"Oh, Kotaro! You look just wonderful!" Mikoto smiled as her eyes traced me up and down.

I sighed internally, but chose to accept the compliment gracefully instead of arguing. "If I do, Lady Uchiha, it is only because of your excellent taste in clothing." I bowed gracefully as I held out the wooden box. "In appreciation of the clothing and to thank you for welcoming me into your home tonight."

The rope handle was taken from my grip and Uchiha Mikoto sucked in a breath as she revealed the glass vase and beads holding an array of metal flowers. "Oh, thank you dear. Now I don't have to listen to Shina-chan bragging about hers every time I come over, hah!"

I rose with a smile. "I thought they might be appreciated in something like that sentiment." My back straight, I walked through the doorway to slip off my sandals, sliding into a pair that Mikoto indicated with a subtle gesture as she passed me with her gift, humming happily.

"Satsuki! Kotaro is here!" Mikoto called out as she hurried down the hall. A sudden ruckus on the far side of the building echoed through the thin walls and sliding doors as I-

"So you're the blacksmith boy."

I turned to take in the stoic older man in Uchiha robes and bowed to the necessary degree even as the man's eyes flashed red and I parried a thrust of his chakra with my own as it tried to settle into my own system.

"Father." Itachi's voice rose up, rasping with the barest hint of reproach as he stepped into the hallway as I straightened myself.

"My apologies." Uchiha Fugaku stated, looking nothing of the sort as a miniscule twitch of his lips barely-apparent as he stepped forward. "Itachi had been... unusually-lavish with his praise where your skills are concerned and I wished to see them for myself." He paused, looking me over again. "In recompense, I will cover your expenses tonight." One of his hands reached into his robes and produced a bulging purse, testifying that the man had entirely planned this affair out.

I could entirely make an issue of this, but...

Nothing good would come of raising hell over a comparatively minor illusion, especially when it was obviously some sort of test. I reached out to take the bag of money, pausing just before I reached it. "As long as it is only a matter of worry this once, Lord Uchiha. I would hate to feel unsafe when visiting a friend."

As much as it was a veiled not-quite-a-threat, the way Fugaku's face shifted told me I'd made the right move. With a single nod, he spoke again, depositing the coin purse in my hand. "Outside of the sparring field, you have no need to worry of such things in my home, young man. Simply brush this off as a father's concern."

I nodded, slower than the older man, now understanding where he was coming from.

I can't say I entirely disagree with him. If my daughter were such a potential target, I would have concerns about a crippled civilian being widely known as her playmate as well. If that teacher from the academy could have been a double-agent, then it's entirely possible someone within Konoha could target me to get her to come quietly.

"So this is the Kotaro I've heard so much about." Another voice spoke up from around the Uchiha clan-head's form.

"Izumi-nee." A plaintive, if atonal whisper sounded from near where the first voice had spoken from.

As Fugaku stepped away, the taller of the two revealed girls caught my attention first. She was a slender young woman in her late teens with a solid spring in her step that spoke of formal training. Her outfit for the evening was an adult's full kimono, if not quite as refined as the one I'd glimpsed Lady Mikoto in earlier. Beside her, though, Satsuki was...

"Cute." I stated with a barely-there smirk, watching as the girl's face nearly caught fire. She'd been brushed and primped to within an inch of her life, bearing little resemblance to the usual rough-and-tumble nearly-tomboy that ambushed me to 'play ninja' so often. Her yukata was the standard Uchiha black-and-blue with a flame motif around the edges that tied into a red sash across her waist.

Izumi giggled as she stepped into Itachi and reached an arm around him before rising on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. "That was fast. I was afraid we'd have to leave without you. Did Hokage-sama really not need you for longer?"

Itachi hummed in negation as he reciprocated the affection. "Something of a false alarm, nothing to be worried about."

"Good, then you can help me tease your little sister and her boyfriend." Izumi declared with an understated grin.

A tiny smile crawled across Itachi's face, something which inexplicably warmed my own heart. Seeing the coolly stoic man who had averted so horrible a one-time future now happy and at peace with himself for the most part... it truly did restore just a bit of my faith in humanity. Of course, it also made me wonder when the other boot was going to drop.

No Uchiha Massacre meant Itachi would never join Akatsuki, would never inform on them however-much he actually did, which would mean Konoha had less of a grasp on the organization...

I had to wonder about Danzo, too, and what that asshole was doing in the shadows as well. If I ran exclusively by what I knew from my past life, the man was an unmitigated disaster of a human being and a constant yoke around Konoha's neck. I had to wonder if there was any worth to him in this world, if he'd done anything to justify the power he was given beyond the bitter scheming against Hiruzen's regime and Konoha's ideology as a whole.

