Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first inkling Kakashi had that something might be wrong with his kids was when he arrived at the academy 3 hours late to find the pink-haired civilian girl systematically dipping senbon in various liquids that he assumed had to be poison, chatting amicably with the two boys, and the loner-revenger-flight-risk was leaning against Naruto’s legs, head practically in the blond boy’s lap while Naruto deftly braided and unbraided the Uchiha’s hair.

That was…unexpected. Where was the fangirl more focused on Sasuke than ninja arts? How was Naruto sitting so calmly when he was supposed to be all untamable energy? Why the fuck was the traumatized Uchiha so…cuddly and…soft looking, when his file said he was so messed up he might never understand the value of anyone’s life but his own?

And then, when they got around to introductions…

“Haruno Sakura, frontline medic. I like reading and going to the hot springs. I hate zombies—” all three of the kids grimaced “—and when people don’t listen to the doctor and try to escape the hospital via window—”

That feels a little pointed, Kakashi thought, feeling oddly pinned by her wide, sea-glass eyes.

“—and my goals are to surpass Tsunade-shishou and become proficient at weeding.”

Weeding? Kakashi blinked. That’s…weird.

“Uzumaki Naruto, taijutsu specialist and future hokage! I like gardening and making seals! I hate rabbits—” the other two kids nodded along in agreement, as if that was a sensible and not at all bizarre thing to say “—and war. My goals are to become strong enough to protect all my precious people and to take down at least two big terrorist organizations.”

“That’s, ah, very nice,” Kakashi muttered, because he wasn’t sure there was anything else to say.

“Uchiha Sasuke, ninjutsu. I like swords and the dobe—”

“Teme, that’s embarrassing!”

“—and tomatoes. I’m not a big fan of the moon.” As one, the three kids turned their faces up towards the sky, even though it was still daylight and the moon hadn’t risen yet, and scowled. “I also don’t like when people act for the greater good and do not care about all the collateral damage they cause along the way. My goals are to kill a certain man and marry Naruto.”

Naruto had turned bright red, but notably didn’t protest beyond a shouted, “Teme!”

Dear Kami, Kakashi was not getting paid enough for this.

Things did not get any less strange from there.

Convinced that he had experienced some sort of bizarre hallucination the night prior, Kakashi arrived at the training ground for the bell test feeling a bit more ready to deal with his team. They couldn’t possibly have been as weird and unsettling as he’d thought—they were twelve-year-olds. So what if they collectively seemed to hate the moon, rabbits, and zombies? So what if there was something eerie and off about them?

Besides, if they couldn’t pass the bell test, it wouldn’t matter in any case.

They passed. They passed so thoroughly, Kakashi found himself tied up and hanging upside down from a tree with a seal plastered to the back of his neck that cut off his chakra access.

“Do we pass, sensei?” Sakura asked, all bubbly charm, as if she had not nearly impaled him with a doton jutsu not even ten minutes ago.

“Yeah, sensei, do we pass?” Sasuke dangled the bells from the tip of his finger, a smug grin on his face. He was a bastard, Kakashi decided.

Actually, all of them were. Little shit bastards. Feral goblins. Hellspawn. If it wasn’t Sakura literally changing the landscape of the field underneath Kakashi’s feet, it was Sasuke swinging a sword crackling with lightning, both of them subtly herding him towards Naruto’s hundred shadow-clones, all of which were so fast he could barely track them even with the sharingan.

What. The. Fuck.

“Yeah,” Kakashi said, sighing. “You pass. Now let me down.”

“YES!” Naruto shouted, even as one of his clones lowered Kakashi to the ground. “CELEBRATORY RAMEN!”

Sakura and Sasuke rolled their eyes, but there was a distinct fondness to it. Like they were well accustomed to Naruto’s loudness and energy. Like they had been dealing with each other for years.

But it wasn’t in their files. Sasuke was supposed to avoid everyone. Naruto wasn’t supposed to have friends. Sakura was supposed to hate Naruto and obsess over Sasuke.

It seemed Kakashi would need to have a word with their academy teacher. After he talked to the Hokage, of course.

“Team 4?”

“Failed and returning to the academy.”

“Team 5?”

“Failed. Integrating into civilian life.”

Team 6?”

“Failed. Two going back to the academy.”

There was a pause, and then the Hokage asked, “Team 7?”

“Pass.”

Every person in the room turned to gape at Kakashi.

“You…passed Team 7?” Hiruzen asked slowly.

“I had to. I think they would have hunted me for sport if I failed them.”

Another long, long silence.

“Ah. Alright then. Team 8?”

Drinking seemed the only way to cope, really. And Kakashi planned to see if he could squeeze information out of Asuma and Kurenai about their genin teams as well. Maybe it wasn’t just his team. Maybe the whole year was full of insane kids, considering most of them were clan heirs.

“Hinata is very shy,” Kurenai was saying. “I think she’ll get on well with the Aburame boy, Shino, but I worry about Kiba overshadowing them. He’s so loud in comparison.”

“That’s the issue with Ino,” Asuma said. “She’s loud and pushy, and she’s totally running roughshod over the boys. Shikamaru’s too lazy to put up any effort in pushing back even though his intelligence makes him an ideal team leader. And Choji—” Asuma sighed. “—he’s like Hinata, I think. Quiet. Shy. Not a lot of confidence.”

They both turned to Kakashi, Kurenai’s brow lifting. “How about your team? You’ve got such a mixed bag. I bet you have the same problem with Naruto shouting over the others.”

“Eh, but don’t forget he’s got Sakura, too,” Asuma added. “And she’s one of Ino’s friends. Could be that she’s the same sort.”

Yeah…Kakashi was starting to think his team definitely didn’t have the same problems as the others.

“Naruto is loud,” Kakashi agreed with a shrug. “And Sakura is bossy. But I haven’t seen a power struggle yet.”

It was more the opposite, actually. Naruto was the clear leader of the group, coming up with broad ideas that Sakura and Sasuke would then refine into actionable plans. And the three of them had worked in sync perfectly, almost like they were telepathically connected, like they could read each other’s intentions and movements at a glance and didn’t need words to seamlessly adjust to changes in the plan.

Kakashi had trained ANBU teams with less coordination.

“Give it time,” Asuma said, as if imparting great wisdom. “I’m sure the inter-personal issues will flare up in a day or two.”

Kakashi nodded and let the conversation move on to other topics, but he wasn’t inclined to take Asuma’s word for it. Clearly the man’s own team wasn’t half the trouble—or half as batshit insane—as Kakashi’s was. It seemed he was on his own for this.

Chapter Text

Tazuna knew he was fucked. Getting back to Wave was going to be a problem no matter what, and he didn’t have the money to get proper, high-level protection. But this was Konoha and he’d thought…

Well. He’d assumed he wouldn’t be escorted by children and some slouchy pervert.

Tazuna was going to die, the bridge would never get built, his home was going to be strangled into starvation and poverty and death, and he would be dead. Kami, and so would the children, probably—they were so little. The pink one looked like she should have been a princess. The blond haired boy was so bright, so happy and innocent. The dark hair one was more solemn, but Tazuna had seen the way he’d been holding the little blond boy’s hand before they’d met him at the gate.

He was going to die, and he was going to get these kids killed along with him, shinobi or not.

Tazuna knew their time had come when from behind him, there was a shout, the clanking of metal, and perhaps it made him a coward, but he wouldn’t look. He wouldn’t watch those children fight and fail. He would just wait for his own death, and beg forgiveness in the Pure Lands.

The sounds of fighting were over with quickly. And then quiet.

“Tazuna-san, are you injured?” The little pink one stood before him, hands glowing green as she looked up at him with concern.

