DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything from the Naruto universe.

Thinking (+ flashbacks, "Naruto speaking to Kurama in her mindscape," etc.)

Emphasis

Bijuu, etc. speaking

Bijuu, etc. thinking

"Jazu's such a good baby! Pretty, pretty baby Jazu!"

"Naruto," Kakashi began, amused and yet beginning to get a little irritated. "Jazu is a NINKEN."

"Jazu just wants to be a baby! Puppy puppy puppy!"

"I've turned you into a monster," Kakashi sighed but saw his wife's eyes flash. "You know that's not what I meant, Beautiful."

No, her jinchuuriki status is not what he meant at all. Fortunately, Naru was currently puppy-high and Kakashi counted his blessings because otherwise, he knew that she would've seen that look on his face.

"You look like you're in pain, my love," she'd too often said as if it hurt her. And Kakashi knew that it did hurt her when he was melancholy or so incredibly frustrated. "Ne, will you let me help you?"

There's really only one significant thing between them that's been left unsaid - and Kakashi worries that for her it's the same. Obito…

If his beloved mate believes he hasn't noticed the way she bites her lip and occasionally stares at his Genin picture, she's foolish - and Naruto may sometimes act it, but the last thing she's ever been is foolish.

Plus, I moved the pictures around, putting that one way in the back and she brought it back out. Should he dust it for fingerprints just to make sure? –Naruto's really good at not leaving prints, though…

Naruto had glared at him for his little comment but the accompanying pout only made her aggravation with him adorable. Then she turned back to the puppy he'd gotten her. "Do you want to be a big ninja dog when you grow up?"

She was delighted when the puppy barked at her excitedly, wiggling all over even more - if that was possible. "What am I going to do with you, though?" She turned to her husband with big, inquisitive eyes as she held the golden retriever close to her waist as the pup struggled to move so that he could lick her. "I've never had to… help train an - well, train an anyone or anything, I guess. Aside from Konohamaru."

She had been waiting for Kono to get out of the Academy to teach him the Rasengan, but maybe it was time? Or maybe she should ask her father first since he invented it? Ah well… She went back to nuzzling Jazu and telling her how pretty she was.

Kakashi hummed as he sipped more coffee. Naru had bought him a flavored blend and it wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be. She had been attracted to it because of the smell and got to the coffee pot before he could stop her, however. Naru liked the taste, too, and now his little wife was bouncing off the walls just like her puppy. Well… Not literally - yet."

He'd been warned. Shikaku's voice went through his head. –His advice came shortly after they had moved in together.
"Number 1: do not let her get NEAR caffeine. ESPECIALLY not coffee. Number 2? Do not get between Naru and her ramen. Other than that, leave her to her own devices."

"Her own devices," Kakashi sniffed. Left to her own devices, she'd get herself killed, glad to take the kunai for someone else. "So. What do you have going on today?"

"My team's assigned perimeter duty begins at 0900, so we'll have a couple of hours to train beforehand and will be gone for a few days. I'm scheduled to be at the Barrier Division when I get back… While I'm gone I'm going to work on those communication earrings since Tou-san wants them field-tested en masse. But seriously, Kakashi! What do I do with Jazu and how am I going to keep her with me? She doesn't want to stay on my head!" Kakashi snorted, but she had been serious. Akamaru always rode on Kiba's head when he was little. Jazu was a big and rather hyper puppy, though. "I know you said that you don't like leashes but I don't know what to do."

"They're spreading you too thin," he commented, wanting to stay by her side but knowing that they each had their own missions to complete. He knew and hated that his sensei had begun to give him certain boring inner-village intelligence missions because he wanted him to follow him as Hokage. He'd told Minato that he wasn't interested in the position at all - plus Minato was, physically, a little younger than him - which gave him a very bad feeling. –A hunch that he would not allow to come to fruition. Minato was going to live a long and happy life now that he was back, as far as Kakashi was concerned. "Dispel your clones."

"No," Naru replied absently, readjusting the pup and running one hand through her still-drying hair. "And what do I do with Jazu?"

Kakashi hummed as he looked her up and down, wondering how in the world his luck had finally changed for the better. She was so incredibly beautiful, hyper or not. "I'll take her to the kennels."

"Is that okay?"

"Yes. It's where the boys sometimes stay when I'm away - where all of the ninken stay."

"Okay," Naruto said with a pout, putting down the puppy and giving the nearby (and smaller) Pakkun a warning look which he just scoffed at as he trotted off. Jazu was bouncing around, trying to go after his loopy little tail. "I want to do right by her."

