Uchibi Sasuke by Laryna6

This was originally posted to a forum as kind of an experiment. Normally, as a straight woman, I write what I like, and obviously my idea of fanservice is hot guys. Since I was trying to write for an audience, I did some stuff to imitate the site's sense of humor and obsession with certain bits of fat. Ah, men. Since I don't know if I'll be able to continue the plot there was going to be, especially when I have so many fics to finish, I'm posting it here as a series of crack slices-of-life in the 'verse.

Future Okami crossover.

Shiroi no Naga, Naga the White Serpent, is the title of Naga from the Slayers OVAs. Yeah. Incidently, Lina's mage title is "Lina the Pink," which may explain her homicidal tendencies…

The two people that Uchiha Sasuke hated most in the world were Uchiha Itachi, for obvious reasons, and a distant relative named Uchiha Ryuzaki.

He had probably met Ryuzaki before the massacre, since he had lived in the compound, but he hadn't even made enough of an impression for Sasuke to remember his name. No, the reason he hated Ryuzaki and all his despicable kind was because of the day a few weeks after the massacre when he had finally managed to get the scum's daughter Shinobu to tell him why she had such horrible screaming nightmares and didn't deal with them by crawling into or under his bed for protection the way all the others did.

For one blinding, rage-filled instant, he had been glad Itachi killed every single person older than him in the clan. Because that included Uchiha Ryuzaki, and he might even have died screaming the way scum like that deserved.

Ever since that day, the types of people Sasuke hated most were traitors and perverts.

And everyone wanted to get their filthy hands on the Uchiha orphans, and that filth Danzo especially kept eyeing them. Sasuke always had them line up and count off after he left the compound, just in case he'd tried to steal one again.

People kept cooing over the poor little dears and giving them candy, and Uchiha Mikoto had made sure her son knew what happened to little boys who went home with strangers with candy. They got their eyes ripped out.

But there was something even more horrible than that.

Sasuke hated the blood-soaked compound. But it had walls, and he could keep the others away from the people who wanted to make the children think they were nice and ask to be adopted by them. He watched the nurses and guards the Hokage sent very closely, to the point his training suffered, and after the third one turned out to be working for some group on the side he barred all non-family members from the clan grounds and told the Hokage that as clan head he was demanding the Anbu stay outside just in case any of them were peeping toms like the one in the dog mask who kept reading what Sasuke knew was porn.

Sasuke hated Itachi more than anything for killing everyone and sticking him with eighteen kids from six to six months. He had to get stronger, to protect them both from Itachi and the village.

But between paperwork, cooking, patrolling, tutoring, repairing the damage from their tantrums (no, he was not their mother), there was just not enough time in the day.

He only had two hands and was born the wrong gender and the wrong clan to master Eyes In The Back Of The Head no Jutsu, the ultimate skill of mothers and Hyuuga.

And part of the bargain was that he had to act as clan head if he was going to claim he was capable of looking after them all, and that included taxes. Which involved math.

Between stress, sleep deprivation, and percentages the young man called 'Uchibi Sasuke' behind his back might have gone off the deep end even sooner than his canon counterpart if it weren't for one thing.

Uzumaki Naruto.

As a general rule Sasuke neither knew nor cared about the names of his classmates. Only his early training enabled him to make it in before the bell rang, and he was out as soon as it rang again so he could round up all the others (the academy made a good day care) and do the shopping on the way home.

The one person whose name he knew was Naruto, because Naruto made damn sure everyone knew his name.

Sasuke's parents were dead, and unable to tell him to stay away from the demon brat. He didn't listen to anyone else anyway, with the grudging exception of the Sandaime, who was tentatively marked down as maybe half-decently trustworthy. Maybe.

Not being a fool, Sarutobi made sure no one who might tell Sasuke caught him reading Icha Icha.

On that particular day, Sasuke had left class early when an Anbu had stopped by to report that Uchiha Shigure had broken his leg climbing a tree (Konohamaru had dared him) and was running to the hospital carrying the day's bentos (after the third attempt to drug them, he didn't let his cousins' food out of his sight) when Naruto ran into him.

Now, in Sasuke's defense, Naruto had done this deliberately, since he knew how everyone made a big fuss about the Uchiha and boxes being spilled everywhere on top of that would make a good distraction. So he really was asking for it.

Sasuke had let his taijutsu grades slip and was only doing enough of the homework to avoid being held back. However, he was special jounin level in capturing and subduing brats who needed to be given a Time Out by being pinned to the wall with kunai.

Iruka, the Anbu, and the truant officers all dropped their jaws, amazed by how easily he had vanquished the fox brat and wished they could hire him right then and there.

As they watched in awe Sasuke kept grinding Naruto's face into the food strewn all over the road and informing him that he, Uchiha Sasuke, did not need his, Uzumaki Naruto's bullshit and if Naruto did not personally replace every single one of those bentos he had ruined by the time Sasuke got back from the hospital and his immature, idiotic behavior made Sasuke's little cousins miss lunch then Sasuke would gut him, roast him, and slice him up for sandwich meat as he screamed.

For the first time in his life, Naruto regretted (part of) a prank. Painting the Hokage monument was one thing (a wonderful idea, that's what it was), but making a fellow orphan go hungry was another.

Iruka let him go after he promised to buy the food, hoping he'd learn from this.

"What is this?" Sasuke demanded when he got back, after yelling at the instructor who should have been keeping an eye on his cousin.

Naruto looked at the moldy rice, wilted seaweed, and three-week-old fish that made up the bentos and didn't see a problem with it. That was what all bentos were like, in his experience. That was why ramen was the best food.

"Are you trying to poison them, you dobe? Look at the sell-by date!"

"Sell-by-date?"

Now, harsh experience had forced Sasuke to learn to identify the innocent look and become aware that no, kids didn't know the things 'everyone knew' unless someone told them. Naruto watched, amazed, as Sasuke took a deep breath and withdrew into a simmering rage. It was the first time anyone but Old Man Hokage had believed Naruto when something really wasn't his fault. "Yes, sell-by date. See this here? You shouldn't buy anything after the sell-by date. Who sold you these?" Who was really responsible for trying to stick his cousins with expired food that would have forced Sasuke to stay up all night as they threw it up?

It was one thing to sell expired food to the fox brat. It was another to have the head of the Uchiha clan in full regalia storming in and demanding an explanation for something that, under Konoha law, could be considered an outright attack on his clan.

The public outrage and the fines the council levied forced him out of business and when Sasuke picked up the children and headed home that day he also dragged Naruto along on the shopping trip and showed him how to tell if food was good or not.

Even with Sasuke's specialized skill set it took time to make those bento, and Naruto was not getting out of replacing them.

As Naruto kept his word and Sasuke thought happily of the extra fifteen minutes he'd be able to sleep in the next morning the children swarmed the new person, telling him how to make their bento and saying how much they admired his pranks.

The distraction actually allowed Sasuke to get caught up with his carefully-calculated minimum amount of homework, and he graciously allowed Naruto to stay and do his as Sasuke supervised the children doing theirs.

The children were amazed at a bigger kid who knew less than they did and Naruto ended up with seventeen tutors.

And the eighteen members of the Uchibi clan ended up with a math tutor. Naruto didn't know anything about geometry, but he had a head for figures and could pick them up quickly.

It was the first time in his life someone had said he was good at school stuff. He had people looking up to him. No one had called him any names and he wasn't being chased out. Naruto kept pinching himself when no one was looking

When Naruto asked if he please could come back tomorrow, Sasuke's reaction could be summed up as, 'Sure you can, my new cook and babysitter.' Not wanting to endanger his new happiness, Naruto did everything he could to be indispensable, from making everyone's favorites to playing ninja. From dusting to acting as Sasuke's training dobe.

Sasuke, after the first night he'd had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep since the massacre, offered Naruto a job. Naruto was even more stunned. You could get paid for being in heaven?

It was when Naruto took over as Sasuke's accountant that Sasuke began to wish Naruto had been born a girl. Because, according to what little the young boy knew about male-female relations, then Sasuke could marry her and the kids would have a mother. And marriage meant his new labor-saving device, defender against the cursed tax forms, and favorite person in the whole wide world would never, ever be able to leave. And he wasn't alone in feeling this way

Thus it was that Sasuke the pervert-hater and the rest of the Uchibi clan became responsible for the creation of the third-most perverted jutsu of all time.

While adequate sleep, completing his homework and sparing-playing with the chibis and his training dobe Naruto allowed Sasuke to become top of the class (he never caught up in book work all the way, but his now-jounin-level child-grabbing and related skills made him first at the practical), Naruto still flunked.

Oh, he did okay in bookwork, because Naruto wouldn't want to lose the admiration of the Uchibi Army (and Sasuke would have kicked his ass) and the teachers couldn't miss-mark pages that someone would be going over with Naruto to see what he had done wrong. And he came in second in taijutsu – inevitable, since Sasuke had started at such a young age and training together at the same pace had allowed him to keep slightly ahead.

But Sasuke didn't know how to identify problems caused by too much chakra, let alone teach Naruto how to deal with it, and so while Naruto knew quite a few other jutsu he still couldn't climb trees or do a bunshin.

Secretly, Sasuke was happy Naruto hadn't graduated. On the one hand, Naruto was his friend. On the other, this meant he would be staying in Konoha while Sasuke was on missions, looking after the children and threatening to kill anyone who looked at them funny. He could have made a fuss. Naruto didn't ask him to. He wanted to graduate on his own.

He did.

The next morning, Sasuke watched a small army of Narutos fighting the small army of Uchibi (soon joined by the Konohamaru Corps) while other Narutos cooked, cleaned, and worked on the construction of all the booby traps he and Naruto had been planning on adding to the estate's defenses as soon as they had a chance. He realized that only one thing could make this any better. "Hmm, can you henge your bunshin? That would be useful."

Sasuke had lost his mother at a young age. So the sight of dozens of buxom bikini-clad (there were children present) women taking care of everything and wanting to do things for him was just too much for the boy.

The Uchibis stopped and stared. "Wow."

"You got Sasuke?" They crowded around the pool of blood on the floor.

"Wow." Just wow: that was the majority response.

"Nee-chan, is Ni-san a pervert?" Sasuke was ni-san or aniki (regular big brother or big brother/boss): Naruto was Ni-chan or Nee-chan (big brother or sister).

"I… I, Uzumaki Naruto, have created the ultimate jutsu! In your face, Sasuke!" The… other movements that occurred when Naruto punched the air knocked out two others.

After the Hokage managed to convince Sasuke that this was a normal part of growing up, he wasn't a pervert and shouldn't commit seppuku, Naruto took to staying in female form a lot to taunt him. Sasuke, not being an idiot, kept Naruto from figuring out that he really didn't mind. Really.

He would have felt a bit bad about yielding to the desire to wage a subtle campaign of psychological warfare to get Naruto to stay female permanently, since he'd already picked out his future wife, if it weren't for the fact clan heads were allowed more than one wife.

Harem no Jutsu, indeed.

Everyone knew that once he came of age, Sasuke would be Konoha's most sought-after bachelor. Not only was he rich, handsome, a skilled ninja and so on, but he was also was trailed by lots of adorable coo-inducing chick magnets and would clearly be an awesome father.

Sasuke had one criterion for his future wife: be a female Uzumaki Naruto.

Failing that, they had to be unconnected to any of the clans, because the clans wanted to absorb the Uchiha, especially the Hyuuga. They also had be responsible, get along well with children, and above, all, be a skilled enough ninja to kill anyone, Itachi or pervert, who attacked the compound while Sasuke was away.

Now, good female ninja were rare these days, and most of them were only good since they got clan training. Someone being good without any obvious powerful backing was suspicious, and Tenten was out since Sasuke had heard of Gai.

So, he was probably going to have to train up one himself, he decided while trying to stay awake during a council meeting. However, if he showed interest in anyone female, then certain people (he looked at Danzo as he thought that) would try to get their claws into her.

So, he needed a decoy. He knew just the person.

No one as paranoid as Uchiha Sasuke would have missed someone skulking around his compound. Once he got the drop on Hyuuga Hinata and got the story out of her, however, he totally understood. From how the Hyuuga had tried to get him to fire Naruto (as well as everyone else) they seemed to think he was a bad influence, and it wasn't like he'd let his children be around a bad influence either. So he'd let Hinata join the training fights and so on, because it got him another free babysitter, and if Naruto was going to marry someone else it would be someone he approved of.

However…

Her father would have thrown a fit if Hinata had started making heart-shaped bentos and experimenting with makeup for the sake of Uzumaki Naruto. Uchiha Sasuke was another matter entirely, and if Naruto just happened to be there, and ate most of the food, and looked at Hinata worriedly when he saw shadows under her eyes and ask if she was getting enough sleep…

Well, what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. For now.

And they seemed to be a good influence on her.

The Uchiha giving in and probably letting the Hyuuga reabsorb them one day was big news. Compared to that, no one noticed Sasuke giving the only student better academically than him a job as tutor (with emphasis on manners and girl stuff) to the Uchibis, and also having her help with their physical training.

It wasn't the business of outsiders if she'd been given access to the Uchiha jutsu library as well as the etiquette books.

Thus began the legend of Shiroi no Sakura, Sakura the White Serpent, mistress of a thousand jutsu, who would earn the title of 'The Professor' by following in the footsteps of the Third Hokage, and her epic rivalry with Orochimaru.

Best described by Naruto: "It's the battle of the jutsu-freak snake perverts! Winner gets Sasuke's body!"

However, Sasuke's plan to have Sakura watch the house when he and Naruto were gone (Hinata's father wouldn't let her), was ruined when she not only graduated as well but was assigned to the same genin team, meaning she'd be absent exactly when they were.

The negotiations had been a bit delicate. The Hokage had wanted Naruto to be trained by his father's student so he'd have a chance at fair treatment, the council had insisted on Sasuke being trained by the very same sharingan-wielder, and having Hinata on the team (third in taijutsu) would have made it too unbalanced, but her father didn't want Sasuke to be around another girl all the time who might try to win him away from Hinata.

The girl everyone had assumed was Naruto's girlfriend seemed safe enough.

All hail orange, the great anti-angst. It does indeed help mood (part of why a lot of product packaging is orange), boost appetite & give people headaches if they look (glare) at it too long. Between that and it being weight training for stealth, it's the perfect color for a young Naruto.

Growing up, Naruto was protected from the scorn and hatred of the village by three people: the third Hokage, Orange-sama, and Ramen-sama.

The village of Konoha wasn't exactly Shinto, but there were no atheists in foxholes. Many people had shrines to various deities, all the way from Amaterasu to the God of Kunai (please don't let them hit me, please don't let them hit me…). Not to mention a great deal of tree spirits, since this was Konoha, after all.

Since no one wanted to sell him anything good, ramen was the one thing that Naruto could always count on to be warm, filling, and not make him sick. In a world where people were cold and cruel, ramen could always be counted on and so could Old Man Ichiraku. Naruto was chased out of any other shrine he entered, but he was always welcome at the temple of the really great god Ramen.

As for orange, while ramen was only there when he could get to Ichiraku's or he spent a whole three minutes praying for its blessing, orange was with him always. Whenever he was around orange, everything seemed brighter. Even the ramen tasted better. People noticed him more. And, just like all food besides ramen was terrible, so were all clothes that weren't orange. It was the clothes he was allowed to buy that were orange that didn't have holes or other problems (being orange was considered bad enough). Orange always made sure he was warm and cozy.

Other people might say that orange was a bad color, but that was because they were jealous that Orange liked him better.

Orange even let him know who the bad people were: it gave people who glared at him headaches and made them look away.

"It makes you too easy to spot, dobe," Sasuke repeated.

"Yeah! So if I can hide wearing orange, then I'm really good, right?" Naruto grinned.

Sasuke thought about this for a minute and not only let Naruto order his new 'respectable' clothing from the ninja tailor the Uchiha had always used in orange as well as the Uchiha colors of red and black but also suggested a training outfit in orange with weights.

He was considering ordering stealth practice outfits for the children (in a fiery red-orange, not actually orange), when the Hokage came over to see how everything was doing and Naruto showed him how cool the formal kimono had come out.

It wasn't until graduation and finding out about the Kyuubi that Sasuke realized why the Hokage's face had gone cold when he saw the fox pattern. Although it had been very suspicious when he'd 'accidently' wrecked it and given Sasuke access to his own personal tailor.

Sasuke's had never been heard from again.

Training the Uchibi army and figuring out scenarios with Sasuke had taught Naruto about specialization. So, since he now had his own army of Kage Bunshins and could henge them into the right type of gear and so on, he needed to think about what type of squads would work best for what.

Since Harem no Jutsu was such a powerful technique, that of course had to be one of the first he worked on. Or no, protecting his precious people came first.

Using their flashyness to grab attention and status as knockouts to knock out anyone who saw them (stunning, literally) while keeping them too busy to notice what else they were doing, Division 2 of the Awesome Kage Army, the Orange Bombshells only became more enthralling when Naruto figured out how to do genjutsu.

Although it wasn't until he got his summon contract and with it a way to allow them to survive multiple hits and become practical as meatshields instead of sacrifices that the first AKA division, the bodyguard specialist Knights of the Holy Ramen reached their full potential.

As a Hyuuga, Hinata's life had been set ahead of her. She would either become clan head and live to serve the clan, to the point of letting someone the elders picked sire her children, or be given the caged bird seal and still serve the clan the way her Uncle and Neji-ni-san did.

She didn't know if she wanted Hanabi to be given the seal, so maybe she should stay weak, for her sake…

The Hyuuga were very traditional. A traditional Japanese good girl was gentle, and shy, and devoted to others. That was not a good ninja. The more Hinata's father told her she was bad, the harder she had always tried to be good. The more he hurt her, the less able to bear the idea of hurting others she became.

If she defied him, he yelled at her. If she didn't defy him, he yelled at her. There was no way for her to win.

But there was someone who kept trying no matter what. Her inspiration, the light of her life.

Uzumaki Naruto.

In the face of the hatred of everyone, he persevered. No matter how he was smacked down he always got up again. Naruto was the bravest, strongest, kindest… best person in the world. Naruto was a bright, orange, warm sun, shining upon even her. A beacon, a sign that she could do it. If that light ever went out…

Most young girls dream of their life and future happiness. Hinata knew that her life wasn't worth dreaming about.

Many ninja dreamed instead of their death, how it would be epic. Protecting the village, killing their enemy…

Hinata couldn't be Naruto's bride. If she even crept up to him and told him she liked him, he would, oh, he would be so happy (she hoped) and her father would find out and things would become even worse for him. Or what if he tried to help her, break her free of this fate? She would die before ever hurting Naruto, her most precious person.

So when she saw him sitting alone on the swing and aching, when she ached to go to him, she dreamed that one day she would prove to him, without any doubt, that someone loved him. Someone saw him as precious and worth protecting and admiring and…

So she dreamed of laying down her life for him, an offering to him. For Naruto to be alive and happy because of her? There was nothing that could make her happier.

Most young ninja girls read books about ninja defending princesses and imagined themselves as the princesses, the ones being protected.

Unlike them, Hinata wanted to be a ninja. Naruto even had golden hair, and shining blue eyes, oh, if only she could lift the clouds of sadness from them!

If only she could have been his friend instead of Uchiha Sasuke. Oh! Naruto was coming out of the compound now! She'd know his voice anywhere as he called out for the mask guys to gather.

Activating her eyes and straining her ears, she saw that Sasuke had come out as well as Naruto. "Okay, time to test my pervert detecting jutsu!"

"Anyone who fails this test will be barred from coming anywhere near my compound," Sasuke informed the Anbu. He was carrying a book: she looked closer and saw it was one of the medic-nin books.

"Alright, here we go! Sexy no jutsu!"

While Naruto and Sasuke were too young to really know what they were doing, Hinata had been in an incredibly stressful home since birth, something that causes girls to mature faster. That was the reason for her early period and the following… rapid and sizeable development.

Peeking under Naruto's clothes (accidental! She swore!) had made her blush. Seeing a bright, bubbly, happy Naruto with long golden hair and absolutely no clothes covering her soft, shapely body blowing a kiss at her (or in her direction, at least)?

Naruto had already been able to make Hinata swoon. This gave her her first nosebleed.

Oblivious to the non-Anbu spectator, Naruto pumped her fist. "Awesome! How accurate is it this time?"

"Accurate enough." Sasuke scowled at the bodies. "According to the book this version is too big there." He looked at Naruto's chest.

"Yeah, and according to my research, this works better." Naruto folded her arms under them and then they became his arms again. Sasuke tried not to feel disappointed. "Let's go find some more perverts to test it out on!"

Is there anyone here who hasn't read Terry Pratchett's Night Watch?

There's a bit about Lord Vetinari, tigers, and ultimate camouflage. Yeah.

Orange rules. I hate how way too many fics can't have Naruto be badass without making him cease to be Naruto. There are good fics that have Naruto suddenly think that emo colors that actually aren't good for camo either are cool and dislike ramen, but most of them make me feel like Naruto has been replaced by some unholy combination of him and Sasuke, perhaps even with mpreg involved.

"But when we get the bells, who goes back to the academy?"

Sasuke just gave him a look. Sakura raised her hand in the air and waved it a bit. Um, hello? Wasn't that obvious? "I need six more months of kata at least until I want to be in actual danger. We're just genin, or not even genin yet, I don't want to be trying to dodge and strategize at the same time." Katas meant her body would mostly do it for her. "And I haven't finished with the D-rank jutsu yet." She still had the entire collection of D-rank suiton jutsu to memorize, and then she needed to start figuring out which ones to actually learn to use first, and…

Anyway, "It'll all be material I've seen before, so I'll have plenty of time to study."

"You don't mind going back to the academy?" Naruto scratched at the back of his head. He couldn't figure out if being self-sacrificing was a girl thing (Hinata was that way too) or… he'd worked so hard to graduate, but he could kind of see why Sakura didn't consider giving up a bell as a sacrifice.

"It's the intelligent thing to do. Have fun painting fences. Normally genin teams have three members, but it's obvious they assigned the Copy-Cat Ninja to us because they want Uchiha-san to be taught to use his sharingan-"

Sasuke snorted, arms folded.

Sakura continued, "So he might actually want to flunk both of us if possible and have Uchiha-san," she wasn't going to call her boss Sasuke-kun, and the less familiar she was the more he liked her, "as an apprentice. If you go back to Iruka's class because of me you'd be bored stiff and he wouldn't be happy with me," and part of her job was dealing with the school faculty when it came to the Uchibi's grades and so on, "And you might not get another chance until we figure out why you can do kage bunshin all day and can't do a real bunshin to save your life. Or save your chance to become Hokage."

"Maybe we should deliberately flunk." Sasuke didn't want to get stuck with a disrespectful pervert who kept a clan head waiting for hours, especially when his only claim to fame was having committed grave robbery at some point.

"That's probably what he wants us to do." The only way the eraser could have hit him was if he'd let it.

Or maybe he just was that incompetent. Team Seven, over their association with Hatake Kakashi, often found themselves wondering that.

"So, harem no jutsu, or…"

"We know he's a pervert."

"You two are the perverts," Sakura muttered under her breath.

One of Sasuke's many tests had been exposing her to Naruto's infamous jutsu. Sakura's only response had been a glare and saying that if she was going to have to put up with perversion she'd better get a pay raise. Sakura was one of those rare people who was almost entirely straight, so akin to the rulers she wielded with an expert hand when sketching out kunai trajectories and booby trap diagrams that even bouncy bubbly blondeness had no effect.

Now, if that tasteless, excessive flab and lack of muscle had been replaced by lean, firm, prime male ninja stock? If instead of a bunch of walking sterotypes and insults to kuniochidom she'd been confronted by naked Sasukes, then Sakura would have been out like a light. Luckily, Naruto and Sasuke were boys and hadn't quite figured out there were differences besides the physical yet. The idea that someone might have a sex drive and consider boobies unattractive flabby lumps of flesh that needed to be covered up and decorated in order to look half-decent hadn't yet penetrated.

Once, Naruto had a crush on Sakura. She had rejected him because he was too nice.

For women like her, love was intertwined with respect. To her, it had seemed as though Naruto was a weakling trying to suck up to her so she'd like him, someone so pathetic he couldn't even make a single friend. Ding went the poser alert.

Someone who sucked-up to others was weak. A weak ninja was a failure, and all their mothers had told him to stay away from boys that would only die gory deaths and break their hearts. No, Sakura wanted a man.

Sasuke didn't suck up to anyone. He never pretended to like anyone, male or female. He didn't see it as worth the effort. So, his fangirls knew, that meant that if one day he said he liked them he would actually mean it.

Sasuke had picked her. That meant that he actually viewed her as possessing some value. The strongest ninja of their generation thought that she might one day be worthy of his respect.

Sakura had already thought Sasuke was awesome, but the day he gave her that supreme compliment was the day inner Sakura ripped her clothes off and demanded, "Give me babies, now!"

So Sakura put up with Sasuke's perverted quirks, studied him to determine his taste in women, grew her hair out, invested in the best push-up training bra she could find, and trained.

And inner Sakura fanned herself watching Naruto and Sasuke spar, cheering on Sasuke and hoping he would burn off Naruto's shirt again.

"Since he's a pervert: if he sees your technique, he might pass us just so he can have you use it all the time while he's training you," Sasuke warned Naruto.

Naruto sighed. "The curse of having such an awesome technique…"

"Let's just try to kill him."He'd asked for it, literally.

"How about…" Sakura took out her kunai and posed, looking all cutely determined.

Sasuke nodded. One of the problems kuniochi students had and Naruto had taken advantage of was that a lot of Konoha ninja, especially the younger ones who hadn't faced real kuniochi and been killed by them yet, went easy on girls.

"I'll swarm him, you two actually attack,"

"-I'll keep doing things that would get me killed in an actual fight and see if he gets distracted by trying not to actually hurt me too badly,"

"And I'll let him think I've gotten angry when I don't win right away and you'll sneak up on him," Sasuke finished. "Get changed while we get started."

"What?"

"Naruto. This isn't some prank on the Anbu. Get changed."

"For this loser?"

"He's going to be our sensei. He should know what he's letting himself in for."

"Come on! This is broad daylight! Yellow grass, brown ground and trees, green leaves… I'm already dressed better for blending in than you!"

"That loser is a jounin. Do you want him to beat you, the terror of the Anbu?"

Twenty minutes later – they'd wanted him to think he'd seen all their tricks – Sasuke had a fourth most hated person in the world (after Danzo), and smiled happily as he torched that book the pervert loved so much.

Sakura winced as Narutos mooned Kakashi, but it appeared that either he had the grace to give up or he was indeed a pervert and a sexist pig, willing to defile her Sasuke's tight ass but not that of even a seeming-woman.

He barely seemed to notice Naruto now either. "My… " His book! "How did you do that?" Had Naruto somehow learned the Hiraishin?

"I just walked right up to you and took it!" Naruto changed back to the form that Sakura considered kinda hot actually. Inner Sakura growled jealously, seeing the disappointment Sasuke tried to hide. Standing next to that tree, he blended in amazingly well in camo.

Kakashi smiled under his mask. "Where? I don't see a thing," and leaped back. "Ah, a ghost! I must have killed you during the test. You're a ninja, you knew the risks!"

"I'm not a ghost!"

Catching on, Sakura peered into the woods. "You can come out now, Naruto, we got the bells."

Naruto grumbled. "I'm not even trying to hide, you just suck, Sakura." Practically everyone in Konoha sucked at stealth, he realized. What kind of pervert tutor let Konohamaru think that was how to hide? He was probably sabotaging his training so it was easier to catch the kid.

"So that's why you wear orange! You're so insignificant that without it no one would ever notice you," she taunted him.

Sakura knew nothing of Naruto's battles to be acknowledged. Didn't know that was indeed part of the reason he wore orange. Neither did Kakashi, who thought these were adorable students, and that Naruto was volunteering as group clown.

Within a week, Orochimaru had received reports of a Konoha genin who possessed a bloodline limit that granted him the power of invisibility while not wearing orange. Since this was a bit similar to a now-extinct mist bloodline who had been able to change the colors of their skin and been nearly invisible while naked, and no one knew how Naruto's parents had been, the other villages took this somewhat seriously until follow-up reports told them this was just the leaf-nins being crazy as usual.

