Follow-up, only this time my only note is now about the children of Usagi and Kakashi:
Rina & Mika, Age 14, Chuunin, twins
Ayeka & Vegeta, age 6, twins of no rank just yet.
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Usagi came around slowly, hissing as she drew in a breath.
What the Hell happened?
'You were arrogant,' Sanbi rumbled. 'You forgot there was still one enemy ninja, even if his picture never made the bingo book. His ice melded well with your own, and he did a Kawarimi with you as soon as he had his Master in hand.'
'So I owe my survival to you?'
'To Maki-chan, she was the one who drank in the Slug's lessons and was near enough, could work fast enough, to save your life. Rina-chan and your dog wasted the enemy left, the blond Uzumaki took out the other ice user who was all but dead from chakra exhaustion.'
She moaned softly at her own stupidity. "The size of our group equaling Zabuza and the dogs, plus the ice user…" she muttered.
"Thank Fuck…" she heard someone breathe, something clattering. Then a body was clambering into the bed at her side, a lithe, familiar form that wrapped around her like an octopus and simply clung.
"I am so sorry, just so sorry, I never meant to touch you," he breathed wetly. "You weren't meant to be there at all!"
"I didn't expect he knew how to swap us out," she rasped. "My stupidity I guess…"
A door opened. "Alright Hatake, you had your time now let me see my patient," a familiar voice demanded irately. "This is not a brothel and I will not have you trying to screw her right now—"
"Da~ad!" multiple voices shouted out.
Usagi burst into peels of laughter— echoed by complaints. "Hehe - ow hee - oh, fuck that hurts…"
"MOM!!"
This set off screaming fits, Tsunade barring other visitors, refusing to let them even look around her.
One little one sneaked around into the room, and Ayeka called him out. "Vegeta!!"
Tsunade swore. "God damn it you Hatake!!"
Orochimaru pushed past his teammate's arm, scooping up the boy. "Get a look now boya," he said firmly. "This is the last you will have for a while."
Vegeta looked over his shoulder, wet black eyes locking with tired blue.
"I'm here baby," she rasped. "Daddy is just being a koala right now."
"Daddy broke you!" he screamed at her, and her breath stilled as she felt him flinch. "He not 'llowed touch you, I hate him!"
Orochimaru quickly took him out of the room, screaming all the way.
She held him tightly, not letting him wriggle away. "I am here," she said steadily. "I breathe. My heart beats. I am here…"
"You were there," he said thickly. "On my hand… with the Chidori…" His breath hitched. "I couldn't turn, there is no turning, the Chidori gives me tunnel vision, sensei knows, he can tell you—" He choked on his breath, right hand trembling violently as he yanked it away from her, staring at it with sick revulsion as his mind went over the recording the Sharingan had—
A hard hand forced his face back to his wife. "Fuck no, we are not doing this Hatake," she told him, her tone granite hard. "I have to let Tsuna-hime move you soon to do my check up, but you can be rest assured little bitch? I will hand you your ASS in training, as I expect Shina-hime will hand me mine when I am good for it again. I should have stayed back. I should have let you finish your mission first. I nearly wrecked both missions because I arrogantly assumed you had it all in hand, and I more than deserve the write up for this. Do not get it into your fool fucking head to take the blame that is my own. I very nearly made our twin daughters watch that shit. They have a damn good reason family is not to be on missions together."
Tsunade closed the door. "Nice to know you are aware of where the blame belongs," she sniped. "Out of the way Hatake!"
Kakashi slid gently to the side, clutching one of her hands between his. "Please," he spoke brokenly.
Usagi squeezed his hand. "Sanbi has fixed most of it," she told him evenly. "We just need to check the details."
He watched her intently, blood shot gray eye laser focused on her.
Tsunade coasted green glowing hands over her, checking the right side of her chest first. "The tear is healing," she reported. "But you are going to have respiratory issues over time, he wiped out your right lung, so you are going to be finding it harder to catch your breath, though Sanbi appears to be trying to fix that."