He blinked. Then blinked again as he looked around, taking in the immediate area. Two fully grown men—shinobi, and missing nin from Kiri, going by their headbands—were tied together with the chains of their own weapons, looking a bit as though they didn’t know how they’d ended up in that particular situation. Standing over them was the dark-haired boy, one unimpressed brow raised as he stared down at them. The blond one was smiling despite the tiny smear of red on his cheek.

“What—but…you—how—”

“Maa, Tazuna-san, these things just happen,” the gray-haired slouchy pervert said, sounding utterly resigned. “I find it’s best not to think too hard about it.”

“We should probably talk about the real rank of this mission, though,” the pink-haired girl said, eyes crinkling dangerously. She was smiling, but Tazuna had the sudden thought that she might well rip his throat out with those teeth if he wasn’t careful. “Just so there are no more surprises.”

Tazuna gulped. He might be dying anyway.

When Zabuza contracted with Gato, he knew there was a chance he’d encounter other nin who would be guarding the bridge-builder. He knew, even, that he might face someone powerful, or that he might be a bit outnumbered—especially if the bridge-builder was coming from Konoha; they tended to work in teams—but overall he hadn’t been too intimidated.

He was one of the seven swordsman, a title he was proud of even if Kiri had gone to the shitter in recent years. There weren’t many people who would have the skill to beat him.

Not even the legendary Copy-Nin, given that the man had been put in charge of three little brats, and that meant his attention would be divided the entire fight. Distracted enough for Zabuza to get in a few good hits. Distracted enough for Zabuza to trap him in the water and go for the genin.

(He wasn’t thrilled about killing kids, really, but they were genin, and even if they weren’t dangerous now, they would be one day. It was better not to leave a potential threat unattended.)

“Don’t kill—what about…nii-san—I know…teme,” the blond one was saying to his teammates, just quietly enough that Zabuza could only make out every few words. It didn’t matter, of course, when they’d be dead soon anyway.

Only, when he blinked, the blond one had disappeared along with the dark-haired boy, leaving only the pink girl to guard the bridge-builder. Zabuza snorted; well, if she wanted to die first…

He had only a second to register a blur of yellow in his periphery, to smell the singe of ozone in the air before he moved mostly on instinct, leaning back in time for the swipe of a lightning-lit blade to cut just centimeters from his nose. It was the dark-haired one, and he moved fluidly to continue his attack, fast and sharp, with no wasted movements. Zabuza found himself drawn into the sword fight, matching the boy blow for blow, forced to swing Kubikiribocho faster and faster, and it was…it was impossible.

Zabuza had to be the more experienced swordsman. He had at least two decades on the kid, who couldn’t be more than thirteen or fourteen at most. And yet Zabuza couldn’t find a place to push an advantage, couldn’t find an opening—why was the brat so damned fast? How was his control over lightning that good, that it zinged down over his blade perfectly, not so much as an ounce of chakra wasted?

And why did Zabuza feel like the boy was laughing at him?

“Check in!” the dark-haired genin called, not even sounding winded, what the fuck.

“Sensei’s clear!” That was the girl, and Zabuza spared only a fraction of a second to acknowledge that she had somehow managed to retrieve the Copy-Nin from the water prison and eliminate Zabuza’s water clone without him knowing.

“All clear over here!” the blonde one shouted, dropping down out of the trees, with a large, dark lump over his shoulder, long dark hair trailing—

Haku.

There was a split second where he was frozen in place—how had the blond one found Haku, how had he subdued him, was Haku hurt or even still alive—and then there was a crackling blade at his throat.

“Don’t move,” the dark-haired one hissed, leaking killing intent, and Zabuza listened, because for some reason the brat hadn’t slit his throat yet even though it was plenty obvious he could and would if Zabuza didn’t comply.

“Yeah, Zabuza-san! We just wanna talk!” The blond one was setting Haku down gently, with the same care he might have shown a comrade. “Gato’s a piece of shit.”

The genin holding the sword at his neck snorted. “And he’s not going to pay you. Cheap bastard.”

“How do you know that?” Not that Zabuza would be particularly surprised. There was something greasy about that man, and besides, Zabuza never trusted a client. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had tried to stiff him on a payment.

“A man as greedy as that doesn’t part with his money easily,” the blond said with a shrug. “You meet one guy like him, you’ve met them all.”

Fair enough.

“Here’s our offer,” the dark haired one said, easing the sword slightly away from Zabuza’s neck, giving him a little breathing room. “You help us take out Gato, clear out that whole operation out of Wave, and take 50% of whatever liquid assets he has.”

It was a tempting deal: off Gato and take his money in one go. But—

“Missing nin operate on reputation, kid. No one else is gonna hire me if I’m known for killing my employers, now are they?”

The blond boy huffed. “You won’t have to be a missing nin for long, though. There’s a revolution in Kiri, and I know Terumi Mei wouldn’t turn away an extra sword.” He nodded towards Haku. “And I know she doesn’t have a problem with bloodline abilities, seeing as she’s got one herself.”

Zabuza inhaled sharply. How the fuck did these kids know all that? What were they fucking feeding the kids in Konoha?

(His mind was whirling a mile a minute. Mei would be tough but fair, and she would accept them both, probably, knowing that they’d only left Kiri out of the need for safety and disagreeing with how things had been run under Yagura, and—

She was a Kage he could stand by. A little unhinged at times, if he remembered correctly, but in the love-crazed way, not the genocidal way. And really, who in Kiri was totally mentally stable in the first place?)

“Terumi Mei, you say?” Zabuza asked rhetorically.

The blond kid smirked. “You help us, get paid more than what Gato would have given you, and you’ll have plenty of money to get you back to Kiri. If that’s what you want.”

Zabuza was struck by the sudden realization that this kid was dangerous, maybe even more dangerous than the boy still holding a blade to his neck. Because a shinobi who came at you with a sword or jutsus or even their fists, you could fight. But a shinobi who came at you offering you the thing you wanted most, offering you a way to get it without losing anything in turn—

How the hell was Zabuza supposed to fight against that?

(And if it all turned out to be false, then he’d have to come back and kill the brats later. But he didn’t think it was. Because there was no point to them tricking him, given that they had already won.)

“You’ve got yourself a deal, brat.”

“Your training regimen for those kids must be insane,” Zabuza commented gruffly. It was a little awkward to make conversation with the Copy-Nin after he’d tried to kill him, but that was the way of shinobi.

Hatake’s single visible eye curved into an approximation of a smile. “Oh, no, Zabuza-san. They came like that.”

Hiruzen had been regretting sending Team 7 on the Wave mission practically from the moment Kakashi and the kids had left with Tazuna. There was something…not right about the mission, and Wave was a destabilized area, but he’d had to send a genin team, and he’d thought Kakashi would be best equipped to deal with any surprises. Moreso than Kurenai or Asuma. Gai and his students would have been a better option—more experienced—but they were out in Tea country and—

Team 7 had returned, whole and unscarred.

By some miracle.

“You…encountered Zabuza, the missing nin from Kiri, and his apprentice?” Hiruzen asked, horrified.

“Yes, Hokage-sama,” Kakashi answered evenly, looking mostly unfazed. “We fought briefly until I was trapped in a water prison.”

Hiruzen frowned, feeling like he was missing something. “You said yourself and your students were unharmed.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Ah. Sakura-chan destroyed Zabuza’s water clone and freed me. Sasuke engaged in a sword-fight with Zabuza while Naruto neutralized the apprentice. And then, they convinced him to join us to take out Gato.”

It was all said with Kakashi’s usual bland tone, and so it took Hiruzen a minute to process.

“Could you repeat that last part?”

“They convinced Zabuza to join us in taking out Gato.”

“How?”

Kakashi shrugged. “Naruto spoke with him.”

Hiruzen waited, but it seemed that was all the explanation Kakashi was going to give. “Right. So you finished escorting the bridge-builder alongside Zabuza and his apprentice. And then…took out Gato?”

