Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shizuka wakes up in the hospital. Abruptly. Sitting up with a gasp.

The car had impacted the taxi on her side. Her little brother was sitting next to her, but if she is ok, he must be ok too― has to be ok too…

Except, she doesn’t have a little brother.

And she has never travelled by automobile, never mind a taxi. She wasn’t coming home for the holidays. Her brother didn’t pick her up at the station. She entered her house and the bodies of her parents were there― there had been a lot of blood on the streets, she had run. Her brother had― Itachi had― he was a traitor. No. He wasn’t. Because he had been ordered to do it. And she wouldn’t have found out until after his death, so so many painful years into the future…

This is so absurd that she’s skipping disbelief completely, to just go directly into the anger. She will also skip all the way down to acceptance at some point, but right now she is just going to carry on while being very, very angry.

Angry because people were very stupid and it messed up her life. Angry because it could have messed her up very hard, if not for the bizarre reaction to the Tsukuyomi that made her remember a past life in another reality.

Shizuka lays down again on her bed, and takes a moment to breath and lower her heart rate. And she is Shizuka, indeed. The accident is clear and vivid in her mind, visceral and terrible like a nightmare, but just a nightmare. She feels like herself. Shizuka knows how Eli would have reacted and it is not like this.

The Shizuka from before wouldn’t be reacting like this either, she is already being influenced by Eli’s memories and she is not sure how much she likes that, except. Except the Shizuka from before would be reacting just like Sasuke.

So she is thankful for Eli.

Eli had been a civilian foreign languages teacher, in a land where shinobi, as Shizuka is learning to be, are just fiction. Kind and soft at 23 after spending her childhood being mean and edgy, Eli had learned her own lessons and changed, but she had always had a soft spot for some villains and antiheros. She had also spent a decade being a huge Naruto fan. And all of that is going to save Shizuka from  doing all the shit Sasuke did.

Now she needs to plot. She needs to plot really hard and she needs to know how accurate is what she remembers. She needs information. She needs a concerned responsible adult who will answer questions. What is a good way to attract the attention of a concerned adult?

She thinks of her parents, she thinks of her cousins, her uncles and aunts. She thinks of all the members of her clan that were loosely related to her, that she didn’t know and now she can’t never get to know. She thinks of her brother who is a murderer and plans to be a martyr― no, a sacrifice. She also thinks about Eli’s little brother and how she will never know if he was ok, if at least he got to live. She thinks about how Eli’s family lost their daughter. And she thinks about all that is to come. And cries. She is mourning and she will use it. She will use her pain and the memories to suit her purposes and eventually. People. Will. Pay.

*

The nurse that comes is a responsible concerned adult but she won’t say anything, so Shizuka cries a bit more, begs a little and eventually the nurse goes to fetch someone who can give answers.

*

The nurse comes back with the Hokage and then leaves them alone to talk.

Shizuka doesn’t want to talk to the Hokage. She is scared of the Hokage. He won’t let anything scape he doesn’t want her to know and he is likely to notice that there’s something off with her, that she knows too much― but who else was she expecting?  She is just deluding herself if she thinks it would be easy to extract information from some other ninja.

And ROOT is probably watching. If she is scared of the Hokage, she is terrified of ROOT.

So she will bear it. She will try to act as Shizuka from before. A little girl who witnessed something terrible but doesn’t know anything, and she will learn from him as much as she can. She will do with what she has and she will succeed, there is no alternative.

The Hokage tells her that he’s sorry for her loss and Shizuka can believe him. Shizuka can believe he is sorry and regretful, but she can’t believe he has her best interests in mind. He then asks her what happened.

She can do this. She steels herself ―and she hopes that it looks like she is doing it to prepare herself to recall something awful ― and she wraps herself in the clueless Shizuka from before, and she tells her tale.   

And she apparently passes the test.

Then she gets to ask her questions: what will happen with the bodies of her family, they will have a proper burial, right? They will be cremated, right? Will she have to organise it? To wash them and dress them as she’s the only left to do it? She wants to. She does! Really! She wants to do right to her clan, it’s her duty to send them off. At least can Hokage-sama see that they are tended properly? Will he promise to see to it himself? And what will happen to her? Where will she go? And her classes? What happens to her house and the houses of her family? And someone needs to do something about the pet birds trapped in their cages before they die! And to take care of the ponds and see if there aren’t any dogs and cats trapped in the houses. She doesn’t want them to die too. And they are going to catch Itachi, right? He can’t go free, they must catch him.

The Hokage does promise to see that the bodies of her clan will the treated properly, and she hopes that her half-hysterical and tearful questioning makes him feel guilty enough about what  he did to her and her clan, to see himself the bodies and realise that some mysteriously lack eyes. He tells her that some teams will be sent to clean and that they’ll be told to round up animals and close down houses and locals, and that everything will go to her. He promises that they will do everything possible catch Itachi. But about what is to happen with her…

“Even if you don’t really need it, you will get the same monthly allowance other orphans receive, Shizuka-chan.” Oh Gods, he’s not actually going to say what she thinks he’s going to say next, right? She’s a little child. He won’t dare. “You will get assigned an apartment for yourself.” He just said it. “And you don’t have to go back to the Academy until you feel ready.”   

It actually will make easier some things she needs to do, but she could have liked to believe that someone cares about the children.

“Thank you, Hokage-sama,” she says in a soft voice, trying to look like she’s demurely lowering her eyes, and not like she is hiding her face so he doesn’t see the disbelief about the callous disregard to her welfare. “I― I would like to be alone for a bit now. Would that be ok?” He goes away, thanks to all eight million gods. 

*

Once again alone, she resumes her mourning, but now just for herself and her family, and cries herself to sleep.

Chapter Text

The thing is, when Eli was alive, Sasuke was one of her favourite characters. Eli had liked him mostly because he was a mess who made terrible life decisions, but knowing that Shizuka could have made those same terrible decisions is― jarring. Until the moment she had woken up with an extra set of memories, Shizuka’s childhood had been very much like Sasuke’s, their personalities had been pretty much the same, too. Even worse, Shizuka, like Sasuke, is pretty much obsessed with revenge, she is just going about it in a different manner; people will pay, even Itachi (but not in the way he wants), and she will have a good life in the process.

*

The medics keep her an extra day in observation and she uses that time to think, to try to remember all she can about the manga and all those weird plot-twists (for one, Sasuke was supposed to be the reincarnation of some mythological personage, if that is also true in this universe, what does that make of Eli?!) and to plan. She’d like to write it down but there’s no way she’ll do something so dangerous, so she’ll have to hope that the Uchiha genetics hold true and she'll able to keep it all straight in her head.

The next morning, as promised, she gets escorted to a small furnished apartment (in a building near the Uchiha compound. What is this man thinking? There’s no surprise about how Sasuke ended up like that) and she’s introduced to her new landlady, who is a lovely old woman. Then she is left alone.

Probably there are ANBU, ROOT and otherwise, watching her.

She spends the next couple days holed up in her new little apartment that is actually pretty nice, the kind of place Eli would have liked to live in, sunny and cosy. She is still mourning ―because it’s good for her emotional health to allow herself to feel grief; she has, even now, the ability to compartmentalize, but she knows this is something she needs to process now ― but  she still tries to make simple meals she ends up eating mechanically at exact intervals of time, she also does what schoolwork she can do on her own and lays sleepless on her bed at night.

Then the third night she just gets up from the bed, puts on shoes, gets out to the street, and walks in her pyjamas to her house.

Thankfully the cleaning crew had already completed their work so it’s not that hard (it is hard enough already) to walk resolutely through the eerie empty streets, past the place where her parents died, and into her room. The familiar bed and smell of the sheets make it easy to fall asleep after having been awake for so long. 

Next morning, she realises she entered Itachi’s room. 

She returns sheepishly to the pretty apartment and follows her routine, goes to bed, turns and turns, gives up, gets up, goes home and sleeps in Itachi's room again. 

Then she returns to the apartment in the morning. Follows the routine. At night she makes herself a ball under the blankets, doesn't sleep, doesn’t go out and is restless all the following day.

She cleans all the barely lived in apartment until she gets blisters, forgets to eat her scheduled meals, and spends that night, once again sleepless in a ball.

She goes home in the morning to train in the garden and ends up sleeping a nap in the engawa.

She doesn’t go back to the apartment.

And no one comes looking for her.

To think she was worried about sleeping in Itachi’s bed, because, in her opinion, that was a bit too high in the worrying behaviour list. Either she isn’t under surveillance anymore or actually no one is concerned about her mental health, but if no one will stop her, she’ll keep living home and she’ll move to Itachi’s room permanently; it is bigger than hers, anyway.

(She totally finds Itachi’ secret stash of candy and eats it all.)

*

Now that she’s sleeping regularly, she has some nightmares; mixed incoherent scenes of That Night and The Car Crash that wake her up violently and leave her gasping for breath just like that first time at the hospital. She also dreams of Eli’s life. Those are bittersweet and nostalgic, but overall good.

She is eating better, but she still cries sometimes and, at moments, the loneliness of all the empty space around her and Eli’s interrupted life gets to her, and the only thing she can do is to keep busy training, doing schoolwork (because even if she isn’t planning to be absent from the academy for too long, she doesn’t want to fall behind) and doing chores. In this case, the natural Uchiha pig-headedness is an advantage, because she decided to live there and so she will live there.

*

She still keeps the apartment, in part because she doesn’t want to talk with the Hokage again to explain herself, in part because the landlady is a lonely old woman whose only income is the rent from the few tenants of the building and Shizuka feels bad taking it from her when Shizuka doesn’t actually need the rent money and it comes from the village’s coffers, anyways. Her clan’s assets have been sealed until she is 16 or makes chunin, whichever happens first, but she has been given free access to her parents’ personal accounts to supplement her meagre expenses. It helps that all clans that joined the village before the First War are exempt from property taxes for as long as they keep providing shinobi to Konoha, because they had been bribed into loyalty with the promise of free real estate.

Shizuka finds weird not having to worry about money, doubly so because she had never worried about money before, and it bugs her until she chases down the feeling and it leads directly to Eli.

When Eli was young, maybe the same age Shizuka is now, she didn’t understand why ―because her parents did their best to provide and keep it secret from her― but she had to always try to keep her shoes from scuffing when she played because she had to wear them to school too and when they didn’t fit anymore, she cried because was told to wait, just a bit, please, just until the next year starts, to get new ones. Her uniforms had been always hand-me-downs and she was sent to birthday parties without presents. At some point they had to move into her grandmother’s house.

Eventually her parents had gotten better paid jobs, and her favourite dish was revealed to be something her mom only made when they didn’t have enough for anything else. Tortilla cut in pieces soaked in chicken broth from a bouillon cube and, sometimes, lime juice from the tree in the sidewalk, the Dog Soup, Eli’s mother had called it, because in her own childhood her family feed their dogs with old tortilla boiled with chicken feet and heads.

After graduating Eli had to move out to another state to find job, but it wasn’t easy and she had had to resort to the Dog Soup every once in a while, and then she died.

But now Shizuka can give herself the luxury of splurging just a little bit. The apartment had some stuff in the fridge that she is taking home (no sense in letting it spoil) and she has enough to indulge in a bit of real chicken meat and vegetables to make the broth. Tortilla is not something easily acquired, so she’ll just use bread instead this time.

The only problem with her plan is that she doesn’t know any shops near her clan’s district, her family had always done most of the shopping at businesses owned by aunts and uncles. Exploring the village feels― daunting.

Her landlady catches her dithering in front of the building, the farther she dares go.

“Do you need some help, Shizuka-chan?”

 Shizuka nods cautiously in answer. She doesn’t know what to think about her landlady. Is she aware that Shizuka isn’t living at the apartment? Does she care? Will she do something about it? Shizuka doesn’t know how much she likes the idea of everybody just allowing her to live on her own in the house where she saw her parents be murdered, but the alternative is to live somewhere else and, well, no.

“You are going out for groceries, are you not?,” her landlady asks, nodding towards Shizuka’s bag. “I have to do some shopping myself. If you’d like, we could keep company to each other”.

That would be nice, thinks Shizuka before accepting the offer. To have company, that’s it.

Her landlady holds her hand before crossing the street and it is reassuring. They walk hand in hand all the way down to the grocers. Shizuka marvels at being treated her age for the first time since she was released from the hospital, and it lasts until she gets tasked to help carry a bag full of cans along her own shopping.

“Do you need something else, Shizuka-chan?”

“I need to go to the butchers and the bakery, Nadeshiko-san.”

“I’ll show you the way, dear. And you can call me Obaachan if you’d like. My grandchildren are about your age, you know, but I have never been called grandmother before because they live very, very far and they have never been to Konoha to visit. My daughter is apparently always too busy to make the trip, you see.”

“That’s sad, Obaachan,” she answers, because, what else can she say?

They finish their shopping and return, hand in hand once again. At the entrance to the apartment building Shizuka stops, indecisive. Her landlady smiles at her and takes back the bag of cans with surprising ease for a frail looking old lady. She takes out three cans of tuna and hands them to Shizuka.

“Here, as a thanks. Shizuka-chan, I know that you’ll be careful and you have been handling yourself very well, but if you need something you just have to ask, alright? My door is always open for you, dear.”

“Thank you, Obaachan,” says Shizuka, suddenly feeling bashful. Her landlady pats her head and enters the building. Shizuka looks wistfully at the door for a moment before starting her way home.

*

Shizuka crosses the yellow barricade tape and stops. There is a white and grey cat hissing to a seemly empty roofline. It is a very fluffy cat and it seems to be very angry with the empty looking roofline, did the cleaning crew forgot it or did it come back? Shizuka considers bribing it with tuna so she can take it home, but once it notices her standing there, it instantly becomes the friendliest kitty ever and allows itself to be picked up, hanging like dead weight from her arms. It doesn’t let her approach the house with the empty looking roof, but it purrs contently all the way home.

*

Shizuka eats her soup, it is rich and filling, even more delicious because it is being eaten with company. The cat eats his own soup, with carefully deboned chicken and the tiniest piece of bread, cooked separately and with no salt.

The Cat Soup, she is calling it, for when one wants to pamper someone.

*

The cat is lazy, bossy, doesn’t like heights and has a melodic meow, Shizuka calls him Old Man Gyu after a Korean singer Eli had liked. He doesn’t leave, even when Shizuka leaves the window slightly open. At night he sleeps with her, in a ball against her belly, and his warm weight anchors her.

The nightmares stop now that she is not alone in the house.

Chapter Text

The funerals take a lot of time to prepare due to the number of bodies; they all needed to be processed and all of them went through an autopsy, then they were washed and dressed. And every part of this process racked, because there had not been a clan member present to ensure that the bodies were not harvested for their kekkei genkai, because if there had been irregularities found in the autopsies, she was not informed. Even worse, they couldn’t have a wake, as Shizuka was still technically untrained and wouldn’t be enough to guard the bodies from further possible desecration.

Instead, Shizuka, the Hokage and former teammates of different members of her family dress in black and reunite directly at the crematorium.

It’s a sad small group, the death outnumber them so much that it is obscene. They have all the furnaces operating since dawn and still, the next morning arrives, and then the next, and her clan has not finished burning yet.

Shizuka would have liked to build massive pyres that made thick columns of smoke and turned the sky black. Something visible and undeniable that would leave everybody in the village with their throats and eyes itching. She would have liked to make everybody― her brother, Danzo, Tobi, the Hokage and the council, even the teammates that didn’t show for the funeral and those who did, the heads of the other clans, everyone who noticed something was not right, everyone who should have noticed and did not, everyone who had a hand in creating the problem in the first place, she would like to make every single one of them painstakingly gather one by one the 115,154 bones that belong to her clan with chopsticks, to place them in their urns as civilians would do.

What sense does it have to keep to tradition, to maintain secrecy, if all the vultures have already feasted on the choosiest parts? Wouldn’t it be better to let everyone know? To let everyone see? How your loyalty is paid with slow quiet betrayal, with suspicions cast unwarranted upon you until you have no choice that to prove them right. How they still try to keep you, now tame and toothless, until they can squeeze the last drop of useful blood out of you.

