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It was a warm March day.
Spring had come to the gates of the hidden village of the Leaf, bringing rebirth after the cold winter.
The streets of Konoha were animated by the voices of foreign traders who had come to the village to reconnect with their ties interrupted by the cold season, and by the cheerful laughter of housewives out shopping.
Meanwhile, in a peaceful neighborhood located on the outskirts of the village, serenity reigned supreme in resonance with the gentle breeze of spring.
In tune with nature, a sweet melody resonated in the air.
And with the resulting silence, the responsible hands ended the homage to the spring.
The sun's rays fell on the player, in an apparent sign of appreciation.
The player had hair and eyes of the color of the night and her face was gentle and enchanting like a flower, capable of bringing serenity and good spirit to those who saw her.
Her name was Mikoto Uchiha.
"Mom, what are you playing?" Asked an adorable child.
He was Sasuke Uchiha, Mikoto's second son.
“This is a Koto, darling,” the woman replied kindly.
"And you play it all by yourself? Isn't it too big?"
Mikoto smiled at the innocent question.
Sasuke was at that age where every child started to wonder about everything but her little one had taken this trait to another level by asking endless questions about everything with a passion hotter than fire.
Most of the clan agreed that Sasuke would become a great ninja one day but they were also grateful that Itachi Uchiha was there to manage that little volcano.
However, that Itachi Uchiha was currently out of the village…
"A Koto is played by only one person, Sasuke. Do you want to try?"
The current matriarch of the clan, was the only one able of keeping him at bay in the absence of her firstborn.
"no, I don't have time. I want to train to become strong like nii-san." Sasuke exclaimed sulkily.
"And how do you plan to train if your father confiscated your toys and forbade you from going out?" Mikoto retorted amusedly.
Upon Itachi's departure, Mikoto was in the land of Hot Water, on the occasion of the Daimyō's wife's birthday and she would not return until the following day.
The wise and young heir of the clan, aware of his little brother's explosive nature and the absence of his mother, had assigned him a basic level Shuriken Jutsu technique to study and memorize, in order to keep him busy, with the promise of teaching him new techniques, in case he had mastered the Jutsu.
Nonetheless, no matter how shrewd Itachi may have been, he hadn't taken into account the fact that the plague would have mastered a technique of that level the same day he left, collapsing from exhaustion later in the evening, after a hearty dinner.
A bored and free-roaming Sasuke was a recipe for disaster: unpredictable like few others, he was able of getting into trouble and getting hurt as soon as someone lost sight of him or left him free to play with his brother's weapons.
He shouldn't be left alone around.
Fugaku, the head of the military police of the Leaf, took the matter on his hands.
"Fugaku, be reasonable! The police station is no place for Sasuke!"
"Where do you find time to play with him? As soon as he gets bored, he runs away!"
"It's not easy to keep an eye on him! Take the day off!"
Fugaku paid little interest to the elders' warnings about his son's unpredictability during the evening clan meeting.
He had a lot of unfinished work to complete and many signatures to get. He couldn't afford a day off until the summer.
Furthermore, he didn't like the tone in which they spoke: what did they take them for? A father incapable of taking care of his offspring and a barbaric and undisciplined son?
His son Itachi always managed to take care of Sasuke without problems and no report regarding any accidents had ever ended up on his desk.
What could a four-year-old do? Destroy a village?
Ah! Please!
Fugaku had dismissed the recommendations as annoying sermon of little importance and instead of leaving him home again with lunch money or entrusting him to Teyaki and Uruchi Uchiha, he had taken his half-sleepy son directly to the police station.
The morning had passed peacefully.
Sasuke wandered around and occasionally peppered him with questions about the nature of his job.
Nothing that couldn't be handled with a little patience.
Unfortunately, the patriarch had underestimated his son: more hours passed; more energetic Sasuke became.
He never got tired, and the incessant questions had increased dramatically.
Between budget reviews, reports to read, sign and file, and mandates to grant, Fugaku was starting to get really tired.