“Yes. And negotiated a trade deal with Wave. Their fishing export will resume now that they’re not being crippled by a crime syndicate.”

“You negotiated a trade deal?” Hiruzen felt like he was having a stroke. None of this was making any sense.

“No. Naruto did.”

That made even less sense, but something told Hiruzen that prodding Kakashi for more information wasn’t going to yield any answers.

“I…see.” He absolutely did not see how any of this was possible, but the letter of commendation from Tazuna and the trade deal sitting on his desk was proof enough.

“If that’s all, Hokage-sama?”

It had better be, he thought tiredly.

Hiruzen waved him off, and then pulled out the nice sake hidden in his bottom desk drawer. After that, he definitely needed a drink.

*omake*

“So, Naruto, does taking down Gato count as one of the organizations you wanted to take down as your goal?” Kakashi asked, mostly expecting an exclamation of how cool it was to be a shinobi, and how Naruto was already halfway to his goal and that he’d be Hokage in no time.

Instead, Naruto tipped his head to the side, looking confused. “Gato wasn’t a terrorist, Kakashi-sensei. And even if he was, he wasn’t who I had in mind.”

Without another word, Naruto flitted off to join his teammates where they were discussing…ritual sacrifice?

Nope. That is not my problem, Kakashi told himself firmly. And then Naruto’s words hit.

Not who he had in mind? What the fuck does that mean?

Chapter Text

The forest was cool in the shade and damp, and all around him, clumsy genin puttered through the woods, loud as a newborn deer’s first stumble. They all thought themselves so competent, ready to be chuunin and face all the realities of the ninja world. That made them easy pickings, though Orochimaru only had one target amongst them.

The Uchiha boy, Sasuke.

He would be the easiest target of all: hungry for power, stifled by the weakness of his genin team—a civilian girl of no significant ability and the lowest scoring nin of their graduation year, kyuubi jinchuuriki or no—burdened with the deaths of his clan and a need for vengeance. There were so many fears and angers and hurts to play off of. So many ways to tempt the boy away from Konoha.

By the end of the day, Orochimaru would have his next vessel secured.

This is not going to plan, Orochimaru thought as he darted through the woods, the large gut wound he had hastily wrapped slowing him down more than he would like. The Uzumaki brat had slapped a seal on him at some point in the first two minutes of the fight, and that had derailed every one of Orochimaru’s plans entirely. He’d only had a second to look at the seal in between the ducking and running, and for all his research, he still would never be a seal master, but he thought it had something to do with locking away chakra.

If it wasn’t currently handicapping him to the point of being a very serious problem, he’d almost be impressed.

(No, he was impressed anyway. It was like no seal he’d ever seen before, and definitely not that idiot Jiraiya’s work, which meant there was a good chance the Uzumaki boy had made it himself. So there is some of your parents’ genius in you, after all.)

Seal, aside, Orochimaru ought to have been able to take on three genin. He was a ninjutsu specialist, but that didn’t mean he had specialized so much that he had allowed himself to become utterly useless without his chakra. But then the civilian girl had smashed a crater into the ground, looking so entirely like Tsunade for a moment that it had taken him aback, and the Uchiha had lurched forward with a sword, and—

These were not genin.

What they were, he couldn’t say. ANBU in disguise? Some sort of trickster spirits? Oni made flesh?

Whatever they were, they had forced Orochimaru to run, properly run, and he had a sinking feeling he would not be getting away from this unscathed. If he got away at all.

His foot hit the tree branch. A tiny, almost unnoticeable mark that had been carved into the bark glowed faintly underfoot. Orochimaru noticed it all as if the world was in slow motion, and then he was dropping, having lost all control over his body. One moment he was falling, and the next he was flat on his back, staring up at the dark forest above him, the faint hint of sunlight peering through the leaves.

“I still think we should just kill him,” Sasuke said gruffly from where he dropped down somewhere to the left.

“We can’t. He may be useful, yet.”

“Yeah! Plus, you know he wasn’t so bad at the end—”

The world was feeling very fuzzy. Blurred. Dark.

It all dimmed away to nothing, leaving the voices of his three pursuers to echo meaninglessly in his mind.

“Orochimaru’s in the forest!” A chuunin messenger burst into the room where all the sensei were waiting to see which teams would make it out of the forest with the necessary scrolls.

An immediate commotion rose as people shouted and argued about whether anything was being done, and was this sabotage by Konoha, and would they be allowed to go after their students, just in case.

Kakashi sighed deeply and turned to the chuunin messenger. “In the Western quadrant, near Team 7’s last known location?”

It would be just his fucking luck that every psychopathic missing nin would be drawn to his team.

“Hai, Hatake-san.” The chuunin looked pale.

Kakashi nodded. Yep. That figured.

“I’d give them, hm…twenty minutes.”

He was vaguely aware that the room had fallen silent until a sand shinobi scoffed.

“You think your genin will last twenty minutes against a sannin?”

Kakashi blinked at him slowly. “I think that’s about how long it will take them to subdue him, yes.”

Poor bastard. The pity was gone as fast as it had come. No doubt he had tried to target the team, though whether he had wanted Sasuke or Naruto or both was up for debate. He deserves it, though.

If there was a ringing, disbelieving silence following Kakashi’s words, well, no one else had been dealing with those three hellspawn for 6 months. He'd given up on trying to explain that his team was fucking crazy. They'd all see soon enough anyway.

Iruka hadn’t approved of Naruto’s team being entered into the chuunin exams. He hadn’t approved of any of the fresh genin being pushed through like that—it wasn’t war times, there wasn’t a rush to get soldiers out onto the field, why couldn’t they just be children for a little bit longer—but he’d worried about Naruto the most.

The InoShikCho team had known each other since birth, and like Hinata, Kiba, and Shino, they were all children of clan heads. They’d had training since they could stand. But Naruto and Sakura weren’t from clan backgrounds, and Sasuke’s had died when he was only seven. Not to mention that Naruto had been at the bottom of the class, Sakura had only made top kunoichi due to her book smarts, not her technical skills, and Sasuke had proven he wasn’t a team player.

There was no way they were ready, and it was all that dumb Hatake-san’s fault for pushing them.

He’d honestly thought they would fail out during the written portion. He’d thought they’d call it quits and admit they needed help halfway through the forest. He’d thought they weren’t equipped, weren’t ready.

So when the summoning scroll pulled him through to greet the first genin team to make it to the tower at the center of the forest, he was beyond surprised to see Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke standing there, only a little worse for wear.

“You…you made it!” Iruka found himself smiling, at least until his eyes shifted down slightly and he noticed something that should have been obvious from the beginning. “HOLY FUCK, IS THAT OROCHIMARU?”

The man looked significantly rougher around the edges than any of the genin did, his long hair tangled and knotted with both sticks and leaves. There was an obvious wound in his side, bandaged well but in need of medical assistance, and he was also very much unconscious.

What the fuck, Iruka thought to himself, turning to look over the kids once more just in case he had missed obvious injuries on them.

But no, nothing too serious. Naruto looked right as rain. Sakura had bandages along her arms and Sasuke had a smear of blood on his forehead, but they were seemingly unharmed. Which was…bizarre.

“Hai, sensei. And we would like to have him taken into custody as soon as possible,” Sakura said calmly.

Iruka was not feeling very calm.

“Right. Right, of course. I’ll just…”

Get some ANBU to handle this, then you can process later. Much. Much later. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” Hiruzen said, sipping from his sake cup.

“It doesn’t.” Iruka was slouched over the Hokage’s desk. He’d just finished giving his part of the report of Orochimaru’s capture, and he had no explanation for it. Even with Naruto and Sakura and Sasuke debriefing on what had happened, there was no logical explanation for it. “At least...they don’t seem evil.”

