More than one member of Team Seven slept badly that night. When he got home, Kakashi should have been out like a light after the long journey, but his troubled mind insisted on getting in the way.
For so long, his life had been a thing of colourless simplicity. His missions, executed quietly and efficiently. His training, systematic and pre-planned for months in advance. His rest, comfortably filled with intellectually stimulating non-fiction. It felt like it would go on forever.
In retrospect, the cracks had been there all along, even if he'd refused to acknowledge their significance. Why had he, who had successfully maintained cordial but distant relationships with dozens of colleagues, allowed Gai to make a Dynamic Entry through his barriers and become an "eternal rival" who could be defeated but never dismissed? Why had he, whose own attempts at a love life were long dead and in no need of resurrection, become addicted to Jiraiya-sensei's novels, cheering on Mikoto's doomed love for Fushimi, hating but also pitying the dastardly Magistrate Urahara, and willing Kenji to realise that the Terrible Trio were prepared to work through their differences and become a harem if he would only start acting like a man?
Above all, why had he, who had only ever led standard chūnin teams that already knew what they were doing, or elite strike forces that merely needed a reliable point man, signed up to become a jōnin instructor?
It had been the Hokage's idea, like many things that sounded unreasonable but inexplicably worked out for the best. But it hadn't been an order. Kakashi could have refused.
Instead, he'd agreed, only to reject team after team for lacking a skill that he himself had never mastered. A skill that could have changed everything if he'd only learned it in time, and that they would need in order not to repeat his mistakes.
And then Team Seven.
They were too loud. They fought all the time. They refused to take "no" for an answer, and interpreted "yes" as "do whatever you like". And they were the best genin team he'd seen in years.
They understood teamwork. They understood loyalty. They were self-reliant yet respectful of authority (at least when it counted). And for all their lack of experience, they were both disciplined and creative in their approach to new challenges, a combination far too rare even among skilled shinobi.
Team Seven had made his life start to gain colour whether he wanted it or not. It was lucky that Kakashi was a genius capable of devouring teaching guides like rice crackers, because in return he had to accomplish a miracle—to find a way to transform an apathetic lone wolf like him into somebody else's Minato-sensei.
So far, he was failing.
The mission had started out perfectly. He had arranged for the team's first challenging battle, and their first kill, to take place in a highly-controlled environment. It had given them a hint of both their potential and the limits of their strength, and had forced them to confront the bloody truth of the battlefield.
But then came the fateful decision. Kakashi had chosen to press on with the mission instead of putting it on hold until reinforcements could arrive. He'd put the mission ahead of the welfare of his subordinates, and the very next day, they nearly paid for it with their lives.
No matter how great a genin team they were, he'd thrown them into danger before they were ready, and simultaneously fallen for Zabuza's stratagem hook, line and sinker. He should have known then to turn back, to accept the loss of face from changing his mind and disrupting Tazuna's schedule. Instead, in his arrogance he had pressed on, forgetting that this was about more than his personal skills.
And then there was the training. He should have focused on drawing out Sasuke's combat potential, attempted to awaken his Sharingan and taught him its basic applications. He should have taken advantage of Sakura's superior chakra control, teaching her simple techniques to help her keep the client (and herself) out of harm's way. Instead... tree walking. In what possible world was tree walking a good idea against that opponent on that terrain?
No, in retrospect he knew why he'd done it. It had nothing to do with tree walking being vital preparation for more advanced training. First and foremost, tree walking enhanced mobility. On its own, what it boosted most was evasion and escape. He'd been ready to send his team into deadly danger, but not ready to trust them to fight. On some level, he'd hoped they would focus on staying alive, maybe even flee the battle, just so he wouldn't have to bury them as he had buried other teams before them.
They had survived despite his failures, but even now there was so much that could still go wrong. The flame burning inside Sasuke threatened to consume him if fanned in the wrong direction. Sakura was strolling blithely into a world that chewed up the unprepared like a meat grinder. And Naruto reminded him of his younger self, gifted, brilliant, and utterly unable to see beyond himself to the true consequences of his actions. Kakashi still didn't know whether his intervention with Naruto had been a good idea—it may have ultimately saved the day, but it had also nearly ended up unleashing the most powerful destructive entity known to man. None of this had been in the teaching guides.
Kakashi's sleep, when it finally arrived, was neither deep nor lasting. After a few hours, he was awakened by a quiet noise, so faint he might almost have thought he'd dreamed it.
Slide. Step. Strike. Spin. Choke. Strike. Duck. Kick. Rise. Lean. Strike. Grab. Twist. Draw.
A second later, Kakashi finished waking up to find three shinobi lying unconscious on the floor, and a fourth struggling with his right arm behind his back and a kunai at his throat. That seemed about right.
Kakashi fixed the remaining, fifth, intruder with a cool gaze.
"How can I help you, gentlemen?"
The other man was unfazed. He took in the state of his subordinates with a quick glance, reached slowly into a vest pocket, and presented a scroll with an official-looking seal at the bottom.
"Hatake Kakashi, you are hereby under arrest on suspicion of treason against the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Your trial begins in an hour."