Not everyone stays, some come and go, some return and some do not, and Shizuka makes a point of not paying attention to who they are. She makes a point of not paying attention to what the Hokage does. She only drinks and eats when someone puts something in her hands, and it is not safe, but they won’t poison her because they need her alive and for the moment she doesn’t care if they do.  

When everything is done, almost five days after it started, when she returns home from the cemetery, she banks her anger, so when she sleeps that night, curled around the only other presence still alive in that house, she doesn’t dream; the next morning she’ll need to get up early to go to class.

*

Shizuka hesitates at the step to the genkan.

No one is pressuring her to go back to classes yet and she can keep on her individual studying for a bit longer. But…

She knows is a bit silly, but the only “canon character” she has interacted with ever since the hospital has been the Hokage and she’s worried about fucking everything up. She is different than before, she plans to change things, but that is easier to do when you only talk with your cat and your landlady― and that’s not healthy. The more she delays going back to the Academy the harder it will be. She knows, Eli did it all the time. Hiding from people, stop going to places, it is easy, but those things have consequences.

From his place on the comfy cushion Shizuka reserved for him, Old Man Gyu opens an eye and meows encouragingly. Shizuka steels herself and steps on her shoes.

“I’m going! I’ll be back soon!,” she calls on the way out. Gyu meows and it sounds to her a lot like a “good luck”.

*

She arrived early on purpose, with the hopes of speaking with Iruka-sensei first, because that is the appropriate thing to do after you have been absent for a long time. She is in luck and finds him outside the classroom.

Iruka-sensei offers her his condolences and reassures her about her absence not being a problem. He tells her that she can go home if she needs it and offers to help her if she doesn’t understand something or for anything, really, he’ll be always available.

Shizuka remembers then that Iruka-sensei was just a bit older than her when he lost his parents.   

*

Inside the classroom there are only some other early risers.

Shizuka used to have twenty-two cousins attending the Academy and four of them had been at her class. They had not been― close, or at least she had not been particularly close with any them, but all five had mostly hanged up together while at the Academy, which only feed into the clan’s reputation of being aloof and stuck up, and alienated them from the rest.

In the beginning it had happened out of awkwardness; Shizuka had not been well socialised with other children, her cousins had only interacted before with other cousins. And then they had started to eat up their own reputation.  She can see now that the Shizuka from before did have a sense of superiority, over her classmates and over her cousins, and her cousins over their classmates. Now that she knows what she knows, it makes her feel nauseous.

Shizuka ponders if it could be better to sit in her old place at the front or somewhere else. Of the “canon characters” she can only see Hinata, sitting at the back.  It is tempting to try to approach her. Shizuka doesn’t want to sit alone where she used to sit with her cousins and Eli had liked Hinata since her first appearance in the manga, but Shizuka has never interacted with Hinata before. There are also clan rivalries to consider.

The third option is to sit alone somewhere else, but the third option is Sasuke’s.

Shizuka does as Eli would have done. She sits next to Hinata and smiles. Hinata smiles back, just a bit unsure. They wait in silence to the class to begin.

*

The classroom fills gradually as the class is about to commence, and Shizuka searches for the familiar faces of the other “canon characters”.

Sakura and Ino are sitting together a couple rows down, so they are still friends. Also in the last row, but at the other side of the room from Shizuka and Hinata, are Shikamaru, Chouji and Kiba in a small knot of boys. Shino is sitting at the front, one bench up Shizuka’s old seat. The only glaring absence is Naruto.

She is somewhat relieved. She still hasn’t decided how to deal with, well, everything that dealing with Naruto involves. His role in everything is too big. Sasuke’s destiny was too intertwined with his. The world’s destiny is too intertwined with his. She doesn’t know how much she likes her future to depend so much on him, but Naruto is destined to be great. He has the will be a hero, brave and loyal and inspiring. Naruto had loved Sasuke and had gone to great lengths to save him, just like Shizuka’s brother. Eli had loved Naruto a lot.

Shizuka wants to be in Team 7 with him and Sakura, who will also grow to be so strong and confident. She wants for the three of them to be as they should have been if Sasuke hadn’t fucked it up so much. She needs to don’t fuck it up.    

So yeah, not having Naruto in the room is a bit of a relief.

*

The lesson is a continuation of something she had studied on her own, so she isn’t lost. It is math and she has the suspicion that is the reason Naruto is skipping class. Maybe he’ll come after lunch when they’ll have chakra practice.

*

At lunch she goes out to find a quiet place to eat. Her classmates had been giving her looks after realising she was there and she doesn’t want to hear their genuine condolences when she is still too bitter to accept them. Sitting next to Hinata was a good idea; shyness aside, Hinata is also a clan kid and understands one doesn’t talk certain things to near strangers. Iruka-sensei is different, he is one of the few decent adults in the village who actually care about her wellbeing.

Shizuka goes to sit by a tree and sees Shino crouched, looking at a bush. He’s attentively looking at a measuring worm walk down a branch and she can’t help herself, she wants to look too. Measuring worms are just too cute, they are calming, meditative; Shizuka needs more cute calming things in her life. Shino tenses a little when she comes near, but relaxes when he sees her also observe the worm. A step to close and a step to oooopen, one to close, and oooopen, close, and oooopen. It’s actually a very slow worm, because it walks fast but stops every once and then to inspect his way, so Shizuka sits on the floor so she can watch as she eats. She shares an apple bunny with Shino, and he smiles at her, sweet, shy.

The lunch break ends, and they didn’t talk, and it was very nice.

*

Back at the classroom Shizuka realises that Hinata ate alone inside and thinks she too would have liked to watch the measuring worm walk his way down a bush. Hinata looks the kind to appreciate small calm things like that.

*

Naruto doesn’t show up to chakra practice.

*

In the evening, Shizuka goes home and picks up her groceries on the way. She’ll make more food tomorrow so she’ll have enough to share with two people. Food is a good way to break the ice, and to show appreciation.

She is thinking about what to make when she arrives to her house. she doesn’t know what Hinata and Shino like to eat for lunch, but one can’t go wrong with omelette, right? Everyone likes omelette. She should have enough eggs for that. She distractedly calls to announce she is back and enters the kitchen to put the groceries away. There’s a meow. Old Man Gyu is probably hungry. She should make dinner for herself too― there’s a dead rat on the kitchen table.

“Old Man Gyu! Not on the table!” 

She turns looking for him and instead she sees a white cat calmly watch her and clean its paw. There’s a bit of blood on its fur. The white cat then goes to her and rubs itself on Shizuka’s legs. Old Man Gyu enters carrying a tiny black kitten from the scruff of its neck, and once he puts it down, meows in a way that sounds to her a bit sheepish.

The white cat is a girl, Shizuka calls her Riceball, because she had a red spot just like a pickled plum. The black kitten is a boy and has a single white star in the middle of his chest, Shizuka calls him Little Myung, after another singer. 

*

At night she realises she feels― content.

Chapter Text

One day, about a month after the funerals, Shizuka sees while shopping a familiar image on the cover of a manga book. The girl isn’t wearing a sailor uniform, instead it is a girly and kind of frilly version of a samurai armour, but her hairstyle is iconic. The manga is called Adorable Guardian Samurai Moon.

Shizuka buys the first 5 volumes.

She walks home while reading the first one. Adorable Guardian Samurai Moon has pretty much the same story as Sailor Moon, but written in a way that is pretty much recruitment propaganda to convince little civilian girls to become kunoichi. By the time she arrives to the gates of the Uchiha district, she is completely hooked and already planning to buy the other 13 volumes, thinking that, maybe, she’ll be able to find other familiar mangas. She dearly hopes ‘Ninja One Piece’ exists, because Eli died before it ended, and Shizuka really needs to know what happens.

Little Myung receives her at the door, rubbing his cheeks to her legs and climbing to her shoulders, meowing all the while; she slips out her shoes with care to don’t dislodge him. Old Man Gyu opens an eye as a greeting when she passes his spot in the hall that leads to the main parts to the house, and she stops to scratch behind his ears. At the door to the kitchen she almost trips over Icing or Frosting, she is never quite sure which one is which, because they look exactly the same and both of them are assholes, very elegant siamese assholes.

The cats just keep appearing. Shizuka doesn’t know where they are coming from, or if they are former pets of her clan returning home, but by the point she had found herself collecting an entire Korean boyband worth of names, she was already resigned to turn around at any moment and find a newcomer meowing for attention.

She likes it. She enjoys the company and how they keep her busy. She has even begun to appreciate the presents Riceball leaves regularly on the kitchen table. She just needs to figure out what to do with them.

*

Over the course of the following year, it becomes a regular occurrence to hang out and eat lunch with Hinata and Shino, and perhaps Shizuka gets a bit carried away in the beginning and they have to make explicit rules about how much food she is allowed to make for them. And of course Shizuka totally cheats and makes a habit to carry around snacks and candy she can slip into their pockets when they are distracted (Iruka-sensei always notices with his magic teacher powers, but his silence is easily brought with cookies), but she only does it to show that she cares. She is infinitely glad to have them. They care about Shizuka, they worry about her, they make her feel calm. They are excellent friends.

Shino is kind and mindful, but also, at 9 he is already a scarily competent shinobi. Hinata is sweet and painfully shy, but Shizuka has discovered she is also quite stubborn and, once one gets pass the insecurity, more cold-blooded that Shizuka had believed her to be. This means that Shizuka gets her ass handed very often when they train together.

On the other hand, her interaction with the rest of her classmates has been varied, and Shizuka can’t really call any of them friends. She has no problems with Shikamaru and Chouji, as they are easy going and likely to avoid conflict and drama, but neither they bother to befriend Shizuka, nor she attempts to try. Ino is friendly with everyone, but she mostly hangs out with a group of very outgoing girls, the kind to tease jokingly, be very honest and ask direct questions, the kind that have been friends forever, socially intelligent people; they really intimidate Shizuka, even if they remind her of Eli’s own friends. Sakura is always with Ino and still shy, but she is getting bolder, more confident, and Shizuka longs to approach her and introduce her to Shino and Hinata, but Ino is too scary to either poach from her or steal her too. Kiba just glares at Shizuka every time she gets near, she doesn’t know why, she has never talked to him. Naruto…

Naruto is in and out the class all the time. Sometimes he is absent for days on end until Iruka-sensei makes him attend again. Fanfiction had always portrayed him as having no friends― that is not quite true. He does get along with the boys, specially Shikamaru, Chouji and Kiba, he is just not very close to them and often he is left behind. He has lived alone for a while and whatever guardians he had before, they were probably shitty ones. What he wants is for people to pay attention to him, that is his whole thing and he is going to grow up to be great at it. Great at getting people’s attention, to keep it and make them listen to him and want his attention back. She wants to help, but he doesn’t like her at all. He didn’t like her even before That Night, because she used to be. Too. Much. Like. Sasuke.

*

Shizuka gets paired up with Naruto at taijutsu practice and Shino knows it is going to end up badly.

Inexplicably, both his friends care deeply about Naruto and his opinion of them. Hinata, he understands a bit, as Naruto not only is nice to her, but also exhibits several qualities Hinata believes herself lacking. In Shizuka’s case, Shino doesn’t understand why she bothers trying to befriend Naruto when all her overtures are rudely rejected. Furthermore, Shino doesn’t understand Naruto and how he can’t see how much Hinata and Shizuka look up to him.

The match goes as Shino had expected, ending with Naruto thoroughly defeated and Shizuka standing over him. Also predictably, Shizuka offers him a hand to help him up.

“Good match”, she says, as she always does after a spar but, in this case, Shino thinks it is a bit of a stretch, even if Naruto probably did try his best. “Uhm, I could, if you want, I mean, I could help you if you uh― need help with your taijutsu”.

“Ah! Shizuka-chan is so cool!”, Shino hears Haruno exclaim next to him and so does Naruto, who scowls and slaps Shizuka hand away before climbing to his feet on his own.

“Don’t look down on me!”, he yells, pointing at Shizuka way too dramatically. “I don’t need your help! Next time I’ll defeat you Witchy-zuka! You’ll see.”

Shizuka blinks and lowers her hand. “Okay”, she says and steps back to let the next pair into the ring.

Shino sighs, shares a look with Hinata and prepares to deal with the fallout.

It doesn’t come immediately, it never does with Shizuka, and she spends the rest of the day acting normally until after classes. They go to Shino’s house; he has instructions from his dad to invite them home as often as possible, so they can train under supervision, but Shino knows it is because his friends’ home situations aren’t the best and his dad is concerned about them. They are sitting on the engawa when Shizuka leans face first on Hinata’s shoulder.

“He hates me more now.” Hinata pats her on the back. “I just want to help. He― has so much, argh, potential. And, and, no one helps him. And he is all alone. And he is tiny. He needs to eat more.”

Hinata hums and shares a look with Shino over Shizuka’s head. Then she sighs and rubs circles on Shizuka’s back, like one would do to calm a baby. “Shizuka-chan”, Hinata says and Shizuka immediately stops her mutterings about ‘ruining everything’ and ‘everything being her fault’. “D-do you… like him?”

Shizuka raises her head to look at Hinata with what can only be described as horror.

“B-because if you like him, I―”

“I DON’T!”, Shizuka interrupts her, grabbing Hinata by the shoulders. “I don’t like him. I know you like him. And I don’t say I don’t like him because I know you like him. I don’t like him. Even if I liked him― you are, uhm, you are my friend, and I― and I care about you. You are more important.”

“Thank you, Shizuka-chan, b-but I just wanted to tell you it d... it wouldn’t change anything b-between us.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“I― am an idiot.”

“That’s not true, you just care too much. You are a g…g- an excellent friend. Isn’t she, Shino-kun?”

“Hinata-chan is correct. And I’m sure that Naruto-kun will get around. Why? Because you are a good person, Shizuka-chan. You have been a good friend to us and we will help you make him see that.” Shino leaves the ‘or else’ unsaid. “While it is true that you used to be more arrogant in the past, you have changed and since then you have been nothing but polite to him. He may have the right to keep his distance, but that doesn’t excuse the name-calling, pranking and general rudeness.”

Shino thinks that, if Naruto truly wants Shizuka to stop trying to approach him, he should also stop trying to antagonise her at every turn, if only because Shizuka herself appears incapable to set her own boundaries. Shino is about to tell her exactly that, but he is then suddenly hugged.

Without releasing Shino, Shizuka half-turns to also throw an arm around Hinata. Before they became friends, Shino had not expected her to be so affectionate and it still takes him by surprise, but it is nice.

“You know”, she says. “I feared Hinata-chan was, was going to, uhmm, declare us rivals. Or something.”

Hinata giggles. “You read too much shoujo manga.”

“I do not!”, protests Shizuka. “Do I?”, she asks Shino.

It is good to have friends.

*

Unbeknownst to them, at the same time, somewhere else, Sakura gets into a fight with Ino over her crush on Shizuka.

Chapter Text

Hinata notices something has changed when she arrives to the classroom in the morning and finds Sakura and Ino, not only already there, but sitting away from each other. It is very strange, because Hinata arrives very early and Sakura and Ino have always been inseparable, so Hinata can’t imagine what could have happened over night to cause it.

At lunch she comments this to Shino and Shizuka, still wondering what would be so dire as to divide such good friends. Shino says that they should not speculate as they don’t know them well enough and Shizuka asks them to talk about something else, poking with her chopsticks at a cherry tomato from her bento until it bursts. Hinata thinks that Shizuka must be still embarrassed about the Shoujo Manga Misconception and believing that Hinata would fight her over something so silly, so she changes the subject.

“My… my aunt is searching homes for her cat’s kittens and she still has two left. I would like to keep one, b…b-but Father won’t allow us to have animals. I thought… maybe you would you like one?”

She is already expecting Shino to decline because he doesn’t like on principle anything that kills bugs, but Shizuka really likes animals and it takes Hinata by surprise when Shizuka says she can’t.

“I don’t- I don’t think it would be, uhm… wise”.

“Does your landlady have a no-pets policy?”, asks Shino, probably intrigued at the choice of words.

“Oh, no. I think Obaachan also, ah, keeps cats. It’s just that, well, space is not a problem, but a new kitten would need too much… too much attention, and it may not get along with the others…”

“D-do you already have cats, Shizuka-chan?”, asks Hinata. She and Shino have been at Shizuka’s before and she had never seen anything to indicate the presence of a cat; it barely looks like Shizuka spends time there, so empty it is.  