Hiruzen knocked back the rest of his cup. “Thank the Kami for that.”

*omake*

“Elder Shimura Danzo is dead,” Shikaku said, mouth pinched. He, personally, wouldn’t be grieving the man—no matter what the Hokage said, Danzo was more trouble than he was worth, especially considering…

But to die now? When there were so many foreign shinobi in the village for the chuunin exams? It was suspicious at best.

“The cause?” the Hokage asked.

And this was the troubling part, in Shikaku’s opinion.

“Completely natural, at least according to the preliminary autopsy. But I doubt we’ll find anything.”

On one hand, the man was old. People died of old age all the time, although it was mostly civilians. Shinobi didn’t tend to live long enough. But Danzo had been old, and he had walked with a limp for years, had been bandaged to hell and back for nearly as long, and medical records suggested his health had been fluctuating. There was no reason to think he hadn’t died of natural causes, given everything, but—

“There’s more you should know.”

And so he told the Hokage about the implanted sharingan they had found, about the continued existence of Root, the coded mission files and experimentation records, the depth of Danzo’s treachery that they were only scratching the surface of.

It felt far too convenient, but…

“And you have confirmed this information was not planted?” the Hokage asked, caught somewhere between resigned, grieved, and desperate.

“Orochimaru was able to confirm a good portion of it,” Shikaku said. “What he couldn’t, Tenzo-san and some of the other Root shinobi could now that the silencing seal is gone.”

“Any hint that this was planned? The foreign shinobi?”

Shikaku shook his head. “Nothing. Everyone looks to be clean, though I’ll admit the Sand shinobi are looking a bit twitchy. I don’t think it’s related to this, though.”

Hiruzen sighed. “Keep me informed of anything new you manage to dig up.”

Shikaku nodded. He hoped there wouldn’t be anything else, but that was a naïve thought. Already it was apparent that Danzo had had his fingers in every pie imaginable, and he was sure there were more horrors to uncover.

Chapter Text

Ino could admit that she had let her friendship with Sakura…slip. She hadn’t meant to, exactly, but then they had both been interested in Sasuke, and what had started as a simple love rivalry had spiraled. And then, after the academy, they had continued to drift apart.

Maybe it was a bit her own fault, Ino conceded. She’d been jealous of Sakura for being on a team with Sasuke. She’d been jealous of Sakura for being top kunoichi of the year—thought it was unfair, even, because Sakura wasn’t very strong or fast or kunoichi-like, she was just smart. And there had been a small, viciously mean part of her that thought Sakura would fall behind once she was on her genin team, that maybe Sakura wouldn’t make it as a kunoichi at all.

(In Ino’s mind, though she hadn’t realized it, Sakura had stayed as the small, crying girl who couldn’t handle other people’s criticisms. Sakura had stayed as someone to protect, not someone who could stand on her own. Not someone who could be strong without Ino.)

She had thought it right up until they were matched together in the preliminary rounds, and instead of getting the victory she’d been so sure of, Ino had been knocked out soundly in less than a minute.

When she’d woken up in the hospital’s recovery room—not even injured, because Sakura hadn’t hurt her, because Sakura hadn’t needed to hurt to her to take her out of the fight—she’d been angry.

Who does she think she is?

Where does she get off treating me like some nuisance below her level?

How dare she not even respect me with a proper fight?

And then…

Am I the one getting left behind?

Her dad was always saying that to understand how people worked, you needed to see things from their perspective. Shikamaru was always going on about seeing the whole picture, and how in shogi, just because a move might let you take a piece immediately didn’t make it a good move for the game and blah blah blah.

But there was, maybe, a good point somewhere in there.

So Ino had gone to watch Team 7 practice for the third part of the chuunin exams. She’d wanted to know what level Sakura was at, wanted to know how she trained and whether Ino was as far behind as she was secretly afraid of.

As she’d watched Sakura slam her fist into the ground and make a crater—one that that idiot Naruto still somehow managed to dodge, what was up with that?—she knew that her own training had been seriously lacking. She couldn’t blame anyone but herself, either, because for all that Shikamaru was chronically lazy and Choji was afraid of his own power, neither of them had actually tried to stop her from getting better. She had taken their refusal to give their all as permission to slack too, and that was…that was…

Unacceptable.

Because Sakura was strong now—inconceivably so, what the hell had their sensei been teaching them?—and Ino was…not.

(She practically ran home, slamming open the door with enough force to startle her dad.

“Ino, what—”

“The clan jutsus,” she said, panting. She would need to work on her stamina too. “I want to learn them.”

Her father blinked. “Which ones?”

“All of them.”)

If anyone had told Kiba six months ago that Naruto would beat him in a preliminary match during the chuunin exams—and by using his brain and an actual strategy, at that—Kiba would have laughed. But even he had to admit that it was rather ingenious the way Naruto had used shadow clones, all bearing the same scent, and a smokescreen to confuse Kiba and Akamaru.

Kiba didn’t think they’d landed a single hit on Naruto during the whole match, though it only lasted for about three minutes anyway. But it got him thinking: when had Naruto gotten so good? Because he hadn’t been, back at the academy. He’d been uncoordinated and sloppy and rushing in headfirst without a plan.

Team 7’s sensei must be working them hard, Kiba thought. Sasuke, that asshole, had always been better than everyone else, but Kiba had seen just how fast Sakura had taken Ino out.

And he’d seen the way Team 7 clustered together, never further than an arm’s reach away if they could help it, the casual touches between them, the steadiness and surety. He’d seen the implicit trust in the way they guarded each other’s blind spots. He’d seen the way they leaned near each other, smelled the way they all carried each other’s scents. Like family. Like pack.

Team 7 isn’t just stronger than us, he realized. They’re better at being a team, too.

How much time had Kurenai-sensei spent trying to get them all to get along and listen to each other that could have been spent on training? How much time had been wasted because Kiba kept picking fights with Shino, kept trying to make Shino into someone he wasn’t? How much trust had been sacrificed because Kiba talked over him and Hinata both?

What would we be if I hadn’t been constantly standing in our way?

It was time to find out.

Hinata was disappointed, of course, because she had given her all against Neji and it hadn’t been enough. It had been so little compared to his strength that she had ended up in the hospital for weeks afterwards. She had brought shame to the main family, had brought shame to herself, had failed again—

But.

But Naruto had been the lowest in the class rankings at the academy, and yet watching him train, watching him fight…it was obvious how strong he’d grown. Because he hadn’t given up. He’d started with nothing and fought for his strength every step of the way. He had pushed himself, fought for himself, until he carved his own path to stand on equal footing with the rest of his team.

When was the last time Hinata had chosen anything for herself? All her training, all her motivation—it had come from the need to prove herself worthy to others. To prove her worth to her clan. To prove her worth to her father. To prove her worth to her team.

She had been fighting only for other people, and in doing so, had lost sight of herself.

But no more.

Naruto had been last in the academy. Sakura might have been top kunoichi, but she had been weak. And now they were two of the strongest from their graduating class.

Hinata clenched her fists in her hospital sheets. She would be cleared for light exercise soon—not much, but it was something.

She might be weak now.

But she would not always be.

Shikamaru had not been called a genius for nothing.

There was some fuckery going on with Team 7, something unusual. Something beyond “working hard” or “special training,” the way Ino seemed to think. You didn’t go from last place in class to suddenly matching the top student, like Naruto did. You didn’t learn super-strength overnight, like Sakura seemed to. You didn’t go from never speaking to anyone and refusing to let people within your personal bubble, to suddenly draping over your friend’s shoulders like a cat at every opportunity, like how Sasuke did with Naruto.

(Only with Naruto, though. Shikamaru grimaced. They were probably more than friends, actually, given the handholding and the hair-braiding thing Naruto did. He’d have to try to ease Ino into the idea, or else she’d be screeching about “poor Sasuke-kun” for weeks.