When Naruto grew up, he replaced his orange jumpsuit with an orange-and-black tiger-themed 'really cool robe-thing' Hinata had sewn him, with little tinkling bells. It was very warm and padded but made out of some ninja fabric that got rid of sweat and so on.

His stealth skills became so legendary that future generations of Konoha student ninja doing stealth training in regulation orange were told to stop complaining how hard this was making it to hide, the Sixth Hokage had strolled right into Akatsuki headquarters wearing an orange bathrobe with bells on.

…and actually, yes, between the suiton jutsu and crater caused by the epic battle it actually had been uphill both ways through the snow.

Child-grabbing classes are a Yu-gi-oh abridged reference, of course.

Also, do we want to explain certain of Kakashi's judgment errors by saying he was stoned at the time? Makes more sense than canon.

Since muscle weighs more than fat, most superheroines at those heights with those weights & figures? They'd have to be technically obese, barely have any muscle at all, to weigh that little. Since the height-weight BMI charts just go by those two measurements, any healthy woman will be considered overweight according to those charts, because muscle weighs more than fat and the calculations apparently assume people are sedentary and have barely any muscle. You are doing 'getting in shape' right when your clothing sizes are going down and the number on the scale is going up, since that means fat's getting burned and replaced with muscle, and developing muscle raises your metabolism instead of lowering it the way dieting does.

Since Uchiha-sama had been assigned to the same team as that, there weren't as many D-rank mission requests for him personally as Sarutobi had expected. Requests were filled by teams, and few adults with money wanted the kyuubi brat to 'give me a massage,' which in the case of the missions placed by women who had connections to Danzo or the other villages especially really meant 'provide me with a Sharingan-carrying sperm sample.'

Did none of them realize that the boy was twelve? A lot of people tended to think that he was older than he was, from how he carried himself.

There were however, in this universe, two sets of requests that the Hokage and the mission assigners decided to grant.

But first, a taste of the normal D-rank missions.

"Did the mission specify what color they wanted the fence painted?"

Sakura pointed. "They provided the paint, Naruto."

"We're not using this. I know paint." From graffiti and being forced to paint over graffiti. "It'll start cracking in a month. If they can spring for a d-rank they should have paid for decent paint." Naruto took pride in his work as an artist, and this was his first official mission ever.

To see what would happen, Kakashi pulled out the mission request. "They just asked that we paint the fence. They didn't specify that we use the paint provided or even that it be plain." In other words, they deserved whatever Naruto was about to do. When writing a contract for ninja, you watched the fine print. Especially if it was a mission for new genin, who often revolted against the boredom by doing everything they could to cheat. It was practically part of the training.

A quick kage bunshin no jutsu was followed by use of the henge to provide them with paintbrushes.

As they swarmed the fence (Naruto was always prepared for random acts of 'street art' – he loved how much he could hide in his jumpsuit) Sasuke wondered idly, "What are you going to do?"

"Something traditional." Right out of a wood block print. Of course, Naruto's ID photo face paint had been in traditional style. Oni and stuff were awesome.

"Is there a record for most D-ranks done in a day?" Sakura really hoped not. The longer it took them to complete the required amount of D-ranks the longer she got to train. If it became a competition, they were in trouble.

"Well, they did give me a few more…" Smiling, Kakashi took the sheaf out of his pocket. "The daimyo's wife…"

…was amazed by how quickly Sasuke returned after walking off after she'd described her cat. Also by how tamely it was letting him hold it, although the way his fingernails were digging into the scruff of its neck threateningly were the reason, not any skill with animals.

"You are good at retrieval."

"The principal wants him to teach the truant officers child-grabbing classes," Naruto told Kakashi, "but of course he said no." Sasuke was a true friend.

Sasuke scowled at the memory. Child-grabbing: could they have made it sound any more wrong?

Sakura gathered up the pretty-looking weeds into a bouquet and took a deep breath to appreciate the fragrance. "No wonder weeding this garden was so urgent. These seeds must have blown here from some ninja's garden." All these plants were poisonous. Not the parts she was holding, of course, but gloves had been provided since some of them had highly toxic sap if you crushed the stems.

And acidic in that one's case: the clone yelped and waved its hands before disappearing.

Sasuke had been burning the piles Naruto's clones gathered. "No! Don't burn that one! The smoke of that weed is…"

Kakashi pushed him out of the way and took a deep breath. Sighing happily, he told them that, "You should be grateful you have a sensei so willing to take a hit for the team. Why don't you go to the hospital and do the next mission yourselves while I make sure all of this dangerous plant is destroyed?"

As they left he took out the papers with the missions they had already done on them and sent a bunshin for more paper.

"What's that plant, anyway?" Naruto asked.

"Why he's always late," was Sakura's guess.

"They want us to go to the hospital? That's a surprise," Naruto joked.

"Hn."

"Have you seen Sasuke at the hospital yet, Sakura?" Naruto continued, undaunted.

"No, why?"

"You know how Sasuke can get his hands on any medic-nin book he wants? Well…"

As they walked through the door Naruto was interrupted by happy cries of, "Uchiha-san!" from the nurses on duty.

Within seconds he was surrounded: Naruto pulled Sakura out of the way so she wouldn't be caught in the crush. "Congratulations on becoming a genin!"

"We all knew you could do it, Uchiha-san!"

"Hn."

"You are here on a mission, right? I hope they're all okay? Of course they are, you take such good care of them."

A half-shrug.

"The director tried to get you apprenticed, but maybe it's for the best. The sooner you make chunin, the better."

"Poor Kabuto-kun…" Two shook their heads at each other as the mob almost pushed Sasuke through the halls.

"We can always use you in the pediatric ward, but there's this one girl that Ibiki-san said was urgent: they need information from her about that horrible missing-nin attack but she won't stop crying whenever she's reminded of it…"

"He's really good with traumatized kids, and he invented this thing that lets you change diapers from ten feet away as long as you have good aim with kunai. They love him here." Enough that Naruto had noticed a marked difference the instant he'd become Sasuke's friend.

The senior staff here had been in the thick of the battle to save as much of Konoha as possible from the Kyuubi. They'd seen the ravaged bodies and watched as far too many of them died. Pointedly ignoring Naruto was a vast improvement over the walls of massed killer intent that had practically pushed him out bodily as a child.

No one knew how to kill you in as many ways and as unpleasantly as a medic nin. Few understood the terror of death as thoroughly as those who fought not only other ninja but the shinigami himself.

That was one of the two reasons Sasuke made an effort to earn the allegiance and help of the medic-nin. Even though it meant putting up with the fangirls.

"Attack!" Activating their eyes to find out what was going on; within seconds almost all of the adult Hyuuga had been incapacitated by either blood loss or apoplexy, thanks to the Orange Bombshells. Only a few were still standing, and no matter how many they popped they were unable to stem the tide of redecorators.

"I can't believe the Hokage authorized a blank check mission like this," Sakura said as she removed the hands covering the child's eyes now that the Narutos had henged their uniforms on.

"I can." Sergeant-Major Naruto informed her, keeping an eye on the general's signal fan.

"Please? Aniki's been too busy to play with us. We saved up all our allowance, Hokage-sama, so please can we have him play with us today?" Uchiha Ran looked up at Sakura with hopeful wide eyes.

"Aww, isn't she cute?" Private Naruto noogied her. "Hinata's going to be disappointed in you, though."

"Hanabi insulted Hinata-nee-san again, after everything Hinata-nee-san's done for her." No one messed with The Family. Hanabi had been warned. "And Hinata-nee-chan wants Neji to cheer up, and orange cheers everybody up." And this would teach the Hyuuga not to stop paying their protection 'tax' just because the adults weren't around anymore. Ran's daddy had been a detective, and she was going to follow in his footsteps.

What, you thought a clan dedicated to sowing chaos and destruction had been clean cops?

"Hey, we're just genin; we're not allowed to argue with the client. And Kakashi's not here to countermand their orders." Another private Naruto scanned the area with her goggles. "Haven't they realized yet that the Kaiten just sends the paint bombs flying everywhere?"

"These are the Hyuuga. There hasn't been a new thought in their brains in centuries since they can't get past the sticks to where their heads are. Hinata-chan excepted, of course."

"Are you guys going to get in trouble?" Sakura knew that if she claimed that if she had tried to stop them, really, she would be believed. Obviously she couldn't have done anything to stop the Uchiha clan and the Kyuubi brat. It would be sickening if it weren't so useful.

"Nah." Naruto had read the laws after learning how to read, since it would be really embarrassing if he actually got jail time. Not only would it look bad for a future Hokage, but since the Uchiha were traditionally in charge of the police force? Sasuke would laugh. "This'll teach Kakashi to be late."

"Where is he, anyway?"

"As of the last report, buying more cheese puffs."

"Nice of him to share with the memorial stone, though."

"Ow. Ow ow ow…" Sakura really, really regretted not stopping her run when they'd started hurting. Damn self-discipline! It had only hurt a little at first, but it just got worse and worse with every single one, like Chinese water torture.

Sensitive round fleshy bits weren't meant to be banged around. She'd never laugh at a man who got kicked at the balls again.

She'd still do it: she was a ninja after all. But she wouldn't laugh.

How did Naruto do it? Well, they were fake; he probably hadn't realized this aspect. Or had deliberately left it out.

This was the last time she would try to exercise without a bra. It hurt. But what was she supposed to do? She barely had anything as it was, and bras meant for ninja training compressed the breasts. Now she knew why: it was so they wouldn't bounce and hurt like this. She didn't want to pad her breasts, that was dishonest, but she would have to pad them if she even wanted them to look like the size they were!

And no matter what she did, her abs weren't flat, and even though she tried not to give in to her food cravings she kept weighing more and more!

It seemed like the harder she tried to get into shape the fatter she got, almost! She had some muscle on her arms now, and she hoped it was mostly muscle that was making her thighs so big, and hopefully Naruto and Hinata were just giving her a complex and that was why it seemed like her breasts just got smaller every day.

She was this close to trying to see if someone had figured out a jutsu for that, except her parents would freak.

Naruto's damn sexy no jutsu was pretty clearly Sasuke's type, and if she wasn't going to lose to Ino there was no way she was going to lose to a guy!

After that, the Hokage knew he had to get Naruto out of town until it blew over. The Hyuuga weren't going to off Sasuke, not when he was their ticket to finally putting the Uchiha clan in their place as a branch house, but sending a message by killing his liegeman was practically traditional, and since Naruto was the Kyuubi brat as well?

Despite the danger that someone might recognize Naruto as his father's son, despite the risk of an international diplomatic incident instead of just an inter-clan one, he had to risk sending Naruto outside of Konoha.

Wave should be safe. No one cared about Wave. They didn't have a village or even an army.

Since Naruto kept saying how he wanted to test his Awesome Kage Army against a real one, better be on the safe side…

Neji hated the main house, how the elders considered his father less than his uncle solely because of an accident of birth. Why, he'd even heard them say that if those Stone nin had tried to kidnap a Hyuuga instead of an Uchiha, and his uncle had killed them instead of the Uchiha clan head, who had gotten out of being executed for it on account of being too young to be held responsible, then they would have sent his father in his uncle's place.

Yes, he hated the main house. His uncle was cruel and Hanabi was a brat. However, he couldn't bring himself to hate Hinata, not really. She was more a victim of his uncle and the elders than he was, and now she was responsible for the best day ever.

Well, no, Hinata was too nice to do something like this, even to her father, but he still knew who he had to thank for this: those awful, wonderful little hellions. And his future cousin-in-law, Uzumaki Naruto.

The elders might think that one day they'd be able to put the seal on the Uchibis as vengeance for this, but Neji knew better. The one thing that was keeping the elders from blowing up at the disgrace was making it even harder for Neji to keep the grin off his face as Gai tried to convince them to leave the compound the way it was. It was so much more youthful this way!

"Do you know how far away Wave is?"

"Look at a map, Naruto."

"It's…"

"It's more than an hour away from Ichiraku's, that's what it is! Have they even heard of ramen there?" Naruto fell to his knees, imploring the heavens and inwardly praying that-

"Just go buy some and have your kage bunshin carry it, you idiot!" Sasuke's eyes were wide with panic. Tomorrow morning? They were going to be alone for weeks and he only had until tomorrow morning to prepare? "Alert Hinata! Check on the emergency rations and buy fresh vegetables! Forge notes in my handwriting excusing them from school until I return! Make sure Danzo hasn't replaced my will with one granting him custody again! Tell Shigure to veto everything, and if he can't, filibuster!"

Shigure wasn't the next-oldest Uchiha, but he was Sasuke's substitute during council meetings when necessary because he was the best at bullshit.

Oh crap, the distraction hadn't worked. "Why don't we bring them with us?" Please please please…

"Outside Konoha territory? You know how many kidnapping attempts there have been in the last year! Oh, that's right, put them in the number three chains," every ninja clan had torture cellars, "so they won't be able to escape until we're six hours out of town. Arm all the lethal booby traps on the perimeter, even the ones they don't know about! Especially those!"

"Breathe, you paranoid bastard!" Naruto considered trying to shake him to snap him out of it, but he liked his windpipe the way it was.

"I don't have time to bre-" Sasuke keeled over.

Everyone stared. Generally when people keeled over around Naruto there were nosebleeds involved, but no. Sasuke's eyes were open, unfocused and horrified.

Dammit. "Everybody back up slowly." Naruto tugged Sakura away, then hurriedly started shaping seals. "Code F!"

"What's going on?"

"When Itachi killed the adults, he used this weird genjutsu to…"

Sasuke's eyes snapped open and focused, still wild, on the dark-haired adult in the room. "I'll fucking kill you, you…" One of the Ramen Knights body-slammed Iruka out of the line of fire (luckily Iruka had the sense to keep moving when it was popped by a kunai) while a squad of Orange Bombshells tackled Sasuke to the ground. The words were replaced by incoherent snarls of rage.

Naruto hurriedly replenished them as they were destroyed by kunai, shoes with their concealed poison needles extended, knees, elbows, and teeth. Luckily Sasuke was too out of it to do even a basic replacement jutsu. "Show Sasuke him killing everyone in the clan over and over, including the kids and…"

Naruto had to dodge as one of the Orange Bombshells was hurled at where he was standing, "When he gets worried he has these flashbacks and…"

He summoned more Ramen Knights to drag everyone else out of the room, "What's really dangerous is afterwards, since then he really…"

Suddenly the screams were replaced by sobs.

"Tries to kill me."

"Mom…" Narutos patted Sasuke on the head, desperately looking for an escape route as he clung tight to one of them, burying his head between her breasts.

"Or, you know, hit me repeatedly in the head until I can convince him I don't remember a thing that happened, really." Suddenly all the Narutos looked at Sakura and grinned slowly.

She didn't notice. "Poor Sasuke, how horrible." Outer Sakura wanted to hold him and try to comfort him.

'That's right, come to Mama,' Inner Sakura grinned wickedly.

Suddenly, all the kage bunshin vanished and Naruto pushed her forward into Sasuke. "You're a real girl, you do it. See you in Wave!"

Outside, Tazuna went in search of more booze. He was so, so screwed.

In the end, Naruto escaped without brain damage. When Sasuke snapped out of it enough to realize who was snuggling him and what had caused the flashbacks, he realized that Naruto, in an effort to preserve his alleged brain cells (and to protect the Uchibis, too), would take care of all the exhausting, stressful, flashback-inducing set-up work since Sasuke was incapacitated.

Leaving Sasuke free to be fed fresh-baked cookies by Sakura's mother, since after Sakura had gotten over the awe-inspiring feeling of being needed by Uchiha Sasuke himself (and yielded to Inner Sakura's demands for a high-five), she'd realized she should probably go for more experienced backup.

Around eight, while a couple dozen were being boxed up for him to take back to the darling children, Hinata arrived (Neji, being one to pay his debts, was covering for her absence), to aid in fussing over Sasuke and report that everything was indeed being taken care of. "Kaito-kun said that Naruto could borrow his father's hang-glider so Naruto could send clones back faster." Naruto was trying to find a way to put more chakra into his clones, but if he'd left some here they wouldn't have lasted the entire trip to Wave and back. But if one of them flew here and then back on the hang-glider carrying a bag full of others henged into kunai or something, that might work.

"At the beginning I could barely even leave the house without something happening. Kaito, Tohru and Shigure are about to graduate, but… I can't learn just by sparring. I can't be a ninja if I never leave Konoha." Naruto might think that the human body could take more abuse than a normal person like Sasuke actually could, but he wouldn't risk actually killing his friend. And Sasuke might have reworked the clan's defenses, but it had been Itachi's home ground once too. Not to mention that he did not want the fight to take place there. No, ideally he'd stop Itachi before he reached Konoha. So he had to learn to fight in different terrain.

"But you worry. One day you can't leave them alone for five seconds without them nearly committing suicide by table and the next they want to go fight bandits," Sakura's mother commiserated.

"Mom!"

"All babies are like that," Sasuke told her. "They want to find out how stuff works and they don't know what will kill them yet. The sooner you let them figure it out the better."

Telling a little kid 'don't fucking touch my kunai!' while trying not to tear your hair out in frustration didn't work. They weren't going to trust a crazy person and it didn't explain why they weren't supposed to. 'This is sharp, see? They're designed to poke other people's eyes out with. So if you poke your eye out, don't come crying to me because I'll just laugh.' And letting them touch it so they could see that yes, he was right, did.

Of course, in a ninja family, the proper response to, "What did I tell you about running with kunai?" was, "I need to hold it correctly or else I won't be able to stab with a decent amount of force without breaking stride."

Sasuke's approach to them not cleaning their rooms had been, "Don't blame me if you step on a kunai or can't find your shoes." Then, when Shigure had said he couldn't find his shoes, Sasuke's response had been, "I told you so. If you're late and get detention it's your own fault for not doing what I told you."

On the other hand, when Sakura and her mother had that battle Sakura's mother had always given in and cleaned it herself before it got to that point. So Sakura had never actually encountered consequences to not cleaning her room (besides extra chores, which was a consequence of not obeying her mom), and so didn't believe there were any. It undermined respect and credibility.

Sasuke might not have been the Uchibis' real father, but they'd learned that when he said jump they'd damn well better ask how high on the way up, especially in the early days when he was sleep-deprived, already having to fight the urge to kill people, and likely to throw some kunai at their feet if they didn't move fast enough.

"Sakura ran me ragged, I can't imagine having to deal with seventeen of them at your age," Sakura's mother said admiringly. "How do you do it?"

The women of Konoha already would have admired Sasuke for bearing up so well after such a terrible tragedy. It spoke of inner strength. But that was nothing next to the mad ninja skills dealing with so many kids demonstrated.

Hinata leaned forward hopefully, Sakura eagerly, preparing to take mental notes.

Inwardly, Hinata sighed happily. Naruto's children, darling little prankster angels. She'd hug them and squeeze them and never be cruel to them the way people were to Naruto or her father was to her. Oh, she hoped some of them inherited Naruto's beautiful blue eyes. She'd have to have a lot to make sure one did, and so that they would have siblings to play with the way she still wasn't able to really play with Hanabi.

Seventeen? Well, if Sasuke could do it, surely she and Naruto could? Naruto had been Sasuke's friend longer and surely knew a lot of his tricks by now.

Sakura's pink hair was definitely a mutation. There were some bloodlines marked by unique or rare hair colors, but nothing of this shade. Sakura had gone looking, hoping there was something that would make her stand out from the crowd of Sasuke's admirers or help her get stronger.

Being civilians, Sakura's family couldn't trace their family tree back very far, so when she was younger she'd imagined that one day she might discover she had some long-lost bloodline.

But no. She had nothing going for her except a good memory.

Sakura didn't really consider herself all that smart. The thing about smart people was that the smarter they were, the more they were aware of how little they actually knew. They didn't act arrogant because they thought they were smarter than other people, they acted arrogant because if they were stupid then someone who couldn't do fractions had to be really stupid.

So the more she trained to be worthy of the head of the Uchiha clan, the more aware she became of how worthless she was compared to him, and even Naruto with his amazing regeneration and chakra capacity. And stealth capabilities. And leadership skills (well, when it came to children). And ability to draw. And ability to be much hotter than her. And…

Inner Sakura growled at how even her own mother was hanging on Sasuke's every, "Hn." (He didn't do well when on the spot surrounded by fangirls, retreating into monosyllables and scanning the room for exits.) Not to mention the far-more-attractive-than-her Hinata. What if Hinata wised up one day and realized that Sasuke was an even better catch than Naruto? She was the one who was supposed to be his girlfriend, after all.

Her mother wouldn't be present on the trip to Wave. The perfect time to experiment with Breast Enlargement no Jutsu.

Her children weren't going to have nothing going for them. Her children were going to have a family style, and a bloodline, and…

…And why couldn't she have a bloodline? There were hints in some of the books that it was possible. She wasn't going to go digging up Sasuke's relatives, but there were plenty of enemy ninja out there, and who cared about them?

Inner Sakura smiled like a shark.

"Have the catapults been loaded with exploding tags?"

"Yup!"

"Have the ANBU been alerted that the kill-on-sight perimeter has temporarily been enlarged by fifteen meters?"

No response. Well, they were ANBU, they'd figure it out. "Alright, time to run some drills!" First, the Hyuuga attack scenario.

Naruto watched as the henged bunshin were detected and everyone got to their positions and used their jutsu. His jutsu. "Aww, I'm so proud of them."

Naruto had grown up without a family until the Uchiha had taken him in, but at times like these he wondered if he really was related to them. He didn't look like an Uchiha, but maybe they shared some distant ancestor or something? There had to be some reason they shared the same style, the same really kinda evil sense of humor, desire to fuck with people's heads, and understanding of the power of big boobs. "People blame me on the Kyuubi…" he thought before dismissing the idea.

Inside the seal, the Nine-Tails sneezed and tugged at the chains on 'her' arms. No, there wasn't enough slack to dig a handkerchief out from between her breasts. Maybe she shouldn't have had them be quite so large… Nah.

These were the breasts that had challenged gods.

Teeny Omake: What if Uchibi Sasuke had the canon Tsukiyomi?

"Ni-san!" As the child Danzo had tried to steal for ROOT in the confusion ran to hide behind Sasuke, they boy's eyes narrowed.

The darkness around his eyes and the bloodshot veins that ran through them were just from sleep deprivation, he knew, but as that death glare met his eyes Sasuke looked truly demonic. "Tsukiyomi."

Suddenly they were in a nightmare realm. "I was thinking of cutting your balls off for seventy-two hours, you damn pervert, but now I've had a better idea." That grin had too many teeth. "I'm going to put these earplugs in so I don't hear your screams and can catch up on my sleep, and you? Are going to spend the next seventy-two hours watching Barney."

"Nooooooo!"

The day after Naruto learned the Kage Bunshin technique and the truth about the Kyuubi, he knew he had to tell Sasuke the truth.

He had to. Sasuke would find out, and then he might feel that Naruto had lied to him by omission. Like Naruto had put the kids in danger, and Sasuke would never, ever forgive that. That was what was so great about Sasuke. Like Iruka, or the Hokage, but more so.

He still remembered the instant Sasuke had looked at him and seen that no, Naruto didn't know what a sell-by date was. The look that said, 'this kid needs someone to look after him,' followed by an automatic, 'so I will.' Because that was the kind of person Sasuke was. Sasuke didn't want to be Hokage: he thought that Naruto was crazy for wanting to be responsible for the whole village. Sasuke already had enough of a hard time looking after seventeen people. Except he'd added Naruto. And Hinata. And Sakura. Because it needed doing and so he did it.

They were about the same age, but Naruto didn't think that Sasuke was a kid, not the way he was. The way Naruto had it figured, kids were people that got looked after and wanted people to look after them. People to teach them stuff. Naruto had the Hokage, and Ichiraku, and Iruka, and Sasuke and now Hinata. He wanted to become Hokage so the old man could retire and he could look after him, after all his precious people, but that was a 'someday.' When he grew up. He'd be acknowledged and he'd be the Hokage and everyone would feel safe because he was protecting them. Sasuke was looking after people now. People felt safe because Sasuke was protecting them, even though Sasuke had only just made genin. Even though Sasuke didn't feel like they were safe just because he was protecting them. He was just protecting them.

Naruto had thought that it was the Hokage position and hat that did it, but maybe it wasn't rank. Maybe it was just what you did. Sasuke didn't go to an adult when he needed help, he was someone people went to. Naruto wanted to learn how to be like that.

But he couldn't start by keeping this to himself, trying to solve it himself. Not when it might be endangering everyone else.

He didn't think that Sasuke would make him leave. Not when Iruka had accepted him. Not when the Hokage, who knew the most about it, felt safe with Naruto being in Konoha, where the people he protected were.

But he'd still been kind of nervous, so he'd done lots of stuff that morning to remind Sasuke of how awesome he was. Except he'd ended up knocking Sasuke out. Which had been great at the time, but now he had to tell Sasuke how he'd passed and learned that jutsu and why the ANBU had come by and almost demanded to search the grounds for him instead of taking Sasuke's word as clan head that he wasn't there.

So he'd explained about Mizuki, and how stealing the scroll had been way too easy, and Iruka, and, well…

Sasuke had frowned and looked a bit angrier than he already was because Mizuki had messed with one of his people when Naruto mentioned the Kyuubi, but hadn't said anything so Naruto had gone on. When it was over, he said four words, stood up, and motioned for Naruto to follow him.

They were: "I can top that."

Sasuke had gotten back to the clan compound late and wasn't surprised that he didn't see anyone. They didn't want to remind him of their existence, in Naruto's case because he didn't want his head bashed in and in the kids' case because they didn't want to be tied up to make sure they didn't follow him to the Land of Wave.

He still did inspections, going by everyone's room to make sure they were there. Mostly just to reassure himself. He knew he should let them avoid him in the morning, because he'd be reminded that they were even smaller than he was, many of them smaller than he had been when everyone had been killed, and then he would have a hard time leaving.

He had to leave. He couldn't be some kind of wuss who didn't do any missions. He had to get stronger. Because as he was he couldn't protect them from Itachi, and it might be even worse than that. He wouldn't know until he found himself in real combat.

Closing his eyes for a minute after closing the last door, he went to the kitchen, saw that everything had already been packed, and then went to his room.

Most other people wouldn't have been able to sleep. Sasuke already knew one lesson combat veterans learned: sleep when you can. Insomnia and pointless worry were luxuries he couldn't afford. They got in the way of the mission.

Kakashi was early, and bookless. The Hokage had not been pleased. He had more copies of course, but he'd wait until he was out of sight of Konoha, just to be on the safe side.

In his experience, his genin were irrepressible. He'd been so proud when he'd heard about what they'd done! And Gai's squad had been hired for cleanup! But Naruto was glancing at Sasuke worriedly, Sasuke was in "Hn," mode, and Sakura had flipped out when Tazuna had insulted Sasuke's ability to get him there safely.

One moment she was going through a gear checklist, all by-the-book rookie, then the next minute she was like a different person. One willing to tear his head off, client or not.

Once that had happened and Naruto determined that Sasuke wasn't going to try to kill him he started to chatter and things got less depressing. Honestly, these were genin on their first trip outside Konoha and their first C-rank mission. They were supposed to be having fun and being impressed by the novelty of it all. Proud of themselves.

Well, he'd figure it out eventually. First things first: putting Sasuke in a situation that would awaken his Sharingan. Ah, up ahead, that looked promising.

Kunai plus twenty meters of metal wire plus a D-rank Raiton Jutsu plus a suspicious puddle equaled two irritated and surprised but not actually wounded or anything enemy ninja.

Feeling that she'd done her part by springing the trap, Sakura pulled Tazuna behind a tree and looked around for some logs she could use for the substitution jutsu, just in case those guys tried to charge right through Sasuke, Naruto and Kakashi while they might still have the element of surprise.

Naruto's hands froze, almost in the seal for kage bunshin. He'd been faced with killer intent before. With hatred before.

And he had all the wrong habits, because he wasn't allowed to attack the people who hated him. People who didn't hate him, sure, he could spar with them, play with the ANBU, but from toddlerhood it had become an ingrained reflex to run when faced with killer intent. Retreat. Find a better position or Old Man Hokage if they kept following him. Except Sakura and an old man were behind him and Sasuke and Kakashi were beside him, so running was the last thing he should do.