"Naruto," Kakashi almost sang. "Didn't I tell you to dispel your clones?"

"Yes, you did," she replied with a naughty smile, "and didn't I tell you no?"

He pulled her into his lap. "Do I have to remind you of who is in charge here?" He put his face into her neck and inhaled her intoxicating scent. –He shouldn't be doing this to her. Again.

Lately, he'd been… hard on his little wife when they'd been intimate. He had all of this shit on his mind, all of these worries, that just came to the surface - that he could barely hold back from her - when they were together. Naru always took it like a champ, though, and… She really does take it oh-so-well… Well, fuck. Now he was getting ridiculously hard again.

Naruto almost couldn't believe he wanted to do this again! He had been so relentless in the shower and she still hadn't asked him where he got that additional, much lower shower stool that was just the right height so that he could prop her leg up on the higher one and … Crap. Her nose had started bleeding - and that wasn't her body's only reaction. She hid her face in his shoulder after subtly wiping it off. "Mmm, Kash," she whined. "We don't have time for that! How about cuddles?"

"Maa, maa: dispel your clones and I'll give you a really big, meaty treat! I promise you'll like it!"

Naru began laughing into his hair. "Such a pervert."

"You can leave, Hokage," A grunted at the Leaf leader.

Minato wished that he could stick his tongue out at the man whom he was definitely faster than but that was Kushina's thing. "Raikage-sama," he charmingly said instead, "is that how you treat the leader who brought you the best medic in the world after he warned you that something like this would happen?" He only received a snarl in response.

"I'm here… you know," Yugito reminded them in a broken grunt as she watched Senju Tsunade heal her fractured ribs. She tried to smile reassuringly at her partner, Samui, while twitching as her bones healed AND internally promising Matatabi that she was fine. The worst of it was over for the moment but after seeing what had happened to her body in the Fourth Shinobi War through her counterpart's eyes, she had a bad feeling that there were more terrible things to come.

What Yugito had seen had sickened her. She'd blow herself up before she allowed any part of herself to be used like that again.

"You need to stop being such a stubborn son-of-a-bitch, A," Tsunade said with a glare. She never liked the Raikage but once respected him. "You're putting your people in danger just because you don't like or are jealous of Namikaze."

Tsunade would leave it up to her son to make anyone else aware of their relationship. Minato, however, turned and left, following Kumo's huffy leader out of the room.

"Is she going to be okay?" Samui asked the world-renowned medic, taking her partner's hand with her good one.

"You should really save your chakra for the others that were hurt in the attack, Senju-hime," Yugito said now that she could breathe more easily.

"Our leaders have asked me to ensure your recovery, specifically." Tsunade was also tasked with gathering information since Minato doubted that A would tell him much. "She will fully recover and my current expectation is that she'll only need a week's rest since Yugito's a jinchuuriki," she explained to the jinchuuriki's blonde partner before moving to check on the jinchuuriki's femoral artery again. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Bastard came out of NOWHERE," Yugito said with anger lacing every word.

"We were just going to bed," Samui admitted now that she could relax a little. She'd been so damn worried about Yugito: what she'd done hadn't been cool at all! "Something like a vortex appeared in the middle of the room…"

"And that damn Tobi dragged Hoshigaki Kisame through it, along with his giant, sentient sword," Yugito continued as she tried to sit up. The Senju woman held her down. "I bolted, knowing that they were after me."

"You threw me through the wall and sent your rats after me," Samui said, finally ready to let her girlfriend have it. "That was not cool!"

Yugito looked at her, feeling bad about it, looked away, and then decided to glare at her. "I saved your ass. Um… sorry about your arm, though, babe." Samui gave her a deadpan look that she knew meant a future lecture and a few nights on the couch while Tsunade-hime snorted.

"I'll finish healing you next."

"My injuries are minimal, Tsunade-hime," Samui insisted. Really, she only wanted her to make sure Yugito was alright. Then she could give her a real piece of her mind.

"Whatever," Tsunade replied. "If you want to leave your injury as is so that it gives your girlfriend something to feel bad about, it's not on my conscience."

"Thank you," Samui said while Yugito shouted "Hey!" There was a knock on the door and Tsunade turned around to find the Raikage's jinchuuriki brother standing outside of it. She was surrounded, wasn't she? Oh well. He, once again, stared at her breasts and all three women groaned.