-o-
Naruto's mood had not improved by the time he woke up. He could feel something ending, some faint wisp of childhood he hadn't even realised was there. In a way, he should have known this would be the case. The ninja world wasn't like the civilian one, where you turned over the right calendar leaf and magically became ready for adult life. Here, the rights and responsibilities of adulthood were aligned with those of being a ninja: as a genin, he was expected to sacrifice his life for the village at a moment's notice, and accordingly had the right to live that life as he saw fit. There were restrictions, of course, given the young age of most genin. Some rights were reserved for their parents or guardians, and Naruto would not attain them until he reached chūnin rank or the age of sixteen (whichever came first).
Then again, with the Hokage's hands-off approach to guardianship, Naruto had already been making his own decisions on most day-to-day matters, and it wasn't like he was planning to get married or open a sealcrafting workshop anytime soon. As such, he hadn't felt the seismic shift of growing up when he graduated, and hadn't realised that his life was changing forever. Now, at last, that feeling was catching up to him. In the space of one mission, he'd experienced first love, fought to the death, and had to make major decisions about his place in the world. Then, in its aftermath, he'd discovered that he was caught up in a web of secrets and dangers that most adults wouldn't have to deal with in their entire lives. Who would he become if he kept going like this? Was he expected to give up being playful, flippant and carefree (or at least as carefree as Naruto got)? What did it mean to grow up, to adapt, and which parts of it was he allowed to choose?
What if some parts were inescapable? Kakashi-sensei seemed like he had to make an effort to stay on the same wavelength as everybody else. Gai-sensei didn't even bother trying. Naruto got the sense from Hinata's stories that Kurenai-sensei couldn't decide whether she was being Team Mum or running an interesting social experiment, while Chōji said Asuma-sensei was impossibly chill for somebody who only smoked tobacco.
Naruto would one day be a jōnin too, as a prerequisite to becoming Hokage. Was he also going to get progressively more unhinged as he gained experience? He had an inkling, now, of how the mechanism worked, and wondered how many recurring nightmares one accumulated over a lifetime of killing people and watching one's friends die.
He already knew his own would be worse.
-o-
Nobody was touching him. That was what didn't feel right.
He was in the middle of a crowd. Where was the jostling? Where were the people trying to accidentally knock him over? Did he suddenly not exist anymore?
Worse, where were the muttered curses? Even those who were too scared or disgusted to touch the monster could still hurt him with words. It didn't hurt much—not after all this time—but each one was another tiny grain of salt into a wound that didn't close.
Aggression was natural. Its absence left a void.
That void was what terrified him, more and more with every second. Silence so complete he could only hear his rapid heartbeat. Stillness so complete he couldn't feel the passage of time. He wanted to do something, anything, to make the world more real, but he couldn't move.
The crowd wasn't moving either. If the world was empty, then what were they doing here? Why were they surrounding him? Was he the reason they were here?
But if they weren't here to hurt him... If they weren't here to interact...
What if they were here to watch him, and had been all along?
The heads turned. All of them at once. All to look straight at him. They'd heard the thought.
Every single one. Watching. Their eyes the only points of colour in the world. Watching. Watching him without mercy.
And he still couldn't move.
-o-
Naruto had woken up with a scream.
Even after turning on the light, it had taken him minutes of grounding himself in his tiny flat, minutes of proving to himself that he was real, and alone, and as safe as somebody like him could ever be.
This was what the Hokage could never understand, and Naruto could never fully explain. The true nature of the Demon Fox: the unbearable horror of being seen, and the equal and opposite horror of being compelled to see the Fox in return.
That single moment of realisation, frozen and extended across all time, was the background feel of facing the Demon Fox. The helpless terror of the vivisection table. The desperate prayer to go unnoticed by a being so vast that it would crush you simply because that was easier than the alternative. All incoherent, like trying to describe the experience of an explosion by talking about crater sizes and casualty rates. Forced circumlocution for a thing that words could not touch directly.
The Fox was still inside him, even now. Was that just a nightmare, or had its eyes followed him back from their prison? Could it see him right now? Could it hear him the way it heard him when he'd spoken to it inside his mind?
Enough. He had to think about something else. Now.
His parents. He finally knew his parents, and they were every bit as legendary and heroic as he could have hoped. And a lot more dead. He knew his classics, and was thus aware that there were a dozen reasons for a ninja to fake their death, only to reappear in the village's hour of need with upgraded powers and a badass new outfit. He knew those reasons, and those stories, off by heart. But nobody came back from sacrificial ninjutsu—techniques that were lethal by design because nothing less would get the job done.
And so now, when he'd finally come close enough to touch his parents' shadows, they disappeared forever. It wasn't fair, hearing about their deaths from the Hokage like it was something in a history book, long ago and far away. Gone, filed away, too late to be undone, for further information please see the index. Why couldn't he have known them, or at least had memories of them, something that would make the world in which they'd been alive a real place?
The villagers had known them. What would they say if they found out they'd been tormenting the son of one of their greatest heroes? Would they be consumed with regret? Would they beg for forgiveness? Would they start atoning for their sins?