He could feel the headache coming on at just the idea of it.)

Something had happened with Team 7.

Something big.

Something…inexplicable even.

And it had started the day of team assignments at the latest, because Shikamaru could remember his utter confusion at the way Naruto had leaned into Sasuke’s side, how Sakura had kicked her chair out and slumped into it, and how Sasuke hadn’t complained at all. They’d been assigned as a team shortly after, but it was like they’d already known.

No.

It was like they’d already been a team. Like they’d been a team for years.

(Shikamaru’s dad was like that with his own InoShikaCho team. You know, minus the part where he was in love with one of them. Thank Kami for that.)

Shikamaru had been turning it over in his mind for months, and the more he watched, the more certain he was. The familiarity and ease, the sudden jump in abilities, the way nothing seemed to faze them in the slightest…

Time travel.

It was illogical. It didn’t make sense by standard conventions. Shikamaru didn’t even know if there was a jutsu that was capable of time travel, but…

Naruto—even before he’d changed—had always specialized in doing impossible pranks. Painting the Hokage Mountain without getting caught. Catching ANBU in his traps.

(And Shikamaru had done his research. The Uzumaki clan—when they had been alive—had been renowned for their seal-work. Seals were categorically difficult in the sense that the possibilities were limitless, at least in the hands of a seal master.)

If anyone could figure out, it would probably be Naruto.

Realistically, probably Naruto and also Shikamaru’s future self. Which was concerning to think about, so he tried not to.

Besides, if they needed Shikamaru’s help at any point, he was sure they’d have figured out he knew by now. And as long as they didn’t approach him, he was going to shelve this information firmly in the section of “not my problem.”

No need to go looking for trouble, after all.

“Gai-sensei! They are so YOUTHFUL!”

“YOSH! My Eternal Rival has trained his students well!”

Tenten raised a brow. “Are you insane? There’s obviously something wrong with them. They’re genin. They shouldn’t be doing…that.”

She waved her hand at where Team 7 was currently training.

And by training, she meant that they were demolishing the training ground. Full-on boulders were turned to dust in seconds under the pink girl’s fists. Trees were leveled when the two boys’ jutsus met. Their sensei was lounging on a distant tree branch reading and only flickered out of the way when the destruction got too close.

Tenten had thought her sensei was the craziest one in Konoha, but she might have been proven wrong.

The blond boy—Naruto, she recalled—held his fingers in a cross, and a hundred more of him spawned across the field.

Tenten couldn’t help the small smile. She liked Neji when he wasn’t being an ass, but the way he’d treated Hinata in the preliminaries had been cruel, and the way he had disregarded his upcoming opponent in Naruto was just arrogant—he hadn’t even bothered to come scope out the competition.

Which was obviously a mistake because the entirety of Team 7 were monsters. She was almost glad she’d lost to the sand kunoichi in the prelims. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about fighting any of them.

Naruto’s hands flashed through signs too fast for Tenten to read, and then a big gale swept through the training grounds, the Uchiha diving for cover as the pink girl used a doton jutsu to sink into the ground.

Well. Neji wouldn’t know what had hit him.

Mother had been quiet since coming to Konoha, hardly speaking, not even urging for blood during the trial in the woods or the preliminary fights. The boy in the green jumpsuit—Lee, his name had been—was very good, and usually a good fight spurred Mother on more than anything.

But she was quiet, and whenever she saw the blond boy with the whisker marks on his cheeks, she shrunk back and away, wary of him.

And they saw the blond boy a lot.

He was…friendly. Unafraid and open in a way that Gaara was entirely unused to. He could not remember a time when anyone had treated him so…normally. Even when Temari and Kankuro tried to warn the boy that Gaara was dangerous, he had only smiled and said, “So am I.”

When Gaara sat on the rooftop late at night, the blond boy was there—Naruto. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they sat in silence. Sometimes Naruto talked of foxes and tanuki, of brothers and chakra and power. Sometimes, he talked about seals.

“I think you’re hurting,” Naruto said one night, after a week or so of their nightly meetings. “I think you and Shukaku both are. I’d like to fix it, if you’ll let me.”

Naruto was like a spirit, Gaara often thought. Like something from a story, like a fairytale. Something magic to fix all the unnamable aches that sat in Gaara’s chest, things he had forgotten that he carried and only remembered how heavy they were when they were pointed out.

“Please,” he said.

And when Naruto had laid the ink on his skin, had finished the seal with a rush of his own chakra to activate it, and Gaara felt as tethered to the world as he ever had, rather than like he was one sandstorm away from being swept off into dust, he knew that Naruto must be some sort of Kami.

No, you idiot brat, Shukaku—not mother, apparently, but a chakra construct, a bijuu—said. He’s not a Kami. Just a time traveler.

But, Gaara thought, to bend the laws of time like that…wasn’t it sort of the same thing?

(THAT DAMN FOX’S VESSEL IS NOT A KAMI, Shukaku had taken to shouting. But with the new seal in place, Gaara could shut him out easily.)

Kakashi’s kids had won. Well, it wasn’t technically possible for all three of them to win, but Sakura had beat all her opponents except for when she was pitted against Sasuke, and Sasuke and Naruto had faced each other at the end, drawing it out to a standstill to everyone’s shock.

(Everyone except Team 7, of course. Kakashi had realized ages ago that his two boys were fairly evenly matched, and that Sakura was only marginally behind them, and only because she didn’t have the chakra to sustain a long, drawn out battle like they could.)

When all was said and done, he was sure all three of his students would have promotions.

“Uh oh,” Naruto said as they he came to stand with his team in the arena. He didn’t look upset or concerned—in fact, Naruto looked a bit too…content, with a smug little grin that was so very much like Sasuke’s—so Kakashi wasn’t too worried. Still…

“Uh oh, what?” he asked.

“The Kazekage doesn’t look too happy,” Sasuke answered, smirking.

“Do you think Orochimaru spilled the beans about the planned attack?” Sakura asked.

Kakashi blanched. “How do you three know about that?”

Kakashi only knew because he’d been high level ANBU before taking on a team, and because he was still one of the top nin in the village. As far as he knew, the briefing on Danzo, Orochimaru, and the Kazekage’s plans had been locked down tight, with minimal chance of an intel leak. How did his kids—

“No.” He shook his head, then turned a serious eye on each of them. “You’re not going to destroy the village, right?”

The three of them vigorously shook their heads.

“Kind of the opposite, actually, sensei,” Sakura said. And that was good enough for him.

“Kakashi.”

He’d known this was coming. He’d known it from the moment he first sat down with Kurenai and Asuma to discuss their teams and realized his own kids were…nothing at all like their year-mates.

Asuma and Kurenai had never meant to be…condescending, Kakashi was sure. But they had assumed that his own complaints about his team were dramatizations, a side-effect of being forced to train children he didn’t want. And he couldn’t blame them, really, because even he could admit that some of the things Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke had done…well, if he hadn’t seen it happen first-hand, he wouldn’t believe it either.

After the Wave mission, he’d given up on trying to explain. What was he supposed to say?

Naruto talks to people for five minutes and they just do whatever he wants, even if they were just trying to kill us. (Especially if they were just trying to kill us.) He can make an entire army of himself and move faster than the sharingan. He makes seals on the fly that I can’t unravel even after working at them for hours.

Sasuke bested one of the seven swordsmen in a sword fight. He’s got enough control over his lightning nature that he doesn’t need hand-signs half the time. There’s some serious fuckery going on with his sharingan, but like hell am I going to ask him about it. Sometimes, he and Naruto move so in-sync I’d think they’re using some sort of Yamanaka mind-reading technique.