“Uhmm, well, yeah. Do you want to meet them?”

And that’s how Hinata and Shino find themselves at the Uchiha compound later that day.

*

Shizuka can’t deny she feels thrilled about introducing Hinata and Shino to the cats, even if she knows there is a conversation about her living space coming ahead. While her friends weren’t particularly fazed after Shizuka revealed that she doesn’t really lives at the apartment, they had looked a bit disturbed by the barricade tape. Understandable, really, since the beginning Shizuka has been questioning the common sense of whoever decided it was a good idea to let her return to the compound. That’s not to say she could agree to live somewhere else. It’s just that the part of her who remembers being a twenty-something civilian finds the whole affair alarming.

But those are concerns for later. Now is time for friends, cats and cake.

“I’m home!”, Shizuka calls when they enter the house and then hands slippers to her friends. They are immediately greeted by the enthusiastic Little Myung, who has long since grew quite a lot, and Dino Woo, who is very small and she had given the name both for the irony and because his personality is uncannily reminiscent to the Korean idol Jang Dongwoo. The two pairs warm to each other quickly. “Let’s introduce you to the rest and after that can eat some cake”.

She guides the way to the kitchen, pointing to the cats as they pass them. There is Old Man Gyu, he doesn’t do much, and over there is Dancing Won, the gray tuxedo, he likes to watch her practice her kata in the mornings, judging her silently. Next there is Sunshine, the tortoiseshell, and Taichou, the calico, Shizuka thinks they are sisters and that they, in turn, believe Shizuka is a particularly incompetent kitten. If they see something big, fluffy and orange, it’s probably Yeollie, and he’s harmless, really.

 “Shizuka-chan, there is a d-d... a carcass, on the table.”

“… Oh, yeah, sorry, about that. Riceball, she uhmm- brings me presents, you see, and I can’t get her to stop leaving them on the table.” Shizuka picks up the dead bird and puts it in a container outside to deal with later, then she washes the glass that protects the table’s surface, and her hands. “We can eat in my room if you want.”

*

She serves them cake accompanied with milky black tea and they have happy cats on their laps (including the most wonderful Pretty Jjong, with his beautiful long white coat, who had never done anything bad in his life, bless him), but Shino is scowling at something in a shelf. It’s one of the glass displays cases, the one with the… oh. “I’m really sorry, Shino-kun. I’ll- I’ll take them down, if you want.”

“They, they are― the cat”.

“Yeah, she uhmm caught them for me. I shouldn’t have, but she left the wings intact and they are so pretty.”

 “It’s okay, Shizuka-chan. But you must forgive me; I don’t like your cat.”

“I’m sorry. The next time you come, I’ll take down the butterflies.”

“It. Is. okay.”

“Are the skulls from your cat too, Shizuka-chan?”, asks Hinata conversationally, while Shino composes himself.

“Yep, I’ll leave the, uhm, presents outside so, so the bugs can eat the flesh”. Shizuka looks at Shino to see if that titbit awakes some goodwill towards Riceball. “That’s what I’ll do with the bird.” He does look a bit less angry. “Then I clean them with peroxide, so they look white. Aren’t they pretty, Hinata-chan?”

“They are… nice. Is that your manga collection?”

*

Once they finish their cake, Shino and Hinata excuse themselves and Shizuka offers to walk them back to the gate. On their way they find Namu, who upon seeing them, lays in the middle of road on his back, showing them his oh, so tempting fluffy black belly, pawing at the air in the cutest way. That distraction continues for at least 10 minutes, and when they attempt to leave, Namu demands to be carried along.

They part ways at the gate after saying their goodbyes, Shizuka on one side of the barricade tape and her friends on the other. She looks at their backs grow smaller as they leave, basking in the warm, calm feeling Hinata and Shino inspire, but Namu tenses in her arms. He is staring at a shadow just outside the compound. Shizuka quickly averts her eyes, least the shadow notices her looking.

She likes the company, but she doesn’t like the attention it attracts. Maybe it is benign (the same way a tumour can be benign), but she can’t afford to risk it if it is not. If she remembers correctly, Shino, at least, has already raised the interest of certain people before.

The compound is too secluded for visits, she decides.

*

Sakura did not expect such a strong reaction from Ino; she had not even known that Ino also liked Shizuka-chan. The whole affair left her feeling a bit hurt. Hurt and angry. And frustrated.

The day after the fight, she had arrived early, trying to catch a seat near to Shizuka-chan, and encountered Ino at the door. Ino had mocked her (as if she weren’t planning to do the same thing) and they had ended up sitting on opposite sides of the room, not even barely close to Shizuka-chan.

Another day, she had tried to approach Shizuka-chan and her friends to ask if Sakura could eat her lunch with them, but Ino had intercepted her and critiqued the bento Sakura was planning to give Shizuka-chan. Ino had said: “I bet not even the tamagoyaki is good; I know you don’t know how to cook”, so Sakura had to let her taste it to prove her wrong, but then she couldn’t give a half-eaten bento to Shizuka-chan, just imagine!, and to make the matters worse, the lunch break ended before Sakura could even find her.

Then Sakura had tried to ask Shizuka-chan to help her with her taijutsu, so they could spend time together that way, but Ino, as if reading her mind (which Sakura knew she did not because her dad was still teaching her how to do it), had reminded her that Shizuka-chan’s best friends were Hyuuga Hinata and Aburame Shino, so obviously she liked strong people, and did Sakura really want Shizuka-chan to know how weak she was? So Sakura had to prove Ino wrong again, but that had to remain a work in progress, because Sakura was really bad at taijutsu.

And so, every time Sakura tried to get closer to Shizuka-chan, Ino appeared to foil her plans. The only thing Ino never tries to stop, is when Sakura starts to grow her hair.

It takes her two years for it to be long enough to braid back like Shizuka-chan does, but then Ino says it doesn’t suit her, and Sakura keeps wearing her ribbon to tie it as always.

Chapter Text

No one confesses directly to Shizuka, so she is more that willing to ignore any and all crushes until forced otherwise.  

On the other hand, Shizuka had never seen Sakura so motivated before, and for people who loudly and publicly proclaim each other their worst enemy, Ino and Sakura get along famously. For one, they train together regularly and apparently, they also started a campaign against dieting among their friends. But the best thing is that they never involve Shizuka in their fights; Sakura and Ino are always arguing about things like sugar in omelettes, their training regimen and their seating arrangement in class (which they change every other day depending if they are currently arguing or not). Shizuka would even doubt that they actually like her in this universe if she had not overheard them state so several times, and that is great, because Ino is scary and Shizuka has always tried to avoid getting between her and Sakura.  

Hinata may be right and Shizuka reads too much Shoujo manga.  

Even the things with Naruto had started to go, if not well, at least better.  

Eat your heart out, Sasuke.  

The secret to Naruto is simple: free food. More specifically, free food that doesn’t come directly from Shizuka, and Hinata and Shino had agreed to play mediator.  

Snacks, there and there, eventually became invitations for lunch, and while Naruto´s interactions with Shizuka can’t be called cordial, Shizuka can’t help but feel a little like a nature photographer who has managed to get a close-up of a wild bear who is neither trying to run away, nor kill her.  

The downside, Shizuka and Shino learn quickly, is that Hinata is completely unable to speak in front of Naruto; at least she doesn’t faint anymore. It is a work in progress.  

Other unexpected boon about the lunches, is that Naruto has motives to attend to class more often.  

*  

Shino considers himself a good friend and, because he is a good friend, he swears to all eight million gods, he is going to get Hinata to talk to her crush.  

When consulted on the matter, Shizuka suggests they invite Naruto to train with them, arguing that that way Hinata could gain immunity through repeated exposition in a controlled environment.  

For her part, Hinata agrees immediately to the idea, no explanation necessary.  

The only one who appears to be opposed, is Naruto himself.  

This, Shino can’t understand, clearly their proposition is only beneficial to Naruto, yet he is acting like they just asked him to run laps naked around the village’s outer wall, and it doesn’t help that Naruto doesn’t explain what is wrong.  

At an impasse, they stop asking him and Naruto also stops meeting them from lunch. Shino hates to admit defeat, but there doesn’t appear to be a solution in sight.  

Or that is until Shino and Shizuka start noticing a pattern. 

Naruto, for some reason, can’t form a bushin. This is common knowledge among their class but, and here is when it gets interesting, if one pays enough attention, one will see that Naruto skips classes more often than not the days they will be required to make a bushin.  

He also skips math and history.  

Contrastingly, he always goes when they’ll do anything regarding stealth, trapping, weapon handling and taijutsu.  

Naruto is known for having broken in the staff room several times, so it is not that farfetched to assume he has also stolen (or at least seen) copies of the more detailed lesson plans.  

Shino is quick to dismiss it as Naruto being lazy and avoiding subjects he doesn’t like, but Shizuka gets thoughtful.  

“He is avoiding classes where he’ll be asked to perform to the class things he can’t do”, she says carefully and confidently and like she just solved the problem. “He likes ninjutsu, but he can’t make a bushin. At Math, Suzume-sensei always calls him to solve equations at the board. Iruka-sensei makes everyone take a turn to read out loud at History.” 

“And Naruto-kun always fails at it. I think I understand the point you are trying to make, Shizuka-chan”. Yes, the more Shino thinks about it the more likely it seems. “He is embarrassed”.  

“Yes!” Shizuka smiled that smile she usually reserved for eating cake. “Now what we need to do is ask him for help!”  

“I fear you have lost me.” 

* 

To Shizuka it is all very simple, with the added benefit of solving several current and future problems, all in a single elegant, masterful, stroke. Her logic is thus:    

Firstly, they want Hinata to spend more time with Naruto, not only at lunch, and in a way that forced Hinata and Naruto to actually interact with each other. They don’t have much options other than training together, or maybe some other hobby (gardening, probably), but training is more likely to work and serves more functions in Shizuka’s overall plan.  

Secondly, Naruto craves attention and wishes for admiration, and he is, also, genuinely good. On the other hand, Naruto hates when people believe him incapable of something and, as Shino had observed, he is embarrassed by the things he doesn’t know how to do. Furthermore, his pride doesn’t allow him to ask for help. But this also means that he wouldn’t say no if they asked him for help.  

They just need to ask him the correct favour. 

And that is where everything comes together: Shizuka knows that the bushin will stop Naruto from graduating and she also knows that it is a problem of chakra control. More importantly, she knows Naruto knows he needs to learn it. Contrastingly, Hinata has excellent chakra control, and not only that, she also has a way to see, in real time, what exactly is causing Naruto’s problem.  

So what they need is to find a way to make it seem like Naruto is the one helping Hinata, and not the other way around. And, if Shizuka plays her hand correctly, she may even get someone to teach Naruto the kage bushin early. 

* 

As Shizuka predicted, it was even more difficult to convince Hinata to accept using her byakkugan on Naruto, than it was to get Naruto to agree to help them.  

* 

They are weird, but don’t get him wrong, Naruto likes them, or maybe he likes Shino and Hinata and tolerates Shizuka for their sake, because they are weird enough to like Shizuka, who is the weirdest of all.  

So the thing is, they are weird and Naruto likes them. They are nice and they like him back, which, Naruto supposes, makes them friends― except Shizuka! Who is his rival. And Naruto is an excellent friend, so when they ask him to help Hinata train her creepy family eye thing, Naruto immediately accepts. He is not entirely sure how he is supposed to help them, though. Shizuka explains, but Naruto doesn’t listen beyond ‘do some jutsus where Hinata can see’. 

It is actually kind of fun, and it is super cool how Hinata can see behind her back and know who is who under a henge.  

"Wow! How do you do it, Hinata? It is amazing!", he asks her, because his henge is very good; Iruka-sensei said once that the only thing that delates him is when he still acts like Naruto and not like his disguise, so he makes sure to always transform into someone he knows, and he knows Shino and Shizuka, not that it is hard being them, he just has to make his face all blank and stuff.  

Hinata goes all red and kind of squeaks something he can't understand, so he steps closer so he can listen to her answers better and she goes even redder and squeakier. 

"B-bah... b-buh...b-b-BYAKKUGAN!", she says after many tries, and Naruto feels kind of bad because everyone knows she feels bad about her stutter and he made her say a difficult word; kind of when he is called to solve math stuff at the chalkboard.  

"Your eye thingy? I know it that! But, how?" 

Hinata fidgets a bit and then goes to cling to Shizuka's arm and whispers something to her. Shizuka listens, nodding there and there.  

"Hinata-chan says that she always knows because she can see Shino-kun's kikaichou and your chakra is very, very bright". Hinata whispers something more. "She also says your henge is amazing, because she can see how you kind of change all your body and you not only use an illusion".  

"That is a very rare skill," says Shino. "Why? It requires large chakra reserves such as those more commonly seen on jounin. It can be assumed it is the same principle used by the Akimichi clan on their Baika no Jutsu, thought it could be impolite to try to dissect in more dept a clan technique." 

"So, you are saying it is, like, hard?" Naruto blinks a couple times in surprise.  

"Yes, Naruto-kun, it is very hard."  

Naruto grins so much he can feel his eyes go all squinty.  

"It is very easy!", he boasts, 'the other way is harder', he doesn’t say. "See Witchy-zuka! I can do a jounin technique, betcha you can't!" 

"Uhmmm, ah, no, Naruto-kun, I can't". She says it as if she doesn't care about Naruto being better than her at something, urgh. He hates how she acts like nothing impresses her! "I uhmm, wonder if- if Naruto-kun also does other jutsu differently", she wonders looking at Shino, and Naruto bristles! Now she is saying it like it is a bad thing he does something she can't!   

"It is likely", answers Shino and Naruto frowns. Hinata tugs on Shino's sleeve and he bends so she can whisper something to him. "And Hinata-chan says his chakra is so bright because it is a lot."  

They all stop to consider that information, Naruto very unhappily. Then Shizuka turns to look at him and Naruto crosses his arms. 

"What?", he scowls. She tilts her head to a side.  

"How far can you do a substitution?"    

* 

The answer is  very  far.  

* 

In all his years as an Academy instructor, Iruka has developed an instinct to know when his students are about to make his life more difficult and all his alarms start blaring when he sees Naruto huddled next to Shino and Hinata behind a very resolute looking Shizuka, who seems to have been elected they spokesperson.  

“Iruka-sensei”, she starts in that solemn tone of voice she adopts when she has time to prepare beforehand whatever she is trying to say. “We have discovered something rather important about Naruto-kun." 

And here it is, the headache. Iruka can think about a couple rather important secrets about Naruto he doesn’t have the clearance to acknowledge they may exist in the first place: one starts with ‘the Nine-tailed Fox’, and the other ends in ‘is sealed in him’. Iruka takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose.  

“And what is it Shizuka-kun?” 

“He has too much charka to do a bushin.” 

Iruka blinks a couple times, headache forgotten momentarily. That actually makes a lot of sense; the students usually have the opposite problem, so he had not considered too much chakra to be an issue and whatever advice he ended up giving Naruto – which was not much, because Naruto always avoided performing the bushin in the first place – reflected that.  

“His henge is solid,” Shizuka continues, “because just an illusion is harder. He can do a substitution from a very large distance, but it misfires if he tries up-close".  

He sees the point she is trying to make, and he doesn’t like it one bit, not at all; permission to teach a S-rank technique to an academy student will require so much paperwork, so much.  His headache flares again and he sighs.  

“I’ll do what I can.” Shizuka smiles and Naruto starts celebrating in a way that suggest he knows Iruka means to teach him something ‘cool’, so before they can get ahead of themselves, he adds: “but that means Naruto has to work even harder on his chakra control and I expect you three to help him!” 

Shizuka’s smile turns a tad more self-satisfied and Iruka wonders what sort of hare-brained master plan he has just played into, but ultimately decides that he doesn’t care unless she is scheming something visibly nefarious, and only because he taught her better than to leave evidence or witnesses.  

Chapter Text

Naruto passes the graduation exam without problem, but when Shizuka sees the listings with their grades, she realises she may had miscalculated: Naruto is still at the bottom, but no longer the dead-last. The dubious honour of that title had gone to Shikamaru who always passed every examination by just a single point. More concerning is the fact that Shizuka herself displaced Sakura as Top Kunoichi (Shino had bested her as Top Student by 2 points, which, fair).