But Naruto's fantasies of revenge popped like soap bubbles when he tried to actually project the most likely scenario. Would the villagers really admit they'd been wrong all along, and face up to the consequences of their actions? Or would they just spin the discovery to reinforce their existing beliefs? How much easier would it be to proclaim that he was an obvious disappointment to his parents, who would surely be ashamed if they could see how their son had grown up et cetera et cetera? Naruto had no illusions that the villagers had originally decided to hate him based on some sort of rational evidence that could be challenged and disproved.
Besides, there was a reason why the villagers didn't know. Much though he hated to agree with his mysterious nemeses about anything, if Naruto could work out that he was Kyubey's host, so could others, and every extra detail made him easier for outsiders to identify. If he was going to reveal the truth, and one day he certainly was, it would have to be after he became strong enough to fend off the Zabuza-level foes that would eventually come after him.
Not to mention whoever had unleashed the Demon Fox in the first place. The Hokage didn't know who was responsible, which suggested that the culprit—someone powerful enough to penetrate village security at a time of high alert, face off against the Fourth Hokage and break a state-of-the-art demon seal—was still alive and out there and likely interested in finishing the job.
Naruto didn't have enough pieces of the puzzle. What was it they were all after? His Leaf-based nemeses had wanted to use him as a tool, but Naruto's experience with the Demon Fox had shown it to be far too dangerous to treat as a deployable weapon of mass destruction. It was an intelligent being, and clearly one with a taste for violence. That meant it was fully capable of seeking revenge on its former captors, or indeed pursuing its own plans, which were unlikely to be for anyone's good. It wasn't worth keeping something like that around if the only way to make use of it was to let it loose and risk either of those things happening. It would be smarter to simply kill Naruto, or keep him in some kind of hidden underground vault his whole life until the time came to transfer the Fox to his successor.
That meant there had to be something else, some benefit to being the host of which he was as yet unaware, and which might just tip the balance of power in his favour. Some way to make use of the Demon Fox's incomparable strength without destroying himself in the process. His parents must have known what it was. And they must have known it was crazy to entrust something like that to a child they had barely met, a child who for all they knew might one day turn it against the village. They must have known it made no sense to have absolute faith in Naruto just because he was their son. And yet.
It was a new sense of connection to his parents, a bond of trust linking them across time, with a depth to it that he had never experienced in the real world. It filled him with a strange mix of emotions, from sorrow to happiness, from awe to disbelief. It brought its own sense of fulfilment even as it made him hunger for more. He would have to patch things up with the Hokage, if only so he could question him about every last detail of their lives.
Feeling a bit better, Naruto roused himself from his contemplative state. Things were changing, after all, and one of those changes was the fact that his wallet was presently full of more money than he had ever seen in one place before. In other words, it was time to go shopping.
-o-
The chief of the (civilian) Leaf police service stared gloomily at the reports mounting into an ever taller pile on his desk as he waited for his latest intern to bring him a much-needed mug of coffee.
At 9:45 am, a hulking purple-skinned ogre, wearing a tiger-skin loincloth and brandishing a five-foot iron club, had barged into the foyer of Scroll Off, Leaf's premier bookshop, and demanded directions to the manga section from a terrified clerk. It returned to the counter ten minutes later, its body language much changed, and very quietly handed over the money for the two most recent volumes of Princess Maker Gaiden, five volumes of Thorns and Petals: Rosamund's Heart-Pounding Adventure and the entire backlog of the critically-acclaimed Magical Girl Glitter Honey.
At 11 am, the chief's intern informed him of a new rumour spreading like wildfire: apparently, Tora, the Fire Daimyo's wife's cat with a tendency to take refuge from its owner on Leaf territory, had been cursed to turn into a dog when covered in water at precisely four degrees Celsius. To date, Tora had been drenched with at least seven buckets of cold water by curious townsfolk, but to no effect. Trade in thermoses and thermometers was booming.
At 11:30 am, a report came in of a mass nosebleed-induced fainting incident among the staff of LUSCO Supermarket. Allegedly, a group of completely naked young women, their modesty preserved only by mysterious clouds of mist, had marched in, entirely unembarrassed, and purchased a variety of cooking implements, as well as industrial quantities of ramen ingredients. When questioned on their way out, they explained that they were preparing a dark ritual to summon their master, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, from the void beyond time and space for purposes best left unspecified.
By that point, the chief had no choice but to accept that the worst had come to pass. Uzumaki Naruto was back in town.
-o-
Naruto strolled cheerfully through the streets, catching up on his shopping needs while a separate corner of his mind gleefully noted the visible consequences of his opening salvo and made notes for future improvements. He'd found himself getting a lot better at semi-conscious multi-tasking, possibly as a side-effect of all that shadow clone use. He also faintly registered the Hokage passing him by at one point, unusually out of his characteristic white robes and ridiculous hat, but the latter completely blanked him. Naruto wasn't sure how he felt about that, but just as he was beginning to ponder the implications, he was distracted by the sight of Kiba and Shino walking down the street.
They were the first people he knew that he'd seen since he got back, the Hokage and a bunch of scowling shopkeepers notwithstanding, and the sight shocked him out of his reverie. This was it, his chance to establish a new pattern of behaviour that didn't completely conceal his intelligence, yet also didn't freak people out and make them run away. He wished he'd spent more time planning, maybe running through the various paths such a conversation could take and considering appropriate responses, like he had with his confrontation with the Hokage. Still, he had to start somewhere, and an ordinary casual encounter with a couple of fellow genin seemed like just the thing.