I shook myself from my latest musing as Satsuki stepped up by my side. "I... really look good?" She asked tentatively, her Uchiha mask cracking slightly.

I smiled and nodded. "You look great."

Satsuki reddened again and gave a barely-there smile back to me. "You look good, too. I like the yukata."

I shrugged slightly and looked down at myself. The earth-brown silk was cut through with a pattern made up of silver lines that, if you squinted, looked like swords. The gold sash at my waist holding everything together with brown accents matched well. The overall effect was an outfit that, while very nice, wasn't so far outside my social strata or income bracket that I'd get odd looks for wearing it.

"Thanks." I nodded, offering her my arm out of courtesy. "Your mother caught me while I was over at Naruko's one day and insisted on getting my sizes to buy clothing for me, so any compliments are due entirely to her."

"Ah... Mom wasn't happy when she heard I've been going over to Sagara's store for lunch so often." Satsuki admitted with another blush, though for different reasons this time. "Between that and asking you for swordsmanship lessons..." She looked away in embarrassment.

I snorted. "As long as I have enough to feed myself, keep clothes on my back, and I'm not sleeping in the streets... I don't care that much about money." I paused. "Once you start taking missions, though, I was going to ask for something small if I'm totally honest."

Satsuki nodded in quick affirmation. "Next year, when I'm a real kunoichi, I'll pay you back, I promise."

I shook my head. "Don't worry, I trust you. Let's just enjoy the night."

…

"Kota!"

Satsuki hissed like a startled cat as a blur of orange, blue, and blonde hair rammed into my free side. I sighed as I flipped the money pouch I'd been drawing from into my free hand and began tapping out change before looking back at the amused civilian behind the stall. "If you could, add an extra three sticks of dango to the order as well? Same type as mine."

"Yay! Free dango! Kota's awesome!" Naruko cheered as she practically humped my arm in glee. "Ooh-ooh! I'll buy you ramen at this great place later!" She paused, then leaned over and grinned directly at her classmate. "Satsuki can even come!"

She grinned widely, thenstuck her tongue outat the other girl.

I made eye contact with the stall owner again and discreetly reached up to scratch at my neck, running an extended thumb across it in a very distinct pattern. The old guy lurched with restrained laughter, snorting loudly and shaking his head as he turned away to prepare our food.

"I thought you were supposed to stay in the compound on festival nights?" Satsuki asked pointedly, her own grip on my arm tightening as she glared at the blonde.

"Hehe!" Naruko smirked, grabbing the food I'd ordered her and quickly snarfing a bite. "Mom said since I'm in the last year of academy I can go out and do stuff now as long as I have an escort!" She pointed over at a redheaded couple some dozen or so feet away wearing Uzu spirals, one of them looking remarkably like Karin and the other tickling a memory that had long-since faded. "Oh, oh! I had to wear makeup, too!" She grinned, distracting me from her clansmen as she pointed to her face with her forefingers. "See!"

I blinked as I realized her 'whisker-marks' had been deliberately covered up, along with the fact that her usually twin-tails had been braided together into a more elaborate design with lacquered wood and beads bound into it. The overall effect was to make her look different enough that people would at least double-take on a busy festival night. Especially since she wouldn't have been seen during them before, she could likely pass unremarked upon, though not unnoticed, for a single evening.

"I see. Well, Satsuki and I were just going to hit the games. Wanna' come?" I shrugged.

The Uchiha girl at my other side gave an offended harumph and turned away to pout.

"Hehe! That sounds totally fun, believe it! Let's go!" Naruko squealed, clapping her hands together energetically as she hopped off to do just that.

I'd mostly avoided the various festivals before this due to various reasons. Mostly, I just wasn't a party-person and needed a pretty good excuse to drag myself out to partake in the noise and lights and people I'd have to deal with. Then there was the fact that the food, games, and craft booths all generally required money to do more than window-shop, something which I'd been largely without until fairly recently. Even here and now, though, I'd probably have stayed in the shop with a book or something if Lady Mikoto hadn' tvolun-told me to escort Satsuki around for the evening.

Even with that, though, everything was... nice.

The food was marginally-overpriced, about par for the course given the fairs and carnivals I'd attended previously, but fairly high quality too. Naruko's bottomless-pit of a stomach demanded we visit several different food stalls over the course of the night, returning to Ichiraku's cart twice while we worked our way around through the various games.

"Do you want to trade in for anything?" Satsuki asked quietly as Naruko rocketed ahead like usual.

I fingered the necklace of beads I'd collected over the course of the evening, various colors of the rainbow dotting the black band I'd been threading them onto. "I don't know. I was actually thinking of keeping the beads this time, since it's my first festival and everything."