While it is unlikely that this generation Ino-Shika-Cho team would be broken to place Shikamaru into another team, and Shizuka is betting on the need to place both her and Naruto under Kakashi's command, she worries about Sakura. Ah, there is no doubt Sakura would excel no matter where she goes, but Shizuka can't imagine Naruto and herself in a team without Sakura.

The day of the team assignments Shizuka sits with Shino and Hinata. They are quietly excited and way less nervous than Shizuka. Naruto sits with the usual group of boys, all laughing boisterously, and Sakura and Ino sit together somewhere close to the front, where they are busy in a very heated half-whispered argument.

"Do you think they'll pace us together?", Shizuka asks her friends around the time Team 5 raise from their seats to meet their jounin, and oh gods, she hopes so, that she'll get Hinata and Shino if she can't have Naruto and Sakura. It would be the most terrible thing to have Naruto without Sakura or Sakura without Naruto... Oh, but what if she gets Hinata and no Shino or Shino and no Hinata? What if she gets a completely different team?

"It would b...b-be nice," muses Hinata. "It's unlikely, though; I don't think they'll place a sharingan and a b...b– an Uchiha and a Hyuuga together."

Shino just hums thoughtfully. Team 6 is announced; Shizuka fidgets in place and prepares for the worst.

But destiny may be on her side for once because Iruka-sensei reads from his list:

"Team 7 is Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Shizuka and Uzumaki Naruto under Hatake Kakashi".

Shizuka doesn't cheer out loud but it's a close thing.

*

Kakashi doesn’t want a team. Especially this team. But he has his orders, so he meets the Hokage at Naruto’s apartment.

It’s messy and the milk in his fridge spoiled a week ago if the better-by date is to be believed, but it’s full of healthy looking plants.

“Naruto is not very smart,” says the Hokage. “But he’ll be better with you, and you know how to deal with the type.”

That was a hit under the belt.

“And the other two?”

“Sakura-kun’s chakra control is perfect and the Academy instructors say that the only thing that may stop her from performing a new jutsu on the first try is her lack reserves; her parents are civilians and will receive us for tea later. Why don’t we go to Shizuka-kun’s apartment in the meanwhile?”

Shizuka’s apartment looks clean at first glance but there’s a thin layer of dust on all superficies. There’s only tea, bottled juice and snacks in the kitchen. The futon is folded in the bedroom’s closet along too small clothing for a girl her age and a well-supplied packed go-bag.

He looks at the Hokage in concern.

“She doesn’t live here.”

“No, but she still pays the rent.”

“Then, where..?”

The Hokage turns to look at the view from the window. Of course she’s living there.    

*

Kakashi hasn’t been in the Uchiha compound in 5 years and the blood was perfectly washed up so one can’t see where it was, but he can remember perfectly where was each body; there is an eerie feeling in the empty streets, exaggerated by the occasional sensation of being watched.

The outside of the girl’s house looks… normal, well-lived, and to see it in the middle of a ghost-town is quite disturbing.

There are four pairs of slippers at the door that he and the Hokage ignore. After entering, the feeling of being watched intensifies. A huge orange cat hisses at them from his perch on top of a bookcase full of flowery shoujo manga and glass cases displaying rat bones and a rabbit skull.

They walk into the kitchen where they find a fridge full of fresh veggies, a tin of homemade cookies on the counter and a dead bird on the table.

She is sleeping in what used to be Itachi’s room.

“Shizuka-kun is a bit peculiar”, says the Hokage like it doesn’t bother him.

Kakashi really, really doesn’t want this team.

*

He likes them even less in person; Shizuka has the same pretty face as Itachi’s (and Kakashi is almost sure the jumper she’s wearing used to be Itachi’s too). Naruto would look exactly like his father if Kakashi had not known his mother. The way Sakura, of the perfect chakra control, tries to look professional even as she steals almost discrete looks at Shizuka, is like something Rin would do.

Let’s get over this quickly.

“We’ll begin with introductions; tell me about a bit about yourselves.”

“Why don’t you do it first, Sensei?” asks Sakura. Kakashi sighs.

“Uhmmm my name is Hatake Kakashi. I don’t want to tell you my likes and dislikes. My dreams for the future are…hmm… And I have a lot of hobbies. Now is the turn of–”

“Mememe! Me first! My name is Uzumaki Naruto. I like ramen and I like even more when Iruka-sensei pays for it. I dislike the 3 minutes it takes instant ramen to cook. My dream… my dream is to become Hokage so everyone has to acknowledge my existence!!...And I guess my hobby is pranks.”

He’s… quite something.

“I see… well, next.”

“Eh, my name is Uchiha Shizuka. I uhmm, I like fresh tomatoes– oh! and cake with fruit on it and I, ah, I don’t like octopus. I have various, various hobbies like collecting things and cooking and reading and playing with my cats. My dream is… not a dream? and I may not even be the one to, I just― I just want― desire― retribution to the person responsible of the destruction of my clan.”

But then why is she clinging to... Now is not the time.

“Er, yeah. Now the last one”

“My name is Haruno Sakura and I like…” she steals a look at Shizuka, “sweets made with red bean paste and I dislike spicy food. My dream is to…” she glances at Shizuka again, but then looks squarely at him, “to become a strong kunoichi like Tsunade-hime! I mean, everybody wants to be like Tsunade-hime because there are no other famous kunoichi, so I want to be strong enough to also inspire future generations!”, after that she blushes a little. “My hobby is reading, too.”

They may not be what he was expecting… but no! He can’t wait to get rid of them!

“That was nice. Now we can pass to the next issue: the exam to determine if you’ll become genin…"

*

The next day Shizuka easily convinces her team to eat breakfast together before Kakashi-sensei arrives; even with the warning to no eat, Sakura practically jumps at the opportunity, and Naruto has been reluctantly eating and enjoying her cooking for a couple years now.

“You made the tuna and potato croquettes?,” is the only thing he asks.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s eat! Sakura-chan, you will love the croquettes Witchy-zuka makes!! ”

“How?! How can you have tasted Shizuka-chan’s homemade food before?! And I told you to don’t call her that!”

After eating they even have enough time to stretch.

*

The instructions to the bell test are pretty much as Shizuka remembers from Eli’s memories, so when Kakashi-sensei says 'go', she is ready to snatch Naruto by the back of his collar and tell Sakura to follow her to the trees.

“What was that, Witchy-zuka!?,” exclaims Naruto when she releases him in the cover of the woods. “I could have beaten him! I’ll go back and you’ll see!! I’ll get the stupid bell before you!”

“He is a jounin, Naruto-kun. He’ll squish us without even breaking sweat.”

“…You can’t do it then, Shizuka-chan? You don’t think you can get the bell? If you can’t then we―”

“We work together and then we can get the bell.”

“But there’s only two, Shizuka-chan!”

“There’s no way I return to the academy, Witchy-zuka!!”

“Then, then you two will keep them. I won’t get between you and your dreams; remember I don’t have one.” She looks at then in the eyes. “Naruto-kun, Sakura-chan, don’t worry and let’s plan how to get the fucking bells!!” She punches the air with enthusiasm; she may be laying it to thick.

“Yeah!” Naruto follows suit.

"You swore, Shizuka-chan―", mutters Sakura, bewildered, but after a beat she snaps out of it and also punches the air. "Let's do it!"  

Chapter Text

“Let's just, uhmm, let's go over the plan again―” 

“I'll go first and try to get a bell!” 

“And then it’s my turn. If Kakashi-sensei has only one, I fight with everything I got. If he still has two…. I- I have to lose easily…”  

“I’m sorry about that, Sakura-chan, but we need him to- to, eh, to underestimate you, if we want the, ah, second part of the plan to work.” 

“Yeah! But that’s only if I lose! I will beat him and then I’m sure you’ll get the bell too, Sakura-chan!”  

“That’s what we accorded, Naruto-kun, but-but if you… happened to lose―” 

“I know, I know! Then you fight him and keep him busy until me and Sakura-chan arrive to spring the trap!” 

“But how will we know where you are, Shizuka-chan?” 

"Oh, well, I- uhmm I'll try to make some smoke, I guess?" 

*

Kakashi sidesteps to avoid the fireball and it impacts the bush behind him. The girl just got a look at him and attacked, so serious. And he is quite sure she has taken seriously the 'attack with the intent to kill' thing too. 

“You seem to be different than the other two, Shizuka-chan”. When she took off with them, it too had seemed that they would be different to the usual teams he tested. Then they went after him alone, what a shame. 

“I am, and I gave them a chance to work with me. They were stupid enough to reject it. Good riddance”, she scoffs.  

“And you seem pretty confident too. Let’s see if you can back it, uhm? Come at me”. 

This time he doesn’t bother to move and just blocks the kick with his forearm. There’s force behind it, but not enough. The takes her ankle with the other hand and throws her away. She hits the floor and doesn’t lose time getting to her feet again.  

Now is his turn to attack, he supposes, even if she is going to fail the test, he could still teach her a lesson on humility. He throws some stars at her and, expecting her to dodge, he uses the body flicker technique to appear at her back. She swings her arm backwards to try to stab him in the kidneys; before it can connect, he is already two meters away. She turns, grunting, if not growling, and throws the kunai at his throat. He catches it between two fingers. Vicious, this one. 

 He spins the kunai by the loop at the handle.  

“Was that all?” 

Instead of answering, she rushes him and tries another kick, he slashes with the kunai and when she dodges, he uses the opening she leaves to kick her away. She stands up again. 

It goes more or less the same several times— she attacks, it fails; he counter attacks, it doesn’t. The kid keeps getting up, he can at least give her that, well, that and that she has wised up to the fact that he kept baiting her into dodging, not that it had done her much good. Now, she is panting some meters away, nursing her stomach after receiving a punch he had not pulled too much. He wanted to wrap this up quickly, but is fun to see her persist, frowning and upper lip raised in a snarl. They still have a lot of time until noon, anyways. 

“Maybe you are not so different, after all. I’ll have to take out my book to read if you’re just going to continue like that.”   

But in an instant, her face smooths out into the faintest smile. A group Narutos springs out of the trees and attack him. Oh, so she was buying time. Interesting. 

And there is Sakura at the edge of the clearing, looking indecisive. After how easy he was able to knock her out, she must not want to risk another fight. Maybe this one is not ready for the field yet and he should actually send her back to the Academy instead of the Corps.  

He lets the fight continue for a while. Sometimes the Narutos make a grab for the bells and he just bates them away. He has already dispelled some, but Naruto hasn’t made new ones― maybe his stamina does have a limit, and, as impressive as it is for a gennin to make so many Shadow Clones, they mostly get in each other's and Shizuka’s way, uncoordinated and overeager. Like right now: she gets distracted avoiding a collision with a clone and loses her footing, leaving her pretty face open to a punch. Let’s just end this now―  

“No! Shizuka! Kawarimi no ju―” How bad it doesn’t work with humans, never mind so far away. Sakura should know better; he has read her file. Kakashi’s fist connects to Shizuka’s jaw. A body impacts his hip. The weight of the bells disappears. What. 

One of the Narutos is sprinting to the edge of the clearing, where Sakura used to be. Sakura is now at his side, laughing and punching the air above her head with the hand that is clutching a bell. The Naruto picks up the other bell and jumps up and down, firsts tucked under his chin. On the floor, Shizuka spits blood and giggles. 

“We win,” she says. Her smile is small and bloody, but delighted. “You can dispel it now, guys.” 

After some of clouds of smoke there is only one Naruto next to him with the bell and Sakura is again at the edge of the clearing with the other. What.   

*

To be honest, Shizuka didn’t expect this convoluted plan to actually work. It relied too much on timing, luck and Kakashi's lack of familiarity with then. If he had not underestimated them after they tried to fight him alone, or if he had actually fought to win, instead of just toying with them when they went at him together, it could not have worked. 

For one, they had to hope Kakashi would not believe the Kawarimi to work, so the one who performed it had to be very far, and while Naruto would manage it, they didn't know if Kakashi knew about the experiments Naruto and Shizuka did with Hinata and Shino, and not only that: there was no way Kakashi would believe Naruto to stay at the side-lines after Shizuka had to drag him away the first time and then tried to fight him alone, so it had to be Sakura.

Sakura had not really needed to disguise herself as Naruto to get her bell, she could just have hidden and waited, but Shizuka wasn’t expecting the plan to work because they had not even needed it to work in the first place. After all, the point of this test wasn’t actually to get the bells, Kakashi just wanted to see them work together, so Sakura had to fight against him too.

But the plan worked and Shizuka should learn to trust her team more.

“So you won, eh?”, says Kakashi, crossing his arms and cocking a hip.

“You bet we did! We got the bells! You have to pass us!” Naruto has not stopped celebrating, waving his bell around, making if ring.

“Very well! But now the tree of us need to discuss some things, so… say goodbye to Shizuka-chan.” Kakashi smiles under his masks and starts walking away.    

He has to make this more difficult, doesn’t he? Shizuka sighs and frees her hair from where she tucked it down the back of her shirt for the fight. She looks away from her team, as if uninterested.

“No,” says Sakura, and Shizuka turns on time to see Kakashi stop mid step. After she walked back to the group, Sakura had settled next to Shizuka on the ground, but she is now rising to her feet. The sound of her bell, muffled by the tight grip she has on it, betrays the faint trembling of her hands, but her voice is firm. “Shizuka-chan should have my bell. She was the one to put the plan together.”

Shizuka can only look up at her in awe, she really needs to believe more in her team; she was hoping they’d do this, but truly, she should have been completely certain. 

“Keep it, Sakura-chan. Remember your dream to surpass Tsunade-hime.”  

“You deserve it more!” 

“I don’t, it couldn’t have worked without you. I planned it so you two could get the bells. I’m ok with it.”  

“It’s not fair, you are the one who got hurt the most.” 

“You two also got hurt―” Did Naruto just throw his bell at her head? 

“Keep it Witchy-zuka! You already helped me once so I could graduate. I’m not owing you more.” Shizuka throws the bell back. The two of them are so good, she feels bad of doing this to them. 

“Don’t be silly, you don’t owe me anything.” 

Naruto is about to throw the bell at her again, when Kakashi clears his throat to catch their attention.  

“It seems that the decision should be mine.” Kakashi puts on an exaggerated pensive pose. “Who should I choose?”  

“Them!”, yell the three of them at the same time, each pointing at the other two.  

“Well, in that case my decision is…. All of you pass!” 

Naruto and Sakura actually fall to the floor in shock. Shizuka loves them already. 

Chapter Text

Shizuka probes the inside of her mouth with her tongue searching for lose teeth. Fortunately, it seems there are none and the blood comes from a cut in the inside of her cheek. She flinches; it stings. She is not looking forward the bruise she can already feel forming on her jaw.  

At the sign of her discomfort, Kakashi-sensei’s hand stops putting pressure on her side and he looks at her questioningly, continuing his poking and prodding to her ribs and belly when she shakes her head no. Sakura and Naruto are sitting to the side waiting for they turn, because, yeah, he was pulling his punches, but better safe than sorry, even if Naruto insists he is alright and if he weren’t, he heals very fast.

"You can eat your lunch after I make sure made no lasting damage to my cute little students, or the Hokage will get cross at me for breaking you this soon."

After he sees that the worst injuries are the many bruises and scratches Sakura and Shizuka collected (Naruto is perfectly ok, just as he said, and Shizuka tries to look as puzzled about it as Sakura) and those are patched up, Kakashi-sensei hands them two lunchboxes, brought at a convenience store.

"I only needed two for the test," he explains with a shrug.

Naruto predictably asks what do their lunch have to do with the test and Kakashi-sensei explains that the objective was not to see if they would be able to get the bells, but to see if they could work together as a team even though one of them would have to sacrifice themselves for the other two.

"Are you telling us that we could have passed even if we didn't get the bells?! And that doesn't really explain the lunches!"

"The lunches were sort of a second chance for you, guys, because I'm a very generous person. If you hadn't figured it out by noon, I would have tied one of you to one of these posts, then I would give food to the other two along with the instruction to don't give anything to their teammate on pain of failing, and I would have pretended to go away. If you disobeyed that order, you passed the test."