After the lunch break, Fugaku had completely lost his patience and he entrusted Sasuke to a group of young Uchiha policemen, retreating to his office with a headache.
"Don't let him out of your sight," he had ordered.
The three Uchiha had looked at the little guy with a surprised face.
They were there to work, not to babysit! How were they supposed to handle this nuisance now?
"Let's take him to the training camp" one of the three had proposed.
The best way to tire a child was physical activity.
They had left Sasuke a whole box of shuriken to throw and had resumed training on their own.
A sudden emergency had arrived to interrupt the quiet.
A senior policeman in his thirties was busily assembling patrols at the station.
Apparently, there had been an armed robbery at a bank in the village and the attackers had barricaded themselves in the building with hostages.
The news had thrown the police station into tremendous chaos.
The three Uchiha looked at each other, not knowing what to do with the third wheel.
Total panic.
They had to run to the bank immediately, but they couldn't take the brat with them.
One of the three looked at the chief's son.
All in all, he seemed like a quiet child.
It would have been enough to give him a book to read and tell him to be good, he had concluded.
"I'll take care of it! You go, I'll join you immediately!" he had commanded.
He picked up Sasuke and carried him into the station.
They couldn't leave him alone walking around.
The sound of the emergency siren in his brain had sent the young chunin in panic, as he was currently opening the door of a random room.
It must have been the room used as a library.
Safe place.
"Listen: now we have things to do so try to be a good boy and don't leave the station, otherwise we will tell the clan leader that you are a bad child, ok?" he warned after handing him a book picked randomly from a table.
The child seemed to have sensed the gravity of the situation on the surface, and nodded indifferently at the Uchiha, who had already disappeared from his sight.
In the heat of the moment, no one realized that it was a bad mistake to leave
a loose and living cannon,
in free circulation,
with a manual about booby traps,
in a room full of ammunition,
in a police station,
for an entire afternoon.
Towards sunset, the emergency had been resolved with the arrest of the thieves and the police were returning to the station to report.
Given the gravity of the situation, Fugaku himself had had to negotiate with the robbers to gain time and this tired him quite a bit.
Fortunately, he managed to distract the targets and with careful and studied planning, they managed to catch the thieves by surprise and save the hostages.
Everything had gone smoothly: they would have locked the robbers in an isolation cell, they would have drawn up a report the following day and he would have enjoyed a good dinner with his son.
Or at least that's what he thought.
Despite his tiredness, his eyes had not failed to recognize the three familiar faces that were speaking next to him. They were Tenkai, Tensai and Tenmei Uchiha, the three policemen who had taken the prisoners away and who were now giving an account of the bureaucratic processes in place regarding the end of the robbery.
Weren't they supposed to take care of Sasuke?
If they were with him, at the scene of the robbery, for the whole day...
Who was keeping an eye on Sasuke?
A sudden, bad feeling began to fill the air.
He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.
"You three. Where did you leave Sasuke?" he asked with a dark expression.
"Ah, don't worry, Sasuke was good all the time. Tensai, he left him in a room on the first floor" Tenkai had responded positively.
"don't worry, I left him in the library. Most likely he had fallen asleep out of boredom..." Tensai added.
"What??!!"
A sudden scream brought the attention of those present to Tenmei who in the meantime had taken Tensai by the collar.
"Are you crazy? That room is full of explosive ammunition!"
"What the hell are you talking about? The explosives are in the underground warehouse!"
“The boxes we brought to the library yesterday were surplus explosive ammunition reserved for the recruits’ training, you idiot!”
Fugaku had a bad feeling.
"The building is still intact and there is no damage. Calm down. The boxes are taped shut and I doubt children like snooping around in the boxes" exclaimed the most rational of the trio.
Their superior, however, had a different opinion.
"Go get Sasuke and send him to my office. Now" ordered Fugaku, returning to the office.
He hadn't even managed to sip his cold green tea before a series of explosions in the small but thick grove next to the training camp had once again interrupted the temporary respite after the robbery.