"Hi, guys! I'm back!" Naruto waved.
The response was not what he expected.
Shino and Kiba's heads turned to Naruto in eerie unison. They stared at him as, in one perfectly-coordinated voice, they intoned, "We are members of Team Kurenai. You hurt our teammate. Prepare to die."
Naruto froze as they started to advance towards him. He had not anticipated his fellow ninja being mysteriously replaced by evil zombie clones, at least not without better dramatic buildup. While he reckoned he could take Kiba in combat without much difficulty, and Akamaru could be dealt with one way or another, he simply didn't know enough about Shino's capabilities or fighting style to take the risk of fighting him in a three-on-one match-up. Naruto had read about the effects of rare toxins, and did not need telling that there were few things more terrifying than an opponent with a precise, long-range, potentially silent and invisible chemical delivery system.
As such, he didn't waste any time. "I don't know what you're talking about! I never did anything to her! I haven't even been here!"
"Hinata's been moping ever since the day you left," Kiba said. "She's barely said a word in the past two months, and we know it's your fault!"
"Why?" Shino elaborated. "Because her demeanour changed completely after she read your note."
Naruto could feel a heavy sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. What could he have done that was horrible enough to make Hinata upset for two solid months? His imagination, ever helpful, conjured images of a sad Hinata lying curled up on top of her bed, looking very small and helpless in the middle of the enormous four-poster monstrosity (which Naruto assumed every Hyūga had in their bedroom); Hinata trying to write in her diary, only for the ink to be blurred by her falling tears; Hinata at dinner, unable to muster an appetite, and brushing away the concerned questions of her household (who would doubtless be swearing Blood Oaths of Vengeance against whatever transgressor had so hurt her)...
Naruto flinched away from the visions, and forced himself to consider the much more tractable question of what he could possibly have done wrong. As far as he could remember, his note to Hinata had been completely innocent. What had he written again?
-o-
Dear Hinata,
Sorry, but I'm going to have to cancel our dinner together. Don't take it the wrong way—it's not you, it's me.
I've signed up for a new mission, and I won't be back for some time. I know we'll have to put our training on hold, but look at it as an opportunity—you can start seeing other people, and it'll give me some space so I can figure out where to go from here.
Naruto
-o-
Either way, there was only one thing for it.
"If she's upset, I should talk to her," Naruto told Kiba and Shino. "Where is she?"
"Nuh-uh," Kiba shook his head. "You've done enough damage. You're going to stay here and take your punishment for not listening to our warning."
He rolled up his sleeves demonstratively. Akamaru growled. Shino didn't move, but the light happened to catch his sunglasses, making them glint in a particularly sinister fashion. Was that a faint buzzing sound, just on the edge of hearing?
"Wait! I'm prepared to negotiate!" Naruto shouted.
Seeing that he'd at least momentarily put them off balance, he pressed on. "Kiba, I know a shop which is selling Pagoda of the Dead 3, the one they nearly banned for graphic content, without asking for ID. I'll tell you where it is if you let me go see Hinata."
Some of the tension faded from Kiba's body language, and he lowered his fists a little. Akamaru looked up at him in puzzlement.
Shino gave his teammate a reproachful look. "Don't give in, Kiba. This is a test of the loyalty of the pack, of the unity of the hive. You cannot abandon your own for the sake of such trifles and still call yourself a shinobi."
"Damn straight!" Kiba agreed, his resolve restored. "You know, every once in a while, you actually say some good stuff. Now let's get on with the beating."
"You know that girl who helps out at the flower shop down the road from the Academy?" Naruto quickly asked Shino before the group's anger could regain its momentum. "I can tell you where and on which days she has lunch on her own, plus three of her favourite topics of conversation."
"Hinata is at the Namikaze Memorial Library," Shino said without a moment's hesitation. "If you hurry, you should be able to get there before it closes."
Naruto created a shadow clone to hold up his end of the bargain, then grinned and ran off. When he'd asked Iruka-sensei in his circumlocutory fashion why information warfare wasn't taught at the Academy, he'd been told that it was too difficult a concept for mere genin-in-training. In reality, he suspected, it was because it was such a powerful tool, and one so easily turned upon even the mightiest Academy instructor.
-o-
The Namikaze Memorial Library was a tall, elegant building of white stone founded during the second wave of reconstruction after the Night of Tragedy, once housing and basic infrastructure had been re-established and there was a need for Leaf to prove both to itself and to the outside world that it had not ceased to exist as a major shinobi power. A lot of favours had been called in, and a lot of uneven trades made, and the most obvious consequence was some very impressive civic architecture for a settlement coming back from the edge of annihilation.