"That's why you told us to skip breakfast!"

"Of course! I had to be sure you'll be hungry so it could be extra cruel to the one who got stuck to the post!"

"But sensei, aren't we supposed to always obey our superiors’ orders without question?", asks Sakura with a frown, but still raising her hand like in a classroom.

Kakashi-sensei’s shoulders slump almost imperceptibly as he averts his eyes in direction of the memorial stone.

“Ideally—yeah, you should, but, ah, by that point I would have already told you that you needed to work as a team to get the bells, and the order to make one of you go hungry, well, that is not something a good teammate would do, is it?" He looks at each of them very seriously to the eyes. "In this case it was not that dire, but if you keep walking this path, one day you'll have to take difficult decisions."

He suddenly shunshins to Shizuka and drags her back with a kunai against her neck. Asshole.

"Sakura, I'm an enemy. If you don't kill Naruto, I'll kill Shizuka. What do you do?" Does this even have a point?

"I- I'll - I don't-"

"She tells you that I'm more valuable alive because I have a kekkei genkai and when you run away with your price, they plan my rescue." Kakashi-sensei blinks down at her.

"And— isn't this situation against the point you are trying to make?" she adds.

"I was trying to impress on you that you shouldn't even contemplate choosing one over other of your teammates and the harsh reality of our work."

"Well, then I'm offering them an umbrella permission to endanger me a bit if it means the possibility of all three of us surviving at the end."

"You are gonna be a difficult one, don't you?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about." He sighs and lets her go. Shizuka walks back to her new teammates.

"I’m okay Sakura-chan. He wasn't actually going to do it.” She tries to reassure her. “And you hear what I said, I trust you to keep us all alive. You too, Naruto-kun, and you should trust us too"

Sakura manages to smile a bit, but Naruto still looked a bit spooked, just for a moment, before he gathered himself to boast:

"I would have definitely rescued you like a damsel in a dress—”

"In distress, Naruto-kun."

“— and you'd have been all swoony and impressed!"

"And very thankful too"

"You better!... Enough to get a cake?"

"Enough for cake. In fact, we should- should get cake after this."

“And ramen!”

“Yes. But later, we are, uhm, we are already eating lunch—”

*

Kakashi observes his students rope Sakura into their dinner plans and lets himself be the tiniest bit hopeful about this team. He also decides there is no harm in finishing the lesson he intended to impart them before dismissing them for the afternoon. He pointedly clears his throat.

“Well, Shizuka-chan just ruined the carefully arranged dramatic moment I had going, so I’ll just finish my piece and then you can go.” His three little gennin look at him, Sakura a bit wary, Naruto a bit annoyed and Shizuka oddly solemn, but it seems to be her default expression. He turns to look at the memorial, so he doesn’t have to look at them. “‘Those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.’ My best friend said those words to me. He was a hero, and his name is written here along with all of those who have died in the line of duty.”

He turns back and now the three of them look solemn, maybe they get it and he hopes it is enough, so he puts on a pose and says cheerfully:

“That was all! Go and we’ll reunite here tomorrow so Team 7 can begin its duties!”

Sakura walks away, trying to ignore Naruto’s animated chatter as he follows her. When Shizuka passes by Kakashi, she brushes his side lightly. Instinctively he catches her wrist. She is holding something wrapped in wax paper and blinking up at him.

“You aren’t that good yet,” he says and then releases her. He also pats her head lightly before sending her after her teammates. Before going, she puts on his hand the homemade granola bar she had intended to slip into his pocket.

He looks at their tiny retreating backs and bites into the snack; he skipped lunch, after all.

*

Sakura can’t believe they passed! She can’t believe she is in a team with Shizuka-chan! She can’t believe she fought a jounin! She can’t… she can’t believe she agreed to spend time with Naruto. He just keeps talking and talking! It’s very annoying but Shizuka seems to be listening to whatever he’s saying. Then again, Shizuka has always been kind to him for no reason, even when he is rude to her all the time.

“—maybe we’ll even get to save a princess!!” Sakura snorts by force of habit, even if rescuing a princess does sound very cool.

Naruto deflates a bit. He cares a lot about her opinion and now she feels a bit guilty.

“Well, we are just out of the academy. They probably give all the princess-saving missions to the jounin,” says Sakura trying to fix the situation a bit aaaand Naruto goes on how he’ll make jounin in no time. Shizuka smiles at her. Score!

They go for Sakura’s suggestion of red bean paste dumplings first, and they eat them walking on the street. It is busy around them and Sakura can’t help but feel like people turn to see them every time the sunlight catches on their still shiny hitai-ate and it makes her stand straighter and giddily. She is a Kunoichi and she fought a jounin and Shizuka trusts her. 

“Next is cake from that fancy store! Witchy-zuka, you’re paying because it was your idea!” Sakura can’t say anything because she is chewing so she just glares at Naruto.

“Eh, actually, I, uhm—”

“No take-backs!”

“No, no, I’m paying. Just, I- I just wanted to see if Team 8 passed their test too.” After saying that, Shizuka fidgets a bit, and how can Sakura tell her no? Sakura shallows the dumpling hastily.

“Of course Shizuka-chan! We’ll look for them!” Shizuka smiles at her again and Sakura feels herself practically glow in happiness. 

“Thank you, Sakura-chan.” This is the best day ever. “We could go, uhmm, go find Team 10, too. You and Ino are such, such good friends! You should share the news with her.” Maybe not.

“Yeah! You should invite everybody to cake, Witchy-zuka!” Naruto doesn’t help. Sakura needs to say something quickly before she has to share Shizuka’s attention with all their class!

“It would be too expensive for Shizuka-chan! We should go only the three of us and go out with them another day.” Or never!

 “Well— you are right, this was supposed to be our first outing as a— as a team. Maybe we should just go and I’ll, uhm I’ll find time to see Hinata and Shino another day…” And now Shizuka looks sad!

“They are your friends. It’s ok, they can come with too!”

*

Shizuka still feels out of sorts after hearing Kakashi-sensei call Obito a hero. She knows what happened to him and his reasons but, like with her brother, she can’t find it in herself to forgive him, and unlike Itachi, she doesn’t love him. Kakashi-sensei deserves better. But Shizuka tries to don’t think too much about that because they just won. They worked together and got the bells and she allows herself to bask in the victory.  

They have no luck finding the other teams so, in the end, is just the three of them in a café and Sakura tries (badly) to pretend she is not pleased about that. Shizuka still buys a whole cake. The girl at the counter looks at them dubiously when Shizuka says they’ll eat it there, but Shizuka knows what she is about. She also orders milky black tea and a plate of very tiny, assorted sandwiches.

“It’s such a shame we didn’t find Hinata-chan and Shino,” says Naruto in between bites. “This is the cake they like, isn’t it?” 

“More like, like they know I like it, so they, uhmm, they let me choose.”

“How does Naruto know that?” Shizuka blinks, puzzled at Sakura’s question. Didn’t she notice before?

“We have a truce!,” answers Naruto. “We don’t fight at meal times so Hinata-chan and Shino can eat in calm.”

“So we just, just— we just invite him to join us at lunch. He never wants to train with us, though.”

“If I do, you’d see my weakness! And use them against me!”

“The time we noticed a- a weakness it worked in your fav—”

“You said you wouldn’t talk about it!”

“Oh! Of course. Yes. Sorry, Naruto-kun.”

“You—- YOU ARE FRIENDS!?”

“Something like that,” answers Shizuka at the same time Naruto yells: “Hell no!”

“He says we are rivals,” clarifies Shizuka at the same time Naruto insists: “We are rivals!!”

They eat all the cake, then they go for ramen and, after that, their separated ways.

*

As she walks home, Shizuka plays a bit with the end of her braid, not giving into the urge to chew on it and just fidgets a bit, twisting it and untwisting it around her fingers, again and again. Eli used to cut her hair every time she graduated and then let it grow again until the next one. After she finished her schooling, she did it when she was about to begin new stages of her life. Her hair had been recently cut the night of The Accident. Her hair had been short That Night. It reached bellow her navel now. It doesn’t mean anything other than she has not cut it in about five years. The ends are split, it takes too long to bush it in the mornings, and she had to hid it so Kakashi-sensei would not grab it during the fight. It is not practical.   

So before going home she takes a detour to the apartment building to ask Obaachan for a favour.

*

After the sweets, and the cake, and the ramen, Shizuka can’t eat a single morsel more, but she accepts the tea when it is offered and dutifully sips on it. The tea is excellent as always; Obaachan doesn’t get many chances to spoil her, as Shizuka doesn’t visit as much as she’d like. Also, over the years the other tenants have been moving away from the walls of the Uchiha District, until only Shizuka remained; tea like this is slowly becoming a luxury.

Sitting primly in front of Shizuka with her own tea, Obaachan regards her fondly, with otherwise sharp, shrewd, eyes. She is old in an ageless, unchanging way. Only the wear at the seams of her dianthus patterned kimono betray the passing of the years and the hard times.   

“Oh, Shizuka-chan! But it is such a pretty hair!”

“Please just cut it, Obaachan.”

“What if I only cut the ends?”

“I can go to a hair salon if you don’t want to do it.”

“I don’t want to ruin it. It has been so long since I last cut my daughter’s hair, and these old hands aren’t what they—”

“You can sell it afterwards.”

 “…Short, you said?”

Chapter Text

Sakura wakes up early, eager to meet her team again and speeds through her morning routine, but even with all that haste, her mom is already up and in the kitchen when Sakura goes downstairs.

“Oh,” exclaims Mom when she sees Sakura. Are her eyes a bit misty? Urgh. “Are you going already? You have time for breakfast, surely.”

Sakura considers skipping it if it means also skipping Mom’s fussing, but if Kakashi-sensei gives them a lunch break, it won’t be until noon, and Mom didn’t wait for an answer and has already laid up a plate of pancakes and fruit while Sakura was distracted. Well, she does have time.

Sakura leaves after eating but doesn’t accept the offer of a bento; knowing Mom, she probably packed a really embarrassing charabento.

Sakura is the first one to arrive to the meeting point, but she doesn’t mind it as it is a nice morning with pleasant weather, and it gives her time to offer a quick private prayer to the Memorial.  She minds it even less when she recognises Shizuka in the distance, walking in her direction.

She smiles as Shizuka approaches, “good morning, Shizuka-cha-What happened to your hair?”

“Oh,” says Shizuka touching the ends of her hair, that now barely reach the bottom of her ears. “I- uhm, I thought it was a good moment for, for- for a change. It doesn’t look good?”

It is different to her old hairstyle, all tied back severely in a long braid. Sakura thought it had made Shizuka appear mature and elegant, and it was such a lovely hair too. Sakura had seen it lose for the first years ago when Shizuka rebraided it after it got messy in a spar, very black and so soft looking, a bit wavy after being held in a braid for too long. Sakura had wanted to touch it and she had also wanted hair like that, so Sakura let her own hair grow long… But now with her hair too short to tie, a bit fluffy and with some bangs, Shizuka looks a lot gentler, her face softer. Sakura noted Shizuka was wearing her forehead protector like a hairband, like Sakura herself was doing. She blushed.

“It looks pretty, Shizuka-chan.”

“Thank you, Sakura-chan. I hope you don’t mind I- ahh, I copied you a bit,” she answers as she sits next to Sakura, smiling softly. “But it really looks cool like this.”

Sakura just blushes more, if that’s even possible, and brings her hands to her head to fuss a little with the forehead protector.

“Really? You think so?”

“Yeah, it looks very good and I wanted to try it too. And now we match!”

They smile at each other and end up falling in a slightly awkward silence. Or awkward on Sakura’s side, as she doesn’t know what else to say (she does know what she wants to say, there are many things she wants to know but isn’t sure how to ask, even less when. She is aware of how little she truly knows about Shizuka, how little Shizuka knows her. She just wants Shizuka to like her). At her side Shizuka simply looks serene and pleased, watching a bee drink water from a little puddle.

In the end the silence is too much.

“Shizuka-chan… I wanted to ask you something.”

“Uhmm, what is it?,” says Shizuka, distractedly, not even looking up from the bee.

“Do you like Naruto?” That wasn’t was she wanted to ask!

Shizuka turns to look at her, urgent and concerned.

“Why everybody asks me that?!”

“Well, it’s just that you are always kind to him and you try to approach him even if he says he doesn’t like you and is rude to you― so I thought you liked him…” she lowers her voice, “because I know he likes me and…”

“That’s how he acts towards you?” Shizuka waits for her to nod and continues: “I don’t like him, I mean, not like- that. It’s just, it’s just he kind of reminds me of, well, myself, of how things could have gone for me if things had been― different.”

“But you aren’t like him at all!” They are, like, complete opposites, thinks Sakura, and begins to list all the ways Shizuka is way better. Shizuka interrupts her looking flustered and embarrassed.

“Well, yeah, we are different in, in- in how we act and deal with things, but―” Shizuka looks anywhere but Sakura “―we are both orphans, for, for starters, and, I was very, lonely, after… after. I was lonely and then I found people who cared about me and that I cared for and I am just so lucky for it, but Naruto. Naruto, he has always been alone. He didn’t have close friends, he does now, I think, I hope, I try, but- it’s an awful way to live and I, I was lucky.”

“But he’s so annoying! That’s why people doesn’t-”

“He wants attention!” Now Shizuka sounds a bit forceful. “Did you heard what he said when we introduced ourselves? ‘I want to be Hokage so everybody acknowledges me!’ No one pays attention to him so he tries to, to, to gain it being loud and disruptive. I used to ignore him and be mean to him before, so I think that’s why he can’t accept so easily when I say I want to be friends, but he, he- he likes that pay attention to him, so he says we are rivals ―or at least that’s what I think ― and I like him as he is, he is good, it’s cute.” Shizuka catches herself, “but not like that! I don’t like him-like him. I like him as friends! Oh gods, this is like the Shoujo Manga Incident all over again…”

Sakura can’t help herself and laughs. This is the first time she hears Shizuka talk so much, or so fast, or so flustered. It’s very, very cute!

“Alright! I believe you Shizuka-chan!” And it’s a relief, too. Because if Shizuka doesn’t like Naruto, maybe Sakura does have a chance! Maybe now is a good opportunity to ask what she had intended to ask, and maybe even confess! This is it! She is going to say it!

“Hey!” Sakura startles at the voice suddenly coming behind her. “Whatcha talkin’ bout?” Naruto had to ruin the moment, as always! Urgh!

“Good morning, Naruto-kun. Why don’t you sit with us?,” Shizuka greets him as she moves to the side to make room for him in the middle. Sakura glances at Shizuka, she would have preferred to spend more time alone, but after their talk— Sakura should at least try to be cordial, so she greets Naruto too and doesn’t say anything when he sits down, looking a bit too pleased about that.

“Sooo,” he says, elongating the sound, “what were you talkin’ bout?”

“Uhm, we talked about my new haircut and then we talked about y―“

“GIRL STUFF! We were talking about hair and girly things!” Sakura can’t believe her. Shizuka was going to tell Naruto to his face that they were talking about him behind his back! With horror, Sakura realises that Shizuka is right and they are actually alike. They are both tactless and clueless and, thinking back about the conversation about Naruto, and to the day before when they were in the café and Naruto came back from the restroom telling them about… ack! They both have a tendency to over-share.

Kakashi-sensei reads porn in public. All three of them are shameless.

Sakura covers her face with her hands and groans. This is gonna be so embarrassing.

But, another part of her, the part that actually enjoys Naruto’s pranks when they are directed to the right target, thinks: that means I don’t have to be prim and proper all the time. Maybe they wouldn’t have made fun at my charabento.

She doesn’t notice when she begins to crackle and neither she notices the confused, concerned looks her teammates exchange.   

*

“When is Kakashi-sensei gonna show? This is the right place, isn’t it?”

“He arrived late the two last days, is he planning do that every day?”

“We should, uhmm, we should use the time and stretch, like we did yesterday.”

“Did you bring breakfast today too, Witchy-zuka?”

“Oh, uhm, no. But I, uh, I packed enough lunch to share… I have some snacks too, if you want.”

“Cookies?”

“Dried fruit.”

