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“Tomorrow is mom’s birthday, so you know what that means,” Kari said loftily. Her younger brother Toru, the 5th of the 6 children in the family, groaned from where he was laying on the floor by the table. He had two shuriken and he was tossing them up in the air and catching them just before they hit him in the head. He already had two scrapes on his face and another on his finger, but he was undeterred by such minor injuries and so continued his game.
Miwa, the youngest, clapped her hands with joy. “Does that mean Papa will be home?”
“He better be,” Kari growled. She was mending a rip in her uniform shirt, and she stabbed the needle through the fabric with irritation. He had been out on missions for the last three of their mother’s birthday, and so missed out on being a part of their mother’s only request: a complete family photo (with no clones). This year, Kari was determined to get everyone in the picture, even if she had to drag her wayward siblings by the hair or petition the Hokage to fetch her father back.
Her twin brother Yuki was definitely going to be a difficult one to catch, since he’d been assigned to ANBU and he wasn’t living at home anymore. Though, to be fair, Kari didn’t live at home either. Her siblings would hardly know it, however, since she was around so often. (Like now, for instance–but how else was she going to mend her uniform, if all of her mother’s sewing stuff was here at the house?)
Ikumi, two years younger than Kari and too cool for family stuff, sighed and tossed her long dark ponytail over one shoulder. She was on the couch studying for the upcoming chuunin exams. Haruto, who was one year younger than Ikumi, was also supposed to be studying but he was asleep, his book open and resting over his face to block out the light.
“Why can’t we just get her flowers or something?” Ikumi asked. “Family pictures are such a drag. Or how about we just each take a photo of ourselves and glue them onto a paper for her?”
“Eh, giving her flowers is like giving her poop,” Toru mused. He threw one of his shuriken too hard and it stuck into the ceiling. “Seeing as we grow them like, out of our bodies.”
“It is not like poop!” Ikumi crumpled up a paper and threw it at him. “That’s horrible!”
Toru caught the paper and scowled.
“Yeah Toru! Don’t compare our exclusive bloodline ability to excrement!” Kari admonished. “Show some respect!”
“Can you grow flowers out of your butt Toru?” Miwa asked innocently. All of the children paused briefly to consider that idea, then Toru burst out laughing–until Ikumi, thoroughly annoyed by him, shot out a mokuton vine at the shuriken stuck in the ceiling, dislodging it and letting it fall back towards his head. He dodged it with a yelp.
“Just be here at dinner time. I’ll tell Kakashi-ojisan to bring his fancy camera, and I’ll make sure Yuki knows.”
“What about Dad?” Toru asked.
“He’ll be there too,” Kari reassured him. Though in reality, she wasn’t so sure.
*
“Tomorrow is mom’s birthday,” Kari told Yuki. She wasn’t strictly allowed in the ANBU cafeteria, but it wasn’t her fault if they left the first floor window to the dining room unlocked and unwarded against mokuton users who could phase through wood. She stole a french fry from Yuki’s plate. They were good, but needed salt. “You can come for dinner, right?”
“This week is guard duty,” he told his twin sister. “My shift doesn’t end until 9 p.m.”
“Ugh! Can’t you switch with someone?”
Yuki stared at her, unamused by the suggestion, his dark eyes saying everything that his words weren’t.
“What if I owed you a favor? And whoever you switch with a favor. I’m getting really good at making furniture now–not as good as dad obviously, but not terrible either!”
“I’m still new,” Yuki said. “I can’t be asking to switch shifts all the time!”
“Well what if I ask? Is your captain here?” She stood up and looked around, but Yuki reached across the table and yanked her back down.
“ You’re not supposed to be here! ” he hissed. “And I don’t want you to talk to my captain. If you get caught I’m not covering for you.”
“But it’s for mom! If it was just me, whatever, but what does mom ever want from us? Just a family photo. And you know someone has been missing every year for the past three years.”
