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The air is rank with the stench of the dead—blood, urine and decay come early (It is, after all, a warm summer’s night). There are still two living, two boys with the eyes of grief, who fight across the rooftops of the new family tomb in a flurry of kunai. One throws the knives, and the other blocks them with a blood-streaked sword.

The elder’s hitai-ate comes loose, and falls to the ground.

Itachi goes to the street below after it, feeling as though all his limbs are made of lead and all the world is burning.

As he picks the cloth up, and winds it back around his head, Itachi hears Sasuke hit the ground with a thud behind him. Hears his labored, gasping breaths.

When he turns to look at his brother, his can barely see the boy for his tears.

He looks at Sasuke, so proud. How many others would have collapsed before now? How many others would have folded, fallen to the earth and screamed? But Itachi felt something die within him when he saw Sasuke’s eyes turn red, and something else dies now, when it finally sinks in for him.

The next time he and Sasuke meet, it will be as enemies.

And that is all they will ever be to each other, again.

Love must really be a curse, Itachi decides, as Sasuke finally topples to the ground in a dead faint, the toll of the night proving too much for his small body. Why else would it hurt so much?

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‘Foreign woman.’

‘Easterner.’

Just some of the words Uzumaki Mito is greeted with when, for the second time in her life, she steps on the shores of Hi no Kuni. She steps to the shores of the Nakano, looks around her, and smiles. When she first came here, five years ago, to arbitrate the truce between the Senju and the Uchiha, there were the forces only of those two clans to be found here. Now, however, so many others have gathered under their banners. Hashirama and Madara were as good as their words.

Her smile falters, slightly, when she hears the words.

The words, muttered suspiciously, come from the mouths of those who have joined with the Senju and the Uchiha since she last saw this land.

To them, she is not the arbitrator. She is the woman the Senju clan head married while he was in a distant land, without gaining their approval first.

She is suspect.

She is female.

She is foreign.

Mito squeezes her eyes shut. Didn’t you know it would be like this? Didn’t you tell yourself that you could face any challenge, at his side?

Already up the banks, Hashirama holds his hand out to her, smiling that boyish, joyous grin. Mito smiles back, gathers her skirts in one hand, and reaches out to clutch his hand in the other.

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Kirabi-sensei’s disappeared off to a bar somewhere—probably to avoid his brother’s wrath when the Raikage finds out exactly the sort of things he did while on this mission. Raikage-sama will restrict him to the village for sure this time, Omoi thinks gloomily to himself. Kirabi being restricted to Kumo for good means no more missions with Sensei. Omoi doesn’t like the idea of having to go on missions with another jonin as his instructor.

“Remember you two.” Samui calls out to Karui and Omoi as the three start to go their separate ways. “We’re meeting at Training Ground Nineteen tomorrow at ten for kendo.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll be there.” Karui waves a hand weakly; Omoi can’t tell if she’s just tired, or if she’s simply as depressed about the prospect of Kirabi being confined to the village as he is.

Even Karui’s depressed? Oh man, this is bad.

“And remember.” Omoi and Karui look around, and both feel a tremor of surprise go through them to see a rare smile on Samui’s pale face. “Even if Kirabi-sensei isn’t allowed to go out of the village anymore, we’re still a group, together.”

Karui smiles, and Omoi nods, feeling his mood brighten a little bit.

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No one’s sure what’s worse: the fact that Orochimaru’s taken a shine to Nawaki, or that Nawaki’s taken a shine to Orochimaru in return.

Tsunade thinks it’s unnatural. Jiraiya and Hiruzen both think it’s suspect. The boy’s father is wary of letting his daughter’s quiet, rather creepy teammate anywhere near his son, and Mito never pegged Orochimaru as the sort to be at all fond of small children.

And yet, here he is, fifteen-year-old Orochimaru willingly playing “Ninja” with his kunoichi teammate’s four-year-old brother, and actually refraining from using jutsu as they play this over-elaborate game of hide and seek.

Tsunade watches from her perch on a nearby rooftop as Orochimaru steps out of an alleyway, casting his golden eyes about warily, only to have Nawaki pounce on him out of nowhere. “Caught you!” The little boy latches onto Orochimaru’s leg and grins up at him. “Caught you!”

For a moment, Orochimaru’s forehead creases in displeasure. Then, he smiles slightly. “Yes, that was very good. But you can do better. Let’s try again.”

And for the fifteenth time today, Tsunade checks herself over for any sign of genjutsu, yet again.

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He never took an entrance exam, nor sat for a class, nor took graduation exams. He was never declared genin, or chunin, or jonin. The boy was ‘unregistered’, in the sense that a nin trained in Kiri could be unregistered, given that of the five major powers, Mizu was alone in having no shinobi registry system.

Haku is not what can formally be considered a shinobi. Zabuza knows that, and as a result doesn’t bother spending a whole lot of time on the basics of the shinobi arts. Kunai and shuriken Haku can throw with relative proficiency. The boy can walk up trees and tread across water. He can slip inside a house and come back out again without leaving so much as a trace of his presence. But Zabuza never lingers long on these skills.

It’s just as well that Haku is not a shinobi in the traditional sense of the word. That frees up Zabuza to train him in much more specific ways.

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New genin Tenten sighs as she gets a good look at the man who is to be her sensei. He certainly is… effusive.

She’d known she was going to be putting up with a lot of high-energy antics from the moment she heard that Lee was going to be in her cell, but she’d never imagined that her new sensei (who bears a disturbing resemblance to Lee around the eyebrows) would be the same. Or worse, for that matter.

Oh well. She smiles over at Neji, who looks anything but amused at the sight of Gai and Lee egging each other on to do more and more push-ups, and doesn’t smile back.

At least these people won’t tell her she’s too “delicate” for training.

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With each passing year she feels her death approaching. With each month, each winter, the Kyuubi’s chuckling grows a little louder. Soon I’ll be free. Soon I’ll be free to crush this village. Soon I’ll be free to crunch on your old bones.

After nearly fifty years of being trapped beneath the cage of her flesh, Mito supposed it would be relishing what it sees as its impending freedom.

Her fingers quiver at the least amount of activity; she can’t brew tea easily and her handwriting is all but illegible. Kushina frowns at her and Mito smiles down at her charge, trying without words to reassure her that she’s alright, that Kushina won’t have to take on her burden for a long time yet.

But Mito knows that the end is near.

In a way, she’s almost relieved.

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It is a well-established rule of the universe that Rock Lee can not dance. It is also a well-established rule of the universe that he is totally unaware of this, and that even if he was, he’d dance anyways.

From his seat at the bar, Neji watches as Lee tears up the dance floor. He jumps, spins, prances about like a lunatic and not once does he ever perform anything that could be even remotely recognizable as a dance move. Only slightly more coordinated, Tenten and Gai fly past as well, and Neji once again marvels at how shinobi who can be so agile, even graceful in battle just seem to lose all sense of coordination once they hit a dance floor.

For himself, Neji does not want to dance. He doesn’t care that they’re here because of him, celebrating his promotion to jonin. He doesn’t care that there will be no celebration among his own kin, at least nothing that could possibly make him feel happy. He doesn’t care that—

Oh, what the Hell.

Lee lights up so much as to be incandescent when Neji slinks onto the floor. He’s not terribly enthusiastic. He doesn’t do a whole lot more than shuffle his feet and wave his arms up and down. But he is dancing. Let no one forget that.

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“I don’t see why you shouldn’t just apply for jonin now. You’d pass the exam with flying colors, and God knows at times like this, Konoha needs all the jonin it can get.”

Leaning back into the park bench, Shikaku opens one eye and looks over at his girlfriend. Yoshino is glaring at him and looks ready to perform one of her infamous finger pokes on his arm to get him to pay attention. Well no need. “Yoshino, you are aware that the war’s been over for months now, right?”

She shakes her head violently. “You still need to apply for jonin, Shikaku,” she snaps. “We’re short on manpower; there’s no better time.”

“Why do you care so much?”

Yoshino just shrugs, leaning back into the bench herself. “I happen to think you can do better. Aren’t we supposed to want better for the people we care about?” she asks sharply.

“I… appreciate that, Yoshino.”

And to be honest, he does. He just wishes she wouldn’t get so… persistent about it.

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With an inward sigh (not outward; outward would only signal to his agents that he is uneasy, and Danzo must set a good example for his agents), Danzo takes up the syringe and injects the serum into his upper arm.

Orochimaru says that this will give him the power of the Shodai Hokage. Danzo understands that this is with the caveat: If it doesn’t kill you first. Danzo heard that caveat quite clearly in between Orochimaru’s words.

Danzo injects it anyways. He’ll need all the power he can get to keep Konoha safe and strong, and if that means risking his own life, then so be it.

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So Izumo, our time grows short and we stand at the edge of death. Don’t look at me like that; I’m not being maudlin. I’m just stating a fact.

Anyways, we’re going to die no matter what we do (I don’t think we’ll be able to escape the Hokage’s wrath when she catches up to us), so I have a confession to make.

It was me who told Shizune about the love letters.

No, no, you can’t kill me! Damn it, Izumo, I didn’t realize you’d get so upset! Augh! Help!

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Her left leg had started aching around three in the afternoon, and Tsunade knew it wasn’t from walking all day; even if she’s no longer an active-duty jonin, she’s in good enough shape that she can walk all day, for several days at a time, without getting this sort of pain.

Tsunade doesn’t tell Shizune; the girl would just worry unduly. Instead, Tsunade waits until they’ve stopped in a hotel room for the night, and sends Shizune downstairs for some food.

Once alone, she rolls up her pant leg, and upon seeing her left leg, she sighs.

Varicose veins.

“Well now I know I’m getting old,” Tsunade mutters, as she applies healing chakra to the distended veins.

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He throws away all pretenses of remorse after spearing Karin through the chest. It’s such a liberating feeling, Sasuke realizes, not to be chained down by things like guilt and fellowship any longer.

Come Hell or high water, Sasuke will have his revenge. Rage and elation bubbles in his blood at the thought of Danzo dying here and now, and he pays not a whit of attention to Karin anymore.

Without remorse, he can do so much more.

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The house of Hyuuga, though their eyes see all, has long labored in darkness. They restrict their kin to serve them under the thrall of a curse. They belittle all those among their kind who do not have strength in their limbs and steel in their minds, and do not even possess the passion of the Uchiha. The Hyuuga are cruel, and bland as milk.

Sometimes, though, they can peel back the layers of their own cruelty, or go about the world without trying to hide that cruelty isn’t something that courses through their veins like blood.

Hyuuga Hinata has never had an easy life in this shadow-laden world. She is soft and others know it. She is kind, and other smell kindness on her clothes. They attack her not out of malice, but because they are trying to survive and she’s an easy target.

Her life has not been easy.

But it’s worth being kind, she thinks, to be able to tip her head back and gaze out at the sun.