“Will do. Want some, Sakura-chan?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

…

“We should prank him.”

“Yeah! What do you have in mind, Sakura-chan?”

“I… dunno, I was hoping you’ll think of something.”

“I have an idea.”

“You do, Witchy-zuka? Let’s hear it!”

“Well, when he arrives we…”

*

Kakashi arrives two hours late, already savouring his students’ outrage― and he finds them running through the academy’s style kata at half speed. He confusedly watches them act like responsible people for a moment, but quickly recovers. He stealthily approaches them, lounges on a nice tree, brings out his book and pretends having been there for a while until one of them spots him. He smirks under his mask and waits for the yelling―

“Good morning, Kakashi-sensei!”

“You are just in time! We just finished warming up.”

“What should we do next?”

What kind of people are these?! 

Next morning, he cites them an hour earlier and arrives an extra hour late. Under the tree he finds a thermos with hot coffee and a note that says is it for him. It is signed with a small flower, a tiny paw print and a little swirl. His team is running laps. They still greet him cheerfully.

Unnerved, he arrives on time the next morning; they aren’t surprised. He even gets treated to breakfast from the three of them (even from Naruto, even if they are somewhat sloppily done sandwiches) and he decides to actually assign them an appropriate conditioning regimen to do while they wait for him, because they are apparently actual responsible people. Go figure.

 *

“It was good while it lasted.”

“His face when he saw the coffee was priceless.”

“Do we have to keep doing the exercise?”

“We can’t, uhm, disobey him now”

…

“It won’t take that much time, thought.  We can stop arriving so early.”

“Nah, it’s cool. We can keep bringing breakfast, it’s nice, but make the croquettes more often.”

“Those are for lunch, Naruto-kun.”

“Well, then just make them more often Witchy-zuka!”

“Shizuka-chan isn’t obligated to cook for you!!... can you bring cookies for our snack tomorrow, Shizuka-chan?”  

*

Naruto finds himself happy with his lot on life. Sakura is nicer to him and more willing to spend time with him, even if it has to be with wierdo Shizuka too.

And Kakashi-sensei isn’t bad. Sure he beats the shit out of them every time they spar, and he is constantly adding more laps and repetitions to their sets of exercises, and he drags them to do all those stupid D-ranks, and maybe he leaves them to their own devices more than Shino and Hinata say their own sensei does, but Kakashi-sensei always patches them up after the spars (even if Naruto doesn’t need it like the girls do; he has noticed he heals way faster than them), and then he actually corrects their form and gives them pointers, and he even praises them if they do particularly well. Only Iruka-sensei had ever praised him before, and Iruka-sensei could be stern, but he had never made Naruto work so hard.

One day, he and the girls― well, they didn’t defeat Kakashi-sensei in the end, but they managed to bring him down once, both shoulders touching the ground, even, and Kakashi-sensei had ruffled their hair before sending them home.

It’s good.

*

The kick sends her flying and, without strength to catch her fall, she lands on her back on the grass. Shizuka looks up at the sky, it’s very big, very blue and some Narutos fly overhead. She hears Sakura eep and then go ouch, and thinks why wasn’t I reborn in the Pokémon World?

Kakashi-sensei calls “again” in that voice that means I should not have to tell you to do it, and she and her team pick themselves up, to get thrown away once more. Or in the Shire, she continues on that thought, hobbits know what life is about. I wouldn’t mind being a hobbit.

Sparring taijutsu only with Kakashi-sensei is the worst; even if she can notice improvement, she can’t help but be aware of his slight disappointment when they don’t perform to the level he is used to and he has to hold back.  

Suddenly, Kakashi-sensei orders them to stop. They obey immediately and fall at attention.

There is a hawk circling them in a pattern that means only he is being called on a mission. Fifteen minutes after Kakashi-sensei disappears in a swirl of leaves, Pakkun runs into the training ground with orders to keep on their training; Kakashi-sensei will be gone for at least a week.

Sakura and Naruto wonder about the talking dog after it vanishes in a puff of smoke, and Shizuka remembers she isn’t supposed to know his name. Kakashi-sensei has not introduced them to his ninken yet; it leaves her feeling wrong-footed. They train until noon and agree to meet at the same time tomorrow. 

On an evening, five days later, Shizuka hikes up to the top of the Hokage Monument and finds a seat on the head of the Shodaime. Out of the four of them, the Yondaime is the one she doesn’t outright hate, and she feels conflicted towards Senju Hashirama, but his hair is a much more comfortable surface.

They are used to work without Kakashi-sensei, but as rookie genin they don’t have the clearance to request missions on their own, not even D-ranked ones, and that has left Shizuka with a lot of free time.

Free time doesn’t agree with Shizuka, so she has taken to go on walks to try and clear her head. She is out of sorts and it is upsetting the cats.

The expanse of the village lays below her, and with the orange hues of twilight abandoning the streets at the start of a moonless night, she can imagine it all going up in flames.

Free time doesn’t agree with Shizuka, at all.

She stares down at the Hokage’s Tower and pictures the black fire of Amaterasu spark on it, consume it all and expand to the trees and nearby buildings, to the very same people fleeing from it; they carry it from one to another and soon everything is alight. The fire is unstoppable, merciless, burning even the ashes, burning without other fuel than her hatred, her rage.

Those she loves are down there and the mere thought of harming them hurts, but if she follows them into their pyre, surely she won’t wake up a second time in another place, remembering, and then it could only hurt for a moment…

But her eyes remain black and nothing happens. She wretches her gaze from the village and breaths in and out, counting between inhalations. They will pay, she promises herself. Only what it is due, she makes herself concede, and stuffs the fantasy back into a deep dark corner of her mind, where she can ignore it for a while.

She stands up and starts the climb down, distracting herself with plans to cook something elaborate for tomorrow’s lunch as private apology for not yet loving them enough to stop. But it was priceless, what they took from me was priceless, growls a voice, rising from that cavernous place in her mind like the smoke from the crematorium’s chimneys.

She doesn’t notice her eyes bleed red for an instant.

*

Kakashi takes his time bathing the dogs and then taking a long shower himself, and arrives two hours late, a bit chakra depleted, very sleep deprived, but at least clean of blood, to meet his genin. (He is still arriving late, even if he is supposed to do it; he is still two hours late, even if he is two days early.) He finds a fluffy cat sitting by their packs, watching them do crunches. The cat looks at him and he feels inexplicably judged, then the cat turns back to the genin and ignores Kakashi until they finish their routine.

“Old Man Gyu! What are you doing here?” That is Shizuka’s Dessert Voice.

“Is that your cat, Shizuka-chan? It is so cute!” The cat preens at the praise and walks to its owner to be picked up. It hangs from his student’s arms like a ragdoll (an unimpressed, judgemental, ragdoll).

“He is. He is also a lazy, lazy bum that never, ever leaves home. Did you come all the way here to see me, Gyu?” The cat twist in her grip so it can climb to his genin’s shoulders and cutely rub cheeks with her. Only then his students acknowledge his return, rude.

Shizuka introduces her cat to the team and it lets himself be pet by Sakura and, after a cautious sniff, by Naruto (who is, by experience, hated by most animals), but it keeps glaring at Kakashi. Is it the dog smell?      

“Didn’t you have an orange cat, Shizuka-chan?”

“Oh, uhmm, yeah, Yeollie. How did you know, Sensei?”

“Eh, cat fur on your clothes.” The cat’s glare feels even more judgemental.

“Oh, yeah. It gets everywhere.”

 The cat remains with them all day, following the team in their errands around the village. Which his student says is a Big Deal, because Gyu is just a lazy housecat who never goes out. The cat is mostly unobtrusive and goes for ear-rubs from his genins only at their breaks, but mostly ignores Kakashi. Kakashi ignores it back.

When Kakashi dismisses his students in the evening, Shizuka carries her cat home and implacable feline eyes watch Kakashi over Shizuka’s shoulder until they turn a corner.

He shudders.

Kakashi had expected a warmer, more enthusiastic, welcome back; he doesn’t like cats at all.

Chapter Text

The team is coming up nicely. The thought comes to Shizuka while they run their warmup laps. Who would have guessed that the secret to manage Kakashi-sensei is positive reinforcement (because it confuses him when it’s directed at him)? Show him you can be a good responsible student that is interested in learning and bam, he becomes an actual teacher. And even a decent one if one is willing to ignore that his previous teaching experiences must have been puppy rearing (blatant operative conditioning) and ANBU training (sometimes he really, really overestimates their current level).

Back when Eli had been learning English, she had come across the difference between a ‘pupil’ and a ‘student’. The first refers to a young person who needed the supervision, care and constant guidance of their teacher. On the other hand, the second is literally ‘someone who is studying’, just a learner: someone who already had some degree of formation and doesn’t rely completely on their instructor. Shizuka supposes Kakashi-sensei was used to have the later. She supposes Canon Team 7’s problems had been, in part, because they had been used to be the former.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter, the important thing is that she and her teammates had improved a lot.

At some point Kakashi-sensei had wised up ―or was given tails ― about how terrible was Naruto’s chakra control, about the perfect control Sakura had over her poor reserves, and well, Shizuka had also needed to improve both her control and reserves, so Sensei had them all do control exercises, like making leaves stick to their bodies, while they completed their missions, but he had also given each one of them a gift. As she runs, Shizuka touches the pair of bells that hang from her waistband and smiles; they don’t ring, and neither do her teammate’s.

Kakashi-sensei had given them the bells after one of those missions he took on his own, one that had not taken very long, but had left him with a faint tightness around his one visible eye. He had been a bit sheepish as he explained how he hoped one day they would use them to test their own genin. Shizuka and her team had been really touched by the gesture, until Kakashi-sensei also told them he expected them to carry the bells on their person, all the time, in perfect silence— and left them to figure it out on their own.

Naruto had suggested they simply took out the little ball inside the bells, and, for a moment, Shizuka had contemplated the thought that Kakashi-sensei wanted them to move in a way that didn’t disturb the bells, but it had been Sakura the one to propose ―and the first one to manage ― to keep them quiet with chakra control.  

It was hard to do, not only was metal a difficult conduct, the little ball inside each bell was tiny, and to stop it from moving they had to direct a very precise amount of chakra. Naruto’s bells had been replaced several times as he had managed to blow them up, melt them together and, on one memorable occasion, to make the little metal ball burst out of the bell like a bullet that, miraculously, had only hit a tree, where it still remains, embedded. Sakura could silence the bells easily and could keep them like that with almost no thought, but she tired quickly. For her part, at first Shizuka had struggled to manage the amount of chakra she needed, but once she got the hang of it, she could keep at it the whole day, except she lost concentration easily and her bells rang intermittently, or the leaves Kakashi insisted they keep sticking to themselves would either burn or fall.

It took time, and effort, and each one giving pointers and encouragement to the other two, but now they can wear the bells silently even as they spar and use other jutsu, and Shizuka is sure that by the time Kakashi-sensei deems them ready to learn to tree walk, they should be able to do it in the first try.

 But even with all the improvement, Shizuka can’t help but worry about the mission to the Land of Waves. It was such a close call to Canon Team 7. What if this is a thing that she’ll mess up for not being Sasuke? She hopes they are strong enough to deal with whatever life throws at them.

*

But what life does is to throw them into the sewage, and it becomes a question, not of strength, but of mettle and fortitude.  

Today’s mission, and it will probably be just the one, because it will take them the rest of the day to get rid of the smell, is to find an heirloom ring that some rich person managed to let fall into a sewer.

Now, Shizuka doesn’t get grossed up that easily (she has to deal with the litter boxes of fourteen cats and has a hobby that involves dealing with dead animals, after all) and neither does Naruto, but Sakura seems about to cry when it looks like they’ll have to step into the water to retrieve the ring, that fortunately got stuck visibly on a garbage cluster and, thankfully, isn’t somewhere submerged in pretty much opaque wastewater.

Shizuka and Naruto look each other to the eyes. Naruto is salivating a lot ―looking at how often he has to shallow ― he is sweating cold and is a bit pale; he is about to puke. Shizuka is not that much better, but she’s not going to ask him to do it when she thinks  ―really, really hopes ― she can do it without puking her guts out.

“I’ll go.” Both her teammates look so relieved. There is no way she’s going to hold this against them. This is clearly Kakashi-sensei’s fault for not having teach them yet to walk on water.

Shizuka takes the first step and, resolutely, doesn’t think about anything else that isn’t keeping her balance, getting the stupid ring and how much she loves her team.

She blocks everything that happens afterwards, until they get back to the surface with the ring secured in a plastic bag, inside an inner pocket with a zipper. Making the effort to touch her sandals the less possible, she takes them off and lets them fall back into the manhole; the plop sound they make gives her goosebumps. Wordlessly, Naruto takes off his own sandals and hands them to her. Sakura takes out her water bottle and helps Shizuka clean her feet the best they can before she puts the shoes on.

They don’t say a word to Kakashi-sensei, and he at least has the sense to look a bit guilty.

*

When Kakashi arrives the next day to meet his team, his customary thermos of hot coffee has been filled instead with a block of frozen tea that he is willing to bet is the cheap stuff and has been over stepped, so, basically, they are letting him eat the cold meal*.  Good thing he came prepared.

“Guys,” he calls and they keep doing their exercises. He sighs. “Guys, come here and let’s talk.”

They obey because he, somehow, got responsible, mature students.

“You’ve been doing a good work and you deserve a treat ―” He is not going to actually apologise, or they’ll expect he’ll do it every time he pulls a dick move. “―so today we’ll ask for a C-rank!” And he has one in mind. It is a nice milk run that gets to the mission desk periodically, perfect for little genins who need to gain some experience. 

Naruto and Sakura look (and sound) really surprised and pleased. Shizuka still has a bit of a frown in her solemn expression, but, well, maybe it will take longer to get again in the good graces of someone you literally got ankle deep in shit the day before.

*

They go to request their mission and Shizuka is so busy half dreading, half hoping to see Tazuna step into the room, that she gets a bit distracted from the procedures until Iruka-sensei ―who is manning the mission desk that day ― protests that Team 7 is too fresh form the Academy to get a C-rank mission, and she only notices because, after being his student for so long, one gets conditioned to pay attention to his voice.

“Relax, Iruka-sensei,” says Kakashi-sensei, doing placating motions with his hands, and then turns to address the Hokage. “I intended to get the Silk Road one, if no-one was assigned to it yet.”

Curiously, Iruka-sensei calms instantly, and the Hokage makes a thoughtful noise around his pipe, while he moves the papers on his desk until he finds the correct scroll.

“I was intending to give it to Saito-kun’s team, but the other team is still undecided.”

“Isn’t he still in the hospital?,” asks Kakashi-sensei.

“He is, but it is a good opportunity to ease his genin into working under someone else. I was aiming for an experienced chunin, but if you take the mission instead of another chunin-genin team, I could sent Norimura-kun with them.”

“I see… well, Team 7 takes it.”

“Very well. I’ll summon Norimura-kun to let her know her new orders. The caravan parts in two days. I suggest the two teams meet before that. You are dismissed.”

 They salute (except Naruto, who waves) and leave. Shizuka realises this is the first time since she woke up in the hospital that she doesn’t know what is supposed to happen next.

*

Norimura-kun turns to be one Norimura Momoko, a recently promoted chunin that looks very eager to prove her competency to ‘Kakashi-senpai’. She has black hair, brown eyes and the tan skin that is the average in Fire Country.

“This is the first time you are in charge of a team, isn’t it? Why don’t you lead this mission, Momoko-kun?”

“Yes, sir!”

“It wasn’t an order, Momoko-kun.”

“I apologise, sir!” The genins that came with her already look longsuffering. Momoko turns red and runs a bashful hand over one of her twin braids, but quickly composes herself. “I’m just very excited, Senpai. And, yes, it’s my first time leading a team, but I have previously worked along Team Saito.”

“Well, then this will be a good experience for you. Why don’t you do the mission briefing?”

“Yes, of course!,” she says and then looks a bit at a loss. One of the other team’s genin nudges her a bit with an elbow.

“We still don’t know each other, Momoko-nee.”