Sakura threatened a man by telling him she could remove all his internal organs without ever cutting him open. I watched her chug a cup of poison once and then call the would-be assassin a little bitch. Some idiot tried to grope her, and she said, “Hands are a privilege,” before cutting his off.

Kakashi knew he hadn’t had a typical childhood or a standard shinobi career, and he knew that skewed his view of what was normal. Hiruzen had complained that Kakashi was too tough on the previous genin he had tested, expecting too much from fresh-out-of-the-academy graduates. Complained that his time in ANBU had made him set the bar too high, made him too demanding, made him push too hard.

So when taking missions with his kids made him feel as comfortable and assured as he had with Team Ro…well, Kakashi wasn’t so stunted as to not realize what that meant.

They weren’t normal genin, and it was only a matter of time before everyone saw what he did. And it seemed that time had come.

“Kakashi—” Asuma seemed to be struggling to pull himself together “—your students, they…”

“What the hell are you doing to them?” Kurenai said, more forthright. “You know you can’t train genin like ANBU, right?”

Kakashi snorted. He wished he’d been able to train ANBU like he could with this team of genin. Kami, if the ANBU trainees had even half the drive and dedication that his students had, maybe more of them would survive.

“Maa, I’ve been telling you for months now how they are—”

“Yeah, you said they were crazy,” Asuma agreed. “You didn’t say they were jounin-level crazy. I knew Naruto could do shadow clones, but a hundred? And Sasuke can do the chidori? And when did Sakura’s aim with senbon get to be nearly as good as Genma’s?”

“They’re hard workers—”

“Kakashi, they’re kids,” Kurenai said. “They’ve made incredible progress, but you’ve obviously been working them way too hard—”

Kakashi held up a hand to stop her. “I’ve been telling you, they’ve been like this from the beginning. Sure, they’ve refined some of their techniques since then, but everything you saw today during the exams? They were pulling that during the bell test.”

There was a moment of absolute silence.

Asuma pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “What the actual fuck?”

Kakashi nodded and knocked back his drink. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

Chapter Text

Things had been weird in the elemental nations lately, Jiraiya thought with no small amount of suspicion. Orochimaru showing up to kidnap Sasuke only to get his ass handed to him by three genin? Kiri being thrown into revolution only to have that settle ridiculously quickly and with Terumi Mei as the new Mizukage? The Kazekage’s attempted attack on Konoha thwarted by Orochimaru’s capture? Danzo’s suspiciously timed death and the information on all his activities over the past decades being revealed?

Not to mention that the Akatsuki had been quiet and a few of the missing nin he’d suspected were part of the organization were being knocked off. Someone had apparently turned in Hidan’s head for a bounty up in Lightning Country. A week later, Kakuzu’s bounty had been claimed at the border of Tea. Some of his contacts suggested that Akasuna no Sasori was missing, and that it had spooked a lot of missing nin into laying low for a while.  

Hiruzen had told him to go find Tsunade and bring her back for the hat because he was getting too old for this shit.

(“I’m sure you heard about the situation in Wave,” Hiruzen said.

Jiraiya certainly had. “Gato was assassinated and all his people cleared out. I heard trade had been reestablished and they’re doing a lot better.”

“Kakashi’s team.”

“What?”

“It was Kakashi’s team.” Hiruzen pulled out a bottle of sake and poured them each a dish. “You’ll want this. Believe me.”)

Hearing about Team 7 was one thing. Meeting them—and why had he agreed to take them all with him to go get Tsunade before meeting them—was another thing entirely.

“If you so much as think of the ladies’ bath in my general vicinity,” the tiny pink one said, smiling so viciously it reminded him of a wolf, “I will make it so that none of your reproductive organs work. Ever. Again.”

The Uchiha boy just glared at him.

Jiraiya glanced up at Kakashi, who looked bored and unbothered as if this was an everyday occurrence. “Right. Okay. Let’s get going, shall we?”

(Naruto had pestered him for jutsus.

By the time they reached Tanzaku-gai, the boy was successfully holding a rasengan like it was a juggling ball.

What the fuck was up with this team?)

Kisame had wanted to go straight to Konoha, but Itachi had managed to persuade him to stop off in a nearby town first so they could gather intel and get a few days of rest before trying to take on the kyuubi jinchuuriki. With Akatsuki members going missing—Hidan and Kakuzu dead, Sasori disappearing after checking on a contact in Iwa—Itachi was more cautious than ever. He wasn’t one to dismiss coincidence, and it seemed likely that they were being hunted.

Not that it was a problem, exactly. Hidan had been a bloodthirsty maniac. Kakuzu, an opportunistic, greedy man. Sasori, too, was vile, his human puppets the sort of thing that made Itachi’s stomach churn though he couldn’t show it. Of all the Akatsuki, those were the ones he’d disliked the most.

But no one was allowed to kill Itachi except for Sasuke. Anything less and it would be a failure of every plan he’d set into motion with the death of his clan. So for now, he would try to uncover who was hunting them and take care of it.

(Selfishly, he would admit only in the privacy of his own mind, he was worried for Kisame, too. He trusted that the other man could take care of himself in a fight, but Hidan and Kakuzu should have been able to as well, and they were dead.

Kisame was the most tolerable part of his life after leaving Konoha. Losing him when his good humor and surprising kindness were the only things that kept Itachi from tearing out of his own skin some days would be…objectionable.)

Tanzaku-gai was a bustling town rife with information. The mix of shinobi, merchants, and other civilians—most of whom were here to get drunk, get fucked, or gamble—made it something of a gossip hotspot, and it was easy enough to pick up the latest chatter.

Orochimaru captured. Interesting. Kiri’s successful rebellion. Old news. Shimura Danzo dead—

Itachi’s breath caught in his throat at that last one.

(Shisui standing on that ledge, eye-sockets empty and bleeding, his one remaining eye in Itachi’s hand, falling falling falling into the river, and Itachi had reached for him, had tried to stop him, but it was too late. He was always too late to stop the worst of things. And Danzo had come after, had said the clan would die either way, but if Itachi did it—if Itachi took the fall, took the blame—then Sasuke could live. He’d been so young, so young, it had taken years to realize just how fucked up that was, how fucked up it all was. And now the man was dead and gone and couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. Natural causes, they said, but Itachi wondered—)

“You’re never going to believe it,” Kisame said, grinning as he handed over a few sticks of dango. “The kyuubi jinchuuriki is here.”

“Hm?”

“I saw him and a couple other brats chatting with some drunk blonde lady.” Then, he grimaced. “The Copy-Nin and Jiraiya of the Sannin were there too. Might pose a bit of a problem.”

“We’ll have to wait for an opportune moment, then,” Itachi said as coolly as he was able.

The benefit of both Hatake and Jiraiya being here was that Itachi would have good reason for backing off, and even if there was an opportunity to try to take the jinchuuriki, he could probably draw out the fight long enough for one of the jounin to show up, forcing them to leave. Even Kisame knew better than to tangle with a sannin, though he might enjoy the fight.

Itachi took a bite of his dango and allowed himself a moment to enjoy it. There was no need to stress too much; the situation was well in hand.

(Meanwhile, elsewhere in Tanzaku-gai:

“The hospital’s gone to shit,” the little pink haired girl—Sakura—said, crossed arms and stern demeanor. “All your protocols thrown to the wind. Do you know, we don’t even train chuunin in basic field medicine anymore? And the first aid training we get in the academy? Pathetic.”

“I never got first aid training,” the Minato look-alike said, pouting, and the Uchiha boy tugged on him until they were leaning on each other.

Tsunade didn’t know what to think. On one hand, she was never, ever going back to Konoha. On the other hand, everything that came out of the little pink girl’s mouth was pissing her the fuck off. Had Hiruzen learned nothing?