It wasn't fear that froze Naruto in his tracks, but it was something akin to stage fright, the need to restrain the primitive fight-or-flight reflex. His conscious mind was able to restrain the automatic response, but it was a moment-by-moment struggle and he wasn't able to push himself over the edge into going against all of what he had learned about how things worked and fighting them until he got hit by a weapon (poisoned, he noted vaguely) and jumped back.

That was enough of a 'retreat to secure ground' that his body felt secure again, that things were going the way they were supposed to, and he was able to actually get control and start fighting.

Except they were dead before he'd done anything except summon the Ramen Knights to help keep them pinned down and start to jump backward to ask Sakura if she knew what to do about this poison.

They had hurt Naruto. They had attacked his clan. That was not. Fucking. Acceptable.

Like Naruto, Sasuke had an ingrained set of combat responses that weren't right for this situation. Weren't right for anything. Because they weren't his.

Itachi had shown Sasuke how he'd killed the clan. The Tsukiyomi was a genjutsu that enveloped all the senses. Sasuke had felt his own hands form the seals. Lift the sword. Felt the chakra flow in his own body and eyes. Like a kata performed over and over, it had become engraved on his body.

Like something seen by the Sharingan.

The Sharingan was activated by death. Chaos, destruction, loss, betrayal. Sasuke hadn't watched his best friend die and felt responsible. He'd watched everyone die and felt responsible.

Not as a child, no, what Itachi showed him hadn't activated the Sharingan then. Because he'd been a child. He hadn't been responsible, he hadn't understood what was going on. It definitely wasn't his fault.

But then he'd taken responsibility for the survivors, and learned that fault and responsibility were not the same thing. They were his clan. He was responsible for his clan. Regardless of whether or not he could have done anything to change the outcome, even though he hadn't been at fault he was still responsible for it. That was what taking responsibility, what trying to take control meant. This was his clan. These were his people.

And that was what triggered the flashbacks. That was what made him fight within his own mind not to follow the pattern, not to lift the sword, not to form the seals… But it still happened the same way.

He killed his father, in those visions. His mother. ShigureKaitoTohruRanShinobu… Everyone.

No matter how hard he tried not to, and he had to try, because they were his, dammit.

Any Inuzaka could tell you that humans are pack animals. The pack is life.

The others had activated the Mangekyo Sharingan, in the end, by selfishness. By weakness. By choosing to commit that murder, they came to see that they were willing to kill even the thing they loved most for power. And by seeing that the person they saw as most like themselves could die, they themselves became afraid of death. They hadn't lost, much less sacrificed, what they loved most. Because they couldn't have chosen to sacrifice those friends unless there was something they loved more than them.

Sasuke wasn't afraid of death. He didn't want to die, he had stuff to do, but better death than failure. Better death than watching anyone else die. Better death than failing to protect that which he loved.

Sasuke had watched, over and over, as they died, and they had not been sacrifices he was willing to make.

"That's… messed up, but how is that worse than the Kyuubi?"

"Your demon is sealed away by the Fourth. Iruka was probably right. You aren't a demon. But to create the Sharingan, our ancestor mingled Hyuuga blood with demon blood. So we can't say the same." Sasuke looked around the shrine once more, knowing that in the end this was why Itachi had killed the clan, this was the source of the slaughter and madness, and wanting to destroy it all. But that wouldn't destroy the truth.

"You're not a demon." No way.

"I'm not." Sasuke met Naruto's eyes and let his own grow red with that power. "But part of me is." He held Naruto's gaze as, he knew, the dots began to whirl with anticipation, as the bloodlust started to rise. The desire to get him to use a jutsu, to watch him struggle uselessly for his life. Naruto was clever, there would be things he hadn't seen before, that no one had seen before, if things got desperate. It would be fun to destroy that too-cheerful idiot.

Then he blinked and it was gone. "So anyone who calls you a monster and not me? Clearly doesn't know what in hell they're talking about."

"You're not a monster," Naruto insisted, upset on his behalf.

There were two reasons that Sasuke didn't want to use the Sharingan in combat. That was only one of them. But he couldn't stop himself, couldn't stop his body as he drew on his chakra as he had too many times before if only in nightmares.

He shaped the focus tiger seal. "Amaterasu."

Except wait, no, that wasn't quite right… The power hung in the air, waiting, and he felt it almost push his hands into a different seal (dog seal, his eyes noted even though his mind was too confused) before it took. Yes, it had gone wrong, they were supposed to be engulfed in black flames right away, not sliced in half a second later.

This wasn't how it was supposed to feel, how it had felt for Itachi. Something was… not wrong, but… Maybe he didn't have the full Mangekyo, or something? But if he didn't have access to the Amaterasu technique it should have just done nothing, not something completely different. There was supposed to be a Sharingan summoning technique, but that was Susa-no-o, not Amaterasu.

Well, it definitely wasn't an ordinary wolf, not with red markings like that, but he'd thought the One-Tails was a Tanuki.

"Sexy no jutsu!"

Before Naruto could wonder what the fuck was happening he found himself in front of a cage.

"Sexy no jutsu!"

"What?" That was the seal on his stomach on the bars, wasn't it? But she didn't look like a fox… Oh, kitsune were shapeshifters, right. "I'm not going to listen to a thing you say!"

"Do you want your friend to get killed too? Sexy no jutsu, before she notices my grandcub's scent!" Before she noticed her as well. "She'd cut right through this seal to fight me, and I'm not in any condition to fight her. But you don't her want to release me, do you? If I win, I'll raze your precious village to the ground."

"She's a dog, what's sexy no jutsu going to do?" Naruto folded his arms.

The false priestess Rao laughed. "You'd be surprised."

Yes, Madara was present at the night of the massacre. He's not present in the Tsukiyomi flashbacks because they're an illusion. If Itachi could put scenes of him killing the kids in the illusion, he could edit out Madara.

Some fics have pointed out how Tsukiyomi could be used as a training technique. To a very real degree, that was what Itachi was doing there. Giving Sasuke Sharingan-engraved body memory of not only how to use Sharingan techniques but basically a tutorial on how to kill Uchiha. Powerful ninja in general, but Uchiha in particular.

Sasuke's personal abilities at this point are… he could definitely take his canon equivalent at this stage. Instead of basically just doing kata since there wasn't anyone worthy to train with, he was training the Uchibis and sparring with Naruto, and there's a saying that the best way to learn something is to teach it. This might have been his first actual combat experience, but he's fought other people a lot more than canon Sasuke. And since he was training others he had reason to look up stuff like tree-walking, and Sakura was doing lesson plans as well.

Against a newbie with only the Uchiha style? Yeah. If this were marital arts, canon!Sasuke would be considered better, since he's better at the style no question. It's been his entire focus. But these are ninja, where dirty tricks and so on are what matters, not perfect form. Theory versus application. Canon Sasuke's learned the moves to subdue opponents and practiced them daily: Uchibi Sasuke's used them daily. Bedtime, bathtime… So, again, despite the fact he's spent less total time training than his equivalent, the author thinks it's still safe to say he could take him.

Kakashi was a ninja. Ninja did not like surprises unless they were the ones performing them. They were generally deadly. That was the entire point.

There shouldn't have been any surprises when it came to the head of the Uchiha clan, because there frankly weren't enough hours in the day. Not for him to acquire a dog summoning contract, for one thing. Although he could have just found it in the Uchiha jutsu library. Except he'd clearly been using a Sharingan ability.

So the dog wasn't the issue. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary dog, although it was clearly poorly trained, since it was raising its hackles and starting to growl lowly at its summoner.

"Uh, nice doggie?" The animal turned to face Naruto, then tilted its head.

Naruto bent down (Kakashi reminded himself again that the boy was twelve, not to mention a boy), and beckoned it over to him. Her, at the moment. "Come? I've got ramen, so don't eat anybody? We can't possibly taste as good as ramen."

It trotted over to him and sat down, wagging its tail. Naruto went down on one knee to pet it. "Sasuke?"

"Is Sasuke alright?"

"Can you check? I'm kind of busy here. Oh, right, I got poisoned."

Sakura folded her arms. "And you were petting a dog in your pervert jutsu instead of telling me?"

"It's not a dog. It scares the, um, that." Naruto held out his hand for Sakura to grab and inspect.

"I'm going to have to drain this." Damn, she wanted his healing bloodline. "It could be any of twelve things, and I don't have time to experiment."

"The 'that?' Really?"

"Come on, you're the jonin and you're the one with good chakra senses, can't you feel how powerful it is?"

"Looks like an ordinary dog to me," Kakashi said. So either the kyuubi had gained the ability to mess with Naruto's head or it really was one of those dark Sharingan abilities. One capable of hiding its nature.

He lowered the covering over his Sharingan eye.

The white dog that had looked so brainlessly happy when there were pettings involved started to growl. "No, bad! Kakashi, use sexy no jutsu! It goes like this." Naruto went through the seals slowly, or started to when Sakura stabbed her arm harder than technically necessary. "Ow!"

No, Naruto was not teaching Kakashi that jutsu. Konohamaru was bad enough, but someone like their sensei? Who might use it to sneak into the womens' baths? No.

Kakashi hid his eye again, deactivating the Sharingan. He'd already seen the blaze of chakra. He already knew that he did not want to anger this summon. There was a sense of 'that's better,' and the dog yawned and scratched itself behind its ear.

"She's not angry now that the eye's gone? Phew." Naruto turned back to normal. The growling resumed. Naruto turned female again. The growling stopped. "Aww, come on! That's not fair." The dog just wagged its tail. Naruto pouted.

Sakura went over to Sasuke again. "He's breathing and everything just fine," dammit, no excuse for CPR. "I think it's chakra exhaustion." Her first time seeing an actual case, so she looked at Kakashi for confirmation.

He nodded. "How long has he had the Sharingan?" Had it been a secret from Naruto as well?

"The creepy eye? He told me he's had it since before he met me. It got activated by the flashbacks or something." Naruto summoned kage bunshin now, to pet the dog, make ramen, and try to keep it happy in general. The dog seemed to approve of this. "He doesn't use it, though, so I didn't see it until he showed it to me."

"Why doesn't he use it?" Why did he keep it a secret from the Hokage?

"Cause he's not stupid. It's an eye thing, like Hinata's, right? And Itachi has this thing with his where if you meet his eyes he's got you. So the last thing Sasuke wants to do is have a fighting style that relies on looking at his opponent all the time."

"That's smart." The Sharingan read everything so easily that Kakashi had found himself beginning to disregard other cues. He didn't just didn't need to look for them because the information just got put straight into his brain. If he'd started out with the Sharingan he might have never learned that those cues existed, since he wouldn't have bothered to observe them.

"He saw Itachi killing them over and over, so… Everything's got a weak point, like the Byakugan does? Sasuke said that he kept seeing his father and ninja he knew were good do things that seemed really stupid and eventually he figured out that Itachi was doing stuff that he knew would make them make those mistakes and then taking advantage of it. The weak point of the Sharingan is how it makes you think." Naruto didn't mention the demon part. "Itachi knew those weak points, so it was a lot easier for him to kill Uchiha than regular ninja. Like rock paper scissors. The Sharingan makes it easier to beat regular ninja, Itachi's really good at beating the Sharingan, so if Sasuke wants to beat him he has to really be like a regular ninja instead of using the Sharingan. You don't fight rock with scissors."

Sakura listened with half an ear as she kept checking Sasuke and dealt with Tazuna complaining about the nearly dying and their incompetence and how one was unconscious and another was in drag. Must not kill client, must not, not even a little…

"And he hates the Sharingan. It failed his family and… stuff. So he didn't talk about it. I heard about it first from Hinata."

If Hinata was here, then maybe the dog thing would look at her instead of him so he could go back to being a he? Hinata was good at cooing over people, too.

"Sakura, start building a litter. We're going to have to abort mission."

"What?" His, her, first C-rank mission!

"Naruto, Sasuke's incapacitated until his chakra recovers, which it might not as long as that summon is here," although it hadn't looked like it was draining him, Kakashi couldn't chance taking a closer look, "and this is no longer a C-rank mission. We were hired to fight bandits, not missing nin. We need to go back and report."

"You mean go back to Konoha?" Lead a Uchiha-eating summon straight to the Uchibis? No way!

"Sasuke's levels are stable, he isn't still being drained. He should wake up in twelve hours." It would have taken Sakura six.

One of the few advantages female ninja had was that while they had smaller chakra reserves, they were able to replenish their chakra faster. While a kuniochi who tossed around large numbers of high-powered jutsu the way male ninja did was asking for it, the female body was built for sustained heavy labor, with energy reserves marbled throughout the muscles for easy access, and, properly trained, they could keep up a fairly steady stream of mid-to-low level jutsu for hours (days, in the case of jonin) without depleting their chakra.

Tsunade of the Sannin's signature technique would eventually come to be considered a female technique not just because of the careful husbanding of resources it required, but because it was almost suicide for a male ninja (other than the clan specializing in energy storage) to use it in wartime or any extended battle. Not only did the focus required mean that it was hard to use other jutsu at the same time, but the lower a ninja's reserves got the less they had available to deal with surprises and the lower their odds of surviving the battle, and a man couldn't use it for a fraction as long as a woman without going in the red.

While normal Konoha tactical doctrine, as revised by the Sixth Hokage and Shiroi no Sakura, was for male ninja to rotate on and off the battle line according to a timetable to keep them in peak condition. That meant that with their resources being replenished by rest and food they were able to constantly spam their strongest jutsu without having to conserve their resources, while kuniochi held the line.

Naruto's sexy no jutsu was accurate enough that he might have noticed the difference if he'd ever started to run low on chakra.

One day, he would notice, and since the Sixth Hokage was already legendary for the huge amount of chakra he tossed around, the use of Sexy no Jutsu, generally coupled with scary laughter, would cause smart enemies to run away very fast, because it meant he had had a wonderful, awful idea and things were about to go Beyond the Impossible.

It was never a good sign when someone already hitting you with with an insane amount of jutsu called for even more power.

In the same way, you didn't want to encounter a stacked Konoha medic nin who looked like they were in their twenties, unless you were in a bar or something. No one knew if Tsunade had ever actually uttered the famous words, "My boobs give me super strength!" (if she had, she'd been too drunk to remember it the next morning) but thanks to some metabolic quirks, after someone had used the technique for a few years, the ratio of chest to waist could indeed be used to give a fairly good estimate of their skill level.

It was Hinata who combined it with the Gentle Fist to create the ultimate techniques Armor Piercing Slap no Jutsu, Bright Slap no Jutsu (which combined it with an explosion), the gender-switch Bitch Slap no Jutsu (Naruto's idea), and St-Fu no Jutsu, which destroyed the ability to fight back not only by blocking the tenketsu but by removing the ability to speak.

Hiashi really shouldn't have said that about Naruto.

At any rate, Kakashi agreed to camp there until Sasuke woke up, since if there was a man down it was better to at least have a secure perimeter than to be on the move, even if Naruto's kage bunshin ability meant that he could carry Sasuke and fight at the same time.

Meanwhile, Naruto discovered that no matter how many Orange Bombshells he surrounded the glowy white & red not-doggie with she, well, technically he according to Sakura but there was some sheness about her somehow, would still start growling if the real him became a him again. It was so totally unfair and he knew she was laughing at him, with her tongue hanging out like that.

"Come on, you're a jonin, you've got to know some way to make her go away!"

"Normally, summons disperse when the summoner has no more chakra available, and most of the techniques try to speed that up or disrupt the connection. She's not drawing on Sasuke, and for the moment she seems pacified." So, powerful or not, she was a much less immediate problem than the fact Gatou had surely sent other ninja after Tazuna. "Here." He gave Naruto some dog treats. "Why don't you see if she knows any tricks?"

"So she's a goddess?" To Naruto, raised among a bunch of believers in small gods, that wasn't all that big a deal. A god that someone really liked someone else might ignore or even not believe in. Naruto had heard of Amaterasu, but it wasn't like she was one of his personal gods. "Can Sasuke summon Orange-sama or Ramen-sama?" Because that would be awesome.

Rao just laughed, feeling them bounce. It was good to have an audience, even if he wasn't fool enough to trust her. She'd just have to wait a few years for the off-switch a good pair of boobs could hit to finish being installed into his male brain. "Amaterasu, mother of us all."

"What's she the goddess of, anyway? Perverts?"

"Well, her eyes do watch just about everything… She's the sun goddess."

"So why is she a male wolf? And why is she making me stay in sexy no jutsu?"

"She's a god. If you ever attain godhood, then you too can do whatever you damn well feel like and strike people who dare question your judgment with lightning. As for her sex drive, it's legendary, literally. You don't have that many children unless you enjoy pleasures of the flesh. One time she locked herself in a cave and didn't come out until the goddess of wild partying started doing a pole dance. Then she was out of there so fast she left skid marks instead of flowers behind. When the one you call the Juubi invaded this world and the Celestial Plains, he did so on board a ship captained by one of the Moon Tribe, who are famous for their beauty. She was too busy drooling over him to notice a thing."

"The moon tribe? Are they demons too?"

"We wish." Rawr. "But no, he was too busy to notice anything either."

"Busy?"

She laughed again, wishing she could flutter her eyelashes at him from behind a fan. "He had the radiant goddess – not in that form, of course - practically pawing at him in heat. Who do you think he was busy doing?"

Snake… When you find out what it does, you'll realize it's a horrible pun. The author makes no apologies.

A ninja awakened suddenly has two responses. Or, at least, the still-breathing veteran ninja do.

Type 1: immediately attack anything nearby. They're probably hostile, and if they weren't, well, then they should have known to only wake ninja up from a safe distance.

Stupidity kills. It's best that it kill the stupid.

Type 2: play possum until you have some idea what's going on. It's better not to go off half-cocked, and if you're in enemy hands it's better to gather yourself before the interrogation starts.

Sasuke would definitely have been a type one, what with the flashbacks, if he hadn't had kids coming into his room to hide from nightmares. The fact that, being future ninja, they were generally carrying at least a kunai in case the monster in the closet attacked just made it easier to mistake them for enemies.

However, ninja needed to act fast, so Sasuke had gotten his friend/foe recognition system trained to function while half-asleep. Meaning, since they were talking, he immediately identified the lap his head was lying in as Sakura's and that there was one Naruto over that way and a cluster of others, all female, over that way. Kakashi and Tazuna took another second.

"No, sit, stay! Don't go over there, I have a doggy bone?"

There was an animal heading his way from the cluster of Narutos. They didn't seem to be in combat, so Sasuke opened his eyes.

The extremely dangerous not-wolf growled, and before Sasuke had time to remember that he'd seen it before falling unconscious his eyes spun and his hands formed the rabbit sign. There was one opponent, which had met his eyes, so the optimal one was, "Tsukiyomi."

The word sent a chill through him. He remembered that word, that jutsu, that night. Those three nights trapped in illusion, the way he was trapped in his body now as it performed the jutsu. Even if that… thing had knocked him unconscious, it didn't deserve…

…to have a stick dropped on its head?

His hands were already forming another sign, since that one hadn't worked. Snake. "Susano-o." Once again, his body braced itself for another massive chakra drain. Once again, the result was massively underwhelming.

A stream of water arched from his hands. Great. Now he had an angry, wet dog.

His hands started to form the dog, but this was the dog. Rabbit, but while for Itachi that had been a killer genjutsu he had gotten a stick. That wouldn't eliminate the enemy.

The pre-programmed responses kept being triggered, then vetoed, triggered, vetoed, his mind watching in confusion and mounting anger as his body was trapped in an infinite loop.

What had Itachi been thinking? How was Sasuke supposed to grow strong like this?

…Itachi had likely been planning to return when he made genin, to remove these compulsions and perhaps place new ones. Itachi would be coming to find him. Soon.

And the dog was laughing at him, tongue lolling out.

"Sasuke, she probably won't attack you if you're in sexy no jutsu. Sasuke?" Naruto waved an arm in front of his face.

The instance his view of it was broken he blinked, loop disrupted. When Naruto's hand swung back he dropped and rolled to come up facing in the opposite direction and close his eyes. "Naruto, get the blindfold out of my pack." His voice was low and serious. "It…" No.

He couldn't tell Naruto Itachi might be coming. He probably wouldn't be killed if Itachi found him alone. He was nowhere near strong enough yet to bother with. But Naruto would try to protect him.

And die.

So he couldn't say that Itachi had probably left this in his head, since Naruto would be able to follow the same trail of logic he just had.

"Oh, right, if it works for Kakashi. That's so unfair." Naruto was wearing a shirt covering the seal, and he still had to be in sexy no jutsu? He tossed Sasuke the blindfold.

Sasuke caught it, eyes still closed, and tied it around his head. He hadn't trained outside where people could see with it on, since he wanted it to remain a secret from Itachi, but for years he'd been training himself to fight blind to avoid that technique. He had no training in navigating a forest blind, but he would just have to start learning now.

It was inconvenient, it sucked, he was going to trip over tree roots and it would be embarrassing, but that was life. It sucked and then you died messily. "What's going on?"

"Well, your summon really doesn't like the Sharingan, or me," Naruto reported. "The jutsu's name was Amaterasu, and she's making me stay in sexy no jutsu or else she starts growling at me."

Naruto was stuck in sexy no jutsu and he had to keep a blindfold on.

Goddamn Itachi. Goddamn Sharingan.

"Kakashi wants to abort the mission and head back to Konoha," Sakura supplied, hesitating. They'd interrogated Tazuna while waiting for Sasuke to wait up, and there was a particular aspect of it that, well, once Sasuke heard it he'd be dead set on going.

"Do you have any idea how she would react to unactivated Sharingan?"

"Well, if she's okay with them being covered… But I think that's mostly because it's funny, or…" the animal had padded over to Naruto. Judging from the movements and the sound of the toss, it had probably made him throw the stick Sasuke had summoned. "She can wait."

If the summon had some sort of vendetta against the Uchiha, they could not return to Konoha. "Do you think she's likely to get bored and wander off?" No, that would be the universe being nice, which didn't happen.

Sasuke had seen that summon. With the Sharingan. It didn't need his chakra to stay around. It didn't need anything. And nothing even a jonin-level-ninja could muster was going to make it leave if it did't want to.

Well, he'd wanted to do missions outside of Konoha.

Ok, that layer of chakra was probably grass, and those were trees.

Most Sharingan users never developed chakra senses that accurate. They never had a need. Itachi had shown him how badly it cost them.

It wouldn't help with tripping over rocks, but then it hadn't helped him avoid walls either. He'd just have to deal.

He heard the dog lapping at the water, as well as seeing it with his chakra senses. The water was full of chakra. "That's not ordinary water."

"Hmm. It does smell like sake." Kakashi was immune to a laundry list of poisons. He would have risked tasting it if it hadn't been produced by a Mangekyo technique.

"Sake?" No one stopped Tazuna from cupping some in his hands. "Hmm. It would be very good if it weren't watered down."

"A dog that wants to kill me, a stick for it to fetch, and some watered-down booze?" Sasuke facepalmed. "Itachi got black fire, an ultimate genjutsu, and I'm fairly sure the third one was supposed to be a summon." That probably didn't suck the way his did. Itachi hadn't used it that night for some reason.

"Well, it kind of makes sense that you'd get the opposite element from him, when you think about it," Naruto tried to cheer him up.

"It has holes. I don't think it's a stick." Sakura picked it up. "It's a flute."

"A flute. That's so much better," Sasuke said dryly. "Maybe it's a chakra flute. That would come in handy, if I could play the flute."

"Maybe it casts a genjutsu." Element, summon, genjutsu thing: that seemed to make sense to Naruto.

Sasuke resisted the urge to facepalm again. If he yielded to the urge to reflect on reflect on how unfair the universe was all the time, he'd never get anything done. The world was unfair. The only thing to do was wait for it to be unfair in his favor. "Maybe if we get the dog summon drunk?" That sort of thing worked in legends.

"That might work." Kakashi had met his teacher's summons. It would definitely have worked on them.

Alright, how had that technique gone? Sasuke opened his eyes: good, he could see nothing through the blindfold.

The better a ninja got, the less preparation they had to do. Although, in Naruto's case, he could do the one-sealed version of Kage Bunshin no Jutsu because he had so much chakra he didn't need to use other seals to make sure it was safe and prevent the drain from killing him. Luckily, Sasuke's Sharingan had been open while his body performed the jutsu, so now it was part of his own jutsu library.

"Could you refill my jars while you're at it?" Tazuna asked.

While they waited to see if it would work Tazuna repeated his story, and as Sakura and Naruto had known he had Sasuke at the part about the little kid who had lost his father and would surely be killed by Gatou along with his mother once Tazuna was killed, to further crush any hopes of resistance. He was weak against orphans: they all knew it.

Kakashi summoned Pakkun to carry a report back to Konoha as they packed back up to continue on to Wave. "See if you can keep her here as long as you can." So they could get a head start.

Pakkun wagged his tail at the sight of Amaterasu, who produced steak from nowhere to share with him. Kakashi wondered what they were talking about, but they left hurriedly as Amaterasu rolled around in the grass, happily drunk.

"Do summons get hangovers?" Naruto wondered.

"Well, they do call it hair of the dog."

"Great, now she'll have more reason to come after me," Sasuke muttered, wondering if that was a rock there and considering asking Naruto to go find him a walking stick since the flute wasn't long enough.

Well, better him than the kids.

Sasuke, despite his immaturity, was considered the least annoying Uchiha Clan Head in the history of Konoha by its council. As one of the two founding clans, they had a considerable amount of power and had made sure everyone knew it. After all, precedent being what it was, a power that wasn't used was a power that could be lost. So his predecessors had made a point of doing something outrageous every year, sometimes on very slim pretexts, in order to rub it in about how powerful they were and how they had all these special powers and loopholes just for them.

Sasuke was too busy for that kind of bullshit, but between the challenges to his control over the clan and his support of Uzumaki Naruto, he generally needed to take advantage of every single unfair advantage the Uchiha had about that often anyway.

While no one liked having their power grabs and child-grabbing shut down, let alone his support of the Kyuubi brat, at least when Sasuke raised holy hell there was a reason for it other than just being a jackass Uchiha.

Sadly, his temporary representative on the Council had no such restraint.

Sarutobi sighed deeply, steepling his fingers and breathing out through his mouth. Nose plugs were a necessity during these council sessions, to prevent the blood loss causing unconsciousness and allowing measures to be passed by sole conscious vote.

"Now, children, you know that when your clan head returns you will likely be subjected to disciplinary action." Sasuke would pin them to the Hokage monument upside-down with kunai, in full view of everyone, as punishment for undermining his position and subjecting him to more goddamn council sessions. Naruto would super-glue dunce caps to their hair. Unless he thought this was as awesome as the Uchiha-spawn thought it was. "Don't make this any harder on yourselves than it has to be."

Shigure just grinned, as did the one who had won the brief scuffle over who got to hold the Official Clan razor-edged war-fan. "I could say the same for you, old man. Our demands are reasonable, and as soon as you given in to them this… unpleasantness will cease." He matched Sarutobi's thoughtful pose well enough the Sandaime wondered if Sasuke was really the only one with an activated Sharingan. What other secrets were they hiding?

The aura of threat was ruined when the one holding the fan hit someone else with it, leading to another rolling dust cloud of fists, knees, and name-calling behind Shigure. He ignored it.

"The measure you wish to pass," he'd better call it that: the office could not accede to demands, "consists of having the Academy lunch menu replaced with ice cream and candy. However, what guarantee do we have that you will stop abusing your privileges even if this council were to pass it?"

"My word as an Uchiha that the instant you sign it, we stop calling emergency council sessions constantly so that none of you can get any sleep."

"No good. I've known too many Uchiha."

"They're children, they have to go to bed eventually," Inochi wrote on the note he passed to Shikoku.

The other clan head shook his head and replied. "The Sharingan doesn't only copy jutsu, but how to make things." The Uchiha were the reason chakra pills and exploding tags became common knowledge. "See those small paper bags on the table? They're Youkai Flowers, an energy replenishing powder especially effective on children." And having so many visible, out in the open, was a clear threat, so blatant it was insulting. Not to mention another means of showing off the Uchiha clan's power: They weren't afraid of having the bags stolen or destroyed.

Not just because of the clan's power, no. No one would dare do that in full view of the council: the Hokage and others would be able to see through any attempt to hide who had done it. No one sane, anyway, but after four days of this it was getting more and more tempting.

