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“Let’s go to my house to study!” Naruto says, grinning. “Mom and Dad said it’s okay!”
“Are the trees going to try and eat Sakura again?” Sasuke asks.
“The trees didn’t try to eat Sakura,” Naruto says, exasperated. “They just wanted to be her friend. Like all of the trees in Konoha .”
“They didn’t try to eat me, they wanted to hug me,” Sakura says, frowning at Sasuke. “And let’s go there! Mom said last time we were at my house we caused too much chaos.”
“Something did get set on fire,” Shikamaru notes. “A lot of somethings.”
“To be fair, there are like, six Uchiha there on a regular basis,” Ino says.
“My clan is not the only clan to set things on fire on a regular basis.”
“Yeah, but you do it the most.”
“I regret not setting you on fire Ino.”
“Don’t set anyone on fire,” Iruka-sensei orders. “Go home, go study for your graduation test tomorrow.”
“Okay Iruka-sensei!”
“Bye Iruka-sensei, have fun on your date with Obito!”
“...Naruto, stop asking your older brother who he’s dating.”
“No!”
“For Sage’s sake…”
Studying at the Uzumaki Compound can always be a bit hazardous. Shikamaru is well aware of this. It’s part of why they normally don’t. But if the Senju Compound is off limits per Sakura’s mom’s orders, then they can’t study there, and if Uzumaki-sama and Namikaze-sama say it’s okay…
Well it still means he still ends up orange from one of Naruto’s pranks, Sakura ends up perching at the very top of a tree, where she seems to be talking to it, and Sasuke seems to have vanished somewhere. Oh wait no, he’s just dangling his cousin Sai off the roof for some reason.
“Where’d Hinata go?” Chouji asks, looking around.
Shikamaru blinks, not even having noticed the Hyuuga heiress vanishing.
“I think Naruto’s cousin Karin is here,” Kiba says. “Smells like she is at least.”
Yeah, that’ll do it.
“Troublesome,” Shikamaru says with a sigh.
Why, oh why do they ever even try?
“I can’t even bring myself to be surprised by this,” Minato says with a groan, nine singed children in front of him. “You know you are all a day away from graduation and are expected to be responsible future genin, right?”
Hound snorts and Minato resists the urge to send him on another courier mission with Viper. The last time he’d done it they’d almost caused a political incident in Kumo, and Hound ended up married to Killer B. He’s still not entirely sure what happened, even if it did help create a Konoha-Kumo alliance.
“But Dad! You said we could study at the Compound!” Naruto says, giving him a too innocent look. It fails by the almost fox-smug sense of mischief his son radiates, learned from a certain nine tailed companion.
“I said study, not create mass havoc,” Minato points out. “And that sounds exactly what you nine did.”
“You left us unsupervised so it’s your fault,” Sakura says.
“You are all thirteen, I shouldn’t need to give you supervision.” Minato rubs at his temples.
He is never again letting Naruto have a study group at the Compound.
Never.