Its existence made much more sense thanks to Naruto's new information. He'd already known that the village had extremely thorough evacuation plans (as a genin, he was obliged to memorise levels 1 to 3, while chūnin were drilled in the full set). If the Hokage and his most trusted staff had known in advance that the Demon Fox might break free that night, he could see how they'd managed to save so many people from an event that had literally wiped away the physical structure of the village. Leaf's revival may have seemed like a miracle to the outside world, but the whole thing was a product of sound planning, between the evacuation that had left countless people alive but without a trade, the First Hokage's decision to found the original village in a vast forest that provided endless construction materials, and a long-term investment policy that defied the commonplace wisdom of never forging deep financial bonds with potential future enemies.
The Namikaze Memorial Library (the very name made Naruto's heart skip a beat) was a tribute to the Fourth Hokage in more than just its name. Its specialisation was higher education—the fact that ninja were forced to finish their formal education at the age of twelve, and thereafter had to focus on mission-related specialisations, had been an endless source of frustration for the Fourth, who in another life would happily have been a scientific polymath. The Third had thus decided that the library would stock titles suited to self-study in a variety of topics, both civilian and shinobi, from agriculture and Bloodline Limits to Yin/Yang elemental theory and zoology, with a tiered access structure preventing ordinary villagers from being exposed to things they were better off not knowing.
Naruto's own attitude to self-study had always been decidedly mixed. On the one hand, he knew well what it was like to hunger for information, especially when others were all too happy to deny it to him. There was pleasure in satisfying his curiosity, and in adding more pieces to the enormous jigsaw puzzle that was his understanding of the world around him. On the other hand, every new piece of knowledge only set him further apart from other people. What he knew could not become a topic of conversation, could never even be mentioned in front of them. The more he learned, the further away he moved from his peers, in intellectual advancement but also in isolation. There was a whole new kind of loneliness in having a head filled with ideas that could never be shared.
That was due to change, though. He had an objective now, one which called for him to take full advantage of his strengths. If learning was one of his strengths, which it most definitely was, then he would have to leverage it as much as he could, and find a way to bring his conflicting desires into balance. He had no idea exactly how that could work right now, but he remembered his conversations with Haku, and however distant the prize, he now knew it was worth fighting for.
Unfortunately, even if he could do that, in the case of the Namikaze Memorial Library one significant obstacle remained. Head Librarian Ishihara "Old Stoneface" Kaori was a woman who hero-worshipped the Fourth, perhaps more so than anyone else in the village, and her hatred for the monster that killed him was as intense as it got. Even after Naruto became a genin and Ishihara could no longer keep him banned from the premises as a "disruptive element" without consequences, she'd managed to keep the boy from using any of the institution's resources with a variety of tricks refined over decades of library management. At the moment, as far as Naruto could tell, the odds of his membership application form ever getting processed were roughly equal to the odds of Sasuke spontaneously growing wings and flying away.
At any rate, Shino had not led him astray. Hinata was indeed inside, leafing through a large black book with improbable speed, her expression of concentration at once fierce and oddly adorable. Naruto was put in mind of a small, fluffy kitten trying to intimidate an intruder into leaving its territory.
"N-Naruto! You're back!" She looked up and gave him a somewhat dazed stare as he approached. Her Byakugan deactivated.
"Um... yeah. Got back last night. Hey, listen, I just talked to Kiba and—"
A heavy seal (of the book-stamping variety, not the space-time-warping variety) zoomed right past Naruto's ear.
"Silence in the library!" an enraged librarian admonished in a loud voice, likely disrupting far more people's reading than the original conversation had.
"Sorry..." Hinata whispered, even though Naruto was technically the one being rebuked.
"Let's go outside," Naruto suggested.
Hinata duly put the book away and followed him out.
Once out of range of the librarian's vengeance, he spoke up again. "I'm really sorry."
Hinata looked at him blankly. "You... are?"
"Yes. I'm not exactly sure what it is I did," Naruto told her, "but I'm sorry anyway."
"Um." Hinata stared at him silently, slowly tensing as if some kind of courage meter was gradually ticking upwards. Naruto waited politely until it passed the critical point that allowed self-expression.
"Naruto... what exactly did you mean by your note?"
"What do you mean?" Naruto asked. "I meant exactly what I said. An urgent mission came up and I had to leave straight away, so we'd have to reschedule that thank-you dinner. But I didn't want you to take it the wrong way, so I pointed out that it would be a nice change of pace for you to try sparring with other people, and I could use the time to come up with training ideas for when I got back."
"Oh." For a second, Hinata virtually sagged with relief, as if some huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Then her face tightened as if said weight had been put back down squarely on her foot, and was expected to remain there until further notice. By this point, Naruto was intimately familiar with Hinata's "I'm beating myself up because I am an idiot" mode, and could identify it from eye movements alone.
"Why, what did you think I meant?" Naruto asked with more than a little bemusement. "I bumped into Kiba and Shino, and they said you've been upset ever since you read it."
Hinata squirmed, as if suppressing an impulse to get away. "I thought it meant... something else. Or I did at first, anyway."
"Did you change your mind?" Naruto asked, noting the non-answer but also knowing that trying to pressure Hinata never led anywhere good, and in fact was pretty much the most counter-productive thing one could do with her. If pushed, she would retreat into herself and grow increasingly upset and non-responsive. If pushed further, she would flee. The one thing she did not do—and, in an odd way, Naruto respected her for this—was give in to the pressure and change her mind on the issue in question.