Sarutobi cursed his softness. First he'd let Orochimaru escape, and then he'd let Itachi's pleas move the heart that ninja weren't supposed to have. 'They're just children,' he'd thought. 'Blaming them for the clan's evil would be as unjust as blaming Naruto for the Kyuubi's.' Riiiiight.

He hadn't wanted to be like the people who hurt the Fourth's son. He'd been powerless to stop them without putting him in even more danger, but he'd had the power to spare the Uchiha children.

Old men needed less sleep, but if it weren't for the fact Naruto would have been heartbroken, the sleep-deprived and therefore legally insane Hokage would have decided then and there that they were all horrible evil devil children and called Itachi back to finish the job.

"I've got the Whapping Stick and yoooou doooon't!" The current winner of the Fan Wars taunted the others, who growled, looked at each other, and charged within reach of the weapon, willing to take a hit to accomplish the mission of beating the crap out of their distant cousin.

He really shouldn't be enjoying watching children injure each other. And yet he was. Sarutobi knew he should be resisting this, that way lay the Mist side of the Chakra, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that seeing them beat the crap out of each other was making it easier to resist killing them all.

After all, it was so much more convenient if they would do it for him.

Ran knocked on the Hyuuga compound gates, wearing the little policekuniochi uniform Hinata-nee-san had taught her how to sew. "Hello? I'm here to collect for the Widows and Orphans Fund!"

Some of which actually went to those widows and orphans. While Sasuke had been too busy and the others too young to go around forcing people to contribute, 'donations' had dried up, and what was left had been spread around far too many victims of the war and kyuubi attack. Naruto-ni-san had gotten the short end of the stick.

After that last mission, however, they were really back in business, although there had been several covert missions before then.

When the gates didn't open immediately she pouted and pounded on the door with the Policeman's Knock her daddy had shown her. "Open up!"

The door opened at last: it seemed the guard had gone to get Hizashi, who put the usual amount in the bucket.

The Sharingan also helped with reading body language. Hizashi wasn't going to laugh and congratulate her on humiliating the Main House openly, but there were slight twitches of his jaw that would have conveyed the message to an adult Uchiha, back in the day.

Ran actually didn't have the Sharingan yet, so he had to resort to another means of conveying his gratitude.

After Ran cheerfully thanked him for the donation the door closed. As she looked down in the bucket to count it, her eyes widened.

You could knock on people's doors and use the threat of pranks and violence to extort not just money but candy?

The ensuing reign of terror by the Uchibi Mafia left an indelible mark on future generations. The Uchiha clan made it tradition that children would collect the donations, dressed up not just as policemen but as adorable orphans, the ghosts of ninja who had perished in battle, and grieving widows to make the whole thing seem more legitimate and make the people who weren't in the know give extra due to having their heartstrings expertly tugged.

And, of course, candy for the little dears who had walked all over town for a good cause.

The Uchibis began to let their friends come with them, provided they begged enough, since they wanted a share of the candy too.

Candy makers, shop owners, people who ran actual charities and children soon caught wind of this, and the practice spread all over the Fire Nation. Supernatural creatures became acceptable costumes, due to misinterpreting complaints about them actually being horrible devil children in disguise.

The Sixth Hokage, far from listening to the pleas of the suffering (was it their fault the stores had been sold out of things that would make them go away?), encouraged the practice. Pranking was incredibly good practice for future ninja, and he had a special place in his heart for children in need.

No, this practice encouraged disguise abilities and was all kinds of awesome. There was only one thing that could make it any better.

More orange!

And thus it was that the children of Konoha were issued a D-class mission to toilet paper the houses of anyone who didn't put some kind of orange decoration on their house.

Contrary to popular belief, the clan's signature Grand Fireball no Jutsu and required development of a fire affinity had nothing to do with the Sharingan. It ran on demonic chakra, not fire chakra.

Perfecting it wasn't the true rite of passage, but rather it was a necessary precursor to the test of courage and commitment to the clan.

"I don't wanna."

"Stop being a wuss."

"This didn't make it activate before," Roku complained, stretching. "And you suck at tying people up. I should be doing this so you know how it's done."

Hiko kept working, tying his arm to the headboard of the bed unnecessarily tightly as punishment for bitching to the person who was currently in charge here. "The victim is supposed to be able to escape, and we mostly do this to civilians anyway." Since no proper Uchiha would be scared in this situation. They knew how this worked. "Now you're supposed to be screaming. You suck at being a helpless victim."

"I'm an Uchiha; I don't know how to scream in terror."

"Well go make some civilians do it and copy them." Honestly. He stepped back from the bed and turned off the light switch. "Alright, places everybody!"

Another person lit his torch and held it under his chin so his head was in creepy shadows. "You really shouldn't have done that."

"Nobody insults Naruto-ni-chan and gets away with it," even if he was only an honorary clan member.

"You broke the Third's law by letting yourself be overheard saying stuff like that. Now, if we were grown up we'd hand you over and he'd kill you. But we're feeling nice, but we'll just let you get away with a warning," a female voice said this time.
Hiko shook his head, and poked the third one.

"Oh, right, Arson no jutsu!"

"You guys suck at being evil and creepy," Roku said as the 'electrical fire' spread. "Those were supposed to be guidelines, not scripts."

"You should have said something about how if they ran they'd only get a little singed, and maybe smacked the idiot so they'd stop panicking." Hiko demonstrated for Konohamaru and his minions.

"Ow! I wasn't panicking," Roku complained.

"Because if they die then it's a lot more trouble to cover up. Come on, Konohamaru, you're ni-chan's student and the old man's grandkid. You need to stop sucking so bad or else it's going to be embarrassing for everyone."

What kind of future ninja held their camouflage the wrong way up?

"You're more like ni-chan than ni-chan is." Roku agreed, meaning stupidly heroic and nice. "Come on already, at some point someone's going to notice the weird lights, and then we'll have to scram."

"And the civilian wet himself and it's getting stinky in here," Hiko said, kicking the blindfolded, earplugged and gagged bundle of terrified civilian, making him curl up into a ball. "So let's not do any more rehersals than we have to, alright?"

The misspelling's deliberate: Naruto doesn't know how it's spelled and this is how he would assume it was.

Fair's fair. If Sasuke's going to end up, 'blind,' he should get a pimp cane.

The search for gifts to bring home to the Uchibis hadn't gone well: Tazuna hadn't been kidding about the poverty level. Even though Sasuke couldn't see the pinched faces of the children watching them, he could see that their chakra levels were low, even for civilians.

And since hungry kids got cranky and took it out on the people who were supposed to be feeding them, it was one of the things he'd developed a sixth sense for.

Which was how they'd ended up at the shore, where Naruto was delighted to see that the explosive tag fishing method described by the academy's survival course really did work. A small army of Ramen Knights (this was food, even if it wasn't ramen), were gathering wood and setting up cooking fires while Orange Bombshells dived in to bring back the fish that floated to the surface, killed by the tags, and brought back crabs and other weird things they'd never seen before to Sakura to ask if they were edible while Sasuke held court on a handy rock.

He couldn't let them go hungry, but he couldn't let them think it was a good idea to go with strangers who promised them food, either. "Public places are one thing," he said, waving at the bridge workers. They'd set up here since they were supposed to be guarding the place, after all, and Sakura had said they'd probably need lunch too. While they were working on the bridge they weren't fishing to keep their families fed. "And so are Konoha ninja," even with all the closet perverts, "but there are a lot of perverts out there."

He heard an angry noise from one of them. It wasn't hard to guess why. Gatou's army of mercenaries would have gone looking for women as well as taking all the decent food. "Don't go off with anyone you don't know alone. If somebody does grab you," and the children of the bridge workers were obvious targets, "then if you're in public, yell for help. We can't watch all of your homes, but Narutos are going to be doing patrols."

Some of the bridge workers had sent for their families, who were helping Sakura identify Naruto's catches and providing some ingredients. Spices kept, and there hadn't been much to use them on. "Pretend like you're panicking, cry if you can." Crocodile tears were one of the first things learned in the ninja academy. "If you struggle to get away, don't do it hard: you'll just tire yourself out. But it's good if you look weak. People are good at keeping stuff from getting away, but not as good at holding people away from them. So wait for a good moment and lunge in." He demonstrated by smacking one hand against the other. "Use your heads, teeth if you can. Don't use knives. They're a weapon, and they'll take you seriously with a weapon. Never carry one unless you can use it."

"It's not like fighting is going to do anything," Tazuna's grandson muttered. Sasuke got up and wacked him upside the head: not hard, of course.

"Don't be an idiot. Of course fighting works. Gatou's men took control of this town because they're better at fighting than you. He didn't die because he fought, he died because he didn't know what he was doing. So shut up, sit back down, and pay attention."

He grumbled but sat down. "See?" Sasuke pointed at him. "I don't know if your parents say that violence never solved anything," he'd heard that civilian parents said that, "but it's clearly not true. I hit Inari in the head, he sat back down and stopped arguing with me. Gatou killed Inari's father, your parents just took it instead of fighting back. Now, it would be stupid for Inari to fight me, because I'd kick his ass and then make him run five hundred laps up and down the bridge. It's not cowardly for him not to fight me, it's being smart. A fight you lose solves nothing, so wait and pick a fight when you can win."

He sat back down. "Now, you're not going to be able to take a grown man, especially if they're trained and have weapons. So, what you do is, once you're out of their grasp, run and get help. What Inari's father should have done was go to Konoha and hire ninja to kill Gatou, back when your parents still had some money. That would have been the smart thing to do."

There was silence, and it took him a bit longer than he would have liked to realize that one of them (a girl, he'd catalogued her voice), had raised her hand. "Yes?"

"Are you going to kill Gatou?"

"Yes: Tazuna only had enough cash for a C-rank but Naruto worked out something with the bridge tolls." Sasuke had tuned out the percentages in self-defense. "Now," he said, cutting off any cheers, "back to the lesson. They'll be taller than you and have longer legs. So what you want to do is make that one hit count so that it'll keep them down while you run away. Going back in for a second one is riskier, because remember, humans are good at grabbing and now they'll be warned. If you can, gouge their eyes out." Sasuke might hate his Sharingan, but he'd grown up an Uchiha and they'd regarded that as one of the worst things that could happen to a person.

"Stand up." He pushed Inari around so they can see what he was doing. "Put your thumb here and what you want to do is push in and scoop. They pop right out."

"Eww." That was so cool.

He pushed Inari so he sat down. "If you manage to do that, then they're definitely down for the count, between the pain and how it's harder to catch someone if you can't tell where they are." Sasuke touched his blindfold. "Don't count on it with ninja, though. In fact, don't even try with ninja: they'll know all these tricks too, and they'll know better than to assume a kid's harmless."

"Like you weren't?"

"Exactly. Now, if you don't think you'll be able to get at their eyes before they get somewhere they might be able to lock you in or tie you up…"

"Mister Uchiha, the doggie's back."

"I can sense that." Dammit. She kept running off places, and he'd thought the kids he'd told to play fetch with her would be able to keep her busy longer. She sat down next to him and he patted her on the head when she shoved it under his hand, feeling resigned. "There are a few other places that you should try going after. Can anyone tell me one?"

"My mommy said to kick perverts in the groin."

"Yes, that will stun them for a bit. However, if you haven't been grabbed yet, and it's best not to get grabbed, don't actually go for the groin. Protecting it is one of the fastest reflexes. So what you do is, you feint for the groin. It doesn't even have to be a really convincing feint: if they're badly trained, instinct will make them guard it. Then, while they're off-balance, you go for somewhere else. If you actually do try to hit them there, that's where their hands will be, and they'll grab you and be really angry with you for trying it. No, you want to go for the..."

"Sasuke, look! Isn't this the coolest thing ever!" Something was shoved in his face by a female Naruto.

"I can't see, Naruto," Sasuke reminded her, and instantly regretted it when something wet and slimy was literally shoved in his face.

"It's a sea slug! Like a regular slug, only even better for grossing people out! The sea anenemies are really cool too, they've got all sorts of colors and they kill everything but orange fish with deadly neurotoxins!"

"That's very nice, Naruto," Sasuke was used to dealing with childish enthusiasm, "but I'm in the middle of a pedophile-killing class here." The hand that wasn't on Ammy's head was holding the walking stick Naruto had found him (he'd buy a sword-cane when he got back to Konoha), and he used it to push Naruto away. "Go put it down Kakashi's back or something."

"On it!" Naruto bounced off.

Damn Sharingan. He was on a beach, the Orange Bombshells had to be wearing bikinis, and he couldn't take this blindfold off or it would be obvious that something was wrong, he'd have to explain, and Naruto would be killed by Itachi.

Damn Itachi.

They were 'the seven swordsmen of Mist,' after all. So the author views it as very possible that Freaky Fish Guy and Zabuza got along well enough to go for a beer and exchange current intel at least once after they both became missing nin.

Also, Good Omens reference.

"Alright, team, time for a meeting," Kakashi announced after the sun had gone down and the workers and their families had been safely escorted back to their homes.

"Hold, on, let me get changed." After lunch (and learning about the local toxic sea creatures), Sakura had put on a swimsuit and started practicing water-walking. Once again, Orange Bombshells held up towels for her to change behind. She worked fast and tried not to think about how Naruto was really a guy. Then she wondered if she was starting to think like Sasuke and Hinata…

Since she could still hear while changing, Kakashi continued. "I scouted Gatou's base yesterday." From a safe distance, of course. "He only has two other missing nin in his employ…"

"Actually, he only has one missing nin, Zabuza. Haku was never in a village," Naruto interrupted to correct him.

"Zabuza, the demon of the mist?" That… was worse than Kakashi had thought. Still, this 'Haku' having no formal training beyond apprenticeship lowered his threat level enough to make up for it. The strangeness of his chakra had concerned Kakashi a little. If he'd never seen anything like it… "Who slaughtered his entire graduating class?"

"He killed children?" Sasuke's voice was level.

Naruto waved his hands. "it's not like that! In Mist, you had to kill at least one other student to graduate. And he's really nice to Haku. And Haku thinks that him hating that system was part of why he tried to overthrow… Um…" He probably shouldn't be talking about that, huh. "Well, he definitely got any kid-killing out of his system then?"

Naruto wondered, once again, why sometimes he was good at saying stuff and other times he totally sucked.

"You spoke to this Haku?" Now Kakashi was the one quietly pissed at him.

"Yeah. His father killed his mother and tried to kill him because they had a bloodline and he found out. Haku survived, but he didn't have anywhere to go and if he had gone anywhere and they had found out where he was from," Naruto mimed slitting his throat. He understood prejudice. "Zabuza found him and looked after him even though he was raised to hate bloodlines too and it was a real hassle to drag a kid along, what with all the bounty hunters."

"Hn." That… got Sasuke's approval.

"What sort of bloodline?" A bloodline changed matters.

"He can do stuff with ice, it's really cool. There's this thing with all these mirrors…" Anyway, "Haku's really nice. Kinda freaky, but nice." All Naruto's friends were freaks. Except Sakura-chan, most of the time.

"Regardless, if they're in Gatou's employ they are our enemies. Did you tell him anything about us?"

"Only what I had to. That Sasuke was the head of the Uchiha clan and we were from Konoha and stuff."

Hearing that, Sakura face palmed.

Kakashi's hidden eye twitched, ready to use the Thousand Years of Pain technique. "What you had to? Naruto, never give information to an enemy. Never. This will make it harder to take down Gatou. Didn't you want to help these people?"

"But they aren't our enemies…"

"They are in the enemy's employ…"

"No they aren't. I found Gatou's financial forecast, he wasn't intending to pay them. That was a breach of contract. So I hired them."

"You hired them?" Enemy nin?

"You hired them?" Without telling me? A second later, Sasuke wondered why he was surprised. "Good thinking." He really didn't like negotiating unless he had to. Too many bad memories and thinking about them made the urge to kill rise. No, dealing with random missing nin and other annoyances was what he'd hired Naruto for. As for payment, the deal was that Naruto could do whatever he liked with the Uchiha clan finances as long as the bills got paid and Sasuke never had to deal with any of it. The fact that Naruto would never let the children go hungry the way he had and was well aware that Sasuke would kill him if any speculation went embarrassingly wrong and caused gossip that undermined Sasuke's bargaining position kept things under control.

"Yeah. I hired them to kill Gatou and come back with us to Konoha to work as bodyguards for the Uchibis. Only if you don't want Zabuza I bet I can find something for him to do, or he can find his own job."

"Why would a missing nin want to join another village?"

"A lot of missing nin are joining villages." Naruto seemed to think Kakashi should already know this. "Well, I think what really decided it was that he was worried about Haku. The two main guys gathering missing nin, well, one of them really wants to get his hands on young boys with bloodlines and the other one Zabuza got warned away from by this other missing nin he knew. Something about this one guy wanting people with strong elemental affinities to eat their hearts or something."

"You want Konoha to grant protection to the Demon of the Mist?"

"Not Konoha, Sasuke. Well, old man Hokage probably will too. We don't get along with Mist anyway since they're a bunch of jerks. And people are crazy about bloodlines."

Sakura nodded. "So… this Haku. What's his blood type?" Inner Sakura smiled like a shark, holding syringes between all her fingers, fanned out like kunai and ready to throw.

Naruto mistook that for a question about Haku's personality: blood type was considered as much a predictor of that as sign. "I think you'll get along great. You like a bunch of the same stuff." Like clothes and flowers and girly stuff.

Sasuke held up a hand to get her to quiet down for a minute. "As head of one of the founding clans, I can take in whoever I please. However, as possessor of a bloodline, isn't he entitled to…" he left the blank for Naruto to fill.

She nodded. "All sorts of stuff, but the paperwork will probably take forever."

As long as Sasuke didn't have to do it. By this point, Naruto was better at writing his signature than he was. "I'll need to interview them." Before they're allowed into the compound. "Where are they?"

"A half-mile that way, and they've got Gatou's head with them. You'll like them. Zabuza's like you, only not as awesome, and Haku's a lot like Hinata."

"Naruto, I can't tell what direction you're nodding at." Not yet, anyway.

Five minutes after meeting Haku, Kakashi's diagnosis was that he was polite, that he was from Mist Country, and that since he actually wasn't female he had to be gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Well, crossdressing was a relatively harmless form of insanity. Could be worse: he could have dressed like Gai.

Sakura's was that he was polite, had good taste in clothing, and was definitely straight. She would have sworn he was gay, except he kept looking up and down female Naruto and blushing but never showed the slightest attraction to Sasuke, so he couldn't even be bi.

She didn't even think of his outfit as crossdressing, just girly. Her idea of 'a man pretending to be a woman,' was Naruto's sexy no jutsu. Haku didn't look like a woman, he looked like a prepubescent boy.

Sasuke, who couldn't see Haku's girly clothing and was only going from his voice and what he said, was amazed. Wow. A polite young man. He'd thought they were a myth. And Zabuza didn't even have any weapons drawn! He had to be one hell of a drill sergeant. And Haku still looking up to him even though he was such a harsh disciplinarian meant he definitely had skills.

Apparently, they called it the Seven Sword School of Child Rearing in Mist Country. It was definitely inferior to the Kenpachi School, but Zabuza appeared to have enough paternal instinct to ignore the stuff about regular beatings. Beating up a child as training was one thing, but beating them for not doing things perfectly just discouraged them from trying, let alone learning how to think on their feet.

"This pathetic little girly thing without even the sense to get out of the fucking snowstorm, what kind of man does that to his kid?"

"If Danzo'd taken them they would have ended up unable to even identify other people's emotions, and what kind of ninja can't read their opponent?"

"They'd have been sitting ducks, like Haku would have been for the next mob. Probably staying out in the snowstorm was the smart thing to do-"

Sasuke nodded. "-surrounded by weapons. We've got tons and tons of booby traps-"

"-Might want to add to them. Word is the sound guy's especially hot for eye bloodlines. Senpai said that was why they kicked him out, he went after the new kid and got his ass handed to him."

"Naruto said something about him going after little boys?"

"Little girls too, but he prefers boys since he'd rather have a male body. That was why I let the kid start dressing like that. Can't believe people fall for it. That's no kind of woman… Hey, Haku! Steal the blonde brat's girl-jutsu!"

"…Zabuza-sama?" Haku looked discomforted.

"You heard what I said. What, you're the one who wanted to get people to think you were a girl. Shit, be a man, or are you afraid it's so small you won't find it again if you hide it for a bit?"

"It's ok, I'll teach it to you." Naruto thought the problem was just that Haku didn't want to steal his new friend's jutsu.

"Haku's pretending to be a woman?"

"…Oh, right, you've got that blindfold. Yeah, it's embarrassing how many people, even ninja, just look at the clothes. Now, the blonde brat, that's doing it right."

Naruto nodded. Yeah, she was just that awesome.

"Should we all pretend Haku's a girl?" Sasuke asked Naruto, the official tricky one.

"Yeah, it'll be fun. I wonder if the Hyuuga will try to marry off Neji to 'her?'" That would get them off his back about marrying Hanabi as soon as she was old enough to have children and put into the Branch House (since the terms of Hinata's marriage contract were not yet settled, they hadn't sealed her yet in order to keep their options open). She was his cousin, for crying out loud.

No, more like his half-sister, since their dads were identical twins. The Hyuuga were messed up, seriously. "You'll get along great with Hinata, she loves girly stuff too. Neji's her cousin, so she'll probably make us tell him the truth so it's not creepy, but he'll play along." Anything to screw with the Elders.

Hinata and Haku did get along famously. They had so many interests in common: looking after their precious people; flowers, herbs, medical Jutsu and other things that helped take care of their precious people; making clothing for their precious people…

Especially Naruto. Especially female Naruto. Haku had a positive gift for designing dresses and swimwear that kept the wearer from noticing how little of her body they actually concealed.

The trouble with leaving Wave and going to back to Konoha was that it meant going back to Konoha. Where the kids were.

Well, he'd meant to make sure they learned blind fighting anyway. The growling would give them enough warning to put blindfolds on… as long as the current truce held.

Naruto wouldn't mind staying in Sexy no Jutsu form for awhile longer, and he could change back when out of her sight. He often spent a lot of the day in female form anyway, since if he went shopping in male form with Hinata that would make people think 'date' while female form just implied 'prank.' They didn't want her father to figure anything out.

The problem was the… not-animal. Sometimes, when Sasuke's eyes focused on where she would have been if the blindfold hadn't been in the way, trying to read her chakra better, her form… wavered. It was like the better he got at this chakra vision thing the harder it was to read her. Four feet or two? Dog or human? And sometimes it was just like staring into the sun and he couldn't make out anything but power, and lots of it.

Most people including ninja, like Zabuza who had taken one look and retreated, not wanting to take on a boss summon without more information, just saw a white dog. A very freaking powerful white dog, but a white dog. Sasuke and Kakashi with the Sharingan, as well as Naruto (probably due to the Kyuubi), saw a white wolf with flame-red markings.

Naruto had told him about the conversation with the Kyuubi. Now, he was a ninja, so he if he trusted anything anyone said, least of all a biju, he should hand in his forehead protector right then and there, but he could definitely believe there was something strange about this creature. The chakra wasn't normal or demonic, she wasn't an ordinary summon or biju, and there was only one other class of creatures this powerful.

Which begged the question of why one would answer the summons of the Sharingan, unless she'd done it for the purpose of finding and destroying the survivors.

Or just for the hell of it. Paranoia was a valuable life skill, but this was a creature who ran around chasing butterflies, looking at boobs, feeding mice, scratching herself… Maybe this was just some animal god, or being summoned through a demonic power had given her brain damage and a five-second attention span or something. She could generally be distracted by throwing a stick, in a pinch.

Just not the flute. She growled and gave you a look and a threatening chakra flare if you threw the flute, and she'd brought it back with her when they'd met up again in Wave. He'd tried blowing into it, and nothing had happened except confirmation of his complete lack of flute-playing ability. There was definitely chakra present in it, a lot more than in normal wood, let alone dead wood.

There was one chakra weapon in the shape of an instrument like this that he could think of. And, well, according to the legends it had a lot more connection to the Uchiha than she did. So it was a reasonable hypothesis except that it was completely and utterly crazy.

In real life, the gods didn't get involved without lots and lots of organized bribery being involved. If you wanted a miracle, ninja were cheaper. In real life, Madara had been a complete nut job, as the Shrine to Stupidity he'd shown Naruto testified. In real life, the Hyuuga liked to lord it over everyone else and if the Uchiha were descended from him it would have had to be through them. If they were, the Hyuuga would be constantly rubbing it in everyone's faces, therefore the Uchiha weren't either.

The Senju, maybe, since everyone knew the Senju were absurdly talented and so modest they ended up rubbing their superiority in everyone's faces, like how they didn't even bother to develop Mokuton into a bloodline, then two generations there was Tsunade's amazing chakra control and they passed that over too. They yawned at things other clans would kill for.

The bastards.

And there were like ten thousand different versions of the myths anyway. The one that said he'd turned the One-Tails into the moon was far from the most outlandish.

The Susano-o jutsu seemed like it would function as a chakra restorer and might have some other effects, but he drew the line at learning drunken master techniques. He would need his head to fight Itachi, and having it clouded by sake would only be a little better than by the Sharingan. He'd test it out later, that was what Narutos were for. Among other things. No, that jutsu wasn't likely to be a problem.

He was tempted to just put this thing away somewhere. If it was that, people would want it. Bad. Probably not quite "all the other villages allying to invade Konoha" bad, but he'd have to deal with thieves as well as kidnappers. Lots of them. And Danzo.

Not that this thing was it. Meaning that there was absolutely no reason not to slide the thinner side of the flute in, then let it slide out again as he felt something like a seal activate.

Oh, fuck him.

He could see the sword. See it perfectly, even though he was blindfolded. Not just with chakra senses, but with his eyes. Or so his eyes thought, even though they shouldn't be able to see it through the cloth. That meant a genjutsu. That didn't go away when he activated his Sharingan.

Although he had a sudden, pressing urge to run away very fast when he activated his Sharingan. Anti-demon energy, perhaps even mokuton? Or the legendary sage chakra?

That would be appropriate…

No, a genjutsu was a genjutsu, so the sword could just be a fake, nothing but an illusion. So, probably nothing would happen if he took a swipe at that tree.

Illusions, normal illusions, didn't chop down trees like they weren't even there. Unless the tree had been an illusion all along. He wanted to use Kai, except all the stories about… what this sword definitely wasn't said that was a very, very bad idea.

Ninja were well aware that what they didn't know or couldn't see could hurt them. Many scholars considered this sword a metaphor for that fundamental truth, among other aspects of ninja philosophy. Most scholars agreed that most of the deeds, teachings, and so on attributed to Sage of Six Paths had actually been done or invented by his predecessors, and that he had just selected from the techniques and philosophies of others to codify what counted as a ninja.

Taoist warrior monks, for example, claimed that one of their founding prophets had come from the heavens to grant the knowledge of chakra to humans, and lived for centuries before returning to the heavens, which he would someday return from to kick the asses of the people who perverted his teachings and used them for evil.

Ninja said that the Sage of Six Paths had learned from the Tengu Sage, an inheritor of those traditions, and when the Tengu Sage refused to do anything about the One-Tails but utter some cryptic nonsense ("Pow! To the moon!") and claim that it would all work out, the Sage of Six Paths had, in his first really ninja-like act, snuck into the Temple Hidden In the Sky and made off with their chakra weapon.

Legend said that no one had been able to reproduce the weapon or create anything like it because the design had been divinely inspired. The prophet had communed with the Source of All Things, and the blade had been named for that conversation.

Supposedly the music of the flute was also divine. Sasuke relaxed as he remembered how his attempts had turned out. Of course, it was possible that was only true if the musician actually knew how to play the thing. Randomly blowing into it probably didn't count.

The instrument of creation and destruction, beauty and murder.

The ancient and deadly Pillow Talk.

He took off his blindfold to confirm with his eyes as well as chakra senses that the tree had really been cut through. That didn't look like an ordinary cut, and it looked even less like a burn mark. He held his hand above the blade: no, it wasn't radiating heat. The chakra in it seemed to flow, almost ripple, creating hues of blue and green, although the sword was mostly white.

Then he looked up to see what else he could test it out on.

The genjutsu hit before his brain even had the chance to register Itachi's presence.