Satsuki hummed thoughtfully at the reminder, her eyes tilting towards the prize stall as she touched the multi-looped bracelet she'd created out of her own beads she'd 'won' at the various stalls throughout the night. Given the fact that anywhere from a third to a half of the party-goers were trained ninja, the traditionally-rigged booths didn't actually offer prizes themselves, instead giving anyone who won a glass bead they could put on a string or leather strap to collect them. A more central booth kept walls of semi-cheap prizes that you could trade in a certain number of beads for once you'd collected enough. They would then be cut free, sorted, and handed back out to the shops for use in the next festival.

Or you could be boring and just buy a certain number of beads off the secondary-market that sprang up each season, or even just hand over ryo for a prize directly, albeit at a larger markup.

Of course, the tradition was that youkeptthe necklace you made out of the beads for your first time through whatever festival you attended... and I was feeling a bit sentimental tonight.

"If I got you two stuffed animals..." I began slowly, catching Satsuki's attention as she brooded over the decision to trade in her beads or not. "...would Naruko take me getting her a fox badly?"

Satsuki's brows furrowed as she looked at me, then shook her head. "She wouldn't like it, even if you just wanted to tease her. She probably wouldn't say anything, though."

I frowned, but nodded. "That's fair. I'll get her a toad, then. She's mentioned her godfather a few times."

We walked on together, the noise of the New Year's Festival winding down slightly as we got closer and closer to midnight and the fireworks display. I pretended not to notice the way the Uchiha girl was staring at me pointedly. Finally, as Naruko danced back with a bag of cookies, I smirked and shook my head. "I'm not telling you."

"Telling what?" Naruko asked, holding out her bag for us to take before popping one into her mouth. "Asdfjlkj! You guys have to try one!"

I rolled my eyes, but selected a cookie anyway. Satsuki glared at me for a half-second, then grabbed one herself.

"I'm going to buy you two stuffed animals, but I'm not telling you which until we're done making our rounds." I smirked as I raised up the cheap souvenir bamboo thermos on a rope handle some marketing genius had created for the occasion to take a drink of the fruit juice inside.

"I'm going to the bathroom." Satsuki declared, turning and marching away in the kind of huff that was mostly-performance instead of real anger.

Naruko giggled as she passed out of hearing range, popping another cookie in her mouth. "You two are sooo~cute together!"

I snorted and took another sip of my drink. "Should you really be saying that since you're doing the rival thing with her?"

Naruko danced a little in place, shifting her already out-of-place yukata in another show of her frankly exhausting energy. "Eheheh, nah! If I left Satsuki alone about it, she'd just sneak around waiting for you to do something, so I've gotta', uh..." She paused, tapping her chin with a finger. "That word where you make someone do something?"

"Manipulate?" I asked, amused despite myself. "Provoke?"

"That one!" The girl grinned. "I hafta' tease and provoke her an' stuff, or she wouldn't do anything on her own." Satisfied with her declaration, she popped another cookie in her mouth.

I narrowed my gaze at her, not really appreciating the matchmaker she was playing, but equally unwilling to divulge a good reason for her doing so. From her point of view, after all, it was all in good fun and would either end with nothing happening or with Satsuki and I in some form of relationship. There was no consideration for me wanting to leave the Hidden Leaf Village or what it would do to Satsuki in the event she developed feelings beyond an innocent crush.

So instead of doing the smart and painful thing, I fell back on the old reliable of engaging the trickster on her own level.

It would make things more painful when...if I left, but...

...I also didn't want to ruin the night.

"It doesn't seem fair that we're both getting to tease Satsuki and you're getting to tease both of us." I stated as I leaned against the wall, edging into the girl's personal space as she grinned. I raised an eyebrow and dropped my voice a few octaves into the kind of low baritone that would reverberate through your chest. "Narumi."

Instantly the girl's eyes went wide as her hands flailed awkwardly to catch the half-bag of cookies she'd nearly dropped. "Eeeeeeeehhhhhh! No way, no way, no way, don't call me that! It's not cute at all!"

My only response was to laugh loudly at her deep blush, visible even through the makeup covering her jinchuriki marks. My good mood lasted through the rest of the evening, Satsuki's own temperament rapidly improving once she learned of the new game I was playing. The stuffed toad I bought Naruko and the stuffed crow I picked up for Satsuki ended up soothing their egos after long hours of teasing each other into stuttering messes.

For some reason, though, they joined forces to purchase me a beaver plushy.

The night's fireworks more than made up for the sinister moment of collusion between the two, as did the energetic hug I got from Naruko and the hesitant one I got from Satsuki.