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What a pure-hearted child, Mei thinks to herself, smiling slightly as the Tsuchikage gapes, Danzo looks as unruffled as ever and the young Kazekage fixes the man who had been mocking him in a level stare. Young Gaara is behaving quite true to form.

Unlike the Tsuchikage, Mei had never been interested in mocking this boy or putting him in his place. As the leader of his village he has just as much right to be as the Summit as any of the other kages, and telling him to be quite and listen to his elders would only have reflected badly upon her, in the long run—Besides, do I look like an elder to you? But there are other reasons.

Gaara, Mei suspects (though she can’t be sure), got his position much the same way Yagura got it. Not because he wanted it, but because his village’s council wanted their jinchuuriki where they could see him. He had probably been forced into the position that he’s had for just a little over a year now—Mei had sent the standard congratulatory note to Suna in the winter of the year before last. He is very young—sixteen or seventeen; she can’t be sure—and likely inexperienced.

And Yagura hadn’t been such a bad man, not when he wasn’t under Madara’s influence. When he was in his own mind he was kind and gentle, but discounted by all. The boy reminds me of him.

And he reminds him of herself, as well.

If Gaara is discounted among his own people because of his age, for Mei it’s her gender that does the damage. In Kirigakure, few women ever become shinobi. Even less become jonin, or even chunin, and before her, no one had ever contemplated a female Mizukage. In Kiri, women are seen and not heard—or that’s how it’s supposed to be.

He is the past jinchuuriki, responsible for many deaths. Mei is a product of the Bloody Mist, the only survivor of her graduating class. Between that, and everything else, how can she not empathize with this boy?

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Over the centuries, they call him many things.

‘Killer.’

‘Monster.’

‘Creature born from human malice.’

‘Natural disaster.’

They treat him like a savage, unthinking beast and become so arrogant as to think that they can cage him. Him, Kurama, child of the Sage of Six Paths! He was created to help keep this world safe from the Juubi, and these pathetic humans, they who claim to be his followers and descendants, believe that he is a beast to be caged?!

He can not speak in the tongues of these men; only the Sage was able to communicate with the children he created out of the Juubi’s chakra. Kurama does know that, on occasion, he treads on some human dwelling without meaning to, sending them all pouring out like ants. They always rebuild their homes, these humans, and relatively few are ever killed. For this, they wish to cage him?

But it can not be avoided. Kurama is caged, and learns what humans really are. Conquerors, jailors, uncaring of the spirits and minds of their prisoners. Uncaring of their prisoners’ names.

These people, not a single one of them was worthy of the Sage’s sacrifice. So he, now known only as the Kyuubi, having gone centuries without hearing his name spoken to him, becomes exactly what those pathetic little ants claimed he was from the start.

A killer.

A monster.

A creature born from human malice.

A natural disaster.

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Hashirama sighs as he stares down at his seventeen-year-old brother, slumped against a tree trunk. “I’m sorry, Tobirama. I never meant to let the apple juice sit out so long.”

Tobirama, barely conscious, nods and slurs something indistinct, waving his hand drunkenly.

Yeah, drunkenly.

Hashirama sighs again, and snaps at Toka to shut up as she holds her sides with pent-up laughter. At seventeen Tobirama has the bearing of an old man: quiet, stoic and watchful. However, he is an utter lightweight as regards to alcohol. “Come on, Tobirama,” Hashirama murmurs soothingly, sliding Tobirama’s arm over his shoulders and hoisting him to his feet. “Let’s get you off to bed.”

The boy’s already asleep before they get to the tent.

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She always gets a kick out of seeing their reaction when she holds the bottle out to them and says “Put this on or get out.”

Sasori raises an eyebrow. Deidara splutters. Hidan swears. Even Itachi is a little thrown by Konan’s condition, and seems to needs a moment before coming to the realization that she’s serious, and she has the authority to put weight behind her words.

Oh, it’s a sign of loyalty to the Akatsuki, yes, a symbol that they’re members of the organization, that they belong there and they belong to the Akatsuki.

But Konan has spent far too much time living in a world that demeans and denigrates all things feminine, and she gets perhaps just a touch wicked satisfaction in making all the other members of the Akatsuki—men, every one of them—wear nail polish.

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Sakura, Hinata and Ino are directed to sit on cushioned benches in the atrium, while their male counterparts go into the presence chamber to speak with the Daimyo. Sakura and Ino fume; Hinata squirms uncomfortably in her seat between them.

After a few moments spent like this, Sakura and Ino coming ever closer to the point of combustion, Sakura finally speaks.

“You know,” she says in an undertone, so only her fellow kunoichi can hear, “when I look back on history, it’s remarkable the sort of advancements that have been made in the woman’s sphere in the last eighty years or so. We can own property; we can tell the world that we’re not property. We can inherit. We can have paying jobs. We can run businesses. We can marry whomever the Hell we want to, and if we’re civilians, we don’t have to be dogged by a male escort everywhere we go. We can divorce our husbands if we decide we don’t want to be married anymore. We can become doctors, lawyers, judges, politicians. We can become councilwomen. Hell, we can even become Kage if we’re strong enough and set our mind to it!

“But apparently…” Sakura draws a deep breath, shoulders practically crackling with tension “…that doesn’t mean a damn thing in this city. Because despite how far we’ve come, despite being kunoichi assigned to protect this Daimyo’s ass, he still won’t let any woman, not even the kunoichi here to protect his ass, into his presence chamber. Apparently we’re not qualified for that.”

Ino shrugs and stares ahead, blue eyes very hard.

Hinata squirms in her seat, and prays that the boys will hurry up and come back out of the Daimyo’s presence chamber.

She’s not entirely sure that the three of them could pull off a feminist revolution by themselves. They’re definitely going to need backup (And that’s back in Konoha, a long way from here).

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The long boat ride back from Tsuchi isn’t doing Omoi any favors. He gets horribly sea-sick and spends most of the boat ride, most of the times, wondering exactly how likely it is that the boat will sink or capsize and they’ll all drown—he knows he’s not a strong enough swimmer to make it back to Kaminari unaided, and his chakra won’t last long enough for him to walk on the surface all the way back to Kaminari.

Omoi sits against a smokestack and stares moodily out at the gray ocean. We’re gonna die out here. The ship’s gonna hit an iceberg, and then we’ll all drown.

His eyes swivel towards his teammates, to see if they share his opinion.

Samui’s sitting on a lawn chair, reading a magazine quite calmly. Kirabi’s sitting near the prow of the ship, notebook out and pencil scratching across the page. Karui’s arguing with another passenger.

Omoi smiles hesitantly.

They don’t seem all that concerned. Maybe he shouldn’t be, either.

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Yamato takes a good look at what Izumo and Kotetsu have built, and sighs heavily.

Yes, it’s a food stall. Yes, it’s made of wood. Yes, they actually appear to have followed the manual and the carpenter’s instructions. Yamato can only assume that Izumo is responsible for that; Kotetsu’s so prone to just doing things based on what he “feels like” is right that if he had been the one direction the building, it probably would have toppled over by now.

And God, look at the way they’re grinning! Deriding their work would be like taking an ice cream cone from a small child—pointless and cruel.

But…

“I don’t think it’s quite up to spec,” Yamato says finally, and tries not to see the way their faces fall. “We’re still recovering from the Akatsuki’s attack, you two. I don’t think it would help morale any for the roof to fall on peoples’ heads while they were eating their ramen.”

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He can feel himself come a bit unglued as the last breath of life quakes out of her body and she lies still, in silence. All the personas he’s adopted over the years, all those masks and false faces and voices, slough off of him like the old, wizened skin of a snake.

Who was he?

Tatsuya?

Naoto?

Kosuke?

Yukio?

Or was he Kabuto?

He’s not sure anymore, the way he’s not sure about anything anymore. Mother didn’t recognize him. Not with her own eyes, nor with the glasses he slid over them. She didn’t recognize him in life, and she went to her grave thinking she had been attended by a stranger.

If even she did not know him, than who is he?

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“Well, if you’re going to eat like you’ve got a bottomless stomach, at least eat something healthy.” Ino presses an apple into Choji’s hand, her brow furrowed.

Choji shrugs and takes a bite out of the apple, and doesn’t bother to disabuse Ino of her notions on how he should eat and take care of himself. Members of the Akimichi clan are supposed to be big—bigger than him, actually; his father’s been advising him to eat food with higher calorie and fat content—but if Ino doesn’t know that now, she probably never will. And ‘fat’ is a four-letter word for them both; Choji doesn’t think there’s much chance of her ever slinging that one his way.

Apples have few calories and no fat. They’re really not what his parents tell him he should be eating to get up to a good size for a growing Akimichi, but they taste really good. Choji decides that apples are his version of junk food, and revels in the joy of indulging.

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The kunai glows with the heat of the flames the boy blew on it, and Soji gulps and shudders, edging away from him. He’s just an accountant, he swears; just who is this kid, and who’s this person he’s looking for?

“I know you have information on Uchiha Itachi,” the boy says, advancing on him with horribly keen dark eyes, his jaw set in a horribly distorted line. “Tell me. Tell me now. Or else I’ll…” He holds the kunai up at eye level, and lets Soji fill in the rest.

Oh God. Oh God, what now? What did I do to deserve this? I’m an accountant; I—

“Sasuke.”

Soji’s savior is a red-haired girl standing in the doorway; she stares on the scene before her without blinking an eye. “Juugo found something out; this isn’t our guy anyways.”

The boy leaves as quickly as he came, and Soji practically falls over in relief. That’s it. I am definitely moving to Yu. Stuff like this never happens in Yu…

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His eyes see everything. That is the gift of the Hyuuga, after all, to have the heavenly eyes that see all, and as the clan head, Hyuuga Hiashi could never have anything but the most clear-seeing of Byakugan eyes. Others might be raised up as having the strongest Byakugan in the Hyuuga clan, but the clan head will always have the eyes that see the most.

But sometimes, Hiashi doesn’t think he can see anything at all.

He couldn’t see why Hizashi would leave behind his wife and son to go die for him, die for the Main house that had caged him so early on in life.

He can’t see into the hearts of his daughters, or his nephew. Hinata, silent and smiling wistfully; Hanabi, also silent and straying out far afield; Neji, ever resenting him for reasons he knows far too well. He looks at them and sees inscrutable children, children he would protect if he could, but as it is barely knows.

Hyuuga Hiashi sees all, but at times like this, when Hinata smiles at him and says that she will become stronger, when Hanabi practically begs to have friends over, when Neji treats him far more respectfully than he used to, Hyuuga Hiashi feels blind.

As though the whole scope of his world has turned inwards, to complete darkness.

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They say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Well, there’s not much grass in a prison hideout, so Karin supposes that in her case, the sun must be brighter outside of this hell-hole.