Ninja tried to have a fairly accurate internal clock, although Kakashi's was set to the wrong time zone. It was useful for an amazing number of things, from coordinating attacks and meetings to waking up at the right time.

Sasuke had been buried under an insane workload for a few years afterwards, and the only way to get any sleep had been to arrange things to make every second count. If you went at the right time and went directly to the right offices in the right order and had everything prepared perfectly so you could just drop it off, then you could get in and out of the Hokage Tower in under ten minutes without running, looking undignified, or being intercepted by the council so that they could 'see how he was doing,' AKA manipulating his words to try to prove that he was cracking under the pressure and should be replaced. Otherwise, it took six hours, he had to come back later to provide additional documents, and a couple more times to try to do damage control.

Normally it was only Sharingan users or veterans, like Kakashi even without the Sharingan, oddly enough, who if asked what had been going on exactly two minutes and seventeen seconds into the battle would be able to give an accurate answer.

But every ninja needed to be able to notice if they were suddenly missing time. They got brainwashed less that way.

Despite that, everyone knew that time flashed by when you were working on something that demanded your full attention. Sasuke probably wouldn't have noticed that he was missing two, maybe three minutes or even realized that Itachi had already dropped by to mess with his head until he managed to figure out a relatively safe way to test whether or not he had. Probably by looking at Amaterasu with something set up to block his view after a second and seeing whether or not the programmed attacks were still there.

Except he woke up suddenly and saw a mud clone that had probably looked like Itachi before it got sliced into chunks and started dissolving. Amaterasu, who seemed to have a sword that looked vaguely familiar on her back for some reason, was howling victory.

That… needed a moment or two to sink in and start making sense, but there was really only one appropriate response.

That being to say "Good girl!" and make a mental note to have Naruto find out what type of doggy treat she liked best when they made it back to Konoha, because he owed her at least two boxes for this.

She didn't need to growl to prompt him to put the blindfold back on.

Itachi's Sharingan had an elemental jutsu, a summon, and a genjutsu. This version of Pillow Talk is the genjutsu of Sasuke's set. Tsukiyomi can be considered the ultimate torture genjutsu, since you can do whatever you want to their head but it won't affect the body, for instance no psychosomatic wounds from three days of stabbity. Pillow Talk can be considered its direct opposite, the way holy water, well, mixed with sake, is the opposite of black fire and so on.

The author would like to know what you think of the idea of one of Sasuke and Sakura's kids being a pink-haired girl. That would ride around on his shoulder, at least sometimes. Problem is that he's not going to grow up to be as big as Kenpachi, so that kind of limits the age of the kid and the amount of Yachiru references the author can pull off there…

If this were the game Okami, little hearts would have been floating up from Hinata's body when she saw Naruto again.

If this were an old movie, she would have run into him unexpectedly and run towards him in slow motion to embrace him as romantic music played.

As this was just a crack fanfic, but not quite that cracky, Hinata was alerted that Naruto was back in town by a couple of Uchibis waving at her from behind a tree. She frowned, and left the D-class mission her team was working on to go scold them for ditching school.

A half-minute later, 'Hinata' rejoined her team (not that Akamaru's nose nor the genjutsu mistress' trained eyes were fooled), and ten minutes later 'Ran' was among the Uchibis who descended upon Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura when they were let out of their mission debriefing.

Naruto recognized Hinata immediately by the force of the hug, and the way she didn't let go but kept squeezing and smiling adoringly. "I'm sorry." If only they could have a four-person genin team! Or a four person team but with Hinata instead of Kakashi… "I brought presents!"

The magic word caused several other Uchibis to tackle him. "Presents?"

"Where?"

These being ninja, they immediately started patting down his puffy jacket and putting their hands in his pockets to try to dig out any presents in a manner that made Hinata blush and quietly wish that she had the courage to do that. In public, too…

Naruto managed to get an arm free to point. "Those are Haku and Zabuza. Zabuza's your new sword tutor, and Haku's got an ice-cream making bloodline!"

Well, he didn't know any techniques to make actual ice cream yet, but they were going to work on it, and shaved ice would be really easy.

It was enough to get the Uchibis to stop crushing him before Hinata fainted from lack of air, anyway. (Although it wasn't so much that she was being crushed as that she was being crushed up against her crush's body.)

"Ni-san! You got us a doggy!"

"I want chocolate!"

"No, I want chocolate!"

"No, make plum first!"

"Hey, look, his sword's bigger than you are!"

"Is not!"

"Is to!"

"I want to pet the doggy!"

"I want a kitty, Aniki! You said that if we wanted to take care of animals we should look after the little cousins, but they don't purr!"

"I want a hawk so that I can train it to rip people's faces off!"

"Ninja cats are way better than dogs! Dogs are for the Inuzuka." And the Uchiha were way better than all those other, non-Uchiha clans.

Few people knew that Tora was the descendant of a bodyguard ninja-trained cat that had been given to the Daimyo years ago. Except for the Hokage, which was why the mission was assigned so often. Sadly, no full-blooded ones had survived the Second Shinobi War, and the attempt to recreate the bloodline had been wrecked by the Kyuubi, along with most of Konoha.

"Hey, why are you wearing a blindfold in broad daylight anyway, aniki? I thought you were keeping that a secret?" Shigure whispered to Sasuke under the cover of the others going nuts in distracting ways.

"Later." When we're secure. He clapped his hands together, loudly. "Alright, knock it off!"

The children stopped and all turned to him, maintaining eye contact, or blindfold contact in this case. While others bowed, eye contact was the Uchiha form of coming to attention and showing respect to a superior, since it allowed not only perfect recall of orders, but made it easy for a pissed-off superior to punish them using their Sharingan.

"Tohru." He tossed her the c-rank payment he'd been handed up front (the rest would be coming in later). "Go to the store and buy flavor syrups. If there isn't enough to get all the flavors you want, spar to determine what gets bought outside the store. Shigure, you're not going anywhere until you explain why everyone in the tower was glaring at me." In that well-known why don't you keep those monsters under control way that, a couple years ago, had meant Naruto but now applied to all of them. "Haku. You're not making anybody anything until I get full reports." And determine if they were getting treats or strung up with wires and kunai. "Nobody gets any pets until they've graduated, moved into their own houses in the compound, and shown me that they can keep them clean. I'm already stuck looking after enough wild animals."

Aww…

Oboro and Sagiri tried to hide their relief that nobody would be getting cats. They and Shigure had spent years trying to train their ninja mice!

"Ran, go let Hinata's team know that we're done getting debriefed." And go switch with the real Ran before anybody has a chance to figure out that my 'fiancee' has been snuggling with Naruto. "Anybody who has anything urgent to report, follow me home and do it there. If I find out any of you withheld critical information to go try to get your favorite ice cream flavor, you will spend the next month regretting it. Chihiro, Koori, the missing mist nin and the summon are not obstacle course equipment: get off them right now."

Zabuza had been too busy staring at the five-year-old that had climbed onto his shoulder and perched there to dislodge the thing. What the hell did it think it was doing?

"Boss! You're back!" Enter the Konohamaru Corps!

Sasuke sighed. "If you've all decided to play truant today, then consider not getting caught and dragged back to class an official mission." From your clan head.

Regular school was out, which was why Iruka was working at mission dispatch, but summer school = free daycare!

"Naruto, set up a meeting between the Hokage and I, preferably before the next council session, and take care of the paperwork that's built up." You know how to forge my signature. "Sakura, make sure everyone did their homework and is working on their training. Ran, when you see Hinata, tell her she did a good job keeping you guys from losing any limbs. Konohamaru?"

"Yep, boss' boss?"

Sasuke threw a kunai at this head. The blunt edge, obviously. "Situational awareness! As the Hokage's son and future clan head, you should know better than to charge in and interrupt a mission briefing! Also, that should not have hit you, it was practically crawling through the air! New clan official mission: The person to hit Konohamaru with the most thrown stuff in the next hour gets their ice cream first! No rocks or weapons, I want things that are soft and hard to throw, and no trapping him or physical contact. Konohamaru, if you get hit by under twenty objects, or hit more people than hit you, you get your ice cream second. You are dismissed early to get a head start: Go!" He clapped again.

The kid traded looks with his teammates and they all took off.

Alright, what else?

He swallowed and wished that he could take the blindfold off and look at them. Sensing their chakra was probably a lot better as an indication of their health, since he was raising them to be ninja and ninja needed to know how to act perfectly well despite injuries, but...

They were all there. All alive. Well, except the real Ran, but she had to be prettymuch intact or else Hinata would have sent her to the hospital and let him know instead of taking her form like this, right? Itachi might have come after him, but he'd left them alone. For now.

Sasuke told himself that he was a ninja, a clan head, and a Uchiha, and none of those sniffled when they saw that their families were okay and wrapped them up in big hugs (not even to pat them down to make sure they weren't actually hiding any injuries). "If any of you are hurt and not telling me, I'm going to kill you," he warned them. It took him another second to clear his throat and say, "Dismissed."

His arm flashed out and grabbed Shigure by the scruff of the neck. "Not you."

Shigure ended up hanging upside down from the Hokage monument overnight, which would have mollified the council members more if his hands hadn't been free so that he could contentedly munch on both a large bowl of shaved ice and an even larger bowl of miso pork ramen.

Amaterasu was pleased enough at the adoration of the young children to allow Naruto to escape to his office, where he happily resumed his natural, male form and not quite so happily began to get caught up on the paperwork.

The Uchibis decided that while obviously no other clan or bloodline was a fraction as good as the Uchiha, if they absolutely had to have an inferior bloodline, an ice cream making one would definitely be the least bad.

Sakura went to check on her experiments, and it was when the screaming started that Sasuke relaxed, finally feeling like things were back to normal and maybe doing away missions wouldn't be so dangerous after all.

And then, during their preperations for the Chunin exams (Sasuke had to make jounin as soon as possible, it just wasn't proper for any Uchiha, let alone a clan head, to stay a genin for too long), a sand nin made the mistake of picking on Konohamaru.

That meant war, obviously, between the Kazekage clan's children and the Uchiha clan's. Konoha was their turf.

Sitting behind his desk, in the official regalia outfit, Naruto chewed on an ink brush and made a mental note to fund a project to develop ramen-flavored pocky so that he could chew on that. He lost way too many of his special-ordered orange ink brushes with the tiger-eye ends this way. But he was a verbal thinker and someone who learned by doing, according to one of Sasuke's vast collection of psychology and parenting books (people kept giving them to him as gifts, and some of them were useful).

At first Sasuke had thought Naruto was just plain stupid (stupid enough to get in his way and ruin all those bento),which was what everybody else thought too,but when Naruto started to learn stuff really quickly he'd wondered if it was because Naruto's learning style just didn't fit with how the academy taught, and then they'd figured out that the early teachers had sabotaged his education since nobody liked him, which hadn't made sense until Naruto had found out about the Kyuubi.

A couple of the Uchibis were in the 'just plain stupid' category. Of course, Sasuke considered practically everyone stupid, but one of the girls was, well, according to Sasuke people's parents being cousins wasn't too bad… Unless their grandparents were cousins too, and… clans had to keep really good track of bloodlines so that people had strong enough powers and good enough brain cells to survive as ninja. She wasn't the dead last in her class, but that was because she just did lots of extra homework instead of chores during chore time. She still had to go to the academy, because a 'not all there' Uchiha was an incredibly valuable kidnap target, and once she got the eyes…

So Sasuke had figured out a plan to make his new retainer stop being stupid and embarrassing him as fast as possible, and then when it turned out Naruto was pretty damn smart (if he did say so himself), well, that just made the plan work faster.

The trouble was that if you did all your good thinking aloud, that wasn't good for stealthy stuff, or writing letters or doing homework without bugging people. And stuff. Or if you were in a meeting with bank people about money, or people you didn't really like, and had just figured out a really awesome way to screw them over, then it really wasn't good to exclaim it to the whole room.

And one time he'd done that when he'd finally figured out a really difficult test question and Iruka had been so, so ticked off at him.

The rest of the time, though, it was fun to be loud and prank and make everyone pay attention to him. Useful, too, because that meant they weren't paying attention to Sasuke while he did his stuff, and Hinata got all nervous and 'umno'y when people stared at her. So everybody looking at him was totally win-win.

He nodded to himself.

"You know, I could just take dictation," Naruto's secretary, Naruto, reminded him.

"Eh…" He chewed a bit more. This was a tricky question. "I think I need to brainstorm. Kage bunshin no jutsu!"

"Okay." He started pointing at clones. "You're good me. You're awesome me. You're inner Sasuke, you're inner Hinata, you're inner Sakura, and you're inner Inner Sakura." The clones nodded, transforming.

"Can I be inner Kakashi?" secretary Naruto asked.

"Since when do I have an inner Kakashi? You can be inner Old Man Hokage."

"Awesome!" That meant he got the hat!

"What about us?" one of the other clones asked.

"You're doing triage on the paperwork." Even though he'd been using shadow clone hawks to send the important stuff to himself, all the intelligence and money stuff and everything really piled up. "Ok, everybody, listen up."

Of course, they were fresh clones, so they knew what he knew, but getting in character was important for this. "Sasuke's got Zabuza to teach him about swords, but he also needs to learn how to blind-fight."

"I'll hit the library," inner!Sakura said, since real Sakura would (and, in fact, already had).

'Sasuke' folded his arms. "I can handle that, Naruto." Idiot. "You just make sure there's enough hours in the day by keeping the idiots off my back, and keep me supplied with sparring dummies."

"I'll help," said Hinata, of course.

"Yeah! He'll be just as good as he was with his eyes before in no time, believe it!" said Naruto's good side.

"That's not good enough." Evil Naruto (or, as he liked to put it, awesome prankster Naruto), flipped her long blond hair over her shoulder and frowned in a thoughtful way that was half-smirk, an expression practiced in the mirror.

"Grr, that Itachi! How dare he use a genjutsu on my precious Sasuke-kun? I'll beat his face in!"

Naruto hoped the real Inner Sakura wasn't as violent as the idea he had of her.

Then again…

"No, weaknesses exist to be turned into strengths," Naruko corrected them. "They gave us orange, and we saw the potential to become masters of stealth and distraction. The only jutsu we could do was the henshin, and we created a jutsu that brings kages to their knees. We need to find some way for blindfighting to be an advantage."

"Hmm." Sakura was the smart one of Naruto's inner voices. "Well, people are used to using sight as one of their main senses. And since he's an Uchiha… Most of the traditional methods for taking down Uchiha revolve around neutralizing the Sharingan."

"We already covered that," Naruto reminded her. "Since Itachi's so good at killing Uchiha, Sasuke's always been training to fight as little like a normal Uchiha as possible."

"Maybe there's some way to stop the Tsukiyomi from getting to the eyes to the mind? That way he could use his sight the rest of the time?" Sakura asked.

Hinata shook her head, "Umno, the eyes and the brain are almost the same. To change that is…"

Secretary!Naruto, now Old Man Hokage!Naruto, was too busy reveling in The Hat to really contribute. The Hat? Was awesome.

"What about Tsunade?" Sasuke asked. "If anyone could do it… And haven't you been trying to get her to train you?"

In addition to being the greatest Hokage ever, it was Naruto's dream to become the greatest medic-nin ever. Because then, between his fighting skill and his healing ability, no one would ever be able to take his precious people away from him. Never ever.

He leaned back in his chair. "I've already managed to purchase most of her debt… the problem is she refuses to go anywhere near Konoha." And he couldn't leave, not when the kids and everybody needed him.

"How's the clone research going? Do you think you could send them to train?" Sakura asked.

Naruto groaned. "Remember what she said? Even if I manage to get her to train me, she's going to make it really painful to try to get me to give up." Not that he ever would. "And she'd be really insulted if I told her to teach a clone." Like she wasn't important enough for him to come himself.

And, well, even though she was important to his dream and everything she kind of wasn't. He liked her style, from her letters and everything, but she wasn't a precious person.

Hinata had spent weeks as a kid sometimes, figuring out how to not just create the perfect gift but do so without her family or even the ANBU even suspecting that she was the one who had gotten it to him. Sasuke had taken on the council for him lots. Old Man Hokage had fought to spend time with him and keep him in the academy. Ichiraku made ramen for him.

Naruto had really awesome precious people, and they were way better than an old hag of a sannin, even if she was pretty awesome. And awesomely pretty.

Naruko scowled. "I still can't figure out how to make boobs that big without having them look fake. If only I could study her at close range for a few days, I bet I could increase the effectiveness of the Harem no jutsu by fifteen percent!"

They all sighed, except the two Sakuras, one of whom snorted and the other just rolled her eyes.

Naruto had known from a young age that there were differences between men and women, like the aforementioned boobs, but Sakura had been the one to make him realize how weird women were.

She didn't like boobs. That was, that was like not liking ramen! How could she not be fascinated by the way they were round, and squishy, and…

She wanted to have good ones, but that was like Naruto wanting to have good muscles. It was a pride thing.

And then he'd caught her, and Hinata, looking at Sasuke when he was running around after being drenched by a suiton jutsu and his shirt was sticking to his body, and there was that same look of "Oooh, I want to see some more of those fascinating things," that he'd always associated with boobs.

Sakura a lot more than Hinata, though.

Naruto had asked why Sakura didn't like boobs when Hinata did, and Hinata had blushed and given the ground those 'please open up and hide me?' eyes, and Sakura had told him to leave Hinata alone.

"Umno, I think yours are very nice the way they are," Hinata said, twiddling her thumbs and blushing again.

Yeah, Naruto reflected, he had way better boobs than Sasuke did. Whenever he did take a female form, they were all small. Like handful-sized. She looked sleek and deadly like that, but big ones were way better. The kind that looked like you could lean on them and use them as a pillow while Hinata stroked your hair and rubbed your temples and fed you ramen…

"There are other sannin," Sakura said, to turn the conversation in a direction that she cared about.

"We're not letting a guy who writes pervy books and a guy who does stuff to children with bloodlines anywhere near the Uchibis." Even if Jiraya had named a main character Naruto, which implied that he had some taste, anyway. "Maybe Zabuza knows somebody that isn't already working for the red-cloak guys?"

A blood-curdling scream suddenly echoed across the compound. Naruto flung himself out the door, up onto the roof of the courtyard, and across several others before his brain noted the following words. "My hair!"

"It was my one… It wasn't a bloodline, but people would look at it, and I could tell that sometimes they'd think it was, or might be, and then they'd take me seriously even though I was from a civilian family," Sakura sniffed, not even touching the cup of tea Hinata had made her.

"You left a dangerous experiment like that brewing unattended in my compound while the children were here?" Sasuke repeated yet again, still scowling furiously.

"Hey, it's not so bad," Naruto tried to reassure her.

"I look like Kakashi!" Sakura buried her face in her hands, sobs resuming.

Hinata rubbed her shoulder. "It's not gray at all, Sakura-chan, and white is a very respectable color for a ninja. Why don't we go buy some hair dye, and no one will ever know."

Sakura shook her head. "You can't find dye that color, it always looks terrible." She'd been dreading when she got gray hairs. "It's not just one color, it's strands of several colors mixed together. If it's all pink it just looks wrong." Like a tacky, obvious dye job…

"Well, at least it will grow back?" Hinata tried.

Sakura's silence was suspicious.

"…What were you doing in there?" Sasuke demanded, fed up.

"…just something for a disguise jutsu, like I told you. Make-up has limitations." And a realistic fake tan would earn a fantastic amount of money, especially since Naruto had promised to help her market anything she came up with. "I came up with something to remove pigmentation first, since it's a limiting factor and it's a lot easier to build on a baseline than create jutsus with a wide range of starting points…"

Now Sasuke blanched. "And that stuff is still floating around in there?"

"Ni-san! Shigure turned into a ghost!" came from outside.

Sasuke cursed under his breath and whirled around. "Poison gas containment procedures!"

Sakura frowned. "It doesn't work like that."

"Can it you brats! I am not in the mood for you to act like Naruto!" There was giggling outside. Sasuke sighed. "Well, good luck with phase two." He stood up.

"Hey, wait! Look!" Naruto titled Sakura's head up. "You've got red eyes, like Sasuke!" That was pretty cool. Well, orange eyes would be even cooler, but the point was to cheer her up, after all.

Sakura would never figure out how to exactly reproduce her old hair color. Even when it was dyed strand-by-strand, the hairs would come in white at the roots. Her many attempts eventually became legend: Shiroi no Sakura, who dyed her hair in the blood of her enemies. (She never actually did, but she did use it as a threat…)

Sekhmet in Egyptian mythology: a lion goddess who was wiping mankind off the face of the earth, and the gods couldn't stop her until someone had the bright idea to mix together blood and beer, her two favorite drinks, and she got totally wasted, enabling the other gods to subdue her. Beer-making was very important to the Ancient Egyptians. Probably not because of a belief that she would return to kill them all unless they kept the booze coming, but even so.

Orochi was subdued by just booze and water.

Lightweight.

"Is it safe to go down yet?" Kankuro yelled up at her, hanging off the edge of Temari's fan.

"We can get out of range, but we'll have to make our report." So they couldn't just land: they needed a good view of what was happening.

Oh, sure, she could let Kankuro down and then fly back, but if she had to suffer then he was damn well going to suffer with her.

The mission had all started out so well. Go to the Chunin exams, kill enemy nin, try not to be killed by Gaara. Then some kids had run by playing ninja.

More specifically, playing couriers trying to transport the Ancient Secret Shaved Ice Flavoring Syrup of Ultimate Power back to the stronghold of the Awesome Clan while under attack by enemy nin from the Village Hidden In Really Bright Orange, known for wreaking havoc and migranes upon anyone who saw them. And then there had been something about the fanatical followers of the god Ramen-sama trying to steal everyone's pocket money to donate to Ichiraku Temple, and future Hokage Konohamaru's kuniochi bride seeking vengeance upon the Dark Princess Hanabi for failing to say thank you to him for being nice enough to give her some lychee flavored shaved ice.

Kankuro hated kids, and would have yelled at them to get out of his way, but then he'd realized that they were using actual weapons, and doing things like throwing each other through glass windows, and that changed it from annoying to fucking hilarious.

Temari hadn't been so enthusiastic about watching little kids try to injure each other (even though there wasn't actual killing intent coming from anyone but the little girl and her clones trying to go after Hanabi, but it wasn't like she had a chance), but then the kuniochi who had been practicing her healing jutsu on the injuries gave her some shaved ice, and she decided that this was a good opportunity to gain intelligence on Konoha.

Also, free apple shaved ice.

And when Gaara had caught up with them, he had been too busy staring to even contemplate trying to kill them.

He had even accepted shaved ice from the healer, who was the Light Princess Hinata-sama, avatar of the goddess of Being Really Nice, according to the little girls in elaborate kimonos with hidden body armor and razor-edged fans who were carrying around the train of her kimono.

Hinata blushed and shrugged. It was nice to play dress-up sometimes.

"Isn't she the goddess of healing?" The other little girl asked the one who had made the introductions.

"Mine's funnier."

The second girl shrugged and tugged at Hinata's sleeve. "Nee-san, have I done enough learning how to be a proper young lady yet? I wanna go join the Evil Cult of Blood Ramen so I can do more kunai practice."

Also because while the Uchibis quite liked ramen, they hadn't understood why Naruto liked it that much (with their demonic ancestry, Uchiha were all about the meat. And fire.) until a certain… discussion with some fellow academy students about ownership of the swingset had led to the discovery of blood flavored ramen.

"Of course you can, Sagiri. It's important to have more for lunch than just shaved ice."

"Aaah!" Another young ninja up to them, screaming. "My eyes! The ancient evil has awakened! I can feel my sanity dribbling out my ears! The laws of the universe have been overturned, and, um, that." He tried to get back into character, waving his arms. "The green beasts have escaped from their eternal battle with the one-eyed pervert sensei and the ice prince! Flee, lest you be turned into one of them!" He pointed. "See how they bring chaos to the cycle of day and night itself with their unnatural revels!"

"Lee!"

"Gai-sensei!"

There was indeed a sunset behind them, courtesy of Amaterasu using her celestial brush to cause nightfall. She then put the sun back in the sky, wagging her tail.

Another blonde kuniochi was standing carefully away from them, rolling her eyes.

"We must help these children with their passionate dedication to training!" Gai announced to his team.

Neji nodded silently and went to the side of the 'ice princess.' Hanging out with another ninja was much, much better than his uncle trying to tell him to act in a way that would make his little cousin Hanabi not complain too much about marrying him once Hinata became the heir. He generally didn't have to do anything but stand there while Sakura's friend Ino, the Evil Mind-reader or whatever they were calling her, and Haku flirted.

"Do you want to be the goddess of kunai?" the Nidaime Orangekage asked Tenten.

"Only kunai?" She was a goddamn weapons mistress!

"Maybe the Legendary Mistress of Sharp Pointy Things?"

Actually… that did have a certain ring to it. "You owe me lemon shaved ice."

"Great!" Naruto bounced off. "Go pick a side, or make your own if you want."

On battlefields, chaos reigned! The more sides and the more switching of sides in practice battles, the better ninja practice it was!

"Ah ha! Now I have the Legendary Strawberry Syrup, the most powerful of all the flavors!"

The others stared at the traitor in their midst. "No it isn't. Red bean is way better."

"Strawberry!"

"Chocolate!"

And thus battle was joined between the Awesome Clan's loyal couriers and the ninja who had just revealed themselves to have been working for the… for somebody all along.

Or at least since thirty seconds ago, when they'd thought of it.

Then, in the scuffle, a bottle of cherry syrup had somehow gotten launched in Gaara's direction. His sand had automatically crushed it, but had gotten soaked with something red that wasn't blood.

Mother apparently felt incredibly cheated by this.

The ninja with hitai-ate mixed in among the children had gotten them out of the area as Gaara began howling for blood. Temari had taken to the skies, as had Kankuro whose puppet could be reconfigured into a glider, since the only defense against Gaara was to get out of range of his ultimate defense.

"That white-haired kuniochi has some kind of book open. The black-haired one with the blindfold," who Temari had identified as dangerously cute even with it on, "has pulled back." He'd been trying to turn the sand into glass with fireballs, but there was too much of it. "The black-haired girl in the kimono is covering him," she was hitting the sand and then Shukaku seemed to lose control of it for awhile: interesting. "One of the orange clones is talking to the blindfolded guy… a water jutsu?"

No, that wasn't water that the blindfolded ninja's jutsu had summoned. They could smell the sake even up here.

Sasuke didn't get a chance to make the seals for the fire jutsu Naruto had suggested using once they doused the guy's sand in flammable alcohol before the red-headed Sandnin paused.

Shikaku might have been a demon, but he was also a tanuki. They were bottomless pits when it came to booze, and now he was stuck in the body of an underage kid and before that it had been a goddamn monk. And this wasn't just any sake. This was Eight Purification Sake, the booze of the gods. Mingled with the blood in his sand, there just wasn't anything better.

"Mother has changed her mind," Gaara informed Sasuke. "She now wants more sake instead of blood."

Sasuke and Naruto looked at each other. Naruto shrugged.

Sasuke made the snake hand seal again and gave him another shot.

By the third shot, Shukaku was indeed filled with love for all living things, enough to let Gaara have some too.

Enough to hit on the Kyuubi. "Hey there, foxy lady."

Rao sniffed. A mere tanuki, daring to hit on her?

"Come on, you know you want me. Bigger is better, and no one…" Shukaku's voice was already wavering, and the next shot of sake put him down for the night.

After years of sleep-deprivation, Gaara's body saw its chance.

Temari's eyes widened in shock when she saw him hit the ground: both she and Kankuro cursed when they heard the first snore and realized what it was.

"Hey, where are his teammates going?" Naruto wondered, shading his eyes to watch the fan fly by. "They're just abandoning him?" Because he was like Naruto? Naruto recognized that chakra.

So had Sasuke. "Well, we can't just leave him lying here in the street."

"Sure we can," Sakura reminded him. "ANBU will pick him up as soon as they get off their asses and stop 'observing.'"

"He attacked clan members." Sasuke wasn't going to let idiot ANBU handle that. He sighed, feeling a headache coming on. Being abandoned by people from his village, looking like a little angel while he was asleep: Sasuke knew that it was a weakness to be so easy to manipulate, but Gaara was pushing not just 'little kid' buttons but Naruto buttons.