“Dad,” Yuki huffed, inhaling the rest of his food while Kari spoke. Kari, in turn, swallowed a retort. Yuki and her dad did not get along very well most of the time. She thought that maybe they were too alike to get along with each other, and that was also probably why she got along so well with both of them. They were both calm and practical, thoughtful and loyal. It took a lot to get them really worked up–and the thing that got them most worked up was, unfortunately, each other.
“But he’s supposed to be home,” Kari said. They both knew the implication in that. Their father was very rarely home exactly when he said he would be. It was one of the things that Yuki and Tenzou clashed over recently, in fact.
“I’ll ask. But you owe me two favors. And you have to go on a date with the person I’m going to ask to switch with me.”
“Deal!” Kari said. She wasn’t keen on dating an ANBU (having one for a brother was weird enough) but one date couldn’t hurt. She didn’t even bother asking who it was.
“You have to do the favors even if they say no,” Yuki stipulated.
“Sure, sure,” Kari said, grinning. Just then, she looked up to see a tall, angry shinobi with dark hair in a long ponytail looming over her.
“You are not supposed to be here, Yamato-san” the man said, his frown furrowed so deep into his face that the wrinkles were probably permanent.
“Ah, sorry,” Kari said. “Just making sure the food here is up to standard!” She glanced at Yuki, who only shrugged and, as promised, didn’t come to her defense. Usually when she snuck in here he helped her out by cloaking her chakra–something about masking it with his own–she was really not good at stuff like that– but he had probably dropped it when she stole his french fry. He always hated it when she ate off his plate.
The looming ANBU’s frown went from unpleasant to angry. “Get out, and if I catch you in here again I’ll tell your jounin-sensei and have a mark put on your record!”
“I am a jounin!” Kari said indignantly. “But seriously, just so long as you don’t tell my dad, I promise I won’t sneak in here ever again…unless I need to talk to Yuki urgently.” Anyone else might have been intimidated by a looming ANBU like that, but having grown up around two of the most powerful shinobi in the village, it hard to be intimidated by anyone else, even an ANBU captain.
Before the man could say anything more, Kari waved and melted into the wooden floor. She had two more people to see, after all.
*
“Tomorrow is mom’s birthday,” Kari told Kakashi-ojisan. She popped out from the tree she had been hiding in, catching him just as he sat down on the park bench with his favorite book to begin reading. He didn’t startle at all, of course, and merely looked idly up at her over the top of his book.
“I’m aware,” he said, his voice a familiar bored drawl.
“Will you come and take the picture for us? I’ve arranged for everyone to be there at dinnertime. You know dad–”
“Missed the last three years worth of photos, yes,” Kakashi finished for her. “I’ll be there. But isn’t your father on a mission with his genin team?”
“He’s supposed to be back tonight!” Kari chirped happily. “It’s perfect timing!”
“I see,” Kakashi said. If he was amused by that idea, Kari couldn’t tell. “Can you tell how far out he is from here?”
“Huh? You want me to ping him?” She was the only one in the family with such finely tuned sensory perception, able to detect and track chakra traces through plant life. Her family members’ chakra was the easiest to identify, but she had been useful on several tracking missions, though only in certain terrain. Her skills were absolutely useless in the desert, or out on the ocean. But in the Land of Fire, where forests dominated most of the landscape, she could find almost anyone.
“Sure,” Kakashi said. He even tucked his book away, so he must be interested in this. Kari knew that was a bad sign. Ojisan was most interested in things when they were about to go wrong.
Kari ignored her foreboding and pulled herself the rest of the way out of the tree to rest her palm against it instead. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then sent out a surge of chakra into the tree and down through the roots. I was almost like an electrical pulse, jumping from plant to plant, root to root, tangled as they were deep beneath the entire Land of Fire. She immediately felt the comforting chakra echoes of her five siblings, safe within the village walls, but she pushed further out, concentrating on the direction she was expecting her father to return from. Warmth flashed through her as she experienced the life forces of the deep-rooted trees of the old growth forest, calm and steady and ancient. She frowned slightly–she should have felt her father’s chakra by now, if he was within a 12 hour walk of the village. She widened her search, fatigue beginning to grip her.