“Not to mention that the current Hokage is somewhat complicit in Elder Shimura’s crimes, including the ordered hit on the Uchiha Clan and the subsequent coverup which had my brother take the fall in order to go spy on the Akatsuki,” the Uchiha boy drawled, pressing even closer to Naruto.

Tsunade felt her mouth drop open. At her side, Jiraiya was doing the same, though the Hatake kid notably hadn’t reacted beyond a lazy blink. Are his kids always this fucking crazy?

“Still not convinced, baa-chan?” Naruto asked, mouth curved sly in a way that was painfully similar to Kushina’s, to Mito’s. “How about a bet?”)

When Itachi had said to wait for an opportune moment, Kisame genuinely didn’t think this was what he meant. Realistically, as smart as Itachi was, even he couldn’t possibly have predicted that three twelve-year-olds were going to break into their inn room at two in the morning.

On the plus side, the kyuubi’s jinchuuriki was well within reach. As in, he was currently sitting on top of Kisame with his legs folded like he was about to start meditating or some shit, and the kid had apparently stuck a seal on him because he couldn’t move at all. Which was terrifying.

It would be more terrifying if the kid wasn’t smiling and bickering with his teammates, both of which were currently holding Itachi down and…healing him?

“Are you fucking stupid?” the tiny pink one said even as her green-glowing hands dusted over Itachi’s chest. “You’ve got pneumonia and you were just going to, what? Let it do its thing? Let it make you weak and slow and maybe even kill you? Moron. And don’t even get me started on the state of your eyes. I swear, you Uchihas are all idiots.”

Itachi’s kid brother only rolled his eyes, apparently used to that sort of lecture. “What did I ever do—”

“The whole Orochimaru thing,” the blonde kid said immediately, then started ticking things off on his fingers. “Those shirts you used to wear that were basically falling off all the time. Cursed seal. Running around the elemental nations with a half-baked plan. Your idea for an all-tomato brunch. That time you decided to wash your darks and lights in one go and everything came out gray-blue. That time you accidentally gave Sakura those flowers that basically said you were eternal enemies. That time you asked if Kakashi-sensei had weird tan-lines because of his mask—”

“That was you, dobe.”

“Not to mention,” the pink one said, “how long it took you to figure out you were into Naruto and not just ‘brothers in arms’ or whatever no-homo crap you tried to call it.”

Kisame snorted. These kids were fucking hilarious.

“I don’t understand,” Itachi said, and it was infuriating how his voice already sounded so much stronger, less strained. Just how long had he been hiding that he was sick, Kisame wondered.

“Danzo is dead,” the younger Uchiha said plainly. “Everything he was involved with is being uncovered. Including the massacre.”

“You know.” Itachi’s voice shook, and even from where Kisame was lying, it was easy to tell his partner was trembling, pale and ashen like Kisame had never seen him before.

“Yes, Aniki. I know. And—” he took a shuddering breath “—I don’t know, yet, if I can…if I can fully forgive you. But I don’t…I don’t hate you. Not anymore. I want you to come home.”

There was more talking, hushed and murmured, and perhaps sensing that the two brothers clearly needed a moment alone, the jinchuuriki grinned down at Kisame.

“So. How do you feel about Kiri, and do you know Terumi Mei?”

Kakashi didn’t know who he’d pissed off in his past life, but it must have been a Kami or something equally powerful. If he hadn’t, then his three cute little demonic children would not have met him in the lobby of the inn the morning of their return to Konoha with Uchiha Itachi in tow. Eating dango. Uchiha Itachi was eating dango with his students.

This is fine. This is completely and totally normal.

“What the fuck!” Jiraiya squawked, then started looking around rapidly. “Uchiha—Akatsuki! Where’s the partner? We need to—”

“Kisame-sempai left for Kiri earlier this morning,” Sasuke said, pushing the rest of his dango towards his brother. “Said Mei needed a better right hand than Zabuza.”

Kisame-sempai? Kakashi wondered. What—

Jiraiya blinked, seemingly unsure of what to tackle first. “Hoshigaki is returning to Kiri? How? Why?”

Kakashi felt what little resistance he had leave him entirely. He didn’t know why he was so surprised; this was pretty standard for his kids. “Naruto, you talked to him?”

“Hai, sensei! Kisame-san is really cool!”

“Right. Well. Did someone wake Tsunade? We should try to get going before noon.”

“As if you’re not always four hours late to everything,” Sakura grumbled before getting up and rolling up her sleeves before marching off in the direction of Tsunade’s room.

“Kakashi.” Jiraiya seemed to be having an existential crisis if his expression was anything to go by. Good. It was about time someone else had one. “You can’t just—how are you just…accepting this?” He gestured towards Itachi who, with his cheeks slightly puffed out with dango, looked about as threatening as a squirrel.

“Maa, Jiraiya-san. I don’t know what you’re talking about. All of our missions are like this.”

There was something satisfying about watching the man’s expression crumble further. Hm. Maybe that’s why the kids do this. It’s fun.

At the border of Kiri, Zabuza and his apprentice eyed him, their gazes a bit too knowing. “The Uzumaki kid get to you?”

Kisame huffed a laugh. “Yeah, something like that. You?”

“Kid offered me a hell of a bargain. After his little Uchiha friend kicked my ass in a swordfight.”

“No shit. Uzumaki had me in a paralysis seal before I even knew he was in the room.”

“Sakura-san is very skilled too,” the apprentice said. “In Wave, she flicked a man in the chest and all his bones shattered.”

The three of them were silent for a moment, and Kisame liked to think they were all taking a moment to be grateful those Konoha kids were a bit of a soft touch.

“Anyway, heard Mei’s in charge. Figured you could use a hand in getting the village back in shape.”

Zabuza waved a dismissive hand. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to have you back.” He paused a moment. “Though, if you’re single, be prepared to be accosted.”

Kisame thought back to that morning in Tanzaku-gai, just before he’d set off for Kiri and Itachi had gone to meet with the rest of the Konoha nin. He thought of the healthy blush on those pale cheeks, the soft brush of lips against his own, those delicately lethal hands clasped in his.

(“There’s always diplomatic envoys,” Itachi had said, hushed and steady, and Kisame had been inclined to agree. Kiri would want to repair relations with Konoha, and if Mei was anything like he remembered, she would send him if he asked.)

“That won’t be a problem.”

Chapter Text

Kakashi had had his team for nearly a year, and he felt confident that he could no longer be surprised by them. They were strange and a little creepy sometimes, they had a bad habit of picking up missing nin and they knew things they had no conceivable way of knowing. But they were his. And they were good kids and strong enough that he wasn’t constantly terrified they were going to drop dead the second he stopped watching over them.

His first mistake was thinking he could trust them to mind themselves for an hour or two. He should have known better—every time he’d left them to their own devices, they’d ended up doing something insane, like befriending Itachi and Kisame or fixing the Suna jinchuuriki’s faulty seal.

(Though he’d admittedly only found out about that after the fact when Naruto had explained why the top candidate for the Fourth Kazekage was writing him as if they were best friends.)

Who knew what other shit they had gotten up to that he didn’t know about?

The point was, he should have known better.

Because instead of peacefully sitting around the campsite as he’d left them when he went to go scope out the nearby town on the border of Rain Country, what he found upon returning was this:

There was a tall man in an Akatsuki robe and an orange mask lying on the ground with a hole punched clean through his chest, though Sakura was leaning over him, hands glowing green as she worked. He did appear to be breathing, somehow, and though Sakura had sweat beading at her forehead, she seemed well and unharmed.

Kakashi was more concerned about the boys.

“Kill it with fire!” Naruto shouted, ducking under an unnaturally white limb, and then having to shunshin out of the way as a burst of fucking mokuton shot up where he had been standing.

“Just. Die. Already,” Sasuke grit out, each word punctuated with flame so hot it burned nearly white.