It’s been a month since she was installed here to keep the peace, to quell prison riots and keep any of Orochimaru’s prisoners from escaping. Her new subordinates are incompetent and resentful of having to report to an adolescent girl, and it’s not like she’s supposed to be fraternizing with the prisoners anyways. Karin’s not gotten one word from HQ in all this time, and she thinks she’s going stir-crazy.

Oh God, I’m not asking for a prison riot or any lousy thing like that, but I need some excitement in my life, before I lose my mind.

It’s almost enough to make her want to strip naked and go look for the nearest meadow to frolic in.

Almost, Karin thinks with a snort.

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Kabuto sighs when he hears the sound of a terrified scream followed by a frustrated one. Well, there goes another medic, he thinks to himself irritably. The pain really has left Orochimaru-sama out-of-sorts. I’ll have to remember not to send Karin in there; Orochimaru-sama wouldn’t be happy if he accidentally killed someone with her skills.

I guess that just leaves me, then.

Once his irritation at having yet another mess to clean up fades, Kabuto can only feel sympathy for his boss. Orochimaru has been in a world full of pain since his battle with the Sandaime Hokage went wrong. It’s only natural that his temper’s frayed; if he wasn’t taking it out on unsuspecting medics, there wouldn’t be any problem.

As he pulls together his “I am a sympathetic and competent medic” face, Kabuto rifles through the medicine cabinet. He’s probably going to need all of the painkillers for this one, to give Orochimaru some measure of peace. If only for a little while.

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Hour one passes, and Anko is already a little bored, staring out at nothing but trees.

Hour two passes, and she’s sick of making small talk with the guards.

Hour three passes, and muscles in her legs are practically screaming for something to do.

Hour four passes, and she develops a twitch over her right eye.

Hour five passes, and Anko starts to get hungry.

Hour six passes, and she starts to hope for an invasion, just to have something to do.

Hour seven passes, and Anko wonders if maybe killing one of the guards would cure her of her boredom.

Hour eight passes, and not a moment too soon. Anko practically jumps for joy as she clocks out and heads back into town. Guard duty on the wall is the worst, and she’s known that practically since she graduated from the Academy.

Now, let’s see, what shall I do first? Grab some dango? Train a bit? Skewer one of the runts at the Academy? Bust Ibiki’s office window again? The possibilities are endless…

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He goes to his death without hesitation, without regrets—the only regrets Kimimaro could possibly have is that this is the only way left in which he can serve his lord, that he can no longer serve as Orochimaru’s vessel, and that he will not live to serve him longer.

Kimimaro has lived in darkness for a long time now, and his eyes cringe away from the sun. He has lived with pain lurking in the recesses of his body for what seems an eternity, and with each step he feels as though he will crumple in on himself from the agony scorching his blood black.

But he feels freer now than he has since he first learned the name of his illness and what that meant for his service to Orochimaru. Finally, the path is clear.

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He really doesn’t expect her skin to be this soft. Maybe he should have, wrapped as far under layers of black linen and cotton as her skin is, but Danzo has spent his short life acclimating himself to warfare and ninjutsu, not the contours of a woman’s skin.

Okay, forget skin; where the Hell does all this fabric end? A frustrated breath whistles through his teeth. He’s beginning to think that puppeteers really are made of smoke beneath their loose-fitting black clothes. Or maybe I just am that impatient. I feel like a boor. A clumsy boor.

Chiyo’s dark eyes are full of laughter and she slaps his hand away. “You seem to be having trouble,” she remarks lightly, thin lips curling in a practically wicked smile. “I suppose I’ll just have to help you.”

Oh, yes, she is definitely going to pay for this. But Danzo’s not sure which one of them will enjoy it more.

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Fugaku knew that there was a mole in the Uchiha clan, but he never imagined that the mole was in his midst every day, that the spy for Konoha’s government was sitting right under his nose.

But in hindsight, yes it seems painfully obvious that the spy was Itachi.

Of course, hindsight only lasts for the short time it takes Itachi to enter the room, covered in blood, and steel his nerve to put his parents to the sword. Fugaku watches the boy weep as he’s not seen him do in years, thick tear tracks gumming on his cheeks, and for some reason, he smiles just a touch, in his last moments.

Itachi was the spy in his midst, but Fugaku is glad that his seemingly aimless son has the strength of his convictions after all. He’ll need them desperately in the years to come.

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The Uzumaki have traditionally had red hair from birth, and retain that red hair until the day when they are so old that their hair is instead gray, silver or white. Red hair is practically a status symbol in the Uzumaki; it shows that even if you aren’t a full-blooded member of the clan, you at least have fairly strong blood.

But when Kushina sees the pale gold fuzz on the head of her newborn son, she can’t help but smile, just a little bit.

Red hair might be a status symbol in Uzu no Kuni, but here, it’s stigmatic, and brought her little but grief. Blond hair is hardly any less conspicuous, but all that means is that Naruto will look like his father.

Kushina thinks she can live with that.

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Temari does not like fine, pretty things—or at least, she won’t readily admit to liking fine, pretty things. Kunoichi are looked down upon for having even an ounce of what could be construed as vanity, just thought of as “typical women” when they show a liking for jewels or soft cloth or fine food. And it’s worse in Sand, where anyone is looked down on for having an especial liking for anything beyond the bare minimum of what’s need to live and thrive.

She likes nice clothes, likes the feel of silk on her skin (But never indulges that liking, except on formal occasions—silk can’t be grown in Kaze no Kuni and Kiri-imported silk is exorbitantly expensive). She likes scarves and shawls and jewelry, and rarely indulges these likings, only in winter, or when going to parties or festivals. She only wears makeup because it blocks out the sun and keeps her face, fairer-skinned than the foundation over it and certainly too fair-skinned for the desert, from burning to a crisp.

Temari does not indulge her whims and fancies. Temari is the ideal daughter of the Sand: practical and utilitarian. Or she tries to be. That doesn’t mean she likes it.

“Erm, here.”

Green eyes look up, startled, from their examination of the newspaper. Kankuro stands over her, fully-dressed (odd; she hadn’t thought he was up yet) to the side of the kitchen table. There’s a decidedly awkward look on his face, and a rope of reddish-amber carnelian beads, a gold clasp at each end, twined around his hand.

Temari stares at him, not understanding, or not wanting to understand. “Kankuro, what…”

He shrugs, not meeting her gaze, a pink tinge in his cheeks. “I saw you looking at them on the way back from that D-Rank we took yesterday. You do that a lot.”

Her surprised expression creases in a frown. “Kankuro, carnelian’s not cheap.”

“So?” He shuffles his weight uncomfortably.

Temari shakes her head in exasperation at her impractical brother. Kankuro doesn’t fit into this culture of minimalism any more than she does. But as she takes the rope of beads, she smiles. “Thanks, Kankuro.”

Chapter Text

“Oh, God, what is that smell?”

Yuuhi Kurenai has come across a lot of bad smells in her life. It’s only natural, considering her career—it would be more unusual if she hadn’t, all things considered. But this one is perhaps a bit worse than usual, and more worryingly, she’s not sure she knows what it is.

Anko shrugs, balancing her grocery bag on one hip to fish through her pocket for the key to her apartment. She’s just gotten back from an out-of-town mission, and Kurenai was helping her get her groceries home. “Dunno. Could be the tenant…” Her voice trails off as comprehension makes her eyes glaze over. Then, Anko bangs her head on the door, groaning. “Aw, shit.”

“What?” Kurenai asks, brow furrowed. Surely whatever it is can’t be that bad.

“I just remembered. I forgot to clean out my fridge before I left for Kaminari.”

“Oh… Joy.”

“Shuddup and help me.”

“What?!”

Chapter Text

Though it’s difficult to come to a consensus on anything else, most would agree that Hyuuga Hiashi is a strict father and not the sort of man prone to doing anything that might belittle his dignity as head of the Hyuuga clan. Though the title of “Clan Head” feels more like a yoke on his shoulders than a privilege, Hiashi understands that the dignity of his position must be upheld.

But today, he can be found with his thirteen-year-old older daughter in her garden, helping Hinata pull up weeds.

It was just a whim. He said nothing to her as he leaned down to help, and will say nothing to her when the work is done and Hinata goes to toss her basket full of uprooted weeds onto the burn pile just outside the compound. Some might argue that this is undignified. Some might argue that he doesn’t even like his daughter all that much anyways, so why is he helping her?

For the record, the latter score is a complete falsehood. And as for the former, the sight of Hinata’s shy smile as he crouched down beside her and started pulling up weeds is enough to make up for any whispers that might come his way later.

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Every day, every hour that passes by, a little more of the flesh on his arms goes black and starts to stink. Skin peels away, tissue is exposed, blood vessels dry up and shrivel in plain sight.

No one who goes anywhere near Orochimaru in these days can fail to notice his utter agony—it’s even harder to miss, considering the rising body count of the medics in this particular hideout. He claims to kill them because they crossed him. However, Orochimaru doesn’t kill for such petty reasons, and perhaps there’s another reason.

Envy.

Envy of the people who can still use their arms, can still use ninjutsu. He’s watching his plans go down the drain with each piece of flaking flesh, and kill is the only thing Orochimaru can do that takes his mind off of it, even for a moment.

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“You need a bath. You need one badly.”

These are the words Uchiha Mikoto says to her young teammate on the way back from their mission into the northern forests of Hi. Kushina cringes, looks to Hizashi for support, but he only shakes his head silently, giving his support to Mikoto. Kushina scowls at him; of course he would agree with Mikoto, just like he always does.

Kushina turns her attention back to Mikoto, and shakes her head vigorously. “No, I really don’t.” Maybe if she argues strongly enough, Mikoto will take her at her word and just leave it be.

No such luck.

Five minutes later, they’ve found a stream and sent Hizashi a ways away to keep watch (“And if you use Byakugan, you will die”; this is pretty much the only thing Kushina and Mikoto agree on as regards to this affair). Kushina is sitting in the water, quite naked, and not at all happy about it. Mikoto is sitting on the bank behind her, attempting to wash her hair with a tiny bottle of shampoo she picked up in the last hotel they were staying in (“This is definitely not going to be enough for all of your hair, but we’ll see what we can do.”)

They’re sitting in silence, Kushina wondering just how much colder she can get and bemoaning the fact that she is by far the youngest, smallest member of this cell, a genin among two chunin. Then, Mikoto sighs. “Why don’t you take better care of your hair?”

Kushina cranes her head around, giving Mikoto a silent, close-mouthed stare, determined not to say anything at all to this. Mikoto shakes her head, running her fingers through wet tendrils of red hair. “From day to day, Kushina, your hair is ridiculously greasy. Don’t look at me like that, it is! It’s so greasy I can smell it. I know long hair is hard to take care of—“ here, Mikoto tugs on one of her own locks of hair, quite long in itself “—but I know you could do better than this. It would look fine if you would just make an effort to keep it clean. Why won’t you take better care of your hair?”