"I would be on a timeline of months if not weeks if he doesn't," she agreed, pinching Kakashi's hand when he squeezed too tight.
Tsunade frowned at her. "Why? People survive with just one lung all of the time…"
"A Saiya will not," she said flatly. "You have seen me, how I am always doing something, I have to keep busy, it quiets my head, my own head has never not been my worst enemy. I take medicine to help it but should my body not perform as I ask of it I will push it to do what I demand even if it kills me."
"Then just stop," the Sannin told her, exasperated.
"So I can ask you to stop gambling and you will do as I command?" Usagi shot back.
Tsunade scoffed. "No!"
"Then don't ask me to kill every brain function I have!" Was the quick retort.
"It's not the same," Tsunade insisted firmly.
"Oh yes it is," Usagi assured her. "See, even my therapist does not quite get it, for as fast as my brain races from subject to subject, my body does too. Even as I go through my so-called suicidal regimen every morning, my brain is working at exhausting speeds. I have to do that regimen, or I will be a drug addict on withdrawals, sweaty, pale, and shaking to no end. Kind of like you when we keep you away from the betting tables."
Tsunade pinched the bridge of her nose. "But you can't do that right now, one lung cannot make up for two!"
"No," Usagi agreed. "It can't. But I need it to try. Rina is not ready to run the company yet, Vegeta has to understand, at six years old, that sometimes we make stupid choices in a moment of unbridled arrogance and they can have the worst consequences. If my mind and body did not work as fast as they do he would not have hit just a lung, but shredded my heart, and that? Sanbi cannot fix."
That kept them all quiet.
——-
Kakashi curled around her, keeping his fingers on her pulse point.
She didn't fight that, it had already been long enough in the hospital, and she knew what her arrogance had nearly cost all of them, her husband worst of all.
It didn't help that she was stuck focusing completely on just the team right now, part of her punishment was to make certain they were would be ready for the Chuunin exams in four months, her only other need between that was making sure she had people who could do what she could do.
It had been too close for more than just her family, all of her many odd jobs had seen people come up to check on her, ask after her…
She took a deep breath, stroking her hands over her husband's arm as she looked the larger group around her.
Team seven, one of whom had played witness.
All four of her children, plus both of her in-laws.
She knew Obito and Rin were hiding in the trees…
And all were looking at her.
She scoffed, rolling her eyes. "When my belt holds up my trousers and my belt loops holds up the belt, who is the hero?" she asked dryly.
Mika smirked at her. "My pants, because they are hiding my modesty," she retorted.
"Do you realize it took that quote to get your Father and Grandfather to finally hunt me out?" Usagi asked her with a smirk. "I was Grandpa's therapist at that time, by request of my boss, I only had one chance before they benched him because shit was happening, and no one was dealing with the aftermath of it all of them were trying to go back to the moment it happened," she didn't flinch as her son gripped her waist tighter. "We can't do that shit. In the moment when things are happening to begin with, you simply make the best choice available to your own mind. I and the team I had right then were in Wave to deal with Gato, the shit was making shipping anything exponentially difficult. Shina-chan was with me because it was rumored he had documents from Uzushio. My girls were there because they had the free time, and they have built up reps as being excellent hunters. Part of the reason was, yes, we are family or at least adopted as such and some other members of our family were in Wave and had placed a specific call for backup. But my mission was to wipe out Gato in whatever benefitted the village as well as my own company and do it in a way that would not hurt the village. Full stop. The time we arrived was not meant to be either good or bad, the time was meaningless. Do you understand where I fucked up?" she asked Sakura, who had been witness to the disaster.
She inhaled shakily. "You didn't take it serious," she rasped. "From the start it was obvious you did not take the battle serious. You also didn't take it as your problem, so you dismissed both of them."