What a shitty day
Was Fugaku's thought, before putting down his tea and jumping out of the window, terrified by the new emergency.
At the same time, Mikoto had just returned from the land of Hot water and she couldn't wait to share with her family the gifts given to her by the daimyō's kind wife.
Her good mood was short-lived, as a series of explosions sent her running towards the station.
Wasn't the explosives training supposed to take place the following week? It wasn't like HIM to push the dates forward.
And in fact not.
What happened after her arrival at the police station confirmed this.
"what's going on? Wasn't the training scheduled for next Tuesday?" she had asked Yashiro Uchiha, one of the prominent members of the clan, while she watched the smoke rise from the trees of the training forest.
"ah Mikoto, you came back just in time" the policeman exclaimed, giving her a bad feeling.
Tell me this is a joke...
"Yashiro-san, where is Sasuke?" she asked with a forced smile.
"...in the woods. I think"
"And where is his father?"
"i-in the...w-woods...I t-think"
Yashiro Uchiha at that moment fled from the place at the speed of light. He knew Mikoto's character well and had no intention of being present when she would torn apart her husband.
Mikoto rarely got angry.
After so many years, Mikoto had allowed herself a few days of leisure, leaving everything in the hands of her husband.
And she was really struggling to wrap her head around the fact that Fugaku hadn't even lasted two days.
2 damned days.
She had observed how the members of the police force were coming out of the forest dirty and exhausted and had glimpsed in the group the idiot who was holding a peacefully sleeping Sasuke in his arms, coming towards her.
"You know I won't cook this evening, right?"
"Yes"
"And you know you'll have to sleep somewhere else tonight, right?"
"Yes"
"I wish you a good evening, Fugaku-kun"
"Thank you"
Mikoto shivered as she remembered that evening.
Those four idiots had left Sasuke alone, in a room full of explosive ammunition and had also given him a manual on booby traps.
Sasuke was little but he had more or less learnt to read and write thanks to Itachi.
But of course, Fugaku couldn't remember this.
He was currently all caught up in the successes collected one after another by his prodigious eldest son and he hadn't noticed that even Sasuke, although not as talented as his older brother, was already starting to show signs of being a genius.
The incident the other day proved Sasuke's enormous talent.
The little pest had decided to be good and "not bother" his father too much but it had bored him beyond belief. His father had then dumped his responsibilities to three Uchihas chosen at random, who in turn had parked the little boy in any room (the library) leaving him an "any" book to keep him quiet at the first emergency.
According to Sasuke's testimony, at the beginning he had read the book carefully, appreciating the reading facilitated by many guiding images. More than a book, it was a manual of a few pages and after carefully studying its contents, he had opened the boxes out of curiosity and found cases full of ammunition inside.
Looking at the boxes scattered around the room and the booby trap manual intended for new recruits, a flash of genius had struck him: he would use the knowledge he had just acquired to create the best trap in the world, and he would then show it to his father as soon as he would get back.
As a result, he stole three cases full of explosives and ran into the training forest.
He had spent the rest of the day building an efficient trap system, jumping from tree to tree to tie the wires. Once the initial part was finished, he had littered the entire area with bomb cards. Once the wires, kunai and paper bombs were connected, he looked proudly at the finished work.
After hours of hard work, he began to feel tired and fell asleep in an area near the mined perimeter.
According to the words of other witnesses, the three idiots who had "lost" Sasuke had started looking for him in the forest and one of them, in the rash of the moment, had stepped on a trap causing small but significant explosions.
The unplanned event had caused some new recruits to rush to the scene and, by putting their feet in the wrong places, triggered a chain of explosions.
The panic of the moment had led another recruit to inadvertently touch a wire which in turn had activated a second set of traps causing an endless series of explosions.
The incident had alarmed the rest of the staff who had rushed into the forest.
The explosion of the second group of traps had activated the core of the entire trap system, simultaneously triggering all the bombs scattered and connected to each other via wires tied to logs and kunai.