Once again, Kushina doesn’t answer. Mikoto doesn’t understand the fine details of homesickness, of being an exile in a strange land, unable to go home. She doesn’t understand what it is to have one trait that definitively defines someone as foreign. She doesn’t understand what it is to be ostracized for this trait.

Kushina won’t try to make her understand.

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“This has been a day of great desolation.”

Those are the words the priest uses, on the boat sailing away from their burning land. None disagree, and the living clutch their loved ones close by, praying to see the next sunrise as the sun starts to sink over the water.

Stateless exiles, the survivors of Uzu no Kuni bow their heads and weep.

This has indeed been a day of woe.

Chapter Text

The Raikage grumbles under his breath as he stumbles again, thrown by the sudden lack of balance brought on by his recent amputation. He was able to throw it off during the battle and ignore it, but now that the time for fighting is over, it’s starting to catch up with him.

Goddammit, I was left-handed too.

“Boss, you okay?!” Darui calls from behind.

“Yeah, yeah! Keep up!”

He’ll just have to get used to it.

Chapter Text

“Oof!”

Shi can’t avoid the gasp as he gets thrown to the mat for what feels like the fifteenth time in the last five minutes. And for the fifteenth time in the past five minutes, he wonders why he ever agreed to let the Raikage try to teach him how to wrestle when it’s obvious that he has no aptitude whatsoever for the sport.

For himself, the Raikage chuckles and goes to take a swig of water. “You’re a featherweight, Shi, but I’ll make a wrestler out of you yet.”

Shi can barely avoid groaning. It’s great that his boss isn’t one of those distant rulers who never engages his subordinates on a personal level, but he needs a way out of this, really.

Chapter Text

“It says…” Juugo squints and Karin tosses her head and sighs long-sufferingly. “It says…”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Karin jerks the newspaper clipping out of his hand, ignoring the way Juugo glares at her when she does so. “It says ‘Sighting of UFOs over Tanzaku Gai!’. Can’t you read, Juugo?”

A long, pregnant pause follows after that, Juugo staring too-blankly at her and lacing his fingers up, one by one. After a while, going over everything she knows about Juugo and his “upbringing”, Karin feels a bit like she’s going to choke. “You… can’t read, can you?”

“No, I can’t,” Juugo says very calmly. He never tears his gaze from her face.

“Oh.” Karin shifts her weight awkwardly in the chair she’s sitting in. “Do… Do you want me to teach you?” she asks awkwardly.

He shrugs. “Maybe some other time.”

Once Karin is alone in the room, she exhales, feeling as though she’s not breathed in an eternity. I have to remember. I have to remember what it’s like.

Chapter Text

Once there were two sons of an old, dying father. They were grown themselves, with many children to their names, and were called by their father to his bedside, to learn of how he would allot their inheritance.

In their land, it was custom for the eldest surviving son to receive the lion’s share of a father’s inheritance, and for the younger sons to receive significantly smaller portion—daughters are given nothing at all, but the old man had no daughters, so this was of no concern to either of them.

The old man loved both of his sons dearly, but mistrusted the desire of his eldest to conquer. So he gave the entirety of his estate to his younger son, entrusting the future to him.

That future would be soaked in blood for this decision.

Chapter Text

Some say love makes you blind. Rock Lee’s teammates would agree that such is the case with his crush on fellow genin Haruno Sakura.

“Doesn’t he realize that she’s never going to like him that way?” Tenten grumbles.

Neji shakes his head. “No.”

“Doesn’t he realize that she’s too hung up on that Uchiha kid to ever look at someone else?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t he realize that she’s just an unpleasant person to be around?”

“No, and I think ‘unpleasant’ is probably too subjective.”

Tenten groans, rubbing a hand over her face. “Oh, whatever. My point is, why has he put her up on his pedestal? What does he see in her?”

Neji pauses for a moment. Then, he shrugs. “Hope springs eternal?”

Tenten just groans again.

Chapter Text

“So, Saru, is there a reason you’re trying to specialize in ninjutsu, taijutsu, and summoning instead of choosing one and specializing in it exclusively?”

These are the first words out of Senju Tobirama, the Second Hokage’s mouth when he reads over his student’s proposal, eyebrow raised. Hiruzen shrugs, looking decidedly unconcerned. “I’m trying to be eclectic?”

Tobirama shakes his head, and allows him to go ahead just to teach him a lesson. No one can be more surprised with he than when Hiruzen shows aptitude and skill in all three areas.

Chapter Text

He can hear the bones in his legs snap and pop out of place, but this is no comparison for the snap he hears in his heart and head, like a death knell or some great bomb going off in the wilderness.

Yahiko is dead. They’d wanted peace, but now Yahiko is dead, and Hanzo has proved himself nothing but a betrayer, and one that would draw foreigners into the conflict, at that.

Nagato can feel his faith slip away from him in a flash, his hope for the future dead in his hands.

There is nothing left to do but rage.

Chapter Text

She had tried to move on after Dan died. She’d tried to keep on the work despite the nightmares, the bitterness, the grief, and the skin-crawling blackouts she got every time blood touched her skin. There was still a war going on, after all, and Senju Tsunade knew her duty.

But once the war was over, and she returned to Konoha, Sarutobi could hardly fail to notice his former student’s altered state, the way her eyes would glaze over from time to time and how she barely seemed to hear what people were saying to each other, during these times.

You see, Tsunade had her good days and her bad days. On her good days, she was almost her old self: loud, boisterous, bright, merry. There was still a faded quality about her—she was never quite so lively again. But on her bad days, she was barely recognizable. She spent them drunk and miserable, barely able to talk to anyone with choking on her words.

Those who knew and cared about her did what they could to help her. Sarutobi put her on “medical leave” and allowed her a relatively low-stress schedule of C- and D-Rank missions and occasionally teaching at the Academy. When he went traveling, Jiraiya would send letters and pictures back of faraway places. When Orochimaru went on expeditions into foreign lands, he would come back with books and herbs and rare medicines, things that were supposed to soothe the spirit. Shizune would tug on her hand and insist that Tsunade come with her to the park or the ice cream parlor, to her Academy entrance ceremony and graduation.

But none of them understood, or understand.

It wasn’t just Dan. Or Nawaki. It was everything Tsunade had seen and done, every explosion, every spray of blood, every bone, every death she caused or life she failed to save. She’d been cracking even before Dan died, but after him, it was like she split in two. Nothing can fill the holes anymore.

Beneath her glittering glamour, she feels pale, thin, faded, stretched. Empty. She tries to fill up her life, first with meaningful things, then with hollow pursuits, but nothing can fill the holes, or close the cracks.

Then, another war dawns, and Konoha, needing all the nin it can get, puts Senju Tsunade back on active duty.

She’s had enough.

As soon as she’s able, once that war is done, Tsunade leaves the village. She takes Shizune with her, maybe out of love or just guilt—Tsunade can’t sort out her feelings anymore and isn’t sure if she can love anyone like she used to anymore.

She leaves behind her life, and her surname. ‘Senju’ hasn’t been a part of her since she was last whole.

Chapter Text

“God almighty,” Jiraiya mutters as he holds his sleeve back with his good hand and lets Tsunade apply healing chakra to some of his blisters, and salve to others. “That’s some gas the Rain are using.”

For herself, Tsunade looks over the blisters and grimaces. She’ll have to prescribe antibiotics if they want to keep them from getting…

No, wait. They ran out of antibiotics last week, and the letter requesting more hasn’t received a response yet. Oh, great. I guess the most I can do is tell him to keep the blisters covered—with bandages, not just his sleeve—and to check every day to make sure they aren’t starting to fester.

“Just try to be more careful in the future,” she mutters, and moves on to the next in need of help.

Chapter Text

Temari sighs as she adjusts the weight of the fan across her back for what feels like the thousandth time that day alone and presses on ahead. Her shoulders are aching. She knew the damn thing was heavy, but hadn’t envisioned this, not at all.

Kankuro catches her eye, and grins ruefully, pointing first to the bulky puppet slung across his back, and then to the gourd on Gaara’s back. Temari twitches a smile back, thankful for the reminder that they’re in this together.

Chapter Text

Jiraiya loves telling stories. He loves seeing the wide-eyed expressions of the children, the nodding of the men, and especially the starry-eyed faces of the (no doubt adoring) women. He goes from town to town, telling the stories, so they won’t get stale and he has time to think of more, so that he’ll always have new material for his audience.

When Jiraiya discovers writing as a medium, he grins evilly from ear to ear.

So now his stories can be mass-produced. Excellent.

Chapter Text

“You think peace will last?”

It’s their last night before heading off back towards home, back towards their own countries, and Onoki asks the question once there is no one in earshot. His tone is slightly mocking, but mostly serious, and he clearly believes he has a message to impart. Gaara blinks down at him, and the old man sighs.

“Listen closely, boy. I remember the last time peace was declared. It didn’t last. It held for a few years, and then crumbled like an old silk hanging, exposed to the sun.”

Gaara understands that, and he understands what Onoki is trying to tell him, and why. He means well. “That was then, this is now,” he replies evenly. “Things will be different.”

Onoki snorts. “Will they? Oh yes, this peace might hold for a few years, maybe longer than that. But peace never lasts, boy. It will fail at the next crop failure, the next drought. Or the next time some daimyo slashes funding in half or cuts it off all together,” he adds meaningfully, knowing that Gaara and all of Kaze knows how that last condition might lead to war. “And even if peace doesn’t fail then, I can tell you when it will fail. Peace will fail when the day comes that none of the leaders of any of the nations are old enough to remember what we did here. Peace will fail when no one remembers what war was like.”

“Maybe. But I think it can last,” Gaara remarks confidently. “If we try hard enough.”

Chapter Text

“You’re the sort to die young.”

Minato stares at Shikaku incredulously as they walk back towards the camp site, leaving a trail of corpses behind them. “And just what is that supposed to mean?” he asks, a distinct edge to his voice.

Shikaku shrugs, not sure why Minato’s getting so worked up about this. “You’re idealistic, you want to change the world, you’re a great leader. People like that tend to die young. You see it all the time.”

“Uh-huh.” Minato looks decidedly unconvinced. Then she shakes his head and snorts. “Yeah, I think you’ve been breathing in the gas fumes too much, Shikaku.”

Shikaku just shrugs again. It is what it is.

Chapter Text

Chiyo loves to present the image of being a doddering old woman, of being a senile twit. It’s so much fun to pretend not to even know what year it is, and then knock the know-it-all young people off their pedestals by showing them just how sharp she still is.

The best trick is that of pretending to have forgotten the way to the grocery store. Just as the person she’s begging for help starts to get a supercilious look on their face, she slaps them under the chin and laughs “Ha! Got you!”

Whatever the other’s reaction, it’s worth it to see the look on their face.