Sasuke told himself that if this guy had been abandoned by his team, he likely had no real attachment to Suna, and if he was so easy for a demon to manipulate than Sasuke should have no trouble stealing a second demon vessel for the Uchiha clan. This was entirely a strategic decision. Right.

Gaara shivered, even though this was a warm day, and curled up into a reflexive defensive ball, looking not like a ninja that was worried about someone attacking but a kid who was used to being hit (and Gaara had always been attacked if he started to go asleep, by ninja the Kazekage was willing to throw away in order to keep Shukaku contained).

That was just playing dirty.

As a ninja, Sasuke approved.

Theoretically, Itachi wasn't supposed to be anywhere near Orochimaru, by order of Pein. That would have been Itachi's preference as well.

Realistically, even though Akatsuki knew all about Orochimaru's plan to conquer Konoha and were supposed to avoid it, Suna, and Sound until the time was right, once Itachi had found out that Orochimaru was going to be in Konoha he was going to be there come hell or suiton kinjutsu.

So Pein had cut Itachi orders to visit Konoha afterwards, since he was in the area, and check up on the one and nine-tails to see if they'd been contained in new vessels. After all, Itachi had been in the area (or at least Wave Country) anyway...

Itachi hadn't even needed to suggest that they head in a little early. One of Kisame's old drinking buddies, ahem, missing Mist-Nin contacts, had moved to Konoha. By happy coincidence, they were in the employ of Itachi's little brother, so Itachi had asked Kisame to make sure that he was holding up ok- Ahem, was training to pursue proper vengeance and allow Itachi to get stronger.

So Kisame had wanted to head in early so he and Zabuza could go bar-hopping before any of the bars could get blown up in Orochimaru's little invasion, and Itachi had said why not, since this would give him time to sneak off to see how his little brother was doing.

And report to the Hokage.

And infiltrate ROOT again to make sure that Danzo hadn't managed to replace any of them with an imposter, and visit Shisui's grave, and stock up on hair care products for himself and mass quantities of skin care products because Kisame kept running out of moisturizer like an idiot and stealing Itachi's sunscreen so that his skin didn't crack open and bleed. Sunlight was murder on Uchiha skin, what with being cursed demons and all, and dry desert air was just as bad for Kisame. If Itachi got ordered to Suna one more time...

They split up, since Kisame wasn't going to go into any girly stores, which was why he kept running out of moisturizer like an idiot. At first, Itachi considered trying to buy a sunscreen without any moisturizer at all, but that just made Kisame slather on even more, and it was hard for an Uchiha to look properly dignified when their skin was as red as their eyes.

Then, he had a better idea.

Once the pretty young civilian saleslady had finished wrapping up his specialized batches of sunscreen, each with different contact non-lethal poison (they were doing marvelous things with itching powder nowadays), put the various antidotes in another bag, and offered the handsome foreigner a place to stay for the night (just as planned: hotels were watched, after all), Itachi began to gradually make his way in the direction of the Uchiha district, casually going from shop to shop, gossipy hormonal woman to loose-lipped intel source.

Then, like any idiot tourist, he headed towards the explosions in hopes of seeing something interesting.

"Hey, mister! Want some shaved ice?"

Itachi stared down at the little girl who was waving up at him with the Uchiha female-style fan that was the clan emblem. The… publically known clan emblem, anyway. That was definitely an Uchiha fan. Razor-sharp edges, designed to make it hard to notice the blood stains… he hadn't seen one of those since Cousin Umi had tried to take his head off with hers. "How much?"

"It's free." Haku needed to practice her jutsu so (s)he could finally learn how to make actual ice cream.

"You're just giving it away?" Did she seriously expect him to believe that? Performing random acts of kindness was so… UnUchiha.

"Yup!"

"I suppose." Poisoned, certainly. Some sort of mild paralytic or suggestible thing that a ninja would ignore as a cute childhood prank but would allow them to ransack a civilian.

The way she was eyeing the logo on his bag, probably hoping it contained make-up or gifts for a girlfriend, made that a reasonable hypothesis.

"What flavor?"

"Cherry?"

"The cherry broke 'cause Okubo's a clumsy idiot."

"Coconut, then?"

"Sure!" She hopped up onto the fence and scampered off.

Itachi found a tree and leaned back under the shade to watch the show, allowing himself to recall happier childhood days. As the future head of the clan, it had been up to him to set an example for the others. Playing 'Kill the Senju' with his little brother, showing the others how to properly perform Arson no Jutsu, getting to bite people's fingers off and eat them while interrogating them for the ANBU since he was too young to really know any better and hey, it made them talk, didn't it?

The Uchiha firmly believed in letting their kids get away with murder in order to train them for getting away with murder as adults.

It really took him back to listen to the sounds of children playing. The chatter, the laughter, the terrified screaming, the death threats, the kunai whistling through the air, the crackling of flames…

Eventually, he'd realized that there was something wrong about mass murder and sadism, but he still longed for those simpler days when people who weren't Uchiha had been inferior animals who only existed to play with and steal jutsu from.

"Here you go, Mister!" The girl handed him his coconut ice in a paper cup and scampered away again. He noticed that her lips were stained blue: one of the reasons she was doing this was likely that she was getting to consume mass quantities of shaved ice in the process.

Itachi cautiously took a bite and another. And another, eyebrows rising. Then he began subtly slipping substances from his poison detection kit into it.

Nothing?

That couldn't be right.

He'd have to search Danzo's hidden compounds especially thoroughly. Sasuke clearly wasn't on the ball: he should have realized that the girl had been replaced by an imposter just from observing this.

Where was Sasuke?

A civilian wouldn't have been able to dodge the child that leaped on him from above, so Itachi didn't.

"Hey, Konohamoron! He's not playing!"

"But everyone who's got shaved ice is playing!"

"He's from out of town, can't you tell by the stupid civilian clothes?" Konoha civilian fashion was influenced by ninja gear, meaning it was much more practical for fighting than that of the traders and travelers who came through.

"They should have told him when he got the ice!"

"..." The Uchiha dropped down off the wall, walked forward, and attempted to whack the non-Uchiha who had downed Itachi upside the head. The blow only clipped his shoulder. "Any civilian who just takes food from a random kid in a ninja town is asking for it!"

Konohamaru nodded. "Yeah, he was asking for it either way. So how come I can't jump on this specific guy?"

"Because he's from out of town and your grandad said that if we caused one more international incident he wouldn't let Aniki in the Chunin Exams! Foreigners aren't playing, except for Gaara's jerk siblings cause they asked for it. Weren't you listening?"

"I was with the four-eyed pervert sensei all morning, I just got here."

"Oh. Kay." The Uchiha shrugged, then leaned down. "Hey, are you injured? Hinata-nee-chan's working on her healing jutsu, and she said she'd give her special rice balls to anyone who helped get injured people to medical care." This had drastically increased the number of injuries, obviously, but this was practice and Naruto had told Hinata it wasn't her fault, and it was better to get injured when she was going to fix them up good as new than in a real fight.

"No, I'm fine." Konohamaru jumped off Itachi as he got up easily. The way he'd taken a fall like that without problems alerted them both that he wasn't a civilian: good. "What game is this?"

"Training. Who are we going after now?"

The Uchiha began to tick off fractions on his fingers. "There's the Village Hidden in Really Bright Orange who kidnapped the Ice Princess in order to force her to perform the dark rituals that will bring out the full power of the Ancient Secret Flavored Syrup of Ultimate Power, the Evil Cult of Blood Ramen that's trying to kill her so that there is no power in the world capable of defying the almighty ramen, the loyal samurai of the Ice Prince that are trying to rescue his bride, the Evil Mind-Witch is trying to kidnap the Ice Princess to do unspeakable stuff to her, the Green Beasts stopped destroying the world 'cause they had to run around Konoha on their hands backwards a lot, the Legendary Mistress of Sharp Pointy Things is not letting anybody pass the bridge, the Goddess of Being Really Nice is making more riceballs and the Awesome Clan is going after the Stupid Fan-Girl so that we can beat her up and steal all her jutsu. I'm in the Awesome Clan."

How dare she have a flying fan! The fan was the Uchiha symbol, everybody knew that! How dare she have a fan that was cooler than theirs? The bitch was going to get schooled.

Now that he knew what the little girl had been up to, Itachi was starting to feel the warm fuzzies again. Tricking and using civilians, stealing jutsu, punishing people who dared do anything that didn't show proper respect: it was just like old times.

Wait. That was bad.

"What about the puppet jerk? He pushed me off his glider!" When Konohamaru had grabbed hold in order to escape the guy raving about blood.

"He's gone into hiding to fix his stuff, and is plotting to kill the Hokage's grandson for making his best puppet crash so he can't use the really delicate stuff he spent months setting up in the Chunin exams."

"…Oh."

"Don't worry. If you fucked him up that bad, he doesn't deserve to be a chunin anyway." And Konohamaru was Naruto's minion, and Naruto was Sasuke's, and nobody messed with Uchiha property. "Oh! Aniki got us really good seats for the final rounds! He could only get a couple seats last time! Shigure said there was lots of blood, it was awesome. Somebody got his lower jaw ripped off by a wind jutsu that flung it into the stands!" Shigure hadn't caught it, though.

"Cool!"

As Itachi observed his clan, Kisame was observing something far more interesting. "You mean they do this every day?"

"Except Thursday. That's Ladies Night."

"Damn." Kisame whistled appreciatively. "Why don't more missing nin join Konoha?"

"They've got all these stupid rules about no killing your allies and shit. Only let me in since they couldn't pass up Haku."

Kisame stared at the entrance to Underneath the Underneath and the barely-armored (let alone clothed) guards flanking it sadly. He was an S-ranked missing nin, and there was no way he could get in there without a bunch of genjutsu mistresses, kuniochi and actresses seeing through his disguise. "Damn."

"According to the kid, it used to be a temple to some Tree Goddess or something that did a lot of 'sacred dances.' The temple's still out back, up that hill, but the club's kind of an outreach program. Ministering to the masses and all that. Plus, a lot of kuniochi used to join the temple to learn the dances so they could seduce people, and now that there's the club they don't have to deal with ninja pretending to be religious anymore." They could learn all that seduction stuff without converting.

"This why the first Hokage built this place here?"

"You know it."

Once again, taking liberties with the history of the Uchiha clan for the sake of fitting it with Okami.

"I don't know what to tell you, Hokage-sama. Every test we can perform shows that he's in perfect health. Better than perfect health, his chakra flow is more natural than it's ever been." The medic-nin, winced, realizing that he'd used the word natural and the Hokage was in no mood for puns. "Really, we can't find anything wrong with him."

The Hokage just gave him a level stare that dragged on for several uncomfortable seconds. "…Except for the tree growing out of his head."

Yeah, except for that. "We've been able to determine that it's a peach tree?" the medic-nin offered, feeling more was expected of him.

"I stand corrected." The Hokage nodded. "Except for the peach tree growing out of his head."

"Um, yes." There was a pause. "…Sorry, sir."

Tenzou Yamato was used to being regarded as an experimental subject and talked about as though he wasn't there. He was also a ninja, and a ninja was doing it right when people didn't realize they were there.

The Hokage reflected, yet again, that Konoha's medical establishment had really gone downhill since Orochimaru's fellow mad scientists left. Recently, there were a lot of up-and-coming young female medic nin, since Tsunade and Sasuke had both made it look like an attractive profession, but if this was the caliber of their instructors?

Well, one good thing might come out of a tree spontaneously popping out of the top of Tenzou's head one day and blooming in the street: Tsunade had always felt responsible for Yamato, since her teammate had done this to him with her family's genes, so sending her a request for her medical help might be enough to make her return to Konoha, at least temporarily.

Tenzou was likely the closest thing she'd ever have to a son, since her fiancée had died and Shizune wasn't exactly equipped to become a father.

It was disappointingly easy to infiltrate the young Uchihas' training games. Yes, they had gone to fetch an adult to look him over, but that adult was a twelve-year-old genin's clone, who had looked Itachi's imperial purple and Tyrrian scarlet silk ensemble (actually, he had stolen it from the head of a brothel) up and down, given him a thumbs up, and said, "I like you!" before continuing on down the street with twenty tubs of rice balanced on his head, at least two of them with ninja kids hiding in them, waiting to ambush their prey. Using chakra to push weight up and away from you was a fairly obvious derivative of the water-walking exercise, but it was still a good way to train.

Sasuke's accountant's outfit was more than a little over the top and jarring itself, but the thing that Itachi considered actively wrong about it was the emblem on his back.

It was the Uchiha fan, alright, but it had an orange spiral on top of it. The Whirlpool symbol, the one Konoha regarded as a symbol of eternal brotherhood and friendship and all that rot.

This guy's personal coat of arms meant 'friendly/trustworthy/loyal Uchiha?' That was just so, so… Unuchiha. It was like he'd gone out of his way to find the symbol that was the exact opposite of everything the clan stood for. It was brainbreaking.

If Itachi hadn't already been eternally grateful to the Kyuubi's vessel for keeping Sasuke from cracking under the pressure and flipping out and starting massacring people at an even younger age than he had, that alone would have made him like the kid. He had style.

Obviously, joining the Awesome clan was the best way to gauge how they thought clan members should act, even if it was a play version.

"Ok, so we're going to yell 'For the Clan!' after we all start attacking her." Shouting the battle cry before you started attacking was for people who fought fair and other idiot losers.

"Wait, if this is a real army operation, shouldn't we be yelling, 'For the Horde?'" Like in the days the Uchiha had gone all over the continent looting and plundering. And burning stuff.

"Well, yeah, that was how it was in the old days, but we don't have a horde, moron. There aren't even twenty of us and most of them are on other teams."

"Naruto-ni-san has a horde."

"Yeah! Let's go borrow his!"

"Hey, Red!"

Itachi generally disguised himself as a redhead, since the pale skin worked with that.

Turning around, he glared at Kisame, in a way that asked, 'What are you doing here? Can't you see I'm trying to collect intelligence and find an opportunity to use Tsukiyomi on the one-tails' jinchuruki's sister to make It easier to secure him?'

"Did you find us a place to stay?"

Alright, that was it. "For the last fucking time, Ki-sama!" It was only one letter off from Kisame. "I am your trading partner, not your gigolo! Find your own goddamn women, and buy your own goddamn moisturizer!"

"…so you didn't find us a place to stay?"

"I found me a place to stay." And women.

The Uchibis were entirely distracted from their battle plans by this interesting scene, and sat there munching shaved ice and admiring the daring of Red-san. People didn't use that kind of language in front of them since Sasuke had threatened to burn people's mouths out with fire if they corrupted the children's minds any more than they already were.

"Don't be like that. I got Zabuza here to agree to show you the orange brat's girl jutsu."

"…What?" Was Kisame implying that Itachi wasn't capable of stealing his own goddamn jutsu? He had better not be. Pein had ordered them not to kill or possess each other, but while Itachi and Kisame got along so well mostly because they weren't afraid to get on each other's nerves or act in retaliation without crossing the line, Kisame damn well knew that the Uchiha clan was Itachi's sore spot and that if he pushed Itachi too far, Itachi was going to maim the bastard and find someone to make him some shark fin soup.

"Come on, it'll be easy for you. You already…"

"Hey, mister?" One of the little ones tugged on Kisame's sleeves: the surprise had made him stop talking and stare.

"What, kid?"

"Red is in the Awesome clan right now. If you insult him, then we gotta kick your ass."

"Just play along," the man who was probably Zabuza told him. "Don't do anything a medic nin can't fix, but other than that?"

Heh, that sounded fun. "Awesome Clan? I don't care about your stupid awesome clan. What are you going to do about it, punk?"

Kisame immediately found himself buried under blondes in bikinis.

"For the Horde!"

A few people have brought it up that I'm focusing on the crack instead of the plot. Well, yes. The word 'crackfic' is in the summary. The fact that I believe that the best crack is reasonable crack that's combined with plot doesn't mean that this isn't primarily a crackfic. A lot of my cracky fics are primarily centered on the ongoing plot: Tree of Thoth, for example, echoes the game it's based on. However, since I have serious fics in need of finishing and this was written as an experiment and for a break, the original snippet version of Uchibi Sasuke isn't one of them. So far. I may add to it and remedy this, but not while I'm still getting caught up and finishing other projects.

I agree that a serious take on Naruto and Sasuke raising the Uchibis would be a cool fic. In fact, if someone writes and does it a good job I'd be happy to write them a giftfic in thanks.

Since this fic was originally written for a message board, I used the opportunity to do a lot of experimenting, including with a degree of (in this case faux) interactivity. I'll be moving this chapter to the point in the fic where it was originally posted, but for now (most of) the things mentioned as spoilers in the omake have been revealed in the fanfiction dot net version, which I'm still editing and getting caught up with the original message board snippet version.

So, now presenting -

Omake theater:

"Alright." Konoha's Chief Justice (as head of the police force) pounded on the desk formally with the traditional Uchiha razor edged warfan (the blunt side, obviously) to open court. The Hokage couldn't be in charge, as it was Naruto's gender on trial. "The court is now in session. The people of my universe, as the fic is named Uchibi Sasuke, shall now vote on whether or not we demand the author go back in time and retcon things so that Naruto was born female." If Kishimoto had done stuff to the plot for ridiculous reasons, the author of this fic could do it to give him his harem.

"This is ridiculous!" Naruto looked to where the Third and his students (Orochimaru had been granted amnesty until the vote concluded) had gathered, as well as Kakashi, for support.

Sasuke asked "Can any of you honestly tell me that you wouldn't prefer that Naruto be a woman?"

Orochimaru raised his hand. "I prefer male bodies."

"So that's one reason Naruto should be a woman." And join my harem. Way better than that pervert's.

"Come on!"

The Icha Icha writers and reader gave him a look, then each other. Well, he was young. "Naruto," the ex-Hokage explained, "You'd still be Naruto."

"And the other you is stacked."

"Ba-sensei!" Help!

"Naruto, I hate perverted men and live with a woman." So, for once, she found herself agreeing with them. She didn't want to betray Shizune's loyalty, but she preferred Naruto as a girl too. "What about you two?" Tsunade asked the Itachis.

Original Itachi scowled. "If Naruto is female, Sasuke will be too busy getting laid to be properly dedicated to getting strong, and too happy to hate me."

Retconned Itachi smirked. "If Naruto is female, Sasuke will be too busy getting laid to leave Konoha, where he's safe, and fall into the clutches of Orochimaru. And he'll be happy."

"So a total of seven reasons and votes for female Naruto. Hinata, what do you want?"

"Whatever Naruto wants." Of course.

"Right." Stupid question. "Which do you personally prefer?"

Hinata cast her eyes downward and blushed, twiddling with her fingers. "Umno…"

"The Uchibi clan, Aniki abstaining, casts its seventeen votes for Naruto to be female," Uchiha Shigure reported.

"Since then we'd have three mommies!" Uchiha Shinobu said happily.

"Three hot mammas," Shigure agreed.

"That's twenty-five."

"Twenty-five to one."

"Sakura-chan, I love you!"

"Look, Sasuke, I understand how awesome two hot people of the opposite gender making out is just as well as the next teenager who's honest with themselves. If you wanted to have sex with Naruto while he was a guy, I'd be all for it as long as I got to watch. I've even said that I wouldn't mind if you had sex with him as a girl too as long as things were fair. But you getting yuri and a harem and me not getting any yaoi or a harem that I'm into is totally unfair."

"Hey, he has main character privileges," the author Jiraya pointed out. "Just be glad you're not being written as a violent, abusive women who doesn't have Tsunade's redeeming qualities, just a pale imitation of them." Smaller imitations, too.

"Yes, I'm not. Because the author thought that was ridiculous. The female author? Just because she's trying to write something else for a male audience doesn't mean she wants to deprive herself of one of the two sources of fanservice that she enjoys in this fic. Just be grateful she made Tsunade and Hinata bi instead of you, Sasuke."

"…So the author is the reason Tsunade never fell for my charms?"

Tsunade flicked Jiraya through a window. "No, that was you."

"If you want a universe where you've got me, Hinata, and a harem of female Narutos, write it yourself," Sakura summed up.

"Hmm. Jiraya-sensei?" Sasuke prepared to…

Naruto grabbed his hands. "No!"

"You never gave up on being Hokage, and you expect me to give up on having a harem of kuniochi with awesomely large…" Sasuke remembered Sakura, "powers?"

"No! Don't use that jutsu to bribe Jiraya to teach you to write the way you used it to make the toads force him to let you sign their summoning contract! Not in front of the readers! It's a spoiler!"

"Since when do we care about spoilers? They already know who the two of us are going to learn from because of this thing."

"It's a spoiler for the crossover and the awesome but not actually broken Sharingan abilities you're going to get!"

"Isn't she a spoiler already?" Sasuke pointed at…

"The readers can't see a thing unless it's described, just like you with that blindfold," Naruto reminded him as the spoiler licked Shinobu's face.

Naruto had forgotten everything he'd ever learned about geometry the instant he'd graduated. In fact, he didn't have much natural talent for math at all.

A lot of people found this surprising, since he didn't just get high scores on math tests but was a professional accountant.

Before he met Sasuke, Naruto had been forced to learn how to squeeze every penny because of Konoha's prejudices. It was the accountancy equivalent of training while wearing insane amounts of weight. Gai's level of insane, even.

Then, he had become Sasuke's accountant, seen how much more money could accomplish with the Uchiha name backing it, and realized something: money was power. The Uchiha had accumulated all that money because they'd had power, and now they could use it to get even more power.

Money was like chakra, and you could use it for really cool jutsu.

Thus, the focus that would one day allow him to master the rasengan unbelievably quickly and improve on it had been applied to ninja accountancy and financial piracy. Then he discovered literal piracy.

While there was nothing cooler than being Hokage, Naruto figured that being a Ninja Pirate Demon-Vessel Accountant wasn't too bad. Of course, after his resurrection, there would be some debate over whether or not Gaara counted as a ninja demon-vessel zombie puppeteer.

It was why he and the other Uchibis could have the nice toys even though they kept blowing them up.

Anyway, Sasuke had delegated money stuff to Naruto, who actually liked it, and Naruto had learned to delegate test stuff to Sakura, who actually liked it.

Which was why Naruto spent the first test of the chunin exam trying to get a closer look at the Kyuubi's boobs so he could figure out how to make those of his sexy no jutsu that big without making them look fake, Sasuke spent it studying the chakra signatures of their fellow examinees, and Sakura did her exam, used a wind jutsu to create a lens that focused light to scorch the answers into Naruto's paper for him to copy over, used a puppetry technique with her now almost invisible white hairs to move Sasuke's hand around to write the answers down, and reminded Hinata that she needed to stop looking at Naruto's back with hearts in her eyes and carry the three.

"Do you have any questions?"

"Yeah: how do you make your vest stay like that? Is it glue or is it attached to the netting somehow?" Naruto had discovered that the only thing more distracting than boobs was clothing that looked like it might slip to show boobs.

If you saw boobs, then you saw boobs: awesome!

However, if there was the potential for boobs, then it made people focus on them with every fiber of their being, trying to make that clothing slip down the rest of the way by sheer force of will. The fact that no one had ever been able to actually do this was the real proof there was no such thing as psychic powers in the human gene pool (because the lack certainly wasn't for lack of trying), but people still hoped.

Anko whipped a kunai at him: the fact that Naruto barely managed to dodge was testament to the power of almost-bare tits. Well, that and Naruto's determination not just to master every technique in his arsenal but improve on it as much as humanly possible, and beyond!

Even though Naruto had never seen an issue of National Geographic in his life, he was aware of the fact that the power of breasts needed to be conserved, like the power of ninjutsu. When there were ninjas and ninja techniques all over the place, then they kind of cancelled out. But if there was only one ninja, that ninja could rule the world!

In lands where women were almost entirely clothed, men got excited when they saw bare ankles and sexy, sexy legs, but in lands where all anyone had to do was go to the beach, the appeal of the forbidden was lost. In the same way, there were lands where all the women walked around topless and nobody thought anything of it: no, what they wanted was for the women to put clothes on, because that implied getting to take them off.

Some ignorant fools might think that it was impossible to create a vision more sexy than tons of naked women, but Naruto was determined to go beyond even that!

Anko licked at Naruto's cheek, but only to get him hot and bothered before she put him in his place. Asking her to reveal a Double-D class secret in front of ninja from other nations, even genin?

Since she wasn't really interested, it was easy for her to dodge the casual swipe of Sasuke's sword-cane. "Hands off my accountant," he said, sounding utterly bored and disinterested (in a way the author would compare to his canon self if the author was still taking cheap shots like that).

"Accountant?"

"If you tell me how you do that, I'll show you how to make Konoha reimburse you for your dango."

Anko paused, as did Orochimaru in the act of licking the tasty blood off her kunai. "Reeeaallly," they said in unison.

Orochimaru began to reevaluate his priorities. At first, he'd just been here to pick up a handsome young Uchiha and grind Konoha under his snakeskin heels, but while running a village had seemed like all fun and games with people losing eyes back when the blond brat had gotten chosen over him, running Sound had shown him that it was twenty percent dealing with idiots (many of whom were too necessary to running the place to kill or traumatize) and eighty percent money, paperwork, or both.

He didn't quite think, "Fuck the Uchiha, I'm taking that one home with me," but it was… something along those lines.

"Why don't you come by my place after the exams, and I'll give you a… hands-on demonstration," Anko told Naruto, looking at him in a new light. Casting thoughtful eyes over the lean-muscled Sasuke and Sakura, with her vastly improved figure and long white hair, she added, "Bring your friends, too. I'd be happy to give all of you a few… private lessons."

After all, it wasn't statutory rape if they were genin, and thus legally adults.

"You aren't worried about what Suna will do if you try to keep their demon vessel?" Jiraya asked.

Sasuke snorted. Suna could kiss his ass.

And they would, too, if they knew what was good for them.

Suna's current political situation was untenable, any historian could have told you that. Whenever a hidden village was that weak, they were going to be helped along to death by their neighbors, who would then proceed to loot the corpse.

Of course, any historian would have said the same thing about the Uchiha clan's situation. The reputation for power and viciousness that made Konoha's resident bastards like Danzo want to keep them around was what would make every other clan and village (like, oh, the ones they'd looted repeatedly in the past) want to kill the survivors and bury them at crossroads with stakes through their hearts.

Suna was around solely because the current Kazekage was a genius.

An evil genius, of course, but he was a ninja. The evil was implied. The only genius shinobi that wasn't evil that Sasuke could think of was Naruto, and after Naruto had learned how to shop he'd made a list of every store in town that had cheated him. Years later, when they weren't expecting it, he'd used sexy no jutsu to make the owners spray blood over all their stock.

Naruto had this ability to simultaneously be a sweet angel of mercy (and accurately-filled out tax returns) and an evil, evil goddamn bastard that the Uchiha clan was proud to call its own.

Since Sasuke was a member of Konoha's council he had to act like one, and that involved keeping up with current events. He'd been impressed by what he heard about Suna's situation and how the Kazekage was working from a position of weakness.

He'd essentially turned Suna into a political and military land mine: touch it and die. They had the desert that surrounded them, a few legendary shinobi like Chiyo (who was probably still on the level of the sannin, or rather the two sannin that weren't that Tsunade woman Naruto was after), the treaty with Konoha… And, apparently, a demon vessel that was dangerous enough outside the land of sand but would probably go through any invading force like a Grand Fireball no Jutsu through very dry kindling. The more enemies spilled their blood upon the sand, the more powerful Gaara would become.

Even Gaara's dislike of the Kazekage, which at first glance seemed like a mistake, was something any true ninja should recognize as expert manipulation.

On the one hand, if Gaara had actually cared about Suna, he might have gone after threats to it. Like the daimyo. If he cared about the Kazekage and his orders, then other villages would have regarded the demon vessel as an offensive weapon, not just a defensive one.

On the other hand, if Gaara actually hated the Kazekage or Suna, he wouldn't be willing to go on missions that showed his strength. Not to mention that this was a demon vessel that normally destroyed anything that irritated him. No, the fact Suna was still standing showed that Gaara's view of the village was being expertly handled.

As was the demon vessel's PR. After his previous missions and being shown off in the Chunin exams, Gaara's reputation would have been cemented as a ruthless killer who crushed anyone who attacked him but didn't care enough to attack anyone unless it was a mission. A land mine. Like Suna.