“Yeah, right! Let’s begin with introductions! You must already know, but my name is Norimura Momoko.” She says, sounding composed again, and then points at each of her team’s genin. “And those are Suehisa Hotaru,” the one who elbowed her: a boy with brown hair, brown eyes and a sword. “Ikeno Chise,” a green-eyed, dark-skinned girl who wears her ash blond hair tied back in a non-nonsense bun. “And Sekisaki Gari,” he is a boy wearing more obvious armour than either of his teammates; his eyes are a pale brown that is almost beige, and his hair is pink.

“I know,” he comments, combing his hair back with a hand. “My parents had a sense of humour.” 

Kakashi-sensei likewise handles their introductions (and when he finishes introducing Sakura, Gari grins at her, exclaiming “we are in the same boat!”), afterwards, Momoko explains their mission.

“Every month, a caravan goes from Konoha to Yamaguwa ―a commercial town north from here ― and then back. It is a very safe road, and if they encounter bandits, usually the mere presence of shinobi is enough to deter them from attacking. The only reason they request two teams as an escort, is the large amount of people and wagons that sometimes travels from Yamaguwa to Konoha.” She takes a deep breath and continues. “The expected travel time is two days, three if the cargo is especially heavy, and once we arrive to Yamaguwa, we’ll get one or two days of down-time before the caravan is ready to travel back. We are to meet the clients tomorrow at 0700 at the gates… How did I do, Senpai?”

Kakashi-sensei sighs. Apparently, he is still not used to people who look up to him.

“It was a good briefing, Momoko-kun. Now, how do we end it?”

“Oh, yes, sorry. Dissmised!”

Kakashi-sensei nods and begins to walk away, raising a hand in farewell. Team 7 looks unsure at his retreating back, but after a couple steps he calls: “Come on guys, we have things to do.”

Shizuka says her goodbyes along Naruto and Sakura, and hurries after her teacher, feeling reassured now that she has some information.

^*

Naruto feels really excited at the prospect of going on a real mission outside of the village, because ―don’t get him wrong ― he loves Konoha, but he has never been anywhere else. And he can tell Sakura is very excited too. Shizuka isn’t, but she is weird like that.

“Oi, Kakashi-sensei. What are we doing? Some last minute training?”

“Eh, not quite. We are gonna get your bags and I’ll see how well you pack for extended missions.”

Naruto blinks and realises they’ve been walking in direction to Sakura’s house. He can feel her radiating displeasure next to him; he doesn’t like either the idea of Kakashi-sensei going through his stuff.

They arrive at Sakura’s house and, when she’s halfway through the door, she tells them to wait outside, at the same time her mom tells Sakura to invite them in.

“It’s good to see you again, Haruno-san,” says Kakashi-sensei, and Sakura turns, horrified, to look at him.

“Likewise, Hatake-san. I hope my daughter has been behaving.”  

“You know my mother?!”

“Well, of course, Sakura-chan. Your parents had me for tea the very same day you got assigned to my team,” answers her Kakashi-sensei, smiling down at her, before turning back to her mom. “She and her teammates… certainly have a good work ethic.”

“That’s good to hear,” Sakura’s mom says, and then turns to look at Naruto and Shizuka. He feels shy, all for sudden. “And you must be the famous Naruto-kun and Shizuka-chan. It’s nice to have faces to go along with the names.” She sends a quick look at Sakura, who flinches, and then turns her attention back to them. “Nice to meet you, I’m Haruno Mebuki.”

Shizuka bows, and Naruto hurries to copy her.

“Nice to meet you, Haruno-san.”

Sakura storms up the stairs as Haruno-san leads them to a sitting room and offers them glasses of chilled juice. “I’ll get you some tea, but this girl will probably have kittens, if I took the time to make it.”

Sakura returns, ready to leave again, in record time.

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing about you, Sakura-chan.” It is the truth, but Haruno-san’s tone is so unconvincingly innocent.

“Mom! What did you tell them?!”

“Nothing, dear. Do you think me, your loving mother, capable of telling your friends embarrassing histories about you?”

“Yes!”

Naruto is in awe.

Unfortunately, his house is next and he can’t remember if he left his underwear where the girls can see it or not, and Sakura insists that they are coming in because they went into her house.

He opens the door and awkwardly tells them to wait.

“And I’m not sure if I have something to drink, but I if you wanna you are free to check the fridge.”

Then he goes to his room and tries to remember what he is supposed to pack.

*

Sakura is surprised by the size of Naruto apartment (not that she’ll ever tell him). She had always imagined it as one of those with one room and everything on it, but his kitchen it’s about the same size as the one in her house.

She is also impressed by the number of plants and recognises one as a bigger version of the one he gave Kakashi-sensei one day. Shizuka is also eyeing then thoughtfully.

“Naruto,” calls Shizuka in a voice that should carry to his bedroom. “Will, will your plants be ok with you, ah, gone, for a week?”

Sakura hears something that sounds a lot like “shit” coming from Naruto’s bedroom, but she doesn’t blame him because it had occurred to her either. 

Naruto comes back carrying his pack. “I think I’ll ask Iruka-sensei to come water them. What will you do about your cats?”

“I don’t know. I could ask my landlady, but we had tea yesterday and she, uhmm, she said she’ll be ‘unavailable’ the whole month… maybe Hinata and Shino, maybe they could go and feed them? My cats are very— independent, anyway.”

“And you Kakashi-sensei? You aren’t gonna let Ukki-kun die while you are away, are you?”

“I’m going to use the old yarn trick. You place a glass of water a bit higher than the plants and…”

Kakashi-sensei gives them some tips for making sure your house will be as you left it when you come back from missions… but Sakura doesn’t need them. She has a pet goldfish, but she trusts her mom will feed him and keep his tank clean. If her fridge goes off, her parents will be there to see nothing spoils. They’ll make sure the stove isn’t left on. They’ll be waiting for her when she comes back.

When Naruto comes back, he will be greeted by dirty dishes covered in mould, unless Iruka-sensei has time to wash them.

So she washes them before they leave.

Well, she starts washing them, and tells him to help.

Next stop is Shizuka’s. In the Academy one of the girls said that Shizuka lived in an apartment near her clan’s compound, but they all had known better than go see if it was true. (Now Sakura knows that if she had asked her directly, Shizuka would have even told her how much is her rent and any plumbing problems she had had). Sakura had liked to imagine the place where Shizuka lived (sometimes where they lived together). It would be open and airy, with modern and stylish furniture, and certainly not painted beige like her parents’ house. 

They stop in front of a nice looking building, and Sakura has time to add a balcony to her dream apartment before Shizuka begins to walk again. She leads them to a gate blocked by faded yellow barricade tape. She ducks under it and Kakashi-sensei follows. Sakura remains outside with Naruto, both pretty much horrified.

“That’s where her family―”Sakura can’t finish that sentence.

“Does she still lives―” starts asking Naruto.

“You aren’t coming?,” asks Shizuka some steps into the empty street. Sakura looks at Naruto, Naruto looks back, and they cross the gate.

*

Kakashi falls back and lets his student lead the way to her house. Unlike last time he was here, the streets feel completely empty: no unseen eyes staring at the back of his neck. The house looks pretty much the same.

At the genkan, Shizuka takes of her shoes and steps barefoot into the house proper.

“I don’t have enough slippers,” she explains and Kakashi ends up wearing a pair of purple slippers a bit too small.

 Suddenly, they are ambushed by a terrible beast and it is on his student before he is able to do anything to save her from her fluffy demise.

“Myung!,” his student exclaims between giggles as she is brutally cuddled. It is too late to save her. “Guys, this is Myung. Myung, this is my team.” Naruto and Sakura foolishly approach the beast to rub its ears.

“So you have three cats, Shizuka-chan?”

“Oh, uhmm no. Last count, they were 14.”

“FOURTEEN!”

“Uhmm yeah. They come and go, but they, uhm, they like to be here for visitors, so maybe you'll get to, get to meet them all.” That was her Dessert Voice, this is the most obvious smile he has ever seen on her; he can almost see the sparkles in the background. “Oh, and, and, and be careful where you step, two of them like to trip people. And if you see a fast moving orange blur in the corner of your eye, don’t worry that’s Yeollie and he’s a total cutie.” That thing was probably one of the tigers that roam the Forest of Death.

 She is definitely way, way past any kind of help.

*

 Naruto is thinking that Shizuka really is a witch. Her house is nice, but there is a faint sweet smell around that is not bad, but it is weird and he can’t place it, and he knows there are lots of cats around, but it feels very empty.  

Before going for her own pack with Myung draped around her neck like a living scarf, Shizuka had served them a plate of cookies, offered them some cold barley tea, told them to make themselves at home, and left them in the kitchen under the watchful gaze of Riceball, who was at that moment cleaning blood from her otherwise pristine white fur. Kakashi-sensei had almost immediately snatched his glass of tea and stepped out to the back garden, followed, after a moment, by Riceball.

When they finish their snack, Naruto and Sakura can’t help themselves and go to explore the house.

The first room they enter has walls with shelves full of bones, so they quickly get out of there and firmly close the sliding door. In the next one they find books and manga, and Old Man Gyu sleeping with other two cats in the sunlight coming from a widow. They decide to don’t risk it and remain there.

*

Shizuka comes back to the kitchen and finds it empty. The door to the garden is open, so she steps out.

She finds Kakashi-sensei in a staring contest with Riceball, so she decides to save his remaining original eye by scoping her cat up; you can’t win against Riceball. Kakashi-sensei glares, she isn’t sure if it is at her or at the cat. Then he turns pointedly to look at the garden, in direction to the upturned plastic containers that prevent bigger animals – not that the cats leave much of those alive, either― from taking the carcasses before the bugs finish their job.

“For the bones?”

“Yeah.”

“The cats’ work?”

“Mostly Riceball’s, but yeah.”

“You don’t have to keep them all, you know.”

“That’s, that’s how they show their― love, and it would be wasteful to throw them away after they killed them. And I like the bones, they are pretty.”

They watch the garden in silence, there is not much grass left, the beds are either overgrown or empty. She is not good at gardening, not like her dad, she had only done it because it was one of the only things they did together.  Shizuka pets Riceball until she purrs. Kakashi-sensei suddenly turns to look down at her, pinning her in place like he was looking at her with the sharingan instead of his own eye.

“Why do you live here, Shizuka?”

“It’s my house, sensei. I hold to the good memories by letting it still be my home.” It is, maybe, the other way around.

“You sleep in his room. That jumper was his, isn’t it?”

“I…I want to hold to the good memories.”

“By letting him still be your brother? You’ll get hurt, Shizuka.”

“The man responsible for the massacre of my clan is not my brother.”

“I see.” He doesn’t, not as she means it, but he pats her head, reassured that she is clinging, but not too much, as it was her intention. “Let’s go find your teammates before the beasts that live in your house find them first.”

“They are perfectly harmless kittens, Sensei!”

*

They find Naruto and Sakura sitting on the floor, side to side, reading manga. One calico beast is draped over Naruto’s head and a tortoiseshell one is sleeping on his lap. The big white and grey one that followed them on their D-ranks is sleeping next to Sakura, where he can be easily pet.

“We arrived too late,” Kakashi laments and it alerts Sakura of their presence.

“Naruto hasn’t read Lovely Guardian Samurai Moon before!,” she exclaims and Shizuka gasps and hurries to her teammates’ side.

“Don’t worry, Naruto-kun. I’ll lend them to you.”

“Isn’t it for civilian girls?,” ask Kakashi. He has seen the displays of the series when he goes to the bookstore, the covers had looked just a bit too frilly to him.  

“And it inspires them to become strong kunoichi, Sensei!,” Sakura explains in the fervent tone of a true fan, shoving an open page to his face, so close he can’t really focus his sight on it. “You see ninja being so casually powerful, and you hear the stories of their exploits, and you think you will never be like them because you are only a little civilian girl that’s weak and has nothing special! But Usagi-chan also thought she was just a weak cry-baby civilian and she ended up becoming the brave and powerful Samurai Moon!!”

“And it’s about trusting in your friends and your friends trusting in you, Sensei,” adds Shizuka in a soft yearning voice.

“Yeah! And it has romance and cool fights and pretty outfits!”     

Kakashi takes a step back and makes a placating gesture with his hands. “I get it, girls. No underestimating the shoujo manga.”

Naruto just keeps reading through the commotion. 

Chapter Text

Shizuka arrives with Sakura and Naruto to the gates at 6am, all three genin carrying expertly packed bags with their supplies evenly distributed between them.  They do trust Kakashi-sensei to be professional and arrive on time, but just to be sure they insist they should arrive an hour early, with the excuse to eat breakfast together.

And Kakashi-sensei actually arrives at 0650, so as prize they make a big deal about how he made them wait and how his coffee is probably lukewarm now. The whole thing is absolutely transparent and Kakashi-sensei probably just indulged them because they amused him enough.

Team Momoko arrives at 7 sharp, followed fifteen minutes later by Dankishi-san, the caravan leader, who after introducing himself directs the ninja into helping load the carts, as the people traveling to Yamaguwa start to arrive. It is a small group comprising a young married couple, two merchants from the Land of Tea and―

“Obaachan?”    

“Oh, Shizuka-chan! Why didn’t you tell me you’ll be escorting us? Here, take my luggage. This old body should not be carrying such heavy things.” Obaachan drops her stuff on Shizuka arms and, with some sort of esoteric old lady power, manages to snatch Gari by the elbow as he passes, much to his team amusement. “This young man can help me get on the wagon.”

“Who is that person, Shizuka-chan?,” asks Sakura as they try to fit Obaachan unwieldy bags in a cart.

“Obaachan is my old landlady. I believe, ah, suspect she’s a retired shinobi, but I have no way to prove it, and she says that’s nonsense.”

“Wow, I now see why you moved out.”

“Yeah,” lies Shizuka, half-heartedly and amused. Then she adds, sotto voce: “and one day I’ll be able to stop paying rent for the apartment.”

 “What?”, asks Sakura distractedly as she shakes a pile of luggage to see if it will fall.

“Nothing.”

*

One would think that a single team should be enough to guard six civilians and two wagons if they aren’t supposed to encounter any danger.

“On the way back we may be escorting up to thirty passengers,” explains Chise while the five genin ―Gari is still being held hostage by Shizuka’s landlady ― walk behind the caravan; Momoko and Kakashi-sensei are on point, talking. “With only a team as guards the civilians would feel insecure and, the occasional bandits, overconfident, so they hire two. And thanks to that, Dankishi-san can boast that his caravan has never experienced mayor problems, charge relatively high fares per passenger that are still less expensive than what they would pay a single team for a escorting mission, and get enough clients that he gains back his inversion with a lot of revenue. And that’s just for the people! He also moves cargo.”

“You know a lot about this caravan, Chise-sempai.” Shizuka still feels a bit out of sorts about being doing something so different from canon (that she did not plan beforehand) and, as such, she is very grateful for the info dump; Chise seems to enjoy answering their questions, anyways.

“Well, we were a bit curious about it too, so we asked Saito-sensei. He told us that details on this mission are common knowledge among the career genin and the higher ranks, because it’s a regular one.” 

“He also told us that this is what they call a milk run: a mission that can’t be a D-rank just because it’s outside of the village,” chimes in Gari, who has just managed to escape Shizuka’s landlady. He grins and throws an arm over Chise shoulders.  

“Kakashi-sensei promised us a C-rank!,” complains Naruto, puffing his cheeks and crossing his arms mulishly.

“Well, you just graduated this cycle, didn’t you?,” says Chise. “Saito-sensei had us doing D-ranks for longer and our first C-rank was inside the village―”

“Oh, Chise-tan! That was because Saito-sensei wasn’t gonna risk little Hotaru’s life in some dangerous mission! I’m sure normal teams get to see more action.” Hotaru punches Gari in the arm.

“Gari, cut that out!”

“Gari-chan our team is perfectly normal!”

“You have to admit that there is at least some nepot― ouch! Hotaru pull your punches a bit!”

“Gari-chan! Not in front of our kouhai.”

“What? It’s true! Hotaru’s uncle and Saito-sensei were in the same team and now they are practically married, and then they replaced him with Hotaru’s sist― stop hitting me!”

“Then stop being a jerk! And she’s my cousin!”

“Same difference. So you are basically Saito-sensei’s kid― Chise-tan! Tell Hotaru to stop hitting me!”