Chapter Text

In the cavern, bound to an eldritch machine just so he can breathe for a few years longer, Madara has perhaps become a more reflective person. There really is nothing else to do when he is not in the process of committing the act of creation, but to reflect on the past.

Izuna.

Hashirama.

Tobirama.

Mito.

Others.

These names flash in front of his mind, again and again and again. Some, Madara never wants to see again. Others, he hopes to see soon, very, very soon, when all he has striven for is done and the world is as it ought to have been from the start.

But for now, there is nothing to do but reflect on the past. And in that, and that alone does Madara find comfort, locked down deep in the dark.

Chapter Text

Itachi swallows hard and dredges up all of his resolve as he makes contact with the masked man in the forest for the first time. If this is who he thinks it is, if this is Uchiha Madara, then Itachi knows that he would be better off to stay away. But he also knows that he can’t do this by himself, that he needs help, and that this is probably the only man alive who can give it to him.

There’s nothing else for it. He’s a devil, but a devil you must approach.

“I can see you.”

And so it begins.

Chapter Text

September is here, and she can hear the Kyuubi’s voice when she’s awake now, not just when she sleeps.

Kushina’s seal is such that she doesn’t have much trouble from the fox unless the seal itself is weakening; the sudden awareness of its voice is supposed to be the gauge that something’s wrong. Well, something is very wrong, and Kushina knows exactly what it is.

She hadn’t wanted an abortion. Maybe under other circumstances, maybe if she was another woman, she would have gone for one. But under her circumstances, an abortion is no safer than childbirth, and to be honest…

To be perfectly honest, Kushina feels alone even at the best of times. That’s a rotten reason to keep a kid and she knows it, but that’s where it stands. Besides, Minato’s been getting so ridiculously enthusiastic about fatherhood that she hasn’t got the heart to disappoint him.

So September is here, and there’s less than a month to go before Kushina gives birth. The hour is near, the Kyuubi cackles, and Kushina tries to ignore it.

Chapter Text

His sight is fading out and the rage filling his veins, and at the same time the bastardization of creation spouts from his skin. Here is what Juugo always fears, what he flees conflict to avoid. All think him a coward, but if they knew what goes through his mind in the last dark moments before all goes blank, they’d be cowards themselves.

Tick tock, time is running out. Tick tock, time is running out.

One last mad, terrified moment, before rampant creation devours him, and he is again lost to his rage.

Chapter Text

It’s another stormy day in Amegakure, raindrops pattering on the roofs and further muddying up the quagmire of the road system. Lightning splits the sky; thunder makes the windowpanes rattle. The only citizens outside have sensibly donned raincoats and gas masks to avoid breathing in the fumes of any possible poisonous gas brought in on the clouds, as they have done since foreign countries started fighting wars on their soil.

The God of Amegakure stands on the roof of his tower, arms outstretched, drenched by rain.

Inside, Nagato holds Yahiko’s body firmly in place where it is. He can see the rain all around, can hear it falling. If he tries, he can imagine that it’s falling on his skin. He can almost manage that.

Chapter Text

“I swear, you are the most stubborn kid I have ever met!”

Funny how Jiraiya always thinks that shouting that in an over-the-top way is going to get Naruto to yield and submit to whatever stupid thing he says will actually be helpful to his training this time. Personally, it didn’t work the first time, the second time, or the thousandth time, so Naruto doesn’t understand why Jiraiya thinks it will work this time.

He scowls up at white-haired man, jaw set in an obstinate line. “No way, Ero-Sennin! I’m not learning any of that stuff; it’s useless! Why won’t you teach me something cool for a change, huh?!”

Jiraiya looks ready to tear his hair out, but Naruto will not bend, and he will not break.

If he’s a stubborn kid, he’ll wear the title with pride.

Chapter Text

“Constantly watching the clock doesn’t make its hands move any faster.”

Karin says this in cool, clipped tones, flipping the magazine as Sasuke taps his finger against his knee and scowls, not deigning to give her a response. Of course he knows that; he’d have to be an idiot not to. In fact, Karin is probably an idiot for feeling the need to point it out to him.

However, Karin apparently doesn’t think the message got across to him, for she puts her magazine down, adjusts her glasses and glares at him. “Cool it, Sasuke. It’s just a dermatologist visit.”

And again, Sasuke already knows that, and thinks that Karin must be an idiot for feeling the need to point it out.

All the time, his heart rate increases with each passing minute that his name (or pseudonym, rather) isn’t called. Can’t that thing move any faster? he grouses silently, glaring upwards at the clock on the wall.

It’s mocking him.

He knows it is.

Chapter Text

“And so I was saying to Sora, I don’t care if the cat’s run away…”

Tsunade rubs her forehead wearily and wonders for the umpteenth time if she could get out of the bar before the woman at her side fell back to earth from the force of her punch.

Why is it that everywhere I go, I’m mistaken for someone somebody knows? Especially in the bars…

She’s not entirely sure what this woman, at least slightly tipsy (and Tsunade is herself, unfortunately, stone-cold sober), is talking about. She’s not sure just who the woman has mistaken her for. It’s not like Tsunade’s been listening at all; the only reason she understands any of what’s going on is through sheer osmosis.

Oh God, when is this going to stop…

And what am I doing, anyways? I’m a kunoichi, for God’s sake!

That being realized, Tsunade casts Kawairimi and escapes through the dumbwaiter to the upstairs.

Chapter Text

He remembers the past as drops of blood, splattering on the floor.

Gaara knows he has far to go if he wishes to be accepted. Memory lives long, after all, and too many have memory of him as a merciless killer, a savage beast. What reason do they have to accept that he has changed? What reason do they have to believe that he won’t turn on them once again and kill them all in their beds?

If Gaara sees the past as drops of blood on the floor, this is how he sees the future: the sponge that comes to scrub the blood away, drop by drop by drop.

Chapter Text

It really was supposed to be a pleasant day at the beach. Of course, pleasant days never stay pleasant for long when your part of a four-man group with a missing nin as your leader.

Karin scowls as she slings her beach bag over her shoulder. “Come on, Karin, we gotta ditch!” Suigetsu shouts from the doorway of their hotel room.

“I’m coming, you jackass, hold your horses!”

Just one day, she thinks to herself irritably as the pair of them thunder down the stairs and meet Sasuke and Juugo at the lobby. They’ve got the local authorities hot on their heels as they make their escape. Just one day without having to deal with this crap…

“GANGWAY!! COMING THROUGH!!” she screams as they barrel through the streets.

Chapter Text

Before, she had been, Sakura will admit now, pathetically weak. It felt like all she did during fights was stand off to the side and scream Naruto or more often Sasuke’s name. Good God I was useless. Half the time I didn’t even throw a kunai or shuriken. I could have at least tried to draw the enemy’s fire; that probably would have been the only thing I was good for back then.

Obviously, Sakura had eventually had a moment of clarity as regards to her uselessness, and had endeavored to become stronger. And for a time, she’d thought she’d succeeded in that regard. 

However, now it’s back to square one.

Damn it, she thinks to herself as Naruto and Sasuke go at it. What am I doing? I can level mountains for God’s sake; why am I standing off to the sidelines again?

For a moment, Sakura thinks that perhaps Naruto and Sasuke are just completely out of her weight class.

Then, she decides that she doesn’t care, walks right up to Sasuke and breaks his jaw in one fell swoop.

“No going back to before for me,” she mutters, as Sasuke keels over and Naruto stares at her in astonishment.

Chapter Text

Nagato stares around at the world around him, the rain pounding on his head and shoulders, his eyes still stinging with tears and the pain of whatever it was that made those Leaf nin keel over dead.

He can’t stay here anymore. The bodies of his parents and the enemy nin are cooling in the earth or out in the open, and he can’t stay here anymore. He can’t support himself, and stray children in Ame don’t end up in good places if they don’t keep their wits about them.

The rain is falling, obscuring everything. There is no one here who will take on another mouth to feed.

Nagato takes his first step on the road north, towards Amegakure, and finds himself fearing the unknown of the future.

Chapter Text

There is the light of stars and the moon in your veins, my sons. Did you know that? Did you know how we are all touched by powers beyond our understanding, dwelling deep within our very blood?

A new day is dawning for men, when we no longer fear what the shadows bring. The secret is in our blood, and when you are old enough, I will teach you so that you can teach all those who go beyond us.

No longer shall we be afraid.

Chapter Text

Rarely does Namikaze Minato slow down long enough to smell the roses, or anything else for that matter. Apart from being known for a jutsu that carries him across great distances in very short amounts of time, he also goes about his daily life with great speed. Never slows down for anything.

Until today, that is.

It is a startling sight indeed that gave Minato pause, and his noticing of it is why he’s walking so much more slowly now, down the street, and limping noticeably. He gets a few raised eyebrows but only gives a sheepish grin in response. He’s not repeating his tale.

Chapter Text

It occurs to Sakura, some months after Naruto leaves town with Jiraiya, that someone probably needs to be keeping an eye on Naruto’s apartment while he’s gone.

“Good grief,” she mutters when she goes to the door. “He didn’t even remember to lock it.”

Sakura opens the door, and immediately gasps.

It had occurred to her, once or twice, that Naruto was probably not the neatest person in the world. Given his personality, the idea of Uzumaki Naruto as a neat freak seemed frankly laughable. But this, this is utterly horrendous. Just look at it! Old ramen cups scattered all about the floor, newspapers everywhere, mousetraps, bits of clothing, dust bunnies! Oh Good God, it reeks!

“That’s it.” She shakes her head disgustedly. “There’s no way in Hell he’s coming back to this pigsty. I’m getting a Hazmat team.”

Chapter Text

“Oh, you’re awful.”

Kushina punctuates this sentiment with a wad of paper to the head. Minato takes this in stride as best he can, un-crumpling the paper and laying it back down on top of the stack. “Why am I awful, Kushina?” he asks mildly.

She sniffs. “Because you can order troop movements into hopeless areas without so much as breaking a sweat.”

Minato supposes he could tell her that a leader must take his losses in stride, and that weeping over lost soldiers isn’t going to bring them back like it might in fairy tales, but doesn’t. He has a feeling that she already knows that, and is just letting off steam.

Chapter Text

What Sasuke wanted most as a little boy was to have his father’s attention. Well, that and finally beat Itachi at shuriken practice, but Fugaku’s attention was important too. He fussed, he talked loudly, he strove the be the best at everything, just so he could have his father look at him and say ‘Good job.’ That wouldn’t have been too much to ask for, would it?

Sasuke sat alone in the compound, listening to the singing of birds in the trees and the moaning of wind through the branches. He shut his eyes, and could almost imagine his father sitting with him, giving him praise, advice, or just attention, attention he almost never got.

Almost.

Whenever he opened his eyes, the lie became apparent, and the illusion dispelled accordingly.