The fact that Sasuke now controlled the demon half of their demon vessel meant that the Kazekage would have to come to him if he wanted to make sure the other villages kept believing that he didn't have any real control over Gaara. They could compare notes, work out an alliance, and both of them could just allow other people to get the impression that there was a possibly that the Uchiha might create a clan presence in Suna someday. Or even move the clan stronghold there. The impression would be advantageous, an extra bargaining chip, but not anything that would threaten the other villages and clans and tip them into attacking, since those with long memories (like the Hokage) would know that the Uchiha had always considered Suna a godforsaken hellhole that they wouldn't spend any longer in than necessary except over a lot of other people's dead bodies.

Suna was one of only two ninja villages – okay, three, counting this new Sound village that was sending genin to the exam now – that had never been burnt to the ground by the Uchiha clan. Konoha and Sound had that distinction because they'd been built after the Uchiha had stopped doing that, and Sand because they hadn't wanted to go there. That meant they were the only three villages where Uchiha could live in some semblance of safety.

It was a pity Sound's leader wasn't attending the exams: it would have been worth sounding him out.

Now, it wasn't against the rules for teams to help each other out in the forest of death, but it was very strongly discouraged. Otherwise, teams would join up among village lines and another Shinobi War would be fought at every Chunin exam. There were, however, ways around this.

Normally Sasuke let Naruto be the one to look up what they could get away with, but he'd hit the books himself in the week leading up to the next part of the exam. He was the fucking clan head: if he didn't pass, that would be an embarrassment and undermine his bargaining position.

Which was why when his team was called to go in, he went over to Hinata's team, picked her up, and slung her over his shoulder before going to join Naruto and Sakura at the entrance, casually ignoring the onlookers and Hinata's startled meep.

"This isn't a honeymoon, kid. Although…"

"No shinobi other than genin taking the exam are allowed to enter the forest. However, Genin may take any ninja tools in with them that they can carry." He pointed at Hinata with his free hand. "Hyuuga Hinata is a Hyuuga. Under Konoha law, all Hyuuga are recognized as the property of their clan head. She is also my fiancée, and by our marriage contract I am her clan head. As she is my property, and useful in completing missions, she qualifies as one of my ninja tools. So I'm carrying her in, and she can't be barred on the grounds that she is a person because she is a genin competing in the exam."

"Genin can only enter with their teams." Anko saw where he was going with this.

"So the rest of her team needs to be sent in with us."

Naruto waved for Kiba and Shino to hurry over.

Once they were a ways away from the gates, Naruto folded his arms. "I'm ok, but some of you guys are going to have trouble blending in." Sasuke had dressed formally (of course, that was ninja formal…) to increase his odds of getting away with his trick, and Sakura was trying to create a signature look that would intimidate and mislead her enemies and was wearing a flowing sliver… thing that Haku had designed. It was obvious that Haku had made it by the way Sakura clearly didn't realize how indecent it was.

Naruto, on the other hand, was wearing orange and black, which were fantastic colors for hunting (especially the most dangerous game) in jungles, as jaguars and man-eating tigers had been proving for millennia.

"Naruto, we're ninja." Sasuke threw Hinata at him. "Let's try and get this done by the day after tomorrow."

Naruto caught her handily and put the blushing Hinata by his side, where she was very happy to stay while she focused on remembering to breathe. "Exactly! Wouldn't this go a lot faster if we torched the place?" Orange and black were also excellent colors for sneaking around by infernolight.

"Naruto, I'm disappointed in you. Clan precept 37."

"Oh, right. Pillage, then burn."

"You can set fire to the forest after we get the scrolls, to cover our break for the tower, but before then the trees are an advantage." They blocked the enemy's line of sight and they were far more visible to Sasuke's chakra sight than dirt and ashes would be. "We need to find two scrolls: let me know when your clones find our first set of targets."

Hmm. "See if you can locate Sound genin. I want to see if their training is up to snuff."

When the weird grass-nin definitely-not-lady appeared, Naruto's eyes widened like a kid in a ramen shop. "I call dibs!"

"But…!" No fucking fair! Sasuke had sensed him first!

"You got to fight Glasses!"

"That was because I had to!" He'd promised the ninja-nurses that he'd do his best to make sure nothing bad happened to Kabuto.

"He was still pretty strong." It took a lot of skill to pretend to be exactly at a certain skill level. "Wonder who he's working for?"

Sasuke sighed, shaking his head disapprovingly. "Probably Dango-bastard." Since he'd focused on trying to mark Sasuke, which would be embarrassing for a clan head. Being inserted into teams of Chunin hopefuls would be a good position for one of his. Sasuke sighed, shaking his head. What a disgrace to all of Konoha's medic-nin, to sink so low. His poor father was going to be so disappointed. Well, hopefully he'd be able to straighten his son out once he knew. Grounding, bedpan cleaning, volunteering him to be used as dissection practice… However, the urge to kill Danzo had already rose. "Eh, whatever. You can have him." He didn't want to waste his time dealing with some random grass-nin, strong or not, he wanted to kill Danzo. This entire Chunin exam was a fucking waste of time better spent training to kill people. Yes, the political ramifications, and the interesting tactical exercise, and…

If he didn't have the children to worry about and Naruto hadn't promised to become Hokage and drop-kick those annoying councilors into their place, he would so be ditching this dump. Like, yesterday. No, he thought, sighing, it just wasn't practical. He'd have to exterminate the Hyuuga since they'd be trying to recapture Hinata, and Sakura might have been able to seal the jutsu library into something so they could take it along, but it would be even more hassle than Danzo and the council idiots.

Marginally.

Probably.

…maybe he should start seriously considering moving to Sound.

"No, I'm going to be your opponent," Naruto explained, speaking slowly and carefully. "Sasuke beat the last guy, and I saw you before the others." Well, Hinata had probably seen him first, but Hinata was nice like that. She needed to train herself, but she'd let him have this guy without even a word. He added it to the mental list of 'reasons I need to do something really nice for Hinata.' As a matter of personal pride, it was annoying that in the tally of 'nice things Hinata has done for Naruto' vs. 'nice things Naruto has done for Hinata' Hinata totally had the higher score. On the other hand, it made him feel kind of squishy, and he'd told himself that when Hinata got a thousand points ahead, he'd change the world so the Hyuuga didn't need the Caged Bird seal anymore.

Of course, Hinata said that Naruto was so far ahead that she didn't think she could ever make it up to him, but that was just because Hinata thought he and everything he did was pure awesome, and that was distorting her count, if she had even been keeping proper track. Naruto had charts and graphs. He'd tried to show them to her, but she always ended up looking at him instead. He'd told her that was ok, he'd handle the Hyuuga finances too once she took over her clan since she wasn't good with accounting.

Anyway, "If you want to fight Sasuke, then you're going to have to beat me first, and then the rest of us until it's his turn again." Soooo…. "Let's do this!"

"Ganbatte, Naruto-kun!" Hinata cheered as Sasuke jumped up to stand next to Sakura.

"Shaved ice?" Proper hydration was important, especially in such a hot, humid jungle.

Inner Sakura snarled. "Goddammit, why couldn't Sasuke have fought a stronger opponent? Look at that, his clothes were barely even torn! Mmm, beads of sweat rolling down muscled skin…"

"Thank you." Sasuke nodded, accepting a dragon's blood one once Sakura unsealed it.

"Would either of you like one?" Sakura asked Hinata's teammates, smiling, mentally cataloging them. The future clan heads would be useful allies. In future, playing hostess would be part of her duties.

Kiba didn't like sweets, but Shino's bugs were very grateful for the offer.

Normally, it would be a poor training session if Naruto led off with his most powerful technique, but he had some suspicions about this opponent that he wanted to confirm. "Harem no jutsu!"

His opponent only laughed. "Kukuku…" A powerful technique, yes, but only against lesser minds. No, with this boy on his side?

When fighting alone, Jiraya beat Orochimaru beat Tsunade beat Jiraya. When their summons fought, the order was reversed. This technique would allow him to defeat Jiraya easily.

His eyes glittered not with lust, but with avarice.

After performing an anti-blood-loss jutsu on herself and Hinata, Sakura shouted, "Try the one we worked on, Naruto!"

"Reverse-harem no jutsu!"

Inner Sakura wiped a tear from her eye. "Hallelujah, it's raining men."

While innocent vulnerability and nakedness barely concealed by clouds and hair maximized the effectiveness of harem no jutsu, reverse-harem no jutsu practically required clothing.

One of the advantages female ninja often had over male (although there was of course a range of abilities) was naturally better skill at analyzing their opponents.

Even an untrained civilian woman could, looking at a stranger, list off around twenty facts about their personality, background, intelligence level, occupation, work ethic, amount of consideration for other people, just off the top of her head. They'd automatically take in and analyze this data with a single glance. For people without that skill, clothing was something they just tossed on.

For those in the know, picking out clothing in the morning became something between putting on a disguise and an exercise in psychological warfare. For women with principles, most men were so easy to manipulate that it was disgustingly easy. Just unfair. They'd sooner take candy from a baby than throw on a short skirt and call it done. It was a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

A man who knew how to play the game, however… Rated a second glance.

The amount of factors needed to create a female form that was attractive to men were limited, and 'lots of nearly-naked bouncy breasty blondes' filled just about every red-blooded male's criteria.

Women cared about personality. And clothes and accessories were how personality was conveyed. Sakura had been the one to train Naruto in that art, after finding out that he hadn't actually been deliberately trying to dress in a way that would piss off the rest of the class by demonstrating complete lack of respect for them and the learning environment, and this was the show-piece of those efforts.

A tall, thin dark-haired man with glasses, leaning against a tree, smirking down at the ninja apprasingly, and idly flipping a kunai around one figure. Slowly smiling as he realized that this might be a very fun fight, adjusting his glasses and baring his teeth, dark armor dappled with leaf-shadows.

Another with shoulder-length red hair in lovingly embroidered sages'robes stood impassively, arms folded in long sleeves. Except those weren't just dragons on the robes, that was a complicated seal diagram that, to the trained eye, screamed of vast, understated power just as much as the small circlet on his brow, there as a concession to formality. Eventually, an eyebrow arched, and he made the concession of moving one of his hands out of his sleeves, ready to form one-handed seals of this person wasn't entirely a worthless opponent.

Another insultingly beckoned his opponent towards him, long hair lashing behind him like a lion's tail, advertising the techniques of a wire master.

A gleeful blond kid in an expertly tailored academy uniform worn artlessly, with lots of knives in his hands, ready to play. While jubilation at the prospect of blood was off-putting for civilians, especially among innocent children, this was an anti-kuniochi technique.

Anko would barely have been able to resist ruffling his hair.

Of course, it wasn't only effective against kuniochi. All ninja were trained to analyze their opponents. Clones weren't a difficulty. A thousand times nothing was still nothing, and a thousand times a known quantity was still a known quantity.

Ninja were trained to constantly observe their environment, to automatically analyze their opponents. Dozens, and as Naruto got variety and the different shades of meaning down and designed new forms hundreds of skilled opponents with different skills? Seemingly different personalities that needed to be analyzed to determine their most likely actions?

The more intelligent a ninja, the more trained they were to notice everything around them. Even ninja who didn't like what they were seeing could get stuck in a kind of brain freeze, trying to fend off an assault with automatic/basic jutsu, because they couldn't make any kind of plan until they knew what they were dealing with.

The more intelligent the ninja, the more strategic, the more observant, the more dangerous, the more this technique forced them to focus solely on the enemy in front of them and what was going on in their own head in order to avoid being fatally sidetracked, too distracted to think ahead more than a moment. Too busy trying to figure out what was going on to figure out what to do.

It was a choice between trying to muffle their situational awareness, choose to ignore much of what was going on around them, willingly putting blinders on and allowing their opponent to spring things on them that they would otherwise have easily detected or be put on the defensive and trapped there, unable to seize the advantage.

Orochimaru knew, intellectually, that these were all genin, but he'd trained his subconscious for years to notice things like, 'hey, what's a mist-nin doing here?' 'close-range fighter,' and 'Oh kami, Jiraya's giggling again,' and ring the requisite alarm bells. He might know that the one in the robes of a minor court official of Coral Country with the book and the look of mild surprise at finding himself here wasn't a member of the Yomiko clan, but he still found himself trying to calculate how willing they would be to rip apart that book in order to use their clan techniques, if their skill level was high enough to manipulate the dead leaves of the forest floor, and if they were one of the few clan members with the ability to move through solid matter to attack.

Yes, the true beauty of Reverse-harem no jutsu was the ability to overwhelm the minds of ninja with too much information.

And too much shiny.

Both Orochimaru and the two Sakuras found themselves looking around and going, "What nice bodies… Oooh, I want that one, and that one and that one… Oooh, a rare bloodline, I shall capture it and use it to make babies."

"Come to mamma," Inner Sakura purred, now wearing a labcoat with a scalpel in one hand and a set of restraints in the other.

The other advantage of reverse-harem no jutsu was that Naruto had realized that by getting himself 'in character,' he could act and think differently than he normally did. It was an extension of his brainstorming technique.

"I want that fucking shadow-clone technique," Inner Sakura moaned lustfully. "With that technique, that chakra, and our jutsu library, we would be unstoppable."

"We can't risk releasing the kyuubi in order to gain control over that chakra. Even if it would help Naruto be accepted by the village." It would be wrong, Sakura told herself.

"Fuck that, we're ninja. Morals are for the weak. Oooh, look at that outfit. Most of the parts would come right off if you pulled hard enough, wouldn't they. Haku must have shown him that trick." Sewing techniques to allow seemingly-encumbering clothes to be made battle-ready in seconds. "Oh yeah, look at that." He was pulling his sleeves off thoughtfully, slowly, eyes on the enemy. Stitch by stitch. "Work it, baby. Wow, he's good."

"He spent years learning how to elicit reactions." Even if it had been a clumsy experimentation that defaulted to anger and annoyance, since those were the easiest.

"Very impressive." Orochimaru grinned, excited enough to take the offensive himself.

Sasuke shook his head. Comparing cosplay to the harem technique? This really seemed like an insult to the harem technique, but he guessed he'd take Sakura's word for it when it came to what worked on women. It wasn't an instant knockout, but he guessed that the fact it worked at least somewhat on just about everyone sort of evened it out. It could knock out some people, especially once the fighting started.

The strength, speed, grace, power, the clothing damage, the sweat and determination…

All of them (except Hinata) turned, surprised, when Shino fell over. Sakura automatically got him with a wire before he went very far.

O…. Kay.

The rulers of the insect kingdom were the Queens of the various hives. Few people knew that the reason the Aburame allowed their eyes to be eaten was that the eyes were practically part of the brain. Linking those nerves to their insects instead allowed the developing infant brain first to adjust to link to them as a source of visual data, and build on that connection.

The Yamanaka had noted a long time ago that the mental avatars of all Aburame were female. The Aburame had gone to some effort to keep them from realizing that it wasn't just because the Aburame was the ruler of their insects and the rulers of insects were Queens.

While individual bees and other hive creatures did not possess a mind, the Swarm did. Individual insects did not possess memories, hives did.

Many would be disturbed if they knew that when they spoke to an Aburame, they were not speaking to a singular entity, but a gestalt. The human component might be the most intelligent, but it was all components combined that made use of that intelligence, and personality was a function of memory. If a ninja's body died but any of the queens survived, they were kept alive until hopefully they could be among those given to the next child born, to give him the benefit of that ninja's experience, even if only dimly remembered. Swapping queens between ninja allowed them to learn techniques more easily… and the dissemination of memories and traits led to the common perception that the Aburame were all the same. It was also why the Aburame clan, unlike most others, had no internal friction. It was hard to look down on someone when you had walked a mile in their shoes, and being able to share memories prevented misunderstandings.

The clan heir might not be the future Queen of Queens, but the humans would think that. Shino's insects were of the most ancient, most intelligent, best able to link to humanity lineages the Aburame had.

Shino's human body was male, and there were a few drones of various species in his body, but the vast majority of the entities that made up 'Shino' were female. With memories of being female, in both male and female bodies, stretching back thousands of years.

No one had realized it, but the Aburame considered themselves almost as superior to the humans around them as the Uchiha did. They simply viewed them with pity instead of contempt.

Poor short-lived mayflies. Lost souls, trapped inside their own heads. Eternally alone. They would never be able to truly know anyone. They would never be able to trust anyone. They would die and their children would share none of their memories and their great-grandchildren wouldn't even know their names. Of course they always made the same idiotic mistakes, they had no opportunity to learn or wise guidance. Imagine if each ant tried to figure out everything for itself, surrounded by lies. The traditions of Konoha, the ideology passed on to its members, was no substitute. In the human, world, it was rulers treating their people like tools instead of queens loving their children. Konoha's attempt to change that was futile, but still laudable.

As Naruto's classmate, Shino had immediately recognized Naruto's attention-grabbing for what it was. Flowers wore bright colors and tried to grab the attention of insects: it was obviously the same strategy. To be alone was a terrible thing.

Then, Naruto had found a way to become not a single lonely human drone, but the queen of a swarm. Shadow-clones were short-lived ones that contributed memories and were part of the whole. That made Naruto an equal, worthy of respect. A human, other than the Aburame clan, who had found a way to escape the miserable fate of that species. Strong. Intelligent. Determined to help others, including the weak. Determined to become the Queen of Konoha and try to turn it into a less wretched hive of scum and villainy. Judged by the standards used to judge males, Naruto was a valiant and worthy drone, who did his best to defend the queen of the hive that had taken him in.

For insects, breeding between males and females was solely about bloodlines. Intelligent beings, like humans, wanted it to be something more. Since the human body had a strong desire for such bonding sex between equals, the Aburame yielded to the natural urge, but there was something lacking in such sisterly relationships. Sleeping with a human didn't satisfy the desire for companionship when a simple, singular mind was far from their equal. It made for boring pillow talk, not to mention that it wasn't real love or understanding if they couldn't tell the human the truth, since they wouldn't understand.

Naruto was a male Hive Queen. A hive King. Intelligent, just, strong, unique and exotic.

Someone new, novel, exciting, not someone they had effectively known for centuries.

If not for the pheromones between Naruto and Hinata, there would have been vicious competition among the Aburame over who (what body, what component Queens) would be allowed to court him.

When they, and Konoha, were reminded of the Uchiha Clan's Ibara-Ryosuke Peace Accords (Also known as the Harem Law), several young Aburame beauties were delivered to Hinata's doorstep.

Gift-wrapped.

There has been much confusion about the name of Naruto's father.

Some said Kazama Arashi.

Some said Namikaze Minato.

Both were wrong.

Only a select few knew that the true name of the Flying Thunder God was…

Gekigami.

Very few saw the final confrontation between the Fourth Hokage and the Kyuubi. None of them had the sight to see anything but a human man bravely confronting the nine-tailed demon fox. None of them had the ears to hear anything but the growls of the beast and the strange-sounding chant of a divine sealing technique.

Except the woman floating next to a certain tree, but no one could see her, either.

For those with the sight to recognize gods and demons for what they were, the titanic beast was revealed to be only the aura of power possessed by a demon in the form of a dark priestess, and its tails nine slightly less gorgeous (and smaller-breasted) kitsune wearing collars, whose leashes were held by a clawed hand.

The creature that cloaked itself in the form of a man (although a student of legend would have realized that such a handsome and powerful blond with such a charismatic aura had to belong to the Moon Tribe) stood, or rather, crouched, growling, revealed as a winged tiger.

And the words of the chant, that no one could quite make out, their ears unable to translate the speech of the gods were, "Back off, bitch, this is my territory."

"Rawr." The Kyuubi batted her eyes at him. "Come and get me, tiger."

This time his growl wasn't anger but irritation. He looked to the sky and roared a summons: "Hey, Nee-chan?!"

The goddess of death descended, willing to answer the call of another child of Amaterasu, Mother of All and Origin of all that was Good. "Hey, little bro. What's up?"

"Would you mind sticking her in that seal? And opening up a portal so I can find my hot redhead before she starts rotting like Granny Izanami?"

"Sure thing."

…Or maybe the onlookers were lucky that they could not see the truth of the gods.

A human facing a great demon made for a much more epic story.

Oh: there was also a little tiger cub there, but his true eyes weren't open yet and his human eyes were closed almost the whole time because he was cold, hungry, and pissed off.

"Now I absolutely have to have you," Orochimaru said, surveying all the different ninja forms Naruto could take, all the different skillsets he could apply. "I want to see more of you, Naruto-kun. But, since I can't have you dying today…!"

Orochimaru moved so fast the afterimage hadn't dispersed before Naruto felt a hand on his stomach – his real stomach.

The tips of five fingers jammed into him as the Sannin applied what Sakura recognized as a disruption seal, designed to interfere with all active sealwork on the victim's body. That would immediately disable all of the seals woven into Naruto's ninja gear, leaving him vulnerable!

"Naruto!" Hinata cried as something happened to his chakra, the familiar red and blue suddenly contaminated by something else, the disruption spreading throughout his chakra coils.

"Bastard! What did you do to my accountant?!" Sasuke demanded, leveling his cane at the confusing grass nin. Sasuke couldn't see him/her, but the chakra and the way they used it was making it very hard for Sasuke to tell whether they were a boy or a girl. He/she had returned to his original position in the moment after he struck, leaving Naruto wavering on a branch, about to fall over as Hinata raced over to catch him. After Naruto turned ten, he started getting upset when Sasuke started getting pissed off when someone hurt him the same way he got pissed off if someone went after the (other) children he looked after. Naruto was going to become the strongest ninja and look after everyone: he didn't need Sasuke to baby him!

Being protective of a friend wasn't the Uchiha style, and Sasuke didn't want to admit out loud that Naruto was his best friend since that would make the Hokage and others worry about the Mangekyo and Naruto's safety, which was a laugh since Sasuke did a much better job looking after him than they had. He hadn't looked after him for these years just to slaughter him now, even if that would be the Uchiha thing to do.

However, Naruto and Sasuke's pride were both okay with referring to Naruto as 'something that saves me a lot of hassle,' since that not only made Naruto feel squishy in a totally grown-up way, to know that he was appreciated, but it made it totally practical and not at all weak or Senju for Sasuke to be concerned about Naruto, even if he was a friend.

"I'm fine," Naruto said, but they were in battle so Naruto would say that even if he'd been disemboweled. "Totally fi-" Then he hiccupped, and there was a soft pop sound, the kind that Orochimaru alone recognized as the sound air made rushing into the vacuum left behind by someone using a real teleportation jutsu.

Or when someone suddenly started taking up a lot less space.

Silence reigned until Sasuke said "Will someone please tell me what the hell I am looking at?"

"Naruto turned into a tiger cub. With wings," Sakura reported as Hinata crouched down next to him on the branch, holding out the back of her hand the way someone partnered with an Inazuka learned to do with new animals, to make an introduction without threatening them.

"Fffft," was the sound Naruto made as he rolled over, having fallen on his back, and started trying to smooth down messed-up feathers with his tongue because having some of the quills jam up into his wings when he landed on them had not been fun. Also, some part of his mind was now convinced that if he refused to acknowledge what had happened, it would not have happened. He was Naruto Uzumaki of the Clan Uchiha: he did not get sucker-punched and disabled like that. He made embarrassing surprises happen to other people.

Once he looked properly badass again, he crouched on the branch and roared at the Grass nin with all the killing intent a pissed-off man-eating kitten could muster.

Since these were ninja, the intended intimidation failed, utterly.

By the Dark Gods, Sasuke thought, that is the cutest thing I have ever not-seen. I want to take it home with me… Oh, right, already did.

Of course, from the way the false-grass nin had just squeed (unusual effect! Testing! Science!), he'd have to ensure no one else took Naruto home from the Chunin Exams. Hmm, he could count on Hinata to protect Naruto, so the next to send against the enemy was "Sakura!"

In order to understand the Uchiha Clan Jutsu Library, it was first necessary to understand the Uchiha and their traditional opinion of studying jutsu.

Specifically, that anyone who did it was a total loser.

While most ninja were taught that jutsu were precious knowledge, and fought to master every one they could get their hands on that they were capable of learning (and, as they became more powerful and got access to more, fit with their style), the Uchiha had the Sharingan.

For them, mastering a jutsu was the easy part. The hard part, the part that proved you were a real Uchiha, was also the fun part: finding a ninja and toying with them viciously, forcing them to use every jutsu they had in a desperate and futile attempt to survive, then using their own jutsu against them so that they would realize just how screwed they were, how vastly inferior they were to the Uchiha, before they escaped to the sweet, merciful embrace of death and the fun was over.

Uchiha learned their jutsu by hunting the most dangerous game. Studying was for fucking pansies.

Aside from basic, kiddie, training wheels jutsu, implying that a Uchiha had learned a jutsu instead of copying it was fighting words. Even now, the mere implication that he needed to be shown Naruto's sexy no jutsu was enough to drive Itachi, despite his efforts to forswear Uchiha ways, up the wall, even though Kisame had no idea what an insult it was.

What 'your mom' jokes were to the Aburame, what comments about beastiality were to the Inuzuka, what fat jokes were to a certain other clan, implying that they had worked for their jutsu instead of fighting for them was to the Uchiha.

Those and other offenses were on the official list of offenses that branded someone as Too Dumb To Live, and would have been death penalty if those things didn't take care of themselves. The items on the list were informally referred to as 'Konoha suicide.' Along with pissing off Shikamaru's clan, for they were subtle and had plenty of space to hide the bodies.

The Uchiha library existed for two purposes: to make those other, lesser clans weep with envy, and because the legendary Ibara-no-hime, after the entire business with her seragilo and her husband and the ensuing Clan War and dry spell had ended, had realized that she'd single-handedly hunted a few small clans and styles passed from master to apprentice to near extinction, which was a serious problem because she needed to replace her concubators now that her husband wasn't killing them anymore and there was a serious shortage of quality ninja manflesh out there. Not to mention her repraisals against her husband's harem. Between the two of them, they had wiped several legendary seduction techniques out of existence. While a great deal of work had gone into rediscovering those techniques, barring divine inspiration the three-day-long orgasm was probably lost forever. Even Jiraya's personal best effort had only been a little over seven hours, and that was only possible due to Tsunade's superhuman stamina.

Yes: The Ibara-no-hime/Ryosuke Peace Accords were serious business. No one wanted that tragedy to repeat itself.

Thus, all Uchiha were required to write down at least a brief description and the seals of every jutsu they learned, and periodically someone would be forced to go through and pick some out to hand out, or they'd let someone who had either done something nice for the clan or really pissed them off dig around in there and take a few home to learn.

It was basically like agriculture. If there was a jutsu some Uchiha found in there and really wanted to learn, they'd plant a scroll in someone's house, and a few years later come back to reap the benefit of some idiot geek's hard work. By killing them.

While some scrolls were simply a utilitarian, minimal effort list of names, results, seals and so on, others had started using those scrolls as records of their hunts, testaments to their ability. The Sharingan's perfect recall made it fairly easy for Uchiha to learn to paint, and it was possible to draw a scene with almost perfect photorealism.

Although everyone knew everyone exaggerated. The human body only contained so much blood, for example. The scrolls became the Uchiha equivalent of fish stories, about the one that got away, the one whose blood had sprayed this far...

In other words, perfect babysitting material, in a world without televisions.

In the same way that Narutos couldn't go into the library for more than a minute before being waylaid by all the shiny techniques, countless generations of harried Uchiha parents had discovered that when they needed to keep the kids occupied, graphic violence was the way to go. The position of clan librarian was as prized among the more maternal Uchiha as the Vice beat was among the young men, because her duties were hunting down and torturing people who didn't return their updated scrolls on time and answering the questions of adorable, precocious children, like, 'When I grow up, will I be able to yank people's intestines out of their noses?' and 'Do they really squeal like that, Auntie?'

Yes: the position always had countless applicants, despite the short life expectancy. They dropped like flies, ded of cute. (Or, more realistically, poison, but whatever.) Besides keeping it updated, no one really bothered to establish an organization system, or if they had their successors had ignored it. Uchiha had perfect recall, after all. They could find whatever they cared to.

It was a long and glorious tradition, that ended when Sasuke tried to dig through the mess for anything useful for keeping the kids alive instead of making them shut up, and went, "Fuck the pride of the Uchiha, this is ridiculous," and hired Sakura so they could make use of this stuff.

