes for dogs stacked in his apartment cupboards than he had for humans. Yes they each had a preferred place to sleep when they weren't in their summons world. No the ninken didn't need leashes, it'd be too disrespectful to ask that of them.

Yes he could summon other members of the Canidae family like wolves, but he didn't call the larger wolfs often. When she asked why he paused. No one had ever asked him that before.

He looked at her sweet, hopeful face. He didn't want her chakra to stop spreading happiness. He didn't tell her the wolves reminded him too much of his father. Nor did he tell her ninja had a tendency to use summon creatures as a crutch and many died for it. His own Sensei died when the Kyūbi overwhelmed the toad boss. When he could have used the chakra instead to power a better, less self-sacrificing seal with his seal expert Uzumaki wife. No, he wouldn't burden her with that.

So when she asked again, "Inu why don't you summon the big wolves?"

He said, "They're grumpy if you don't feed them a lot." A half truth, but the statement itself was valid.

"Hmm, I bet they can eat loads more food than us. You'd need a lot of those bars for them. Do you carry that many bars?"

He barked a laugh. The sound startled the tiny girl. It startled himself. When was the last time he laughed?

"You should laugh more often. My otousan says it lightens the soul. No matter what happens, if you can laugh you won't be lost."

He looked at the little girl who had upended his team's life.

"Is your otousan also the one to tell you vegetables were the balance for a meal?"

"Yup!" She chirped.

"We'll get you vegetables then. Do you know the henge? I think they usually teach that the third year in the academy."

She looked up at him, confused. He frowned in turn. Before he prodded, "How long have you been in the academy?"

"A month?" She squished her face. "They haven't let me go back yet. I'm afraid Iruka Sensei will kick me out."

He hadn't expected that. Inoichi had been rather snide and brief on that detail in his report. Inu wondered what she'd done to aggravate the proud man. Or what she'd done to elicit Ibiki's added scrawl of heavily inked kanji on the side of the T and I report. Stating, "I like her. If no one else takes her, I want her." It's what made him pause when glancing at it on the Commander's desk, why he'd requested from Mouse to actually read the full summary from Inoichi.

"Iruka Sensei is a chūnin." All academy teachers were ranked chūnin. He'd no idea who that boy was. He assured, "The Hokage has you here under orders and your parents are staying in the protective housing for ANBU spouses. Iruka Sensei won't be making any decisions the Hokage doesn't approve of."

"Oh."

"You don't have to worry Haruno-san."

"Sakura. My name is Sakura."

"Dōzo yoroshiku onegai itashimasu Sakura."

She beamed at his greeting. It was a pleasure to meet her. She was joyful. The feelings she held bubbled up through her chakra, touching and mixing into his. She was so happy her arms swung back and forth beside her. It caused the bubbly feeling to pervade him. What a strange sensation.

He asked, "So do you want to learn the henge? We can't take you out of here with pink hair. You need to change it to dark purple, brown, or black."

It took her an hour under instruction to learn how to modify her head so each strand remained the desired color no matter how the individual hairs moved. What he taught her was more advanced than the academy henge, but it wasn't academy students hunting for her, it was root. So she learned the same technique he'd taught Itachi and the others to use outside headquarters, the one that made them all look a certain way and should be easy to hold even if they were captured. Slight modifications to the original appearance were key. Nothing too large, nothing far from their natural state.

When he showed her how to do it, his hidden chakra flickered just the barest bit out of its cloaked state. Haruno-san, Sakura, watched his chakra network change and unfurl for the transformation.

"It's you."

"Hm?"

"You're the white chakra rescuer from the wall. And the white blue spark from the hallway. No one else has that color. You've been staying with me when I was sad."

The way she said it, the feeling of thanks she had as she said it, made his chest clench and spread in warmth simultaneously. The feelings soaked from her chakra to his, filled his own like an empty bucket.

"Smart girl."

She beamed at him.

He ruffled her hair. The action brought back that bubbling feeling from her, her chakra wafting it and the bubbles floated inside him. He wasn't sure if he'd ever get used to it.

"So the henge..." He explained in detail what he wanted her to do. Her face went serious with pinched brows in concentration as she listened.

The girl was quick, like he thought. She absorbed everything he said. He wondered how bored she'd get if she continued in the academy for the rest of the year. A standard student needed the curriculum repeated four or five times for it to stick, but with one explanation and some extra tips Sakura had stared at her reflection on the shiny metal door and done it near perfectly. She was so excited to be sporting a purple-black color she beamed up at him.

"I look like Ami if she was an Uchiha."

"Who's Ami?"

Sakura wrinkled her nose again. She really did look like a puppy when she did that.

"A girl from the academy. She's loud and started a fan club for the Uchiha in our class, Itachi's otōto. They say they're in the academy to find and marry a ninja. I just..." She looked down, the toes of her sandals moved to touch each other. "They don't know how dangerous it is. That ninjas die. They don't take our classes seriously and either they'll die or they'll get someone else..." She trailed off.

"That's dangerous," Came his solemn agreement.