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I find myself standing betwixt the two roads, staring at each and wondering which path I should take. I have been lied to by everyone around me, and I am not sure of anything anymore. Who do I trust, who do I follow?

I’m looking for answers, and you can not be sure if I’ll like what you tell me or not. But it’s too late to worry about that now. You’ll tell me what I want to know, whether you like it or not. I’m tired of standing betwixt the two roads.

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“Your students tell me you have memory problems.”

Gai tried not to fidget as Shizune fixed him in that stern but kindly stare of hers. “I don’t know what they’re talking about. I see nothing wrong with my memory.”

Shizune was unmoved by such an explanation. She straightened her files and smiled. “Well, the testimony of your students tells me otherwise, and I have reason to believe that you may have a problem. This is why I have set you up for mnemonics classes with Doctor Hashimoto, starting tomorrow.”

For all that he was usually game for any sort of challenge, Gai had to bite back a sigh. This was going to be deadly dull, he just knew it.

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The look on Sasuke’s face could only be described as dumbfounded. Understandably enough, considering that no one expected anyone to be able to move fast enough to land a blow, let alone Karin.

But she had. And she’d done more than that. She’d punched him in the face so hard he went flying to the ground, ending up sprawled out in the mud.

Standing over him, white-lipped with rage, Karin kicked him brutally hard in the ribs for good measure. “That’s for stabbing me in the chest, you asshole!” she shrieked. She kicked him again. “And that’s for calling me useless!” Kick. “And that’s for…” And again, and again, and again.

Hovering off to the side, the four Hokages, Orochimaru, Suigetsu and Juugo stood stock-still in shock, not sure what to do. But what they all knew was that there was no way they were getting in between Sasuke and Karin’s little white foot, constantly planting itself on top of his ribs.

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Retrain.

That was the word that blasted man had used to describe his new host’s troubles coercing the Kyuubi into lending chakra. She needed to retrain him.

The Kyuubi could nearly laugh hysterically, if he still had it in him to laugh at the circumstances he found himself in. The second Uzumaki brat to imprison him in her flesh and the man who taught her how to cope with it were apparently under the impression that he, he, the Kyuubi, was some pathetic little dog or fox that needed to be beaten until it came to its masters beck and call.

They were under the impression that he was the sort of creature that heeded the call of any tyrant or usurper.

What do I expect, nowadays? These are the pathetic, ignorant creatures who didn’t even bother to ask if I had a name.

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The earth shatters beneath her fist and flies up as though propelled by a catapult. Sakura smirks.

Months upon months of training, sweat, blood and tears, all of her effort has gone into this.

Lo and behold, she is greeted with success. The earth flies up beneath her hands, and Kakashi looks as though you could have knocked him over with a breath.

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He had a position, and dignity that came with that. Tobirama had tried to beat this into his brother’s head, time and time again, but Hashirama never listened, no matter how hard Tobirama hammered the subject into his skull.

The Hokage of Konohagakure was not supposed to behave like a child, romping with said children, in fact. Tobirama shook his head at the sight of a middle-aged man rolling around in the grass with a bunch of five-year-olds. But then, unexpectedly, he smiled.

Senju Hashirama was not one for respecting his position. But at least he was making a good impression on the upcoming generation of shinobi.

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Curious the number of people you meet in this world who have odd eyebrows.

There’s Rock Lee and Maito Gai, for instance. Despite emulating the latter in all other manners of his appearance, the child’s eyebrows are quite genuinely that thick and bushy, and prominent. Much more so than pretty much anyone else in that village’s shinobi forces.

Then there’s Gaara, their extreme opposite down in the Sand Village, who has no hair on his eyebrows at all.

Yes, I, the traveler of many lands and many peoples, have seen many odd sights. But none top the bizarreness of the eyebrows of some of the people of these lands.

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“For the record,” Mei remarks acidly, “I regret everything about that incident.”

Said ‘incident’ refers to an old calendar Chojuro found in a box in the storage area in the Kirigakure government building just an hour ago. She snatches it out of his hands and shoves it unceremoniously into a waste bin by her desk. The still furiously-blushing Chojuro looks almost relieved to have the calendar taken from him, and even more relieved to be waved out of the room.

Once alone, Mei scowls and attempts to rub away an incoming headache.

Note to self: never make any decisions while teenaged, drunk, and strapped for cash. They always end badly.

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It’s difficult not to notice the way the earth is left scorched and all the plants behind it dead after the performance of the Grand Fireball. Completely obliterated, everything is, not even the slightest hint of life left behind.

That’s why Madara likes it.

Obliterate all old life, and you can create anything you like in its wake.

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“Do you think there are bodies at the bottom?”

“You would have to ask that question, Kankuro.”

“No, seriously. You can’t see to the bottom of that thing—why did they have to paint it black? There could be bodies down there.”

“Oh, idiot, that’s not paint, it’s bitumen. It’s a sealant, to keep the water from seeping out of the cistern.”

Kankuro and Temari stand over the Black Hole, as Suna’s largest cistern is (not so) affectionately referred to, eyes slightly wide. It rained recently, and they’ve never seen this particular cistern uncovered before. But good God is it massive, and Temari has to share Kankuro’s opinion, and wonder if there are bodies in that thing. It’s certainly big enough.

Kankuro looks over at his sister. “Dare you to jump in.”

“What, no! You know I can’t swim! I’d drown in a minute, especially with this fan across my back.”

“You could always take off the fan. Come on, Temari, I dare you.”

“No.”

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Sasuke’s sudden change of heart concerning wanting to destroy Konoha surprised all who cared enough to know that he’d wanted to destroy the village in the first place. This is sudden, they thought; he made the decision to kill everyone in his former hometown less than a year ago, had pursued it with such conviction, and now he’d turned back on that path?

Most who actually cared would agree that this was quite a turnaround. But anyone who knew Sasuke well would say that, given how easily manipulated he seemed to be, it wasn’t surprising that he was moved into changing his mind (even if only temporarily) by Hashirama’s words.

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“Let me set an ultimatum for you: Either you start cleaning up after yourself a bit better, or I don’t let you back in my apartment again until you do.”

Yoshino’s hands were on her hips and she glared at her boyfriend Shikaku, nodding in the direction of the kitchen sink. They had eaten a few hours ago, and Yoshino had left for work, letting Shikaku take a nap on the couch. She’d returned home to find the sink piled high with dishes instead of there being clean dishes on the drying rack.

Shikaku rolled over on the couch and shrugged.

Yoshino sighed, and promptly rolled him clean out of her apartment. She’d meant it, after all.

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“Do you think we’ll actually find something this time, Kei?”

Kei smiled slightly to hear his partner say that to him for what felt like the thousandth time. In others, such a trait might have been irritating, but he could only find it endearing. “I think so, Sora. Camp leader’s sure we’ve read the map right this time.”

Kneeling beside him in the excavation pit, sifting through the earth with his trowel, Sora puckered his lips in concentration as he hit something hard, and metallic. Kei dropped his own trowel and stared as Sora, flouting all protocol, dug his fingers into the dirt direction, trying to pry whatever it was he’d found.

Sora came up with a rusted, rectangular strip of metal. He rubbed at it with the tail of his shirt, another direct violation of protocol (not that anyone really cared; the Archaeological Association was centered far to the west and cared nothing for these far eastern lands), trying to discern any symbol on it.

After a few moments of that, Kei wordlessly held out his hands. Sora reluctantly relinquished his find, and Kei sprayed some of his water from his canteen onto the metal.

Now clearly visible were the deep grooves in the metal, fashioned in the shape of a leaf.

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“Remind me again why we’re doing this?” Neji grumbled in Tenten’s ear.

“Community service for the property damage Lee incurred when he drank that sake at Eiji’s.”

“Yes, the property damage Lee incurred. The damage Lee inflicted, all by himself. Why do we have to do this too?”

She shrugged. “Because Konoha believes in collective punishment? Hold still; the collar of your robe is crooked.”

Neji continued to grumble to himself as Tenten adjusted the collar of his choir robe. Then, the choirmaster opened the door and called for the choir members to come out onto the stage. Lee, of course, bounded forward, so enthusiastic was he, but Neji and Tenten stayed towards the back of the line.

…

“Tenten? I can’t sing.”

“Just mouth the words, then. It’s not like anyone’s going to be able to tell the difference.”

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They elected her. She’s accepted the position, been sworn in, and Tsunade still can’t believe that anyone in this village would be stupid enough to think she is Hokage material. Even less can she believe that there are enough people in Konoha who think she’d make a good leader to get her elected to the position.

And listen to me talking about “electing”, too. I didn’t even have to run for office like a town mayor would.

But that’s just it. They did elect her. They elected Tsunade to be Hokage, despite the fact that she walked out on her village, despite the fact that she’s a well-known alcoholic and gambling addict, despite the fact that she has no administrative experience of any kind, despite the fact that she’s the last person anyone sane would think of as Hokage material.

Well, I’ve got the job now, she thinks to herself gloomily, staring out on the village. It’s just before dawn, and Tsunade, who couldn’t sleep, decided she would be productive for once and came into the office early; Shizune will be so surprised. I’ve got the job, because everyone else who was better-suited to it than me is dead. The least I can do is keep the village from collapsing in on its foundations.

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For some of those driven away over crimes they did not commit, they will be able to return if and when it is discovered that they were innocent of the crimes they committed. For those who were driven out of their homes over these offenses, they have at least the hope that one day they will be able to come back.

Itachi has none of that hope.

He looks out over the rain-ruined landscape of Ame no Kuni, high and dry beneath the awning of a roadside inn, and sighs heavily.

Others have hope of exculpation, of exoneration and absolution. He has none, for the blood on his hands is real, and though he may have done it for a reason he can tell himself is just, nothing can take the blood away, and nothing can give the world of the living back his family.

This is home now. His heart may always belong to the Leaf, but this rain-soaked land is home now, and he will just have to become used to it.

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It occurred to him that if ever the children were to survive to adulthood in this world, there would be need for a school.

Tobirama never went to school himself. He did not learn his letters until he was nearly eight, and mathematics—something he never fully got a grasp of—until he was pressing fifteen. He was taught to read, write, do simple math and to fight by Hashirama, and other children of the camp. Adult tutors were difficult to come by and most could not be bothered with his education. He had survived to adulthood by a mixture of good luck and the love of his older, much more powerful brother.

However, that was then, and this is now. They are not a nomadic band of shinobi. They are a city of soldiers and civilians, sedentary, with buildings and shops and surgeries. There is need of a school, and the resources to build one.

“Let’s get to work.”

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Dear God, will he ever shut up? is Hyuuga Neji’s opinion of his future teammate when he first meets him in the schoolhouse, and that opinion stays firmly in place for the next few years.