Usagi pointed at her. "That was a mistake in itself," she agreed. "You were facing an A rank nukenin with his disciple, Lord only knows what he actually taught the kid. But I only saw, or rather, let myself see, Gato and his troupe of mercenaries. Big mistake. But there I went, strolling past the battle as if it meant nothing at all, straight at Gato, giving orders to the girls to handle the mercenaries because I was only seeing the truly massive pile of paperwork that was going to face me… does anyone recall exactly how Kawarimi works?"
"It requires you to trade places with something that is a like size to you in some form," Sasuke frowned at her. "But you and Gato did not equal all of those dogs and that ninja, so how?"
"The chakra mattered more," she told him. "And that kid was a truly lucky little shit, my chakra stores are greater than I use on an average day. He switched out the chakra sizes, and that ninja combined with the dogs was all that was needed at that moment."
The arms around her tightened in a convulsive move.
She stroked the arm in front of her soothingly, looking between the Genin slowly. "I was lucky—" She held up her hands when there was immediate argument. "Let me finish. I was lucky in that my eyes move that fast and compute what I see in the same time, so that I could drop my weights and shift that tiny degree to the side. He was that close otherwise, that ninja would have been dead, and he could not move, even with the Kawarimi. So I was damned lucky I could make that moment count, and move what I needed to move. 'Kashi will be the first to tell you, the Chidori is an assassination technique, and it gives him tunnel vision, he can only see the target then," she felt him hide his eyes in her shoulder, and she leaned into him. "His moment to act was just lighting up the Chidori, once lit, it is an unstoppable force of nature. My choice was between my heart or my lung, and I made that choice. Recovering a lung could be done. A heart? Not so much."
His arms squeezed again. "You are not allowed to be anywhere nearby when next I use the Chidori," he muttered in her shoulder.
"Neither of us can promise that, so do not make such a demand of me, I was not supposed to be there as it was."
Kakashi released a shuddering breath. "You are not allowed to do that, you have too much to do, your company needs you, the kids need you, I need you…"
She let him wind himself down, staring at the ground rather than any single person.
"Sad fact is," she said after a long moment. "I am expected back on field duty following the Chuunin exams, I am to have at least one person well and able to use my languages, who can work with Rina and Mika, and they are likewise to choose persons capable of learning the languages, there are to be two generation equivalents who can replace us as and when needed. We didn't realize how quickly the language classes were going to fall shut, while I left lesson plans only the twins can read them with the correct accent, everyone else fucks up Greek and Italian, forget Latin. Then the ones who can unseal my desk, and I have some sensitive documents there that would have been lost without me…"
"You need a master seal," Rina agreed quietly. "One that can unseal all of your seals."
"You can work with Shina-chan on that," Usagi told her. "I am to be under restriction for the next four months, my lab is out of my reach, if I even approach my desk I am to have someone at hand who can sort my mess because I must empty the desk completely and scratch out the seal that lets it hide. I must have you with me if I go to the company, you are temp command with your sister as your backup."
Rina blinked at her. "And do what?" she asked. "What does that leave you to do, if they take away your lead on Cipher and deny you any mission but D rank?"
"I am now primary teacher of Team 7 and under order to make them ready for the Chuunin Exams. Your father is on standby to teach them the jutsu I am incapable of teaching them, and whatever he feels appropriate for them to learn at this time."
Vegeta squeezed her again. "You were silly?" he lisped softly.