The further she reached, the less clearly she could sense. Then, finally–she felt his chakra. If he walked home during daylight hours (which, with genin in tow, was most likely) he wouldn’t make it. Kari opened her eyes and saw Kakashi-ojisan watching her with his dark, knowing eyes. Disappointment surged through her all at once
“Dammit,” she pulled her hand from the trunk of the tree and curled it into a fist. She defended him to her siblings all the time. “He had said he was going to be back in time for mother’s birthday!”
“You know things don’t always go as planned on missions,” Kakashi said easily. “Especially with genin.” He stretched out his long legs and patted Kari on the shoulder.
But this was a D-rank mission. Her dad’s genin team was fresh out of the academy. How hard could it be to herd a bunch of kids when he’d parented four of his six almost to chuunin already? And he was an elite shinobi, the best in the village (besides possibly Kakashi-ojisan) and an excellent father and mentor. How could this happen?
“Maybe he felt your ping,” Kakashi suggested.
“Is that why you had me try and sense him?” Kari asked. It was an idea that hadn’t occurred to her, since her father and Haruto were the only ones who could sense her chakra like that when she was searching for them.
“Mm, maybe I did. Or maybe I just think you just need the practice.” The smiling curve of his eyes wasn’t quite teasing, but it was a close thing.
“It’s possible he felt it…” Kari thought out loud, a considering hand on her chin. “But only if he was paying attention.” And if he was distracted by his team of youngsters, that was unlikely.
“We’ll just have to see tomorrow, won’t we?” Kakashi asked. She thought that from the tone of his voice that he must know something she didn’t, but she wasn’t about to ask.
“Please just be on time, ojisan,” Kari said tiredly.
*
Tenzou did, in fact, feel Kari’s ping, and he straightened up with alarm as the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. The surge of chakra that had rolled through all of the plant life around him, and touched him–that was Kari’s sensing technique. Why would she be looking for him? Unless, perhaps, she was looking for one of her brothers or sisters. But they were all supposed to be at home in the village this week. She wouldn’t have had to send her chakra surge so far out if she was looking for one of them.
“Yamato-sensei,” the girl on his team, Keiko, noticed that he was looking around the woods with worry as they walked. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes of course,” he reassured her with a smile. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
She looked skeptical, but didn’t argue. The boys hadn’t noticed him notice Kari’s technique at all. He would need to work on their observational skills, since they needed not only to be on alert while they were traveling, but they should be paying attention to any signs of trouble from him so that they could follow directions to stay safe and complete the mission.
“Alright students,” Tenzou announced formally. “I’ll be sending out three wood-clones into the forest ahead of us, and they will each be targeting one of you. Your goal is to find them before they capture you, and your second goal is to make it back to the village before me.”
“What? But what about when we camp out for the night?” One of his boys, Itsuki, was alarmed.
“You may camp out if you wish, but I’ll be traveling through the night. Therefore I advise you to do likewise if you wish to stay ahead of me.”
“What happens if we lose?” Itsuki asked, as if he was weighing how much effort he was going to put into it depending on the consequences. Not a terrible strategy for a shinobi, but not a good strategy for a genin during a training exercise with his jounin sensei.
“I’ll volunteer us to empty bedpans at the hospital for our next mission,” Tenzou supplied ruthlessly. His face was blank and placid, but he knew if Kakashi were there they would both be cackling with laughter at the sight of their horrified faces. It was a notoriously hated D-rank mission reserved for teams who made exceptionally stupid blunders.
Not that he would follow through with that threat. They had only graduated from the academy a few months ago, and they were basically babies. He expected his clones (which, making three would mean they each had only a quarter of his chakra reserves to work with–something he would never do in a real battle) to find them and capture them fairly quickly, after which he would give them a lecture about traveling quietly and paying attention, and then they would hurry the rest of the way home as their modified punishment.