Rock Lee is a talkative person. More than that, he’s a chatterbox who never shuts up for anyone, driving Neji to raid his uncle’s medicine cabinet for the good painkillers. This is just one of the many issues Neji has being in Lee’s presence, and is without a doubt one of the most immediately annoying.

Then, one day, he realizes that he stopped noticing it.

Well, not exactly stopped noticing it. One day, Neji realizes that he’s grown accustomed to it, and that he only gets headaches once in a while now, which is good, he supposes. Lee can yammer on, and he is mostly able to ignore him. Most of the times.

And even then, it doesn’t bother him as much as it used to.

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His eyes flitted about wildly, attempting to pry his way up through the narrow mine shaft. The young man had been climbing awkwardly for the past half hour, feeling about in the dark for footholds and praying to feel fresh air on his face once more. He hadn’t for more than a week, trapped working with the others, and now, of all times, Seiichi prayed that he would at least be able to die with the sun on his face, if it was the enemy who were up at the surface.

It seemed he climbed for hours, or even days, laboring in the dark, shaking, losing faith. Then, a cool breeze hit his face. Then, Seiichi felt hands on the back of his filthy tunic, and suddenly, the world exploded into light.

It hurt. It hurt his eyes, and his head, and his heart. He stared out at the vast blue, cold with the chill of winter still, and tears started to roll down his face.

“Seiichi?”

He recognized that incredulous voice. He recognized the symbol of the headbands of the people surrounding him, that of the Leaf. And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, Seiichi knelt to the frost-bitten ground and wept.

He was free, at last.

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It turns out that Madara’s plan can be thwarted by one simple twist of fate: namely, Obito actually dying from such a thing as having fully half of his body crushed by a boulder weighing several tons. Young Uchiha Obito dies a hero instead of living on in infamy and madness, and Uchiha Madara is left to wizen away in his underground cavern, alone, until death has taken him.

His creations can not serve the purpose a flesh-and-blood human could. Nagato can not be relied on. Even Madara’s manipulations of the Mizukage will lead nowhere. All he can do is sit in the dark, what little vitality he has left in his unnaturally lengthened lifespan dripping away, like the last ebbing and flowing of an ocean reduced to a puddle in someone’s backyard.

All this could have been avoided if he had trusted others to help him. His plan could move forward if Madara had been willing to take on an apprentice of sort at some time in the past. But no, he had to do it his way and his way alone, and no one else could be trusted to do it right.

So there’s no Obito to crash down in on him, and no reprieve for Uchiha Madara.

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Chiyo snarled as she looked over the reports, again and again and again. She would slip poison in the wells, in the food supplies, in the earth itself. Little ‘treats’ left for the enemy to find, and choke on, she reminded herself, twisting the ends of her short hair in one hand.

She’d left the poison, but the reports told her that the enemy had survived.

A medic had arisen out of the forest, a young slip of a girl riding on the backs of her ancestors’ names. No real talent except that connected to the names of her family members. She’s only gotten this far because of her name. Or maybe I have a rival now, in this girl.

Chiyo scowled. Rain or shine, Senju-brat or no, she would not be denied. Well, girly, let’s see what you’ve got.

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He considers himself the greatest of the Sage’s creations, for he has the most tails, and the most raw strength. Kurama is not cruel by nature, but he is young and youth tends to lend itself to arrogance. Combine that with power on his level, and small wonder his siblings despise him.

His father the Sage, in the little time he has to remain with his non-human children, looks upon them, looks upon Kurama, and is tempted to smile. Oh yes, these nine will be children for not much longer, but Kurama’s antics remind him of the behavior of his eldest, when he was still a boy, and it almost makes him feel young again.

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“Have you found it?”

“No, quit pressing me. He’ll wake up.”

Minato glares at his teammate, who glares right back, though to be honest, neither of them can really see the other glaring at them. They can hear Jiraiya’s loud snoring from the other room, and not for the first time curse at their sensei’s inclination towards untidiness. The living room is a mess. They’ll never find what they’re looking for at this rate.

But, then again…

“Hey, Minato.”

The other boy holds up a scroll, and Minato hurries over to inspect it. He holds it close to his eyes, under the moonlight filtering in through the open window. “Yes, this is it. It has to be.” There comes an interruption in Jiraiya’s snoring, and they cast nervous glances in the direction of the bedroom. “Come on, let’s go.”

The two dive out of the window, and make their way back towards their own homes. When Jiraiya wakes the next morning, he doesn’t notice that one of his sealing scrolls is missing, until he realizes that two of his students have suddenly become much more proficient in the art than they ought to be.

Lucky for them, he finds the whole thing rather amusing, and lets it rest.

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The words passed his lips hollowly, the words he was sure would be his doom. An alliance with the Leaf was necessary, yes, he supposed it was, but at this point, the alliance could spell the end of Suna just as easily as it could be its salvation.

I know the history and I know the past; I know that alliances with Konoha never end well for anyone. And yet, what am I to do? They could easily crush as we are; what else can I do?

The Kazekage took up a pen and wrote the words to match the ones spoken. He felt as though he was signing his soul away.

Chapter Text

“Here. Take thirty ryo and go amuse yourself.”

Jiraiya has a cold and would just like to be left alone. This seems to be the only way to make Naruto leave him be, and Naruto supposes that if he can get some extra cash out of the bargain, he’s hardly going to complain. He goes bounding out of the hotel room and into the bright, sun-drenched world in the Hi no Kuni border town they’re staying at.

Naruto looks at the coins that were so unceremoniously slapped into his hand and smirks. Someone’s forgotten that Naruto already carries a fair amount of cash on him at all times, and Naruto can only suppose that cough medicine has its uses.

Now, he has the whole day to himself. He can’t train or learn anything new, but he can do whatever else he likes.

This will be a good day.

Chapter Text

The fever has subsided, the infection has subsided, the hospital has determined that he does not need to have the transplanted eye removed, and Kakashi has been sent home. He faces the dark threshold of his little apartment with a great and weary sigh, before stepping inside.

From there, Kakashi goes straight to the bathroom mirror, yanking down his face mask and ripping off the protective eye patch the medics have insisted he wear, “just in case.” He looks at himself, gaunt and haggard and pale, and looks at what absolutely shouldn’t be there.

Obito’s eye, tomoe swirling furiously on a roiling red background.

It shouldn’t be there. It shouldn’t, it absolutely shouldn’t. It should still be in Obito’s skull, and Obito should still be here, trying to tease him or responding with fury to some imagined jibe.

But reality crashes down on Kakashi as swiftly as a boulder crashed down on Obito. His teammate is gone, and this is his now.

Best get used to it.

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I’m only fifty-four and sometimes I feel ancient beyond all recall. Most everyone I knew as a kid is dead or won’t speak to me anymore; I burned a lot of bridges when I left the village, even if I didn’t leave under the same circumstances as Orochimaru. My generation is a mostly-vanished thing, and I’m left now with a bunch of kids.

I don’t think any of my aides, with the exception of Shizune, are a day over thirty. One of them might even still be a teen; I don’t know. They were all still kids when the Third War struck. Only two of them fought in it. None of them were even alive for the Second War.

Talking to them is like talking to someone who’s just recently learned the language I’ve spoken all my life. We understand each other well enough, but there’s a disconnect. When I say things, they don’t get a certain metaphor or understand the context behind a certain phrase. I hate having to explain myself, so most of them I think walk away thinking I’m a nutso drunk. Whatever. I don’t have to explain myself to them; I just have to tell them what to bring me, what to do and when and how they’ll do it.

But I feel old. I feel like a statue covered in moss standing next to a bunch of new ones. A relic of a past time, no longer meshing with modernity. How much longer will it be before I crumble?

I don’t know.

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Izuna coughs as he stares up at the sky, laid out flat on his back. His eyebrows are singed. No, scratch that. His eyebrows are gone. It’s the rest of him that’s singed.

Izuna has been pioneering in new Fire techniques, and the results up to now have been less than promising. This one, however, this has potential.

If his lungs don’t fall to ash first. Which might be a bit more difficult than Izuna first anticipates.

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He first notices it when he sets out for the tower at his usual time, a time that would normally leave him five minutes early to work, and instead finds that he is barely on time, despite encountering little to no foot traffic, despite walking at (what seems) the same pace as he always does.

Unlike some, who shall remain nameless, Hiruzen has never feared growing older. It’s the only natural course of life, for a man to grow older. With age comes wisdom (at least for some), and Hiruzen will not attempt to stymie the natural process of his cells.

However, this is a bit inconvenient. Though Hiruzen had anticipated sagging skin and brittle bones, he hadn’t really made allowances for the thought of growing slower. I’ll just have to wake up a few minutes earlier, he thinks to himself, rubbing his fingers over the back of his opposite hand, and remember.

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He was nothing like his brother. He was petty, short-sighted and naïve. He was easily manipulated, malleable, turning himself loose on whatever force happened to draw his attention at the moment. Madara sneered as he looked at the boy, one of only two Uchiha still among the living. He was nothing like Izuna.

So why did he have to look so much like him?

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Anyone might have said that she had moonbeams in her hair, the way she looked now. Mikoto walked back towards Fugaku through the pass in the mountains—they were somewhere in the northwest of Kawa, and it was without a doubt very dry this time of year—and smiled. Fugaku, however, took one look through his Sharingan-activated eyes at her, and those little white specks in her hair, and grimaced, as he recalled something his superiors had warned him about regarding the town she’d been sent to infiltrate.

“Well, Mikoto,” he said to her in greeting, praying he’d find a way to say this that wouldn’t end with her gutting him, “either you have moonbeams in your hair, or I’d say you picked up lice in that town.”

She frowned sharply. “What?!”

Fugaku took the liberty of pulling one of the white specks off of her hair and holding it up so she could see.

Mikoto took one look at it and swore like he hadn’t known she could swear.

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They had been hoping for something like symbiosis, the people who first devised a way to seal spirits into hosts. Not just bijuu, but spirits of any kind. It didn’t work, not at first; the human host died and the spirit would roam free after that, wishing to possess a host only on its own terms.

Eventually, a seal had been perfected, a new one to replace the one the Sage had used, the seal that was forever lost to time. This seal would hopefully not result in the death of the host, and said host would be able either to cage the beast or use its power, in exchange for a living space for the beast and the expansion of sentient thought.

Symbiosis indeed, though neither the host nor the beast would have ever called the other anything but a parasite.

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They give him the reports he requested, the things that tell him what he wished, and did not wish, to know. Orochimaru’s activities, his whereabouts, investments he’s made… Hiruzen sighs, looking the papers over.

All of this points to one thing. Orochimaru is hiding something, several things, probably, and what he’s been doing, whatever it is he’s been doing, is almost certainly illegal. Whatever he’s been doing has almost certainly resulted in the deaths of many.

Hiruzen sees all this, and he knows the action that he logically ought to take. But he remembers the small boy who was once under his care, the boy who found a snake skin by his parents’ graves, and he stays the order. Not yet, he tells himself, not yet.