The thing they were fighting—because it sure as shit wasn’t a person, as far as Kakashi could tell—was surprisingly resilient, always wriggling away at the last possible second. The worst part was that it was forcing Naruto and Sasuke to really work to even hit it. There had been times when Kakashi was sure his students had shown him their absolute limit, but he’d never before seen them fight like this.

(Kakashi felt useless—he didn’t know the situation, didn’t know what that thing was or how to fight it, didn’t know what his students needed. Clearly it had been a mistake to not push for answers. Maybe if he’d known more of what was going on with them, he could protect them now.)

“Fuck it. Can you seal it?” Sasuke called. “I’ve got an idea.”

Naruto nodded, and then, impossibly, a golden cloak of chakra fell over him, and he darted forward fast. Naruto had always had speed on his side, but this was on a whole other level. He was little more than a golden blur, just a flash of light—so much like Minato—and then he was behind that creature, his palm slapping against its unnatural skin. It screamed, and Naruto pulled out an empty scroll, slamming that onto where he had touched it, and the creature melted into the paper though its hands tried to claw out.

“Sasuke!”

Sasuke’s sharingan spun to life, red and vibrant, and a moment later the scroll was lit in black flames. Naruto dropped it onto the ground, and the two boys stood over it as it burned to ash.

“Think that did it?” Naruto asked.

Sasuke nodded. “I don’t see how it could come back after that.”

“What,” Kakashi said, voice strained, and his three students jerked towards him, as did the body on the ground, “the fuck is going on?”

“Ah. Sensei—” Naruto started, but he didn’t get to finish.

“Bakashi?”

His stomach dropped out from under him. There was no one left alive who would have called him that, few people that would have even known—

The man on the ground reached up and knocked his mask to the side, and suddenly Kakashi couldn’t breathe.

The scars had changed him a little, but Obito…Kakashi would have known him anywhere.

The world was swaying.

Oh, Kakashi thought. No, it’s me.

Everything had gone black before he even managed to finish the thought.

The last time Obito had been tended to by a healer that wasn’t a Zetsu, it had been Rin. Sakura-san was a lot meaner.

“Stupid fucking dumbass Uchihas. I told you—I fucking told you—not to talk until I was done with your chest. No, shut up and stay still. Stop moving your arms. Sage’s balls, it’s like you want your ribcage to collapse in on itself.” She huffed again, but the green healing chakra felt like cool relief. “Honestly. First Itachi with his lungs, then Sasuke—”

“I wasn’t sick!”

“You were literally poisoned! And acting all tough like you hadn’t lost feeling in your toes. Stupid.”

“Naruto was poisoned too.”

“Kurama-san processes poisons for Naruto as well as heals him in other ways. Naruto’s allowed to be stupid.”

“Hey!”

There was a stirring of movement to his left, and though he couldn’t turn his head for fear of Sakura-san’s wrath—terrifying, terrifying kunoichi—he could just make out the sight of Kakashi pushing himself upright.

“Sensei, you’re back with us,” Sakura-san said, her voice steady and cool, not at all like the raging terror she’d been five seconds ago. “How are you feeling?”

“Like hell.”

“That’ll be the adrenaline and the shock.”

“Obito—”

Sakura’s cool chakra made one more pass over his chest, and then stopped as she sat back on her heels. “He’ll make a full recovery, but he needs to be careful for a few days at least.” Her sharp eyes narrowed in on him. “No fighting. No strenuous activity. None of that Kamui nonsense—I’m not sure how much of a strain that puts on your body. I’m also not sure how much those grafts are impacting your need for food and rest, so I’d like to monitor you closely over the next few days if you don’t mind.”

Obito wasn’t sure he had much of a choice. Sakura didn’t seem like the sort of girl who took objections to her medical advice kindly.

And then Kakashi was leaning over him, hands clutching gently at Obito’s own. The hitai-ate was pulled back to reveal the sharingan as Kakashi looked at him for a long moment.

“You’re here,” he breathed. “You’re alive. You’re real.”

“Yeah.”

Something wet dropped onto Obito’s face, and he realized belatedly that Kakashi was crying.

“You have a lot of fucking explaining to do, Obito,” Kakashi said angrily, but he was still crying and his hands hadn’t let go of Obito’s.

(It was selfish of him, perhaps, to enjoy it while it lasted. Because once Kakashi found out what he’d done, what he’d been a part of, what he would have done, Kakashi was never going to want to look at Obito again, let alone be so close, holding on like he was afraid Obito would disappear if he let go.)

“More than you know.”

“And we have some explaining to do too, I think,” Naruto said, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his head.

Kakashi nodded sharply. “I think I’d like those answers now.”

Time travel. Time travel.

Kami, it made so much sense.

And that they had come from a hellscape of a future, where everyone else had died, where there wasn’t any choice. It was either go back and try to fix things or stay and die too.

(Obito had helped make the world that way. And even if this Obito hadn’t gone that far yet, he’d still been the one to release the kyuubi that night, had been the one to kill sensei and Kushina-nee, the one to help with the Uchiha massacre—

Kakashi was angry. But underneath that, there was guilt and sadness too. Because Obito had been left alone—and with a seal of hatred on his heart—and he’d been manipulated, used and lied to.

There was relief, too, and a selfish sort of joy. That after everything, Obito was alive.

It was…complicated.)

“We didn’t want to lie to you, sensei,” Sakura said. “But—”

Naruto finished for her. “But we wanted to fix things ourselves. We had to.”

“They were our mistakes to fix,” Sasuke said.

He wanted to tell them that they didn’t have to carry that burden alone, that if they had told him, he would have done anything to help. Then again, he was pretty sure they knew that already.

“What next?” he asked.

“We go back to Konoha—”

“No offense,” Obito cut in, “but just because you were able to get Itachi pardoned and cleared to be a shinobi of Konoha again doesn’t mean they’re just going to let me come back.”

“Why not?” Sasuke asked. “The only people who know the full truth are here. If we say you’ve been a prisoner of war for the past 14 years, that Madara held you and tortured you, used genjutsu to make you think you had done all the things that he did…who’s going to know?”

Obito stared at Sasuke, mouth open, and Kakashi felt tempted to do the same.

“But I did do those things—”

“And in another life, you died to atone for it,” Naruto said. “In this one, live and make amends your own way.”

“I can’t fix things,” Obito said, voice a whisper and pained. “I can’t—your parents—”

“I know you can’t bring them back.” Naruto smiled, soft and kind and too generous with his forgiveness. “But I could use another big brother.”

“Another?” Kakashi asked, and Naruto rolled his eyes.

“Don’t be stupid, Kashi-nii.”

Oh. This is…family.

(Insane, chaotic, absolutely deranged family, maybe, but then at least Kakashi would fit right in.)

*omake*

Naruto sat across the table from Shikamaru, eyes narrowed in focus on the shogi board. It was strange to see Naruto capable of sitting so still when he’d always been a fidgeter even in the academy. Iruka-sensei had wasted more breath yelling at Naruto to settle down than he had on anything else.

Then again, a lot of things had changed since then.

“So, how long did it take you to figure it out?” Naruto asked, seemingly out of the blue.

“Do you mean when I suspected, or when I knew?” Shikamaru threw back, moving his piece on the board. He’d win in three moves or less. For all that Naruto was…mature for his age, so to speak, he wasn’t a shogi prodigy.

Naruto grinned. “Isn’t that the same thing with you?”

“Well,” he said, smirking, “I suppose you know me better than I know you.” A pause. “I had the basic theory about a month after graduation. The chuunin exams cemented it for me, though.”

“Sakura and Sasuke owe me a lot of money, then.”

“How’d you know that I already knew?” Shikamaru wondered.

“You’re Shikamaru,” Naruto said, as if that answered everything. “Of course you already knew.”