“We should stick together,” Keiko said. “We have a better chance of spotting Yamato-sensei’s clones that way.”
Tenzou’s brows rose. Well. Maybe they wouldn’t be so easily taken out after all. He popped his wood clones into existence and they scattered. Then, to his genin’s horror, he leapt into the trees and took off towards home, leaving them alone to be hunted by his copies in the dimming evening light of the forest.
As he leapt through the branches, however, something bothered him. His mind went back to the sensing technique that had caught his attention in the first place. There had to be a reason that Kari had sent out a chakra pulse. Either she needed him to hurry home, or one of the other children was missing. Throughout these considerations,Tenzou had the strong feeling that he was forgetting something important, but this entire mission he had been so wrapped up with keeping his genin from blundering over cliffs that he didn’t have the brainpower for much else. (Earlier that day, Ryuji had been practicing using his byakkugan, gotten startled, and stepped backwards into thin air. Tenzou had to use mokuton beams to snatch the foolish boy back to safety.) He would think about it some more. But first, he had some genin to terrorize.
*
Kari thought about what Kakashi-ojisan had told her about her father noticing her ping all night, and in the morning, curious to see if he had made any progress, she pressed her hand to a tree and sent out another surge. To her surprise, her father had made significant progress towards the village. Had he and his team traveled through the night? That would be unusual for a genin team, especially one as green as his. Were they running from trouble? Or was he just punishing them for something? Either scenario was as likely as the other, honestly.
Yuki always complained about how difficult their training was under their father’s direction, and on that, Kari had to agree. Her dad could pretty much do no wrong, but it was true that he was a very strict teacher. Those genin were in for a very educational few years ahead of them.
Or, it occurred to Kari, he had felt her searching for him and was hurrying home to make it in time for the photo! Well. She would just keep pinging him as often as she could all day until he made it back.
She just hoped that her dad made it back in time.
*
Tenzou remembered what he had been forgetting moments after Ryuuji defeated the second of his three wood clones and bragged loudly about how much cooler his mother’s byakkugan was than anyone else’s. It had put him fondly in mind of his own wife Yua’s beautiful green eyes, and then, with a horrified realization that nearly made him miss his landing on the next branch, he remembered. This week was her birthday. He counted the days in his head that they had been on this mission… originally they were supposed to be home yesterday, the day before his wife's birthday, but there had been an extra day because Itsuki had gotten a stomach ache on one of the days and held them up…
Which meant that today was Yua’s birthday.
He was going to miss it. All because of a 12 year old’s upset stomach. With a sigh of regret at cutting his genin’s training short, he triggered a substitution jutsu to trade places with his last wood clone and captured them each one by one.
“You did well,” Tenzou told them after he released them from their mokuton restraints, though he didn’t soften Itsuki’s landing when Tenzou reabsorbed the wooden beam that had been holding the boy aloft by one ankle. “When we get back we’ll take a few days break before our next mission.”
“Cleaning bedpans?” Keiko asked miserably. Her usually neatly braided hair was a wild mess and her shoulders were sagging at having failed. Ryuji looked worriedly up at Tenzou, and Itsuki was rubbing his head where he had failed to right himself before crashing into the ground. Tenzou had really put them through the ringer. But he didn’t feel bad about it. This would make them better ninja, in the long run. He did, however, think that they had earned a reprieve from his threat of cleaning bedpans, even if he hadn’t ever intended to force them to take that mission anyway.
“No,” Tenzou said. “But this isn’t the end of the challenge. We’re going to practice chakra-assisted running in order to get back to the village in the next four hours.”
“Four hours!? But isn’t Konoha at least an 8 hour walk away? Even if we’re running, 4 hours is crazy fast!”
Trust Keiko to be paying attention to things like times and distances. He should have asked her to remember his wife’s birthday.