"Well…" Hinata said awkwardly. "At first, I think I was just in shock, and I didn't feel anything. But that wore off, and after I was done... reacting, I started thinking. I… it's not that I know that part of you at all, but it seemed to me like you were acting out of character. You're brave, and you always face challenges with everything you have, and you never run away from a problem. And you communicate. It's what you do. It's what you've been doing with me all along. So maybe, just maybe… I was making a faulty assumption.
"Between my own reading and what you've taught me, I know assumptions are deadly. People jump to the wrong conclusions about each other, and the girl runs away and gets herself kidnapped when the boy's only trying to protect her, or he thinks she's died and then he kills himself and then she kills herself, or she tries to kill him for turning evil when it's really part of a secret plan to bring about world peace…"
Cold hell, just what did she think he'd written?
"I couldn't let it end like that. And then I remembered that the entire reason I was able to talk to you, the reason you took an interest in me, was so I could learn to think like you. I asked myself, 'What would Naruto do?'"
Wow. That was flattering on an unprecedented level. Naruto had been used as an example of good behaviour at the Academy before, but that tended to be in the format of "Do the exact opposite of what Naruto does, boys and girls, and you're sure to grow up to become fine ninja". (Of course, it didn't take him long to figure out how to game that particular system, and all use of Naruto as an example stopped immediately after the Chewing Gum Incident.) Upon hearing Hinata's words, he could feel his face starting to grow hot in spite of his best efforts.
"I started with the reading list you'd given me. I went through every last page, but none of them could tell me what to do."
"Hold on," Naruto interrupted. "The entire reading list? In two months?"
Hinata shook her head. "Much less than that. I suppose you wouldn't know—Byakugan users have accelerated reading techniques, since we can see the full spread of a scroll, or a double-page spread of a book, all in one go. Besides, I was… motivated. So when I was done, I had enough time to go through the books you'd been reading, and see if that would help."
"How did you know what I'd been reading?"
"I infiltrated the offices of the libraries I know you go to, and examined their records," Hinata told him in much the same tone of voice as she used to discuss the weather. "And not in your books, but in the bibliography of one of them, there was a book with a chapter which had what I needed.
"I still don't understand it all. It said there was nothing inherently wrong with not knowing the answer to a question, and that doesn't make any kind of sense. But I did understand when it said that if you didn't know, you have to admit it before you can take another step towards the truth. And so… um…"
Hinata looked down, studying the ground as if the arrangement of the grass stalks at her feet held the final secrets of rationality.
Naruto waited patiently for a few seconds, but finally couldn't restrain himself. "What happened?"
"I admitted it," Hinata said quietly, as if telling him about how she'd confessed some terrible crime. "I admitted that I'd been driving myself into—into being unhappy based on things that only existed in my head. You must think it's so silly. All I had to do was wait and ask." There was a slight wry, self-mocking expression on Hinata's face which Naruto didn't remember ever seeing there before.
Naruto considered what he'd been told. Then he considered it some more. It did not seem to fit anything in his understanding of how human behaviour worked.
"So let me get this straight," he said, slowly and carefully. "You started thinking bad things about me. Then you realised that your reasons for doing so weren't good enough. So you conducted independent research to fix errors in your thinking, and decided to give me the benefit of the doubt until you could ask me in person."
Hinata nodded tentatively.
"Hinata, will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?" The words left Naruto's mouth before he knew it.
"Just so we don't have any more misunderstandings... this is that dinner you promised me for being a good friend during your time in hospital?" Hinata asked cautiously.
"This is me asking you out on a date after hearing the most amazing thing I've ever heard a girl say in my life."
Hinata was speechless.
Naruto wouldn't make the same mistake twice. "Meet you at seven tomorrow evening by the Nagasumi Fountain?"
Hinata nodded shakily.
"Great," Naruto beamed. "And if they dare try to send me on another mission, I'm just going to have to fake Spontaneous Chakra Combustion Disease or something. I won't let anything get in the way this time."
With that, he said goodbye and quickly left. His completely unplanned dive into the world of romance had, once again, not taken account of minor concerns such as the fact that he owned no date-worthy clothes (at least none he could wear without vivid memories of Haku), and that he hadn't the faintest idea of where on this continent one took somebody for a first date.
-o-
Naruto zoomed between clothes shops at full ninja speed. His quest was urgent, but also perilous, partly due to the outrageous price of fashionable clothing (especially since he'd never been to most of these shops before, and thus did not know which ones would have a special Naruto-only markup) and partly because he was flat-out refused entry to a number of retailers for wearing a blasphemous crime against all that was holy in fashion (sic). Oh, and it also didn't help that Naruto's own fashion sense was deep in the negative, and he could thus only rely on his memories of Tsunami's attempts to make him look presentable.
As he looked through clothes, Naruto went back to pensive mode. Was he really about to start dating Hinata? How had that happened? Sure, she was ridiculously cute, surprisingly bright, a quick and dedicated learner, earnest and compassionate, and generally A-rank girlfriend material, but was this really OK? What if it got in the way of her training? What if her family found out and decided to have him killed (which, given the impression he got of her father, they absolutely could)?