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Shikamaru creeps down the stairs as quietly as he possibly can, barely daring to breathe. He has risen unusually early, and not bothered to shower (he’ll go over to Choji’s for that, if he has to), for the express purpose of getting out of the house because, well… Well, it’s because he’s in trouble with his mom.

Nara Yoshino is not what anyone would call a particularly easygoing woman, though in this case, she probably has good reason to be upset. After all, her fifteen-year-old son, though he has never shown any particular amount of drive, has gotten himself reprimanded at work for showing up late too many days out of a month, and any concerned mother who wanted her child to do well in the world would be irritated to discover such.

For himself, Shikamaru doesn’t see what the big deal is, thus the creeping to avoid her. He pauses by the doorway to get his shoes. He gets the left one on. Then the right.

“Shikamaru, don’t think you can avoid this conversation.”

Shikamaru groans. She came up out of nowhere behind him, and he turns around and can quite clearly see Yoshino glaring down at him, arms folded across her chest as she pounds the floor with one foot.

Busted.

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“What do you want?”

“I want to be stronger.”

“Oh? Why do you want to be stronger?”

There comes a pause, a licking at the lips. Then, Sakura decides to Hell with it and goes on to spill her guts. “Because I couldn’t contribute anything meaningful to our fights! They were the ones who fought. They were the ones who won. The best I could ever do was throw a kunai or shuriken once in a while. A lot of the times the only way I could help them was by staying out of their way!”

Tsunade’s lips twitch in what looks like contempt, and Sakura feels a sharp curl of anger spike on her tongue. Of course Tsunade has never felt like Sakura does now, great golden beauty who can level mountains and heal the wounded away from the point of death. But when Tsunade speaks, Sakura wonders if she hasn’t got her pegged completely wrong. “Alright. But why don’t you decide to be stronger for yourself, instead of becoming stronger just for the benefit of other people?”

Cautiously, Sakura nods. Tsunade smiles, and waves her on.

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Admiral Ryuunosuke, being the commander of Kirigakure’s flagship, before now liked to think that he was going places. Alright, so maybe he didn’t know what those places were, exactly, but he was going places. He hadn’t imagined that in this first great war between the shinobi nations, Kiri would find itself limping home at the close of the war, her ships burned and wounded, her shinobi in disgrace.

But then, Ryuunosuke never imagined a lot of things.

It’s late, and his second has taken over watch so the commanding officer can spare some small hours of sleep. He turns the corner on the rocking boat and comes across a man huddled against some crates, a thick tarp pulled over him.

“Sailor?” Ryuunosuke’s voice turns stern as he goes to the man and wrenches the tarp away from him. “Sailor, return to your post.”

In the dark, the last thing Ryuunosuke sees is a flashing of red eyes before all the world becomes a haze, and the last thing he hears is “I do not answer to you, stripling. Quite the opposite.”

Chapter Text

Nagato dying had freed her, in a way. Freed Konan from the burden of caring for him and the guilt that made her stay by his side, even on the days when he did not know her face and she was sure she didn’t know him anymore.

That might seem cruel, or callous. She might tell this tale to others only to have them shake their heads and wonder how she could ever really have cared about him, if she feels relief at his death.

But Nagato died in the heart and in the head long before he died in his body. Caring for him was like maintenance and preservation of a corpse, and the way he would look at her sometimes, like she was nothing more than a stranger caring for him, made her heart wither in her chest.

At the very least, living only for herself and her own wants, Konan can resuscitate her dead spirit, and find some semblance of peace.

Chapter Text

Let me guess. You assumed that since I was from the cadet branch and she from the Main family, that we hated each other, or at the very least that I hated her. Or you might have assumed that we were secretly lovers, despite there being absolutely no evidence lending itself towards this conclusion.

Allow me to disabuse you.

Yes, the girl is of the Main family, and I from a cadet branch. Yes, I belong to an under-class constantly oppressed by the group that she, thanks to an accident of birth, belongs to. But no, I do not hate her, nor am I secretly in love with her. That’s not how it goes, and you’ve been reading too many bad romance novels. Now leave me alone; I’ve got work to do.

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He becomes aware that he is declining in his old age, and immediately does his best to reject the notion. He, Shimura Danzo, is growing frail in old age? Fah! Out of all the veteran shinobi in the village, he is by far the least likely to be giving into the frailties of old age. He, who has kept in shape all these years, he who has kept his physical and mental faculties sharp as a new kunai, he who…

He who has tripped over a stray slipper on his way down the hall to his kitchen, and landed flat on his face.

Fortunately, Danzo was not physically harmed by this incident, and has only a near-fatally wounded ego to deal with. He does not let the incident slow him down, but perhaps old age really is something he needs to watch out for.

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Over time, though it remains to this day less than a hundred years since the village was founded, many things are forgotten about the first Hokage. It’s forgotten that he was a humble man. It’s forgotten that the business of him taming all nine bijuu was tall tale and not fact from the start; if he were alive still, he’d consider the taming of the Kyuubi to be his crowning achievement. It’s forgotten that he couldn’t do everything, and it’s forgotten that he was not a fount of utter power as some claim.

But the most remarkable thing of all?

It’s finally been forgotten what an utter dork the first Hokage was.

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Her body looks small. In Suna, among the Kazekage’s people at least, the bodies of the dead aren’t tampered with, apart from being cleaned, before burial; they must be buried quickly.

Karura is paler and smaller in death, though she had been small in life and her skin had grown waxen. Her husband looks upon her, cold skin thin as paper, bones standing out everywhere from her poor limbs, hair lank. Immaculately clean, arrayed for death.

This all seems unreal. She seems a stranger to him, a different woman. But then, she had said the same, when this all started.

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Naruto’s penchant for high places was well-known. That he also especially enjoyed perching on top of the statue of the head of the Fourth Hokage, carved into the mountain, was well-known too.

No one quite knew why he loved high places so much. Maybe he was displaying a sense of pragmatism suitable to a shinobi—get up on the highest spot in the area and you’re more likely to be able to spot oncoming enemies. Maybe he had a need for the adrenaline rush that only being very high up off the ground could provide. Maybe he was just a raging egomaniac and needed to feel bigger than everyone else.

Whatever the reason Naruto had a love for high places, those who were in the know considered it amusing that he was most likely to indulge that love by standing atop his father’s head.

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Shizune cringed as she looked over the bill Tsunade had brought back to their hotel room, crushed in her fist as she collapsed onto the couch. Shizune had had to pry it out of Tsunade’s tightly clenched fingers, and then gently smooth it out so she could read it.

Tsunade had gone drinking again; that much went without saying. She reeked of alcohol. But this… Oh dear God, this! She’d spent every bit of cash they had on sake! How was she not dead, or at least comatose?!

None of these questions could Shizune answer. Tsunade’s grandfather had been a medical anomaly, and perhaps she herself was anomalous in some ways. But needless to say, after that night Shizune controlled the purse strings from then on.

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“You need to take this medicine.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“I disagree. You’ve been ill for well nigh a week now, and the physician is insisting. So am I.”

“Mito, I really don’t need to take that medicine.”

At this, Mito smiles beatifically, and Hashirama bites back a sigh.

He knows that smile. He’s been married to her long enough to know that smile. Being the politician, diplomat and expert haggler that she is (seriously, there’s a reason Hashirama lets Mito have full rein on all the trade negotiations with merchants and guilds; even when she doesn’t get what she came looking for Mito still finds a way for things to benefit Konoha). Yes, he knows that smile. That’s the “Alright, I’m done playing nice” smile. That’s the “I’ve been patient, but now I’m digging my heels in and won’t leave until you do as I say” smile.

In short: he’s doomed.

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Anyway you look at it, this plan of Itachi’s was doomed to failure.

Perhaps it’s because he was a mentally-unbalanced thirteen-year-old that had just been ordered to carry out the execution of his entire family that he thought that the best way to assure that his brother would live well in the village was to teach him hate so he’d come after him and kill him. If so, we can probably grant him something of a “Okay, we understand why your plan was so stupid. It’s still stupid, but we understand that you probably couldn’t think of anything better at the time.”

However, as the years wore on and Itachi, while he did not grow any less mentally-unbalanced, did get a little bit smarter and a little more aware of human nature, did not re-evaluate the plan, we’re not so inclined as we were to say that we understand why he acted the way he did. All we can say is that he should have known better.

At least he had the grace not to say that he didn’t understand what went wrong when he found out how his brother turned out.

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Hinata sighed. She’d over-spiced the stew again. Father never complained; he never complained about the quality of the food whenever it was one of his daughters cooking. However, she just had to take one sip of it to know that drinking a whole bowl of this would be enough to give her a head-ache, never mind what it would do to her father.

Do I start over? She wondered to herself, biting her lip. Should I just make something different? Should I simply serve it, and not say anything?

This felt like so many of the other struggles she’d had in her life, over things not nearly so trifling as stew. Struggling to figure out what she should do, whether she should stand on her own behalf or simply weather any criticism that might come her way with a bowed head and a demure “I’m terribly sorry.” That was how Hinata had dealt with things until now.

However, that just wasn’t good enough anymore.

It seemed such a strange and trivial thing to have a breaking point mental discussion over, but Hinata was decided. She would take the stew to supper, making no attempt to hide that it was perhaps over-spiced. She’d take any criticism that came her way, either the harmless from her sister or the less-than-harmless from one of the elders. But she was not going to be ashamed of such a simple mistake.

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“Are you totally without a conscience?”

It was not the first time Hidan had been asked such a question, and he figured that considering how long he’d be alive, it probably wouldn’t be the last. The one asking that question now looked exactly like the last one; two parts fury and two parts fear, eyeing Hidan’s scythe with anything but relish.

For himself, Hidan would give the same explanation he always gave.

“No. But I’m in a hurry, and honestly, you’re really obnoxious.”

Chapter Text

Sometimes, common sense can be in such short supply.

Kurenai looks at her genin and sighs, knowing that she’d gotten probably the three most sensible genin in her year, and that still, they pulled something like this.

“Gentlemen. Lady. Can we recall why we do not use kunai to nail posters to electrical poles for D-Rank missions?”

“Because someone might steal them,” the three recite tonelessly.

“And why is it important that we not allow anyone to steal our kunai?”

“Because kunai are available only in limited supplies,” the three recite, still quite tonelessly, staring straight ahead, voices flat. “And because a single kunai stolen provides an advantage to our enemy.”

Kurenai nods. “Good, I’m glad we’ve made that clear. I hope that this means that next time, you’ll remember to bring push-pins?” If you’re ever allowed on this sort of D-Rank again, she adds mentally.

“Yes, Kurenai-sensei.” There’s a bit more life to their voices this time, perhaps sensing that a reprieve is at hand.

“Good.”

God, deliver common sense into the heads of my genin. Please.