"Eyes up, Bee!" Yugito demanded harshly.

"Uh, yeah! …Just. SO. Big," Bee said shakily, not helping himself at all.

Yugito threw the nearby phone at him. "Stop fucking around!"

Samui nodded, glaring at the big man. "This kind of thing is why my mother said I became a lesbian."

Tsunade couldn't help but chuckle, wanting to throttle the man but staying on task. "So you were saying that you 'bolted' after the man in the orange mask and Sharkface appeared in your bedroom."

"And after attacking me," Samui reminded Yugito more than the medic. She pulled a face but allowed Bee to examine her injuries to prove that she was mostly fine. Samui had a feeling that although Yugi's rats had chased her they purposely avoided hitting her; instead corralling her away from Yugito's fight. It was infuriating!

"The plan, in case of attack, was to head back toward the Jonin Bar-racks," Bee pseudo-rapped while lifting an eyebrow at Yugito from behind his ever-present sunglasses.

"And that's when the alert went up," Yugito reminded him after sipping the medication the Konoha kunoichi gave her.

"Prisoners still on the loose; only the banana fan remains of the treasured toosh."

"'Toosh?' Seriously, Bee: that's your rhyme?!"

"Wait, wait, wait," Tsunade interrupted. There was only so much foolishness she could take, plus that banana fan that was supposedly wielded by the Sage of Six Paths - well, she knew about Naruto's little obsession with that. "The explosion took place at the prison? And the culprit took the so-called Treasured Tools?"

"A's gonna kill you, Bee," Yugito all but confirmed as she became more relaxed. She asked Matatabi not to immediately purge her system of the muscle relaxant. The Two-Tailed Cat promised to keep her senses keen for her partner while she slept.

"It's as bad as we feared," Tsunade said to herself as she absently turned to heal the jinchuuriki's partner somewhat. Minato had told her about Naruto's fear that some of the Kyuubi's - Kurama's - chakra in the Sage of Six Path's pot would be put into that husk of a statue that was meant to contain the tailed beasts. And it sounded like the Akatsuki had gotten their hands on it. "Why would they leave the banana fan behind if they got everything else?"

"'Thought Nar-u-to might come back to steal it, yo."

"So it was kept in a different place."

"Yeah."

Perimeter duty was boring but necessary. This mission was different from her last similar mission, though. This time Naru and her team were guarding and running the outposts of Hi no Kuni, not just Konoha. They'd be gone for weeks and Naru was worried about whether or not Kakashi would last without her chakra. She summoned a small fox who startled her by agreeing to message her husband.

The little blonde fox sure wasn't in a hurry, though. He also reminded her that she would owe them a BIG favor if she did take them up on a certain offer they'd made or agreed to…

Kakashi was doing better with his addiction but Nau wasn't sure that his "treatment" of taking less of her chakra nearly daily made any sense whatsoever. Plus, it's not like they could control themselves sometimes… It just didn't seem humanly possible.

Having captured a second group of bandits, she waited for Sai to finish sending a message to the nearest outpost so that another team would come along and bring them in for questioning. "You know, I could've sent a toad."

The rat-masked Sai sighed and closed his backpack. "You want what I believe is often called 'All The Glory,' Butch."

Naruto sputtered. "'Butch?!' What happened to… Never mind. You could at least call me Fox when we're on a mission, ya RAT!" She pouted under her Fox mask and crossed her arms over her chest plate. "And I don't want all the glory. –I just have a lot of chakra and if my summoning a toad will help you save some of yours, that could help us later."

"Taicho says that we are not to take advantage of your absolutely monstrous reserves."

"M- Monstrous?! You damn inkblot! …Taicho isn't here," Naru replied with a furious pout. Kakashi's constant concern was lovely but could be aggravating, plus Sai was the definition of aggravating.

Oh, Kakashi… What am I going to do with you?

She remembered all of the things he did to her before she left - he's so intense and passionate, she thought dreamily - and was glad that she had a mask on. She unintentionally let out a stupid little simpering sound and tried to cover it by coughing. "ANYWAY. I don't get your jutsu, ya know. Does your chakra continue to be depleted until your message is received?"

"No. I simply push a small amount of chakra into my art and allow it to work."

"That's very youthful," Leaf, their team leader on this mission, said from behind his Icha-Icha.