Then again, he had always intended to get closer to her, and to get to know her better, as part of his efforts to help unlock her potential. And doing those things was the whole purpose of going on dates, right? (That and kissing, which he wasn't going to think about right now.) Besides, as future Hokage, he couldn't flinch away from a confrontation just because his opponent was the village's most powerful clan, with unique powers practically tailor-made to counter his own, capable of crushing him like a bug and only improving their public standing by doing so.
A more troubling issue was that Naruto simply had no idea how dating worked. He knew his classics, and was thus aware that successfully entering a relationship with one's crush was a herculean task, requiring dauntless perseverance, surgically-precise timing, and enough luck to bankrupt a casino. But manga authors were far less interested in what happened afterwards, at least until jealousy, disastrous misunderstandings or villainous kidnappings raised the drama level again. Naruto somehow had an inkling that Hinata would be no better informed, which meant they were in for a great deal of improvisation. And his improvisations had a way of producing what one might term "spectacular" results, for better or worse.
There was also Haku. Did he still have feelings for the missing-nin boy? If he did, was this relevant to the present situation? Was he in some way dishonouring that connection by dating someone else straight away, or was that not how it worked at all? Not for the first time in his life, Naruto wished he had someone he could trust with these kinds of complicated issues, but the Hokage was apparently not on speaking terms with him right now, Iruka-sensei had been a bachelor as long as Naruto had known him, and he flat-out did not want to know what kind of romantic advice he might receive from Kakashi-sensei, given the man's taste in literature.
In the meantime, he was getting nowhere with his shopping. Fashion was a completely alien world to Naruto, one which might as well have had no atmosphere and been full of hungry space monsters. The only thing he could do now was the one thing he'd been praying he could avoid.
-o-
"Sakura, would you mind helping me pick out clothes for a date?"
Sakura stared at Naruto as he stood on her doorstep. "A date? You? Who would possibly want to date you?"
For a second, Sakura thought Naruto was going to overreact to her perfectly reasonable question, but in the end he seemed to suppress whatever he was about to say.
"Hinata."
"Huh." Sakura felt a momentary surge of frustration at the fact that Hinata, of all people, had not only made her move, but was now further ahead in her love life than she was. There was no justice in the world.
"Congratulations," she said reluctantly. "Now, I'll say this only once. Hinata is a delicate, sensitive soul who's far too good for the likes of you, and if you break her heart I swear I'll kick your ass so hard that the first ninja to make it to the moon will be wondering why it's littered in human teeth."
"I'll add you to the list," Naruto muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing. So will you help me?"
Sakura thought about it. It wasn't that she was keen to get involved in Naruto's love life. She had endured a great deal over the last few years to resist his attempts to have one, and the gene pool would not thank her if she started undoing all her good work now. On the other hand, if Naruto was dating Hinata, it meant he'd no longer be asking Sakura out every five minutes. Also, while she didn't know the girl all that well, she did know Naruto, and there was such a thing as general female solidarity. Her conscience wouldn't allow her to unleash something like Naruto onto that unsuspecting girl without at least trying to soften the blow.
"Maybe," she conceded. "How long have you got to prepare?"
"The date's tomorrow evening."
Sakura gave him a disbelieving look. "You've got to be kidding me. I guess I can help you, but it's going to be a lot of work, and I did have plans for tonight. You're going to have to make it worth my while."
"How do you mean?" Naruto asked warily.
Sakura hadn't actually planned this far. What did she want from Naruto in exchange for taking him clothes shopping? A vow of silence, maybe? Or a self-imposed restraining order while they were off-duty?
Then an idea occurred to her, one both great and terrible at once.
"I think you'd better come in."
-o-
Sakura's parents were serious about being good hosts, which meant she'd been drilled in the fundamentals so well that she now found herself reflexively serving tea even to a walking disaster zone like Naruto.
Staring over her teacup as she gathered her resolve, Sakura took a deep breath. It was a crazy thought, not something you would ever expect from the sensible member of Team Seven… but the more she looked at it from different angles, the more it made a twisted, mind-boggling kind of sense.
"I want you to set me up on a date with Sasuke."
"I'm sorry," Naruto said, "I don't think I caught that."
Sakura gritted her teeth. "A date. With Sasuke. I want you to arrange one for me."
Naruto looked at her as if he wasn't sure which foreign language she was speaking.
Sakura was not going to repeat herself again. The first two times had been hard enough. Instead, she cracked her knuckles so as to suggest that failing to respond would not impact well on his lifespan.
Naruto, for all his many failings, did sometimes know when not to push his luck where she was concerned.
"You want me to set you up on a date with Sasuke?"
"Yeah," Sakura nodded, looking deeply into her cup so as not to meet Naruto's gaze.
"Why me?" Naruto stressed the pronoun nearly to breaking point. "What makes you think that Sasuke would listen to me for a second about something so personal?"
Sakura tried to compose her thoughts. The ideas themselves weren't new, but she never thought she'd have to express them to another person before, and it wasn't easy. These weren't bullet points for an Academy essay. This was her, Sakura, trying to convey something subtle and sophisticated to somebody who couldn't begin to understand the material.