Sakura stared at Inu. She had been so frustrated each and every day of class. The girls didn't want to get strong because they thought it'd make them look fat and not even the teachers said anything to stop them from thinking this way. They couldn't see the colors. Didn't see how weak and fluttering the force feeding those kids' life remained if they didn't work hard. The colors showed how likely they were to be ok, to keep growing big and not go away. Warriors with small, flickering colors didn't come back.

No one seemed to understand. Yet Inu did, when he said it the swirl was strong. He said it was dangerous. It's what she'd been thinking her entire first month at the academy. It's what had been plaguing her in her dreams of fireballs and dead people on the village wall. How distressing it was when someone died. It wasn't just something to brush off. Inu seemed to care just like she cared. That it was horrible to watch people's colors fade and disappear.

"Right?!" She swung her arms wide. Sakura burst, "What if they get on a team with someone and... and...they die...their colors go away forever and no one can get them back."

The fuel from her nightmares made her lips clamp tight. She looked down, embarrassed. Maybe she shouldn't have shown so much of herself. She tried to make all the chakra bursting inside hide again. She didn't want to ruin her time with the white chakra rescuer by talking about scary things he clearly already knew about.

"I feel them too."

"Huh?" She looked back up, still embarrassed but not wanting to ignore him. The look on the hound mask was inscrutable. She peered closer at him, seeing how his flow of colors became erratic. He was upset? She didn't know.

"I feel them too. Not the colors, but their emotions. It's why my chakra looks the way it does. My whole family could do it, but I'm the last one left."

Her thoughts on this revelation came out quiet, "That must be hard."

He nodded from above her. He was like a shadow that glowed. Big and tall and blocking the sunshine from the window, but radiant all by himself. When he wasn't hiding his chakra it was so, so bright.

"It's good you're already thinking about your future teammates. It means you'll make a good one."

She smiled, the feeling of happiness that he was still talking to her returned with voracity. Sakura lifted her heals again and again, balancing little hops on her toes. She teased him.

"If they don't kick me out."

His next words dead panned in a tone so serious it made her stop bouncing, "They couldn't kick you out if they wanted to."

"Oh?" Was there a secret rule she didn't know about? She thought she'd memorized them all.

"Then the teams would be uneven, one man short. Can't kick you out."

She stared at him. Then she began to giggle. His chakra did a funny swirl and she giggled louder. He was as funny as Genma, only without the bad books.

"I read your report. Inoichi said you were the top of your class. Why would you be worried about being kicked out?"

"I'm practically a civilian? It's why all the clan kids were upset I beat them." She looked down again. She still felt happy to be here, to be talking, but she didn't like admitting this. As if it were some horrible thing, because maybe if he knew she her parents were Civilian born he might stop talking to her too.

He crouched beside her, his gloved fingers lightly touching her shoulder till she looked up at him.

"Genma came from a civilian family."

Her eyes went wide, "But Genma's so good. Nearly as good as Itachi and Shisui."

His fingers lowered to touch the concrete floor beneath them.

"The kids you see here were all the top of their classes. By pushing yourself to do better it means you're more able to protect your precious people. Even if you quit being a ninja tomorrow, being smart, being good, those are never bad things. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a teme."

Her mouth dropped open, "A teme?"

"Definitely," He agreed.

Inu seemed unaware he was the first adult-ish figure she'd ever heard swear let alone encourage it. Not even Genma swore around her. He was sweet, full of laughter, and gave dirty books, but he didn't swear. However, she was beginning to think Inu was just as unsuited to be around normal children. Sakura was smart enough. She thought Inu might not realize he should be treating her like an academy student.

Inu rustled her hair again, he examined it under the bright light streaming through the window to make sure each side and every strand was keeping its henged dark color. Couldn't have any pink slipping out. He'd have to keep watch on her and be ready to cover with a genjutsu if it failed.

He opened the door, stepped out, but turned when she still stood there, holding the metal door open. Her chakra mixed with his. She was nervous.

"You won't get in trouble if you take me outside?"

"The Hokage just wants you guarded. If we weren't all so busy you'd probably have been taken outside before now."

Team Ro's surveillance of the Uchiha compound continued. Since Kakashi caught evidence of someone crossing the compound boundary unauthorized, he'd requested Itachi and Shisui's teams to help. The Uchiha prodigies had been shifted away from spying on the elders, thus they'd been stuck with the current team Ro. With their increased numbers on that patrol, specifically two extra sets of sharingan eyes, even someone using a space time jutsu found it a lot harder to escape. Already, they'd nearly caught the person.

Kakashi and his ninken had spent most of last night tracking the person's scent. It was at once foreign and vaguely familiar. Disconcerting as Kakashi rarely forgot a scent, but it could easily have been one he'd been around in the war. An enemy they hadn't known they had, a spy, or defector. There were so many missing nins after the war. It could be any of the hundreds he'd worked with before they drove back the invading forces.