“Not until you apologise, you jerk.”

“That was not cool, Gari.”

“… I went too far, didn’t I? I’m sorry Hotaru.”

“It’s ok. Just don’t do it again.”

“Thanks, bro. I’m sorry, really.”

Sheepish, Chise turns to Shizuka and her teammates. 

“So… did you get the Tora Mission yet?”

*

Gossiping and complaining about authority figures are favourite activities of teenagers, especially ninja ones, so Shizuka and her team get a bit of context for Team Saito’s drama. They are two years older than Team 7 and they have been, more or less, coddled by their sensei, a fact that Gari likes to attribute to Saito-sensei’s relationship with Hotaru’s uncle― and that is a sore point to Hotaru, because it is somewhat true.  

“We understand that he wouldn’t want to nominate us for the chunin exams two years ago. Most jounin hold their genin from them for at least a year, but then he kept us from participating in the next ones too. Even if we were unlikely to pass ―almost no one gets a promotion on their first try ― we at least could have the experience.”

“And I know that he tried to talk Momoko-nee into dropping from the exam the first time she took it until my aunt got wind of it and shoot him down.”

Shizuka, who knows that Canon Kakashi, not only nominated his rookie team to the chunin exams just four months after they graduated, but before that had allowed them to continue on a mislabelled mission, decides to keep her mouth shut to don’t add salt to the wound. 

Naruto groans dramatically.

“I’m sure Sensei will be like that too! He still doesn’t even teach us cool ninja stuff. He just has us do the same boring chakra exercises again and again.”

“And he always choses the most tedious missions,” adds Sakura and Shizuka has to agree. Once they were hired to re-accommodate by date the contents of a pile of boxes full of unbound inactive files that had fallen in the storeroom of the Administrative Building; they weren’t even classified.

“And he never makes the effort to wash the thermos after he finishes his coffee,” sighs Shizuka, even if she hurries home to wash it at night, the dregs of coffee are already fermenting by then and the little rubber seal of the lid is starting soak up the smell, but she doesn't really have another complaint to add.

“Boring, eh, Naruto-kun?” Because Shizuka was desensitised by her cats to sudden appearances, she jumped half a meter less high than her teammates when they heard Kakashi-sense’s voice coming from behind their backs. “And tedious. And I don’t seem to make the effort. Uhm? Very well, I see I need to step up your training.”

 “Really?” Apparently Naruto is incapable of perceiving an ominous approaching menace.

“Of course Naruto-kun. But it will have to wait until the caravan stops. In the meanwhile… SAKURA!

“Eep! Yessir!”

“You’ll be running ahead to scout, you can take Sekisaki-kun with you. Naruto-kun and Shizuka-chan will be following the caravan by the branches, one on each side of the road.”

“But Sensei!”, protests Naruto. “We still don’t know how to tree walk!”

“Well, then you’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. So, GO!”

“Yessir!”

*

The caravan stops for a late lunch and Kakashi-sensei calls them back. It’s a brief pause, so fortunately for the genin, but unfortunately for the more handsome of the two merchants from Tea, Obaachan doesn’t have time to exchange her hostage for a younger one. Shizuka doesn’t know how Hotaru has avoided her so far.

When they begin to move again Kakashi-sensei sends Hotaru and Chise to replace Naruto and Shizuka at the flanks of the rear-guard, and goes himself in the scouting position.

Sakura and Gari are about as winded as Shizuka (Naruto doesn’t tire very fast and, when he does, he recuperates quickly). Kakashi-sensei had them fall back to report at intervals of time just to send them running ahead again, so they practically ran laps all morning. They walk along Momoko in the space between the two wagons, but she is too star-struck to be sympathetic.

“If senpai says so, it must be good for you, guys.”

“And since when do you take jounin so seriously, Momoko-nee? Also weren’t you supposed to lead or something?,” asks Gari, eyeing her suspiciously. “Do you have a crush on him? Do we have to tell Souji-san to tell Haruko-san to have a talk with him?”

“OfcourseIdon’t. And please don’t involve my uncle or, sage forbids, my mother, on this.” Momoko is apparently a lot more composed when not in the presence of Kakashi-sensei. “It’s just. Kakashi-senpai is famous. He was promoted to chunin, like, at 6. And I once saw a bingo book mom got from a Kiri ninja that says to approach him with caution. They warn shinobi from the Bloody Mist about him. How cool is that?”

“Kakashi-sensei is famous?,” chorus Naruto and Sakura.

“Yeah, he’s the famous Copy-ninja that knows a thousand jutsu he learned from his opponents!” Momoko turns to Shizuka. “You don’t seem that surprised? You knew of him?” 

“Uhmm, well,” Shizuka tries to look the most uncomfortable she can be so no one asks her to elaborate and she doesn’t accidentally reveal too much about Kakashi-sensei’s backstory. “He’s Sharingan Kakashi.”

“Oh, yeah.” Momoko looks a bit uncomfortable herself, eyeing the Uchiwa embroidered on Shizuka’s sleeve. Success. “You should know.”

“Witchy-zuka! You knew he was famous and didn’t tell us?” Before Shizuka has the need to think of a response, because her plan failed to account for Naruto, he steamrolls to an easier question. “And what’s that sharingan thing?”

“She is on your team and you don’t know? Do you know your team at all?”

“Gari-kun!” Momoko apologetically drags him away to let Team 7 have their own drama in private.

“Uhmm the sharingan is my clan’s kekkei genkai.” Sakura seems to comprehend quickly why Momoko backed up so quickly. And, well, Kakashi-sensei probably wouldn’t mind too much having his students know just this bit of his tragic past. “It’s in our eyes and, when we activate it, it—uhmm― lets us do some cool stuff, though the Hyuuga’s byakugan is cooler.” Because the byakugan doesn’t need terrible scarring trauma to develop. “I haven’t activated it yet.” Which is weird, because Sasuke did. “And I almost don’t want to because, because it is, ah, heavy on our bodies.” And psyche.

“But Kakashi-sensei is not related to you, is he?,” asks Sakura with a frown.           

“No, he isn’t.” Well, Shizuka’s maternal Great-grandfather was a Hatake who married into the Uchiha, but she doesn’t know how related he was to Kakashi-sensei.

“Witchy-zuka, then his eyes—”

“Just one”, Shizuka corrects.  

“― then his eye is… is…”

“Yeah, from a friend who must have cared about him a lot.” Shizuka doesn’t care much about Obito, but Kakashi-sensei does, so she isn’t badmouthing him.

“That’s… that’s…”

“Just don’t think about it too much, Naruto-kun.”

“That’s why he was assigned as your sensei, Shizuka-chan?”

“Most probably, Sakura-chan. But I’m glad to be here in this team with you two and him.” 

*

In the evening, Momoko remembers she is supposed to be leading the mission and, reluctantly at first, but then more firmly when she sees Kakashi-sensei’s approval, orders the caravan to stop for the night when they pass a good spot for the camp. After every traveller is set, the fire is burning smokelessly, and the horses are tended to, Kakashi-sensei further rewards Momoko by asking her permission to take his team away for training.

“O-of course senpai! My team and I can guard the camp in your absence!”

“I’m just taking them a bit further away into the woods, Momoko-kun.”

“We won’t disappoint you, senpai!

*

The instructions for the tree climbing exercise are, for once, not as Shizuka remembers from Eli’s memories. She knows because, once she managed to silence her bells, she thought she could just apply the same principle to a tree—and failed every time she tried. She had asked Sakura for help, thinking that maybe Shizuka was still lacking control, but nor even Sakura could do it. They experimented a bit an found that they could stick to a wall or even to a boulder; they simply could not climb a tree.

Kakashi-sensei leads them into the woods until he finds a nice sturdy beech, though not as big as a Hashirama Tree; he pats it fondly.

“Why can’t we use a Kawarimi on a person?”, he asks. Sakura raises her hand immediately.

“Because to move them you’ll need to use a ridiculous amount of chakra in account of the distance, the other person’s own chakra pools and to balance any difference of mass between you and them.”    

“Exactly, Sakura-chan. Now, then why can I substitute myself with, say, a corpse or my own Kage Bunshin?”

“Uhm, the corpse is, well, dead, and the bunshin is made of your own chakra, so it won’t resist?”, guesses Shizuka, also raising her hand; Sakura looks a bit uneasy at the idea of substituting oneself with a corpse.

“Correct! So why can you stick a leaf to your forehead and not a tree? The leaf is not really dead, after all.”

Shizuka thinks about it for a moment. Oh!

“So you are saying we need to put the tree under a genjutsu?”

Kakashi-sensei blinks down at her.

“Explain.”

“Well, the leaf is, like, very small, so I can just, uhmm, just, ah, inject? my chakra into it and overwhelm its own, but the tree is big and it resists, so I, I—uh—I need to coax it? Like when I use a genjutsu and I use my chakra to influence their chakra?”

At her side, Naruto nods sagely, and Shizuka doesn’t know if he is just playing along or if he actually understood her.

“I wouldn’t have put it like that, but you are not wrong, Shizuka-chan. You see, my little students, to tree walk you first need to learn to weave your chakra into the tree’s, so it is the tree itself who supports your weight. Then, you’ll need to learn to use just enough charka to propel yourself without damaging it.”

“But then why we can’t water walk, Sensei?”, asks Sakura, frowning. “It is not alive!”

“Let us focus on this first, alright?”  

*

It doesn’t take them the whole night, but barely.  

*

The next day they show an impressed Team Momoko the fruits of their training and, for the second day of the journey, the genin are more evenly rotated between the guard positions.

In the evening, the caravan is close enough to the town that Momoko chooses to don’t stop for the night and the ninja fall closer to the wagons, to guide them in the dark.

Then they arrive at Yamaguwa.

Chapter Text

Still dozing a bit, Naruto turns on his bed to escape a beam of light and wakes up fully just in time to flail and panic, because oh shit, he is going to fall— but his hand slaps against a wooden floor and right! He is sleeping in a futon and not a raised bed. He sits up and looks around the tiny inn room, the girls are nowhere to be seen, but Kakashi-sensei is watching him over the top of his book from where he is sitting cross-legged on his own folded futon.

“‘Morning, Sensei,” mumbles Naruto and rubs his eyes to get rid of the gunk.

“Good morning, Naruto-kun,” answers Kakashi-sensei before returning his attention to the book. Without looking, he tosses a sealing scroll to Naruto.  “You should hurry-up and change before the girls come back.” 

The scroll lands softly in front of him on the bedding, Naruto scratches at his belly with a hand and picks it up with the other. It is the scroll where Kakashi-sensei had him pack a set of civilian clothing.  He frowns and pays more attention to what Kakashi-sensei is wearing; he is out of uniform, his face is covered by a medical mask and Naruto can see a long scar peak out the bottom of an eyepatch.

“We have some down-time,” explains Kakashi-sensei and turns a page.

Naruto grins. They didn’t get to see a lot of the town when they arrived last night, just the main road, and he is excited to go exploring. He unseals the clothing and changes quickly. Naruto tugs at the sleeves of the grey hoodie; he thinks the colour is boring, but Kakashi-sensei said that the whole point was to have something in-cons-pi-cuous to wear in an emergency.

There is a knock at the door and Sakura asks from the hall if they allowed to come in yet.

Kakashi-sensei stands up to open the door and stores his book— somewhere.

“Yes, but we’ll go down for breakfast now that you are back,” he says and moves to the side so the girls can enter the room. Sakura looks incredibly pretty in a dark green shirt —are they blouses if they are for girls, right? — in a green blouse and brown shorts; she had even tied her hair up. Shizuka has a dusty pink a dress. Neither is wearing their forehead protector and Naruto reluctantly takes his off too. He puts it on top of his orange jumpsuit and, pocking his tongue out a bit of extra concentration, seals it in the scroll.  

The girls also pack their clothing, but Sakura leaves out a cream cardigan she then hands to Shizuka.

“Here, Shizuka-chan. I thought you might be cold without your jumper.” Shizuka puts on the cardigan and looks really cozy in it. Naruto pouts, jealous, and lets Kakashi-sensei usher him out the room.

*

As they make their way downstairs, Shizuka uses her fingers to comb her hair down. When she went with Sakura to change in the washroom, she had dampened her hair with water to try and make it more manageable, but it keeps trying to stick up in the back and that makes her look a bit too much like Sasuke for comfort. She also hopes they get the chance to find a bath house before they have to leave for the Village; they were able to clean up a bit before going to bed last night, but a sink is not the same as a bath or a shower.

Once on the ground floor, Kakashi-sensei leads them to the main dinning area and finds them a table among the guests. Shizuka had expected they would eat in the kitchen; they are hired help, after all. Kakashi-sensei notices her confusion and explains.

“After breakfast, you are free to go explore and do as you like, but I have a little task for you. You are to try and pass off as civilian children, if none of the passengers discover we are shinobi until tomorrow morning, I’ll even give you a treat when we go back to the Village”.

Shizuka gets the feeling he is not telling them everything, but he likes to make them find their own answers. and it shouldn’t be too hard. She is, also, very, very intrigued about what he considers ‘a treat’, and she can tell her teammates are too.    

They all nod. It is not like they would refuse, but now they are committed, which, Shizuka supposes, was the point.

They get the same breakfast as the guests: rice, miso soup, grilled salmon, very refreshing cucumber tsukemono, and a bowl of natto only she and Kakashi-sensei touch while Sakura and Naruto make faces at them.

After eating, Kakashi-sensei gives them instructions to come back to the inn two hours before dinnertime and sends them off.

*

With his genin out of the way, distracted and playing distraction, Kakashi goes out to be a red herring too.

It is probably overkill, and the henged clone he sent to the pickup point would have been enough, but there are not that many chances for his students to practice their infiltration skills a real but low stakes situation, and this is simple enough that they can’t mess it up too badly.

Right?

*

The first thing they do is plant themselves under one of the many mulberry trees that line the main street. It is busy and noisy enough that no one should pay attention to them, in any case, Shizuka takes out some money from her pocket, holds it in her open palm and gestures Naruto and Sakura to huddle close to her. Now they are three kids deciding where to expend their allowances.

“We should get fake names!,” exclaims Naruto.

“I don’t think it will be necessary,” says Sakura. “It is only for a day, and we shouldn’t speak too much with anyone.”

“C’mon, Sakura-chan! It will be fun! What do you say Witchy-zuka?” Shizuka looks at Sakura and shrugs, Sakura sighs. Shizuka crouches and puts the money in a pile on the ground, her teammates follow her.  

 “Alright,” concedes Sakura, and starts separating the money by value, adding to it from her own pocket. “What do you have in mind?”

“Weeeeeell,” says Naruto, elongating the sound. He takes his coin purse from his pocket; Shizuka had forgotten it is frog shaped and she loves it. “I was thinking that you could be ‘Usagi’, Witchy-zuka could be ‘Rei’ and I’d be ‘Minato’, ‘cause Minako is a girl's name. Sensei could be ‘Mamoru’, because he is Jinbaori Mask!”   

First of all, Shizuka can’t allow Naruto going around calling himself ‘Minato’. Secondly, she would be ‘Makoto’ or ‘Setsuna’, not ‘Rei’.

“You idiot!,” yells Sakura, covering her blushing face with her hands. “I can’t be ‘Usagi’ if sensei is going to be ‘Mamoru’! That’s so, so, so, so wrong!”

“I meant it as in ‘Chibiusa’, because your hair is pink.” He pouts, crossing his arms.

“People is going to notice,” says Shizuka. “That manga is too popular.”

“Alright, then I’ll be ‘Tanjiro’, Sakura-chan can be ‘Kanao’ and you’ll be—”

“That’s popular too, Naruto-kun.” Shizuka thinks about it for a bit. There is a manga whose equivalent she has never seen when browsing the book-stores. “I propose that Naruto-kun will be ‘Izuku’, Sakura-chan can be ‘Ochaco’ and I’ll be ‘Katsuki’”

“I suppose they are random enough,” says Sakura. “Yeah, I like them”.

“No fair.”

“Well, you wanted us to use fake names and you got it. Shizuka-chan’s proposal is more sensible.”

“Alright, but after this we are going to find a Ramen stand!”

 “But we just ate breakfast, Naruto-kun.”