"Look, Sasuke is different. He's special. He sees the world in a way ordinary people like you or me couldn't hope to grasp."
Naruto frowned at this, but didn't interrupt, which reflected well on his survival instinct.
"He's always got his eyes on the horizon. He sees great dreams and visions instead of getting bogged down in everyday things. But thanks to that... he doesn't really see other people. He doesn't talk to us. He brushes us off when we talk to him. He barely even notices we're there, like we're just scenery painted on the background of his life."
Sakura took a sip of tea, watching Naruto carefully for his reaction, which was mercifully neutral. If he'd laughed at her feelings…
"So what does this have to do with me?" he asked.
"I know, I just know that if I could get Sasuke to see me for who I am, even for a single night, then he'd realise we're meant to be together. But I'm getting nowhere. He doesn't even register me trying to ask him out. That's why I need your help."
"OK," Naruto said. "I still don't see where I come in. A few weeks ago you told me I had the emotional sensitivity of a wild pig. Out of everyone who could do it, why would you want me to play matchmaker for you?"
"Because," Sakura told him, "I don't know how or why, but he knows you're there. Maybe you're irritating enough that even he can't ignore you. Whatever. Sasuke notices you where he doesn't notice the rest of us. He responds to you. He talks to you like a normal person, while ignoring everyone else. He only has eyes for you."
She stopped sharply. "Uh, that came out wrong. I didn't mean it like that. It's not like that." Her voice rose as she suddenly remembered her speculations from the Wave mission. "It's not like that at all, you hear me! And if you try to make it like that, I swear I'll—"
"Sakura," Naruto cut her off. "I'm not after Sasuke. Ick. I'll have to wash my mouth out with soap after just saying that. I'm here to ask for your help dating Hinata, remember?"
Sakura relaxed a little, and quickly put away the leaking, freshly cracked teacup she'd been holding. It was lucky that her mother had the same temper as her, and as such bought the things in bulk.
"Sorry. Anyway, that's why I think he might listen to you. I know it's like performing complex surgery with a sledgehammer, but you really are my only choice. So can you do this for me?"
Naruto could say no. He could mock her, say she was so desperate that she'd seek help from the likes of him, or comment on how she was too incompetent to pursue her love on her own. He wouldn't leave the house alive if he did, of course, but still… for some reason Naruto's opinion mattered enough for Sakura to feel anxious.
"All right. I'll get you a date with Sasuke by the end of the year."
The tension flooded out of Sakura. Then she fully parsed his words.
"What? That's, like, forever! Who knows what dirty tricks Ino might use to lure him away before then!"
Naruto shook his head. "If you wanted me to trick or blackmail him into going on a date with you, that could take a few days or weeks. But is that really how you want this to go?"
"I guess not," Sakura said. If anything, that would make her situation worse. If Sasuke ended up associating her with Naruto-brand tomfoolery, then she might as well pick him up and throw him into Ino's arms herself. Still, the end of the year? That was practically next door to eternity.
"Trust me," Naruto told her. "It's going to take time to find a way of making Sasuke want to go on a date with you of his own accord, but I'll manage it. It'll be a challenge worthy of Uzumaki Naruto himself—which is convenient since I am Uzumaki Naruto himself. So now that's sorted out, we should get going before the shops close."
-o-
"Try this one on."
"No good. Next!"
"Too light!"
"Too dark! Grimdark is in style this season, but a happy-go-lucky guy like you could never pull it off."
"Orange and blue? No. Hell no. You die now."
"How about those sunglasses? Hmm, we might actually be on to something here. I never thought the megane look would work on you, but... Go on, say something clever-sounding."
"I think more works of transformative fiction should exploit their unique access to paratextual space."
"Wait, no, what was I thinking? Just keep your mouth shut. In fact, that's a good policy for the date in general. Now try this jacket on."
-o-
By the end of the evening, Naruto was feeling more wrung out than a sponge after a D-rank twelve-hour dishwashing mission (yes, those existed, though they were generally reserved for those who'd really upset the Hokage), but he did at least have some clothes that went well together, and did not make him look insane or colour-blind—for the first time in his life, according to Sakura.
Finally at the front of the interminable queue, Naruto reached into his pocket and prepared to part with the majority of his precious A-rank pay—but in addition to his frog wallet, his hand encountered a folded-up piece of paper. A folded-up piece of paper he had not put there. After paying for his clothes, Naruto quickly made his excuses to Sakura and bolted for the nearest public toilets to read.
Hatake Kakashi is currently facing a secret military tribunal. He is accused of attempting to sabotage an A-rank mission, and of interfering with the politics of a sovereign state without Leaf authorisation. Should his guilt be proved, he will likely face capital punishment.
The end of the trial cannot be delayed beyond tomorrow morning, and those responsible for proving Hatake Kakashi's innocence cannot be trusted. If you are aware of any evidence which may exonerate him, by proving that he did not refuse reinforcements for his recent mission to the Country of the Wave, and that he did not order the assassination of one Gatō Amand, you must bring it to the tribunal, beneath the abandoned bookshop on the corner of Kusaribe Alley and Yagyū Road, no later than 4 a.m. tomorrow.
4 a.m. tomorrow was in six hours.