Naru's brow twitched. The three guys she was teamed with this time were all former ROOT nins - and one of them had named himself "Root" which didn't exactly inspire confidence within her for him. Aside from the names, they were alright - she very much loved Sai and all of his weirdness, of course - but she couldn't help but think that, in another world, Root and Leaf would be very much like what a coupled Kakashi and Gai could've produced. It made her feel bizarrely jealous of the taijutsu master.

In a ramen shop prep room in Konoha, Gai was just about to finally kiss Ayame but sneezed not-so-youthfully on her face.

Attempting to shake off the whole awful idea of chibi Green Beasts with gravity-defying hair wearing masks, Naru and her team took off to the next border outpost.

The Hokage guard platoon transported Tsunade back to Konoha and then brought Jiraiya to the Hokage who had flashed to meet Uchiha Shisui in Shimogakure.

Genma twirled a senbon in his mouth once he was again in front of his leader. "You do remember that our job is to guard you, Hokage-sama?"

"I do," Minato said, knowing where this was going (again.) He was going Obito-hunting since his former student had shown himself again, no matter what.

"Then allow us to do it," Iwashi pleaded.

"I'll be fine; I have my own mission. Right, sensei? Shisui-san?"

"Hai," both men chorused before going back to their conversation.

Minato smiled at his platoon as Jiraiya lamented not getting to spend more time in the Kumo onsens to Shisui. "I need you three back in Konoha in case Tsunade-hime needs you."

"Unbelievable," Raido internally said - although a little of it may have come out in his frustration. "Hokage-sama, if I may? You gave us a seal that will allow her to summon us in case of an emergency." Minato looked sheepish. "Please include us in your mission."

Minato clicked his tongue but supposed they could help out. "You'll have to be able to keep up with us." That might sound demeaning but the three higher-level Jonin were some of the fastest Konoha nins, period. "And we need to discuss strategy in case we come upon Tobi and Hoshigaki."

"And the unknown supposed Uchiha," Shisui said. He couldn't believe that one of his remaining clansmen hiding here in Frost could have joined the Akatsuki. So far all were present and accounted for. Kumo had to be wrong! And the report the guards at the Kumo prison had given didn't sound like they'd necessarily been victims of a Sharingan.

More than a week later -

"HATAKE!"

Kakashi slowly looked up at Tsunade. She hadn't needed to yell: he was sitting directly in front of her, enjoying his book!

"We've got intelligence that the Three-Tail has reformed between Hi no Kuni and Uzushio. I want you to lead a team to seal it." She began running through her lists of available shinobis, not seeing the alarm that briefly crossed his visible eye.

Naruto's not going to like this, the silver-haired Jonin thought to himself.

Tsunade summoned several segments of Katsuya and then turned first to her apprentices. "Shizune and Sakura: you're with him. Grab Tenzo and hmmm. A Hyuuga: get a good one that can fight and has especially excellent chakra control. I want you at the gate as soon as you're packed." She signaled for Kakashi to stay while she ordered the two women out so that they could prepare for the mission. "How's your chakra control?"

"Impeccable," Kakashi answered. Tsunade snorted.

"Brat, we both know you've been sucking Uzumaki and demonic chakra out of my little granddaughter like a damn vampire."

Kakashi offered her a hint of a nod but didn't like it brought up in front of anyone, even (or perhaps especially) in front of his ANBU cohorts. He glared at each one of them, promising pain if they told anyone with only a look. He really hated medics, especially overpowered ones - and fortunately the ANBU there did, too. What happened to medical confidentiality? Damn medics: knowing too much about their shinobis.

"I practice chakra control daily, as prescribed."

"Good!" Tsunade had him follow her to the closet outside Minato's office and opened the seal that would allow her to get in. "I want you more in charge of the sealing than doing it yourself, but if something happens, I asked because I needed to know if you were up for it."

Kakashi leaned on the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest. "Should we really be doing this?"

Tsunade sighed and looked thoughtful. "What else can we do? I know my granddaughter's 'philosophy' - but isn't it better to seal the beast in a scroll, perhaps temporarily, rather than allowing the Akatsuki to take it or making another child into a jinchuuriki?" She tossed an enormous scroll at the Copy Ninja and ignored his resigned misery although she understood the sentiment.

Kakashi strapped and adjusted the scroll over his shoulder so that it hung lengthwise along his back and legs. "Everything we need is in here?"

"It sure is," Tsunade said, glad that Minato and Jiraiya had looked over the seals that were inside. "Dragon should be returning to the village any time now. If you see him on your way out, take him with you. He could be invaluable."

"Hai!"