Her eyes watched as his appearance changed again. The Inu mask disappeared, transforming into the Sukea persona he'd built up and regularly visited the village under. Sukea the photography enthusiast who chatted with shop keeps and joked with old people.

Instead of answering he told her, "When I'm wearing this face call me Sukea. If anyone asks, tell them your parents asked me to watch you for the afternoon while they had to run to an emergency at their workplace. Don't give your name. Say you're not supposed to talk to strangers."

She eyed him. Cataloging his altered features. Something sad swept across her chakra, she wasn't sad, but she was thinking about something sad. He didn't like the feeling from her, it was too close to pity for his comfort. She released the door.

It's heavy weight swung the metal closed and automatically locked it behind them. To get inside the person would have to disarm the locking seal with a flare of their approved chakra signature. Each person passing had theirs automatically logged along with time of entry, sent straight into the book behind the guard's desk. A guard who was still staring at him through the Headquarters' front window. Apparently the sight of Inu using his free time to teach a girl henge and get her food was very strange indeed. He normally would be laying in his apartment bed right now. She'd asked that first question and he hadn't expected to suddenly be spending the afternoon with her. Except she was asking him questions and he kept answering them.

Sakura declared, "This makes us friends."

"Does it now."

"You know one of my secrets and I know one of yours. Or does everyone know about Sukea?"

"No they don't."

"Then we're friends."

This is a solution to her loneliness, he realized. It's just not the solution he'd been pushing before. He couldn't give her family back or give her suitable company her own age, but he could give her this. He held out his hand.

Sakura thought she liked Inu the most.

He'd answered more of her questions than anyone and he even taught her this new trick. She'd been so bored since she'd been stuck in that building and the maze of tunnels underneath. Her chakra signature had been added to exactly two floors and she had explored every nook of those two floors so many times. Half the reason she approached the silver haired Inu is because he'd been lingering near her and she was so tired of having no one to talk to.

Now she was outside! The fresh air blew through her hair and she didn't even care that he'd messed it up. His technique was so sneaky and cool, she never had to have pink hair again if she didn't want to. It was a shocking revelation for the girl who'd been teased so mercilessly about the hue.

He'd also said it was okay to be smart and to be a good ninja. He was the first person who'd ever said that to her. Her parents, while they cared, had been wary when she said she was going to be a nin just like them. They'd shared a long look full of meaning she hadn't understood, her mother's jaw had been stiff as she gave a sharp final nod of approval. That had been that. They were proud of her, but also scared for her. Her okaasan twice now, after finding her upset after the academy, asked her if she wanted to return. Sakura's answer hadn't changed.

Storming forward with Inu the colors flooded her limbs. She was firm on her resolve. He was her friend. He couldn't take it back now.

He did take her to a stand serving seared meat and vegetables. They ate them sitting side by side at the stall and when she asked about how long it had been there the persona of Sukea chatted animatedly with the stall owner. The older woman grew excited they wanted to hear about her family who still lived and cooked in one of the villages skirting Konoha proper. This woman and her children moved inside the walls once the civilian apartments had been expanded.

The arm of Sukea might look unassuming, but when he leaned against her she could feel the hard ridges of his armor. When the woman's back was turned he whispered to Sakura.

"There are still six outskirt villages. They're close enough to regularly do business with Konoha proper, but they remain far enough not to immediately get in the way of village defenses. Together the seven villages could pool a population of 500,000 and a fighting force of 110,000 if retired ninja were recalled. Most retired nin relocate there."

"Why?" Sakura blurted.

She might have been embarrassed, but Sukea had a kind, pleasant face. Remembering he'd told her to never henge the real features like her face, beyond the colors and tiny distinctions, she looked at the sharp structure of his and realized this is maybe what the white chakra rescuer really looked like. Maybe not the paint markings, but the jaw, the nose. His intense eyes as he took her questions seriously.

"Housing is cheaper out there."

"But they move farther from the people they care about," Sakura, having now spent nearly four weeks away from her parents couldn't imagine choosing this.

"Not so far they can't see each other every week."

"But don't clans have compounds?"

Some don't have enough housing for everyone. Konoha has been prosperous and they've grown big here. Because we won the wars. There's also a few who've been thrown out for marrying someone their clan didn't approve of. The Konoha clans might be 20% larger if they didn't anger people," Sukea added these numbers under his breath so only she could hear.

"That's so many," She whispered back. Sakura liked having someone to share secrets with.

With an added, "You'd have learned that in the academy's last year. It's part of the preparation for C rank missions. They'd also warn you not to spread the knowledge around."

Sakura added after a moment, "Being sneaky is good, in case some bad people attack."

"Correct. They won't expect so many. The village is hidden in the leaves in more ways than one."

With that statement the mostly hidden chakra from the man next to her stuttered and hid itself away. Watching it, Sakura wondered why that comment meant so much to him. The man who showed her his face. She ate the rest of her vegetables, twirling her sticks and watching the white blue flow of his chakra's reaction. How it dipped, spurred suddenly moved in and out. It tested and played... His chakra reacted. Sakura thought it might be one of the few things he couldn't entirely control.