“It is challenging, but not impossible. Here’s how it works…”
*
Kari idly sent pings out all day, even though it was probably a foolish waste of chakra. She did it so many times that Haruto appeared in front of her, annoyed and curious.
“What are you doing that for?” he asked. “I can feel it every time you do that!”
“Oh, I’m checking on dad’s progress. He’s almost home!”
Kari was already home, as were the rest of her siblings, even Yuki. He handed her a folded up note furtively when he saw her. “This is the info for the date I set you up on,” he said in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Plus you owe me two favors.”
“Of course,” Kari said lightly. She stuffed the letter into her pocket and focused on getting everyone ready. Just when she was about to send out yet another ping, her father appeared in front of her.
“Papa!” Miwa was the first to fling herself at Tenzou, followed by most of the rest of his children in a much more orderly and subdued way. Even Yuki managed to give his old man a grudging side-hug, to Kari’s amusement.
“You made it in time!” Kari smiled wide. He looked like…well, he looked like he had just run with a team of three rookie genin for the past 24 hour hours straight. But she didn’t care. This was the first year that they were all here for mom’s birthday picture!
They gathered in front of their family’s house, situated on the outskirts of the village, just on the edge of the wooded area within the village walls, and Kakashi pulled out his fancy camera.
“Kari,” Tenzou said, puzzled as they all squished in together in front of the house under Kakashi’s direction, “Where’s your mom?”
*
Yua, it turned out, had not been invited to the family photo. Kari fell to her knees dramatically and groaned at her own lack of planning. She had been so keen on getting everyone together for the photo, she had forgotten to tell her mother that they were planning to meet up at dinnertime. Soon it would be dark, and the opportunity would have been totally wasted!
“Ah, Kari-chan,” Kakashi put a hand on her head. “I already sent a clone out to fetch her.”
“You did?” Kari asked. She jumped back to her feet, fondness for the old shinobi blooming in her chest. “How did you know I would forget?”
“You’re not the only one who wanted today to be a success,” Kakashi said. “Your mother has been bugging me and your dad for a family photo for years. Besides, do you really think that Yuki would be able to switch guard shifts so easily without a word from the Hokage’s closest advisor?”
“But–a date and two favors–!”
Kakashi merely smiled cheerfully. “You should have asked me. I would have only asked for one favor.”
Before Kari could feel too much angst over her poor planning, her mother appeared at the end of the path, accompanied by one of Kakashi’s clones. They were walking side by side, and waved when they saw everyone gathered at the house.
“Happy Birthday!” Everyone shouted (except Miwa, who yelled “surprise mama” insead) as soon as Yua walked up the front path to the house.
“Oh wow! Everyone is here!” Yua said, her green eyes shining happily. She accepted hugs from all of the children and a quick kiss from Tenzou. “Even you!”
Kari beamed. For all the trouble that this had been, she couldn’t be too upset over her embarrassing mistake, now that it had worked out. “Time for the family photo!”
“Thank you!” Yua said in her gentle voice. “This is very sweet of you all.”
“Go stand with your children,” Kakashi said, hoisting his camera up.
“But what about you, ojisan?” Miwa asked.
“Yeah!” The kids all chorused until Kakashi’s ears turned red. He looked at Yua, who smiled and nodded deeply at him.
“Alright then,” he said. He shrugged and handed off the camera to his shadow clone before sauntering towards the rowdy group.
Kari was shouting directions as if she were a captain on a mission gone to hell, but after a few minutes of shuffling and grumbling, Kakashi’s clone said, “Smile!” and the shutter clicked.
Mission complete!
*
Epilogue
“Here mama, I promise these didn’t come out of my butt,” Miwa said after dinner, handing a pretty bouquet of white daisies to her mother.
Yua accepted the gift sincerely and without blinking. “Oh! Thank you sweety,” she said. She had been a mother to ninja children long enough to not even be phased by the idea of butt flowers–but she would definitely be asking Tenzou about that one later.