Needless to say, the recruits and the youngest policemen were fully caught in the entire explosion, unlike the seniors who had remained at the entrance of the forest to analyze the situation.
The following silence had marked the end of the explosions.
Fugaku had activated his sharingan to look for traces of his son, worried about his condition.
He had found him asleep on the lawn with his head resting on a book.
At first, he had thought that he had been thrown away by the explosion and that he was injured but after seeing the immaculate lack of injuries, he had picked him up and started to walk back.
Seeing the book, he had picked up from the floor, his brain started putting two and two together.
On the way he had noticed the state to which the unfortunate recruits who had entered the forest had been reduced. Aside from smoke and dirt, no one seemed to have sustained any serious injuries, making him breathe a sigh of relief.
He had cast a warning look at the group of scoundrels and the unfortunates had lowered their heads aware of their mistakes.
At the end of it all, given the absence of injuries, the third hokage had laughed out loud and agreed to cover up the whole affair, dismissing it as a surprise anti-explosives test that ended with a failure.
Fugaku and his other colleagues had spent the rest of the evening and part of the night cleaning up the mess and compiling a false report.
At dawn, the next day, a visibly exhausted Fugaku showed up at the door of the house, being welcomed by a smiling wife, the same one who had thrown him out of the house the previous evening and who had now put breakfast on the table for him.
Fugaku had greedily eaten the meal and after having eyed the little demon in front of him, he had given him a quick lecture before dragging himself to bed with the last of his strength.
Mikoto smiled at the memory of that comical scene.
Her husband had grounded Sasuke for two weeks and brought peace to the district.
The following day, the women of the clan had brought their children to play at his house.
Between tea, biscuits and noise, Mikoto had received praise for her son's talent but there had been no shortage of criticisms from the elders of the clan (towards Fugaku).
After dismissing the guests, the woman began to tidy up the closet, leaving her son with the task of cleaning up the living room.
"This isn't right" Mikoto had thought.
She had to find a way to engage Sasuke.
Having him train from morning to night was out of the question. As talented as he was, Sasuke didn't have the same maturity as Itachi and she knew how arrogant an immature Uchiha genius could become.
Moving several boxes in the darkness of the room, she had finally managed to take out a large case: it was the solution to her problems.
"oh, what a shame. And to think that Itachi can play it so well...truly a shame." Mikoto had expressed with a theatrical tone of sadness.
Sasuke was taken aback by the unexpected statement.
Big brother was able to play the Koto well?
Since when?
He had never seen his brother play a musical instrument.
Mikoto smiled wickedly.
Just mentioning Itachi or Fugaku was enough to instantly have Sasuke's full attention.
He was so adorable!
"Well, you were still too young to remember. You were barely two years old. Your brother learned to play the Koto in a week...
...and I thought, maybe, you also had a talent for music.
Like Itachi"
Sasuke took the bait.
"Mom please teach me to play the Koto!" the little Uchiha had exclaimed.
Mikoto had smiled victoriously.
She had done it!
Unlike Itachi, Sasuke was a direct child and expressed what he wanted without hesitation. If Itachi was treated like a small adult, Sasuke was the typical happy child from a good family, lively and respectful, whom everyone liked (when he wasn't causing trouble).
He was a pure bundle of emotion and energy, and Mikoto hoped to instill some art and culture in at least one of her children.
She watched as her son hugged her with pleading eyes.
Mikoto knew that look and aware of the effort that Sasuke spent to become strong as Itachi, she knew that he would spend the time, from dawn till night, playing like a madman.
"Of course, darling! Mommy will make you the best player in the clan"
She hoped so.
The reason why Sasuke was easily convinced was because he was bored (being grounded) and Itachi and Shisui had been out of the village for days training and wouldn't be back for two weeks.
In the absence of these conditions, the idea of teaching her son just a single musical note, would have been just a wishiful thinking of hers.
"come here, I'll show you how to wear the finger picks"
"Shisui, please hold Itachi as long as possible," Mikoto mentally pleaded.