"I was stupid and arrogant," she agreed quietly, carding a hand through his hair. "I almost cost the village their Head of Cipher with no one able to competently translate my notes, break my seals, the Company Head of Capsule Corp, and worst… the Matriarch of the Hatake Clan almost died for my stupidity and arrogance, at the hands of her husband. There is no recovery from something like that, and he only did as a Shinobi would do, faced with an enemy who wanted him dead. Do you really think Daddy would ever forgive himself, that he cannot alter his aim when using the Chidori? That the enemy understood changing his targets was the only option they had to save their partner? I only had the time to move that fraction of space, I had no time to throw Gato in the way, I would have sacrificed him in a heartbeat — but I had no time," She met wet black eyes. "We just didn't have time baby, the kawarimi switched Zabuza and I too quick, Daddy was leading with Chidori… point two seconds, all that I could do was shift aside, my heart out of his way. Point two seconds to realize, all of my worry about this mission, and I was the one who was going to send it careening to Hell and back…"
Vegeta buried his head in her waist, crying softly… but she noticed his hand shift, reaching around her to touch his father, who met his hand with his own, squeezing gently.
"It will take time to move past this," her father-in-law said soberly.
His husband leaned against his side, sighing heavily. "You have exceeded my quotient of emotional bullshit for the day," he grouched.
Usage snickered. "It screws with the head to love someone, doesn't it?" she teased him.
"I don't love you," he said rudely, gold eyes slitting.
"No," she agreed. "But the ones you do love were hurt by my actions and if you didn't realize 'Geta would be turning his screams on you, if you killed me…" She gave him a lopsided smirk as he hissed irritably. "The Head of Intelligence is reorganizing the psych evaluations for you three gents, I am too close to the material to be a reliable source."
That got three groans of irritation from them. "He can have fun finding someone who does not blame me for my mistake leading to the Third War," Sakumo scoffed.
"Or reverse, someone who does not idolize your every step," his son shot back, smirking.
"You all face the task of making your next therapist realize your humanity rather than your legends as they stand," Usagi said dryly.
"There is a man behind the legend?" Sakura asked her with a teasing smirk.
"There is always a human behind every legend," Usagi agreed. "It is a matter of letting yourself look and see more than the legend that ended certain historical battles, and try to piece it out. Does he have a sweet tooth? Does he go mad for cute things? In one fashion or another every legend is also their own dork, but what are they a dork about? And in turn, what does that tell you about their personality? What do they have to 'shut off' in the heat of battle, to get the job done to the best of their skill?"
Sakura blinked slowly. Then opened her mouth… only to shut it again, thinking hard.
Usage spoke again, distracting her utterly. "This is a question that you never have to answer unless this is your job. But you can still psycho analyze your enemies, what can you tell about them in a glance? What can you use against them? In a glance at Naruto-kun I can tell you he will an absolute bitch to fight in tai battles, you have to watch how his muscles flex, and his baggy clothes just don't let you gauge that so you have to keep your focus on his chakra, which is a blinding wall of noise so hard to get a read on at any point. His area is his battlefield at every moment, he can see weapons in the most idle of things, his kunai and shurinken are sheared down to their last threads and still he uses them."
Naruto flushed, covering his ninja gear on his hip. "I was going to replace them when I got paid for that C rank," he muttered.
Mika came over, gently picking up Vegeta as Rina scooped up Ayeka, beginning to walk away with them, the grandfathers following them silently.
Sakumo stopped beside Kakashi, resting a hand on his head.
One gray eye barely opened to look at him. "No."
Sakumo snorted, sliding an arm around his ribs. "She is remanded to the village for months, brat. You will see her tonight," He hauled the Jounin to his shoulder. "Let's see if we can't talk Inoichi-kun around to our point of view with the new therapy, yeah?"
"I will see no one else," Orochimaru said clearly, Vegeta in his arms now rather than Mika's.
"Seriously," Sakumo agreed. "We have had one therapist for decades now, suddenly one mistake has them thinking we need a change? How rude of them…"
Kakashi sighed, looking back to his wife as she kept talking with the Genin, not letting them lose interest in her.
She was good at that, he knew, she was a teacher for a reason…
She was just also a great Kunoichi as well and too strong to be held by the desks for long.
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And that finishes what I felt like posting recently... after about six rewrites or so. Meh, whatever you like.
Have a blessed day