Normally, young Uchiha were sheparded through their first hunts, helped by elders, but he wouldn't have time for that. They needed to have enough jutsu to deal with Danzo and countless others forced into their heads, and they needed to know them yesterday. Screw giving the prey a fighting chance so the battles would be more fun, this was serious.

Sakura quickly learned that the library did have one way in which it was organized.

The closer to the front something was, the more exaggerated, showy, power-intensive, and utterly useless (unless you were a chakra whore like Naruto) its contents were. The further and further back you went, the more accurate, realistic, useful, practical in real life, and subtle and generally worth learning they became.

When she realized that, she went straight for the scrolls shoved away in dusty corners.

While Sasuke had decided never to use the Sharingan itself, the fact it was cheap, broken, and generally evil made it a great tool for keeping the kids alive. They could start trying to care about ethics and sanity once they were no longer in danger of being hauled off by old perverts.

So, Sakura's task was to learn every jutsu she could, and then go through her library and demonstrate them for every Uchibi who got the Sharingan, and keep them updated as she learned more. Sasuke agreed with her learning the basic (coughboringcough) ones first, as children would have smaller chakra reserves and it would give them an incentive to practice and improve so that they could learn real jutsu the real way. Not to mention they were less likely to kill each other with weaker jutsu.

Some of the scrolls contained the Memory House concept, as well as a few anti Yamanaka booby traps. Unlike the Uchiha library, Sakura's mental jutsu library was very well organized.

Normally, ninja could only use jutsu they had practiced exhaustively, engraving them on their body like kata did taijutsu moves, because trying to think of which jutsu to use took time, and it was a bad idea to pause to remember which seal came next when there were kunai flying at you.

Sarutobi had become the Professor, the god of shinobi, by dint of countless hours raiding libraries and lost archives, and a week of practice for every hour of research. Other ninja could only bow in awe before his work ethic and the impressive results.

Except Uchiha, who made fun of the geek.

But even Uchiha had to think of which jutsu to use, so they still tended to stick to the personal favorites that jumped to mind quickest. The advantage of Sarutobi's practice was that it gave him time to think of when it was best to use every single jutsu. He attained not just automatic jutsu use, but automatic strategic jutsu use.

Faced with the limitations his teacher had been unable to overcome, Orochimaru had been forced to conclude that Sharingan or no Sharingan, if he wanted to master every single jutsu, it was going to take forever.

So he'd decided that he'd better get started on immortality.

Normally, Shiroi no Sakura's legend would have died there, in that forest. There would simply not have been enough hours in the day for her to catch up, not while juggling five other projects and courses of study.

The next goddess of shinobi would have been crushed beneath Orochimaru's heel before her efforts had any chance to bear fruit.

Except she'd been hanging around far too many Uchiha for far too long, not to mention Naruto. Unlike... someone the author will not poke fun at becuase it would also be cheap and overdone, she was a ninja. Her goal in life was no longer just to have Sasuke or be worthy of Sasuke. No, with Sasuke came the Uchiha clan, and with that came the position of clan matriarch, in a time when the clan was experiencing an unprecedented crisis. And any proper ninja knew that crisis meant danger and opportunity.

She wasn't going to settle for being adequate, she was going to go down in the history books. Sure, she was going to be compared to legends, legends with the Sharingan. Her competition was cheating? There was only one thing for a ninja to do: find a better way to cheat.

Since it came up in a review:

The way Naruto takes a certain tech level for granted is one of my major turn-offs about the series. I look at their society and the tech level and distribution we see, and frankly, no way in Hell.

Romans with nuclear power: could have happened. Very easily could have happened. They had the steam engine and understood its principles. They just didn't do anything significant with it because their big social problem, the one that eventually led to them having several emperors and coups in single years, was a labor surplus. The last thing they needed was labor-saving devices and manufacturing techniques.

Nuclear reactors are simple enough mechanisms that they can be found in nature. A civilization with enough knowledge of fluid dynamics to make use of steam power and the Archimedes screw wouldn't have had much trouble figuring out how they worked with a natural example, and since heating water was a major occupation of Roman civil engineers (public baths)? Given their use of lead piping, there could have been reactors throughout Europe and the Mediterranian, in the middle of cities, long before anyone realized there was a negative health impact.

VHS, 8-bit digital and analog computing are entirely different from the above. You've heard the phrase 'standing on the shoulders of giants?' It can't happen in a world where everyone's cutting each other off at the knees, or trying to avoid being cut off at the knees and therefore not supporting or sharing techniques with anyone else. Industrial espionage is the kind of thing that makes or breaks countries at this tech level: the genesis of American textile mills is definitely worth looking into.

Infrastructure, social stability, the reason Damascus Steel is lost technology (we still don't know how they did it, and all evidence suggests that our modern attempt to reproduce their results is massively inefficient by comparison)... Hell, Orochimaru is strong evidence they haven't realized several key and counterintuitive aspects of experimental design, the kind that will render data worse than meaningless if not corrected for.

You've got basic applications of physical principles, the kind of thing that can be invented by a single genius, and then once the 20th century hit in our world, we reached a point at which advances couldn't be made that way anymore. Thomas Edison 'invented' so many things because he basically made a factory with a bunch of other scientists and stole the work of a bunch of other people, too.

The tech we see in the ninja world is past the point of abstraction and requires enough public trust in infrastructure investment (in a world where stuff gets blown up: think Tazuna's trouble with the bridge times ten thousand similar installations) that it's just not feasable given their society and its focus on information control.

The ninja world is not Japan: they don't have the social cohesiveness or unity to transform from a Third World society into a country with a First World tech level. What Japan did was miraculous: people, please don't take it for granted. They had a snowball's chance in hell of pulling that off, and all of the factors we can point to as things that helped them succeed are not present in the ninja world. Especially since the ninja world would actually have had to invent all this stuff instead of ripping it off from countries with superior social stability and freedom of information.

In short: no, just no. Even if someone did invent radio in that world, it would get crab bucket and S-class secret'd into oblivion. We only have the internet because universities were able to win an argument with the US Military and take over what was originally invented as top-secret military network tech during the Cold War. Do you really think the Narutoverse ninja would let some professors win that turf war?

LOL, no. Photography, sure. Photography can be accomplished with any of a handful of relatively straightforward chemistry tricks. Anything past that? Not happening.

Not until Naruto conquers the world and brings about an era of peace and non-dickishness, anyway...

Because oh yes, there is a plot with the Okami crossover stuff. There was a single line about Jiraya talking to Sasuke re. Gaara's custody - this is how he got involved. Needs more tweaking, but I'm too burnt out to care. Persona 2 Eternal Punishment is awesome, but freaking demon rumor system... At least all that happened is I missed out on some goodies, it's not anywhere near as bad as the social links.

Konoha held a lot of memories for Jiraya. He'd lost a lot of people here, and the memories of the good times were actually the most painful, since he'd never get to experience them again. He didn't have to come back to Konoha to report, Sarutobi would understand, but despite everything, there was something that always made Jiraya return to Konoha.

A strip club.

The strip club.

The other hidden villages had tried their hardest, but never been able to come close to Underneath the Underneath. Screw teamwork: this was the real reason Konoha had the lowest defection rate of all the hidden villages. This was the real reason Tsunade hadn't cut ties and turned in her hitai-ate.

They took away your membership card when you did that.

These were not just strippers. These were ninja strippers. Was she actually taking anything off, or was it just an illusion? Or the thrill of realizing that she'd actually been entirely naked the whole time. There was the Whirlpool clan with that octopus summon contract and the rest of the Classical Art show. And so, so many more.

Jiraya had come to town before the chunin exams started in order to catch the last showings of Orochimaru's student's snake charming act before she joined the exam proctors and was replaced by those Yamanaka twins. The club waved the normal rules about audience participation for those two, and Shadow Mistress Nara, since it didn't really count if it wasn't the audience member themselves doing the touching, but the kuniochi who had taken control of their body.

Sadly, Jiraya was too powerful a ninja to be controlled like that.

The backstage pass almost made up for it. They'd been putting on productions of his Icha Icha novels for years, with their genjutsu mistresses creating the images of the characters exactly the way he'd imagined them. Jiraya hadn't been able to agree to any movie deals after directing those: they just couldn't come close.

Despite the temptation, no one with any sense used kai at Underneath the Underneath. You missed half the show that way.

Jiraya was led to his reserved booth and made comfortable with some nice sake and a couple of trainees to lean against his sides and keep him warm. Their flattery was pretty clumsy, but there was something endearing about that. They were trying so hard to be appealing, with carefully put-on makeup and clothing cut to hang on their figures in a way that looked ill-fitting, as though if a guy stared long enough, it'd slip down, not realizing that all they had to do to be seductive was bare their innermost selves.

Of course, that was the last thing any ninja would ever do, so it wasn't that easy to learn kuniochi skills. Fortunately, this was a place they could practice without having to worry about anything they weren't comfortable with, or getting killed if their act slipped before their dress did, while the mark was still paying attention to what they were saying.

In order to keep secrets, the less said the better.

Jiraya was making fast, motion-study sketches of all the women in the room, to keep his hand in and to see the surprise and flattery in their eyes if he gave them to them (he sketched these two first, of course), when she walked in.

No one got her name or ID, and Jiraya wished he was surprised by this. "Who is she?" he asked one of his two girls, only letting admiration show in his voice.

They didn't have any idea and didn't see anything odd about that. They were just looking at the white-haired woman in the red silk slip that matched her facial markings with admiration that bordered on envy.

She was given a seat right at the edge of the stage and immediately about five people who should have realized something was up (such a powerful unknown?) started ordering drinks for her.

She put her feet up on another chair, slitted skirt falling away from well-toned legs, and sucked a cherry off its stem in a wonderfully obscene way that made Jiraya want to clap. She was good.

The only question was how good.

The Toad Sage, along with the rest of the room, was barely paying any attention to the act on stage until the drumbeats started and it clicked. This wasn't just any show that was going on tonight. This was their signature production of Ame no Uzume's dance, the dance that had lured the sun goddess Amaterasu herself out of her cave to watch, restoring light to the world.

Despite the use of demon containers, despite the power of boss summons, despite so many Konoha ninja seeing the Ninetails itself, ninja didn't really think about the fact that there were powers other than their own in this world. Jiraya's training as a sage had given him access to some of that power, and with it knowledge.

Even Jiraya, who should have known better, hadn't really figured the gods into things. Oh, he'd studied their power, as a sage. The prophecy about him should have given him a hint that things were on the move. But years had rolled by, the prophecy had seemed fulfilled without really amounting to anything, and he'd settled into a comfortable rut of spreading the less-well-known teachings of the Tengu Sage, bringing a little pleasure and joy to this corrupt world.

"Of all the strip joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine," he thought to himself, watching the entire room revolve around this woman, none of the ninja realizing that there was anything unnatural about this.

Because there wasn't. The entire world did revolve around the sun, and its goddess.

Most of the room couldn't even look away: she was the only one watching the act, licking her lips.

Jiraya had studied about her, but he hadn't realized she was this hot.

Yes, this is jumping ahead.

It doesn't really spoil anything except that certain people don't get killed off (permanently, anyways) and come on, like you thought the Author was really going to do that.

I'm mostly out of material from the original forum posts, which is why updating has slowed. I would promise to update on my regular schedule of Fridays if I was updating anything on that schedule right now. Up next is most likely a kiriban chapter.

When the matchups were announced, Hinata gasped. Neji?

Sasuke and Naruto winced (although Sasuke's wince was hidden by the blindfold) and looked at each other. Or turned his head in Naruto's direction and tried to detect the effect Naruto's… enthusiastic emotions had on his chakra, in Sasuke's case.

The conversation could be summed up thus:

'Your fiancée.' And Naruto couldn't be too nice to her, with all these onlookers, even if he was known for spontaneous hugs.

'Your girlfriend.' The fact that Sasuke was currently obligated by the whole marriage contract thing to provide emotional support didn't mean he was any good with the warm fuzzies.

'You're the bastard.' There was no nice way to say what had to be said.

'You're the nice one… point.'

So Sasuke was the one to put his hand on Hinata's shoulder and pull her side. "Sakura? Come with us."

Once they were a couple rooms away, he told Sakura to put up a sound-muffling barrier. The only thing as useful as an accountant was a walking library of handy jutsu.

"I can't beat Neji." Hinata told him. "My father said… If he can't make chunin, or at least make a good showing, then his eyes are more valuable than his skills." That meant taking him off active duty. Restricting him to the compound and maybe the rest of Konoha, either guarded or as a guard, for the rest of his life, so he could be used for breeding purposes.

"Hinata..." Sasuke patted her on the shoulder. "Don't think of it as condemning your cousin to a life of luxury, with nothing better to do than have lots of sex. Think of it as saving his life."

"What? What do you mean?"

"Because I know that the elders made the exact same threat to you. They're not going to want to risk their chance of recapturing my family, after all. If you don't make a good showing, you'll be restricted to the Hyuuga compound and my clan's, pulled off of active duty. And that not only means less time with Naruto, it means less chance to get stronger. No Uchiha clan head has ever had a wife who wasn't internationally feared. He is threatening the prestige of my clan. I can't ignore that. Not to mention that you, being you, obviously won't go down easily. Meaning Neji will have to hurt you. An attack on the future Uchiha matriarch in order to damage the prestige of my clan and make it easier to absorb us. I have to respond to it."

Maybe he should use smaller words. Hinata was one of those weird nice people who didn't get clan politics. "If Neji defeats you, I will have to put a bounty on his head. Within twenty-four hours, every village in the world will know it and have him in their Bingo Books: you know Naruto's communication network. The Hyuuga clan doesn't bow to threats, meaning they'll keep him on active duty. Maybe he'll defeat the first few idiots, and that will make the elders happy, but eventually? Neji will die. Especially because I'll be letting Naruto set the amount of the bounty, and you know how he gets when his precious people are hurt. For every bone of yours Neji breaks, Naruto will up the bounty money enough that the ninja who kills him will be able to buy another private island. So, again. Don't think of it as hurting your cousin. Think of it as saving his life." He patted her on the back. "I'm sure you'll be able to defeat him in a way that isn't too embarrassing, but remember. If you break a bone, Naruto breaks the bank."

"Naruto-kun wouldn't…" Oh, but he would. Naruto cared so much about his precious people, and she was one of his precious people, even though it was hard to believe sometimes, that someone as wonderful as Naruto would… No, no, Naruto wouldn't want her to think that way. And Naruto wouldn't want to hurt her cousin Neji, so she had to find some way to make sure that Naruto wouldn't have to. And hopefully to make sure that Neji wouldn't end up having to sleep with women for the rest of his life who didn't care about him, but resented the clan's orders or were civilians that just wanted the money they would get from the Clan Elders for bearing a Hyuuga.

Poor Uncle Hizashi was always so exhausted in the mornings, after that. Why, sometimes he couldn't even move and they'd have to summon a medic-nin! It had just been too cruel to the elders that time, to order him into one of the guesthouses with twenty-three women and not allow him to leave, not even to see his son, until they were all pregnant.

Even her father, cold as he normally was, had seemed unusually downcast and even subtly angry, and he'd been so happy when his brother was finally released and finished recovering from chakra exhaustion that he'd actually been almost cheerful for weeks! He'd even gone a full twenty-four hours before first criticizing her for not acting assertive enough and then, when she said that she couldn't cook for him because she needed to go to the Uchiha household even though he'd ordered her too, that she was being too disobedient and unfeminine! He'd, he'd actually been feeling well!

(Hinata had no idea that 'Hiashi' had been so irritated before 'Hizashi's' return because his older brother had asked Hizashi to switch and cover for him while Hiashi got to take a break. In Hiashi's defense, he hadn't known ahead of time that the Uchiha clan head would be leaving town and Hizashi would be stuck at council meetings with Uchibis. Normally Hizashi quite liked the demon brats, but the fact that he was having to deal with them for as much as seventy-two hours straight while Hiashi got to be buried in women eager for money and/or to get it over with, at least before the sixty-four-strike-divination-of-erogenous-zones secret seduction techinique convinced them otherwise just added insult to injury.)

No, Hinata had to find some way to save Neji's life and save his career as a ninja so he wouldn't be tied down while people had their way with him. Especially when even her own father was helping Neji train: was he counting on her to find a third option?

Well, no, this was her father, but Uncle Hizashi might be. And even if they had never believed in her, she still had to do this, for Naruto and Naruto's nindo!

"Do you need ideas? Naruto would be happy to help you brainstorm." Naruto was good at brainstorming. Sasuke had tried, but all his ideas basically came down to, 'screw the ice prince, just kick his ass. The medic-nin would be happy to put him back together and console him.' Neji was widely acknowledged among the female medic-nin as Konoha's third hottest genin, after Sasuke and Kabuto. Then there was his very sizeable breed price: the Hyuuga were still trying to build up their numbers after the Kyuubi and on top of the pampering she would receive while pregnant, any nurse who managed to mother or 'physical exam' her way into his bed would be able to afford Konoha's top spa treatments daily for at least three years.

"There is a way." To defeat him without looking too much better than him. It would be embarrassing for her to defeat him, after letting herself be seen as a kuniochi more interested in children and cooking than the ninja arts, but if they were both equally embarrassed? If she defeated him with an embarrassing technique, then the Hyuuga would have to keep them both out in the field, in hopes that at least one of them would bring some prestige to the clan. "I'll use the technique Naruto and I have worked on together."

Sasuke was still distracted enough by mental analysis of his own upcoming match that he almost said that would be incredibly cruel before he remembered right, what did he care? "Good." He patted her on the shoulder again. "That's the kind of," pure evil, "thing it takes to marry into the Uchiha clan."

"Hey, guys, do you need me to stall?" Naruto had tried to get their attention from outside Sakura's bubble of silence, but when they ignored him (and Naruto made damn sure people couldn't ignore him. Well, not unless he wanted to be ignored) he'd realized what was going on and ran into it, trailed by Temari.

"Stall?"

"He didn't crush her, did he?" Sakura knew that Ino was a ninja, and that came with risks. She couldn't hold a grudge against Gaara for killing her friend, he'd been possessed and crazy. She knew what she was like when sleep-deprived, she couldn't imagine how psycho she'd have been after years of it.

"Uh… Crushed on her? Maybe?" Naruto scratched behind his ears. "They put up a barrier after the clothes started to come off."

Sasuke blinked. "What." Gaara? Seriously, Gaara? Sasuke couldn't deny that he needed it, but Ino using seduction techniques on Gaara was totally and utterly unfair. So cheap.

He'd thought Ino was just another fangirl. He might have to concede that she was worthy of the regard Sakura held her in if she kept this up.

"I think Ino tried to mindwalk, since it was the only thing she had that would do any good, and Shikaku was drunk, and Ino ended up totally giggly and passed out, so Hinata, you're up! Break his fingers!" That was the traditional ninja version of 'break a leg!'

Hinata blushed slightly. "Thank you, Naruto. I'll do my best."

More snippets from the future: unlike the Saving Neji chapter, these were actually put up on the forum before I moved on to other projects. I'm still missing various odds and ends, so I'm trying to get them up here for archiving purposes before I forget.

Also: a reader named PatSquared sent me a scene from their head during a review response conversation. Since part of the original experiment that produced this was the interactivity, I said that if he expanded it, I might post it as an omake or somesuch. It ended up diverging from the vision in my head, but I still liked it, so if you want to read someone else's take on Uchibi Sasuke-style crack, I put a link up in my profile. If anyone else wants to write anything, from more omakes to a serious fic with this premise, let me know? I normally write giftfics as thanks for fanfic, by the way.

Speaking of giftfic, I also owe a kiriban gift chapter to mikan17lover, who wrote the 200th review of this fic. Something I do because I really appreciate the feedback in reviews is randomly award kiribans to people who write landmark reviews: I ask for a prompt and they can request a special chapter of a fic or a random oneshot. She requested more with the Narucave Pirate fleet: I haven't forgotten about it, I'm just having trouble putting my feet down and getting the stuff I'm supposed to be working on written. I'm not promising a 300th review giftfic, partially because I do need to get back to the plot, but if the 300th review contains actual useful feedback the odds are pretty good, hint hint.

"She's still fighting the clan elders? It's been hours!" Sakura, who had gone back to the compound temporarily to check on her experiments, sat down next to Sasuke, holding out a dragon's blood shaved ice she'd snagged from one of Naruto's clone venders. "I mean, this is Hinata we're talking about. Little miss Can't bear to hurt a fly unless it's even thinking about touching Naruto-kun. The girl who spent years letting everyone think she was weak in order to protect her little sister from getting the Caged Bird seal? She doesn't like hurting people!"

And yet she had spent almost five hours by Sasuke's time sense one, or two, hit-pwning all of the Clan Elders. The girl who couldn't bear the thought of hurting someone else's feelings was utterly embarrassing them, and then using healing jutsu on them.

So that she could do it again.

"I mean, I know that she needs to make a point, but this just isn't like her." Sakura the White Serpent started going through all of the many, many genjutsu counters she knew after summoning a snake to put her own shaved ice on.

"It's her, and she's in her right mind," Sasuke told her, taking another bite of the ice he'd taken without even glancing at it. Sakura knew what to get him.

"Then what does she think she's doing? I mean, I don't mind being here to lend moral support," she'd left a clone when she'd gone to check on her dear little experiments, "But this is just getting ridiculous. And the chanting would be giving me a headache if I didn't know a jutsu for that."

"She's got a good reason." Sasuke looked over at the source of the chanting. Or rather, around at them.

The field of combat and the small group of spectators were entirely surrounded by Narutos. Orange Bombshells in extremely skimpy cheerleader uniforms, to be more specific. Jumping and doing cartwheels and waving orange and purple pom-poms and cheering, "Go Hinata, go Hinata!"

"I think she'll probably stop in a couple minutes." Pity. The young woman was really just too sentimental and nice, which was bad in a field ninja, but the perfect qualities in a babysitter.

Now, if Sasuke were Hinata, he would never have allowed the suffering of others to interfere with his mission objectives. He would have continued beating those old fools into the dirt all day, or even all week, and when he stopped it wouldn't be out of sympathy for them but in order to throw his wife over his shoulder and suggest they go do something… experimental.

No, Hinata had a very good reason for continuing this even after she'd broken the back of any possible Hyuuga resistance to her rule. It was the same reason Sasuke hadn't even left to go pick the two Uchibis who hadn't already graduated up from school.

It was because shortly after Hinata won, the bouncing would stop.

"It's alive, alive!" Sakura had always wanted to say that, but the Fourth's laws on human experimentation were pretty strict, and Naruto wasn't going to repeal them even for her.

Yes! The gestation device's problem with lack of proper sensory stimulation had indeed been fixed by her genius genjutsu seals! She would never again have to spend several months feeling all bloated, ugly, and having her experiments disrupted by constant cravings for chocolate, plum wine, and someone to kill with one of her thousand jutsus!

"Guess you're going to stop writing Icha Icha now, huh Jiraya?" Tsunade elbowed him in the side, grinning. She finally had a daughter despite the damage Genesis Rebirth had done to her ability to bear a child! She would finally be able to stop her husband writing those books! She had won!

He just blinked at her. "What? Why?"

Tsunade smirked. "You know, daughters are god's revenge on men for being men. You'll have to worry about her running into someone just like you." Now he'd learn why everyone hated perverts like him. "What are you going to do when she's old enough they come after her?"

"…Well, I hope little Ichako is lucky enough to run into into someone just like me. As for anyone who wants to date her, I'll just give them a quiz on the contents of my books first, and I'll make sure that they know that if she doesn't have at least three orgasms, I'll kill them."

"…What? And we are not naming her Ichako!"

"Well, I'm not letting some virgin who doesn't know what he's doing lay a hand on my daughter. And I already won the argument three years ago, anyway."

When he'd managed to make her gasp out how much she enjoyed the benefits of his 'research,' and was forfeiting all future rights to cast aspersions on it or his great works of instruction.

It was the duty of a sage to bring holy wisdom to the masses. Some tried it by writing long, boring books about how people should stop fighting and love one another in order to bring about heaven on earth. Jiraya's books did it by showing, not telling, how wonderful it was when people stopped killing their fellow inhabitants of this world, like sexy kuniochi, and instead came together with them in order to perform sacred rituals and enter nirvana.

He still regretted giving up his life as a traveling monk, spending his time spreading love to all the world, but in all these years he'd never found tits quite like Tsunade's.

Aneki: big sister/(gang) boss, in the way Aniki is big brother.

This is a bit of the 'what if Naruto was born female' universe (in which Sasuke actually gets fewer boobies) that The Author threatened Sasuke with awhile back, posted to reassure people that The Author has not forgotten about the fic. - And that is from the ANs in the version of this originally posted in the forum. For the Fanfiction dot net readers, the Author still hasn't forgotten about this fic, The Author has just been on one hell of a gaming binge. Including Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure and all the Persona games except P3 in reverse order. The Author would apologize, but she regrets nothing.

"Stick and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me," is bullshit. Especially for demon vessels, who can heal the first kind of damage much easier than the other.

The Wouldn't Hit A Girl Trope means that female!Naruto would probably get beaten up less than male!Naruto, but that means that people would do it with words instead. And it's a lot easier to torture someone with words without feeling like a bastard/a 'really' bad person than knives, meaning more people would do it.

Shunning is a scarily effective form of torturing people, especially the young, into compliance, and for good reason. Not that any version of Naruto would cave, of course, but a female!Naruto would end up quite a bit more damaged than a male!Naruto simply because the gender would cause people to take out their anger at the fox on Naruto in the more effective manner…

And Uchibi!Naruto is one of Sasuke's, and nobody fucks with the people under Sasuke's protection.

So far, the biggest differences between this and regular Uchibiverse are that sexy no jutsu doesn't exist and a lot more Uchibis go into Interrogation, since they end up with a lot of practice torturing people…

"Hai, Naruto-chan," Hinata said, even though she really had no idea whatsoever what Naruto had just said. She had learned, over the years of their friendship, that if Hinata didn't respond to Naruto's happy chatter at the appropriate junctures then Naruto would frown and ask her what was wrong.

And while Naruto-chan's peeved little frown was adorable, and her willingness to go do something about whatever had made Hinata unhappy right then and there made her so very happy, that just wouldn't do.

Because there was nothing more wonderful in the world than Naruto-chan's smile. Hinata wanted to pay attention to what Naruto-chan was saying, really she did, but when Naruto-chan was smiling like that, everything else just went away and she remembered the first time they had met, when Naruto-chan had been all alone on the playground, just like Hinata, and had been the one to come up to her, and somehow Hinata had ended up telling her everything, things she'd told no one else ever, and Naruto-chan had held her hand and patted her on the head and said, "It'll definitely be all right, believe it!" and then when Hinata had smiled back had pulled her over to what was Naruto-chan's very own swing. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her.

When Naruto-chan smiled, so happy and enthusiastic, Hinata could really believe that everything would work out, that Naruto-chan would make sure it did. Naruto-chan's happy place was her swing, Hinata-chan's was wherever Naruto-chan was smiling.

So, to make sure Naruto-chan kept smilling, Hinata had quickly learned to say, "Yes, dear," to anything Naruto-chan said. Because she really would do anything to make Naruto-chan happy.

Share her bento?

"Hai, Naruto-chan," because she'd made it hoping Naruto would ask.

Practice Taijutsu?

"Hai, Naruto-chan," even though she worried that a weak opponent like her would be a waste of Naruto-chan's time, Naruto-chan just smiled and said that Hinata was great, and of course she would train and get stronger to help Naruto-chan. If Naruto-chan believed in her, she could do anything.

Defeat her father?

Yes, even that. Naruto-chan had said, "You shouldn't take that anymore! I know you don't want your little sister to be unhappy when she grows up, but you're unhappy now! If you don't beat him up and make him be nicer to you, I will!" And she'd folded her arms and stamped her foot on the ground, and Hinata had not only known that she could but that she would, because her father didn't like Naruto-chan and even though Naruto-chan would surely win and be okay, he'd try to hurt her and Hinata-chan wouldn't let Naruto-chan be hurt.

And even though she felt bad for Hanabi it would all work out okay, because when she grew up she was going to get rid of the caged bird seals anyway, and with Naruto-chan and Uchiha-san's help she knew she'd definitely be able to.

Naruto-chan had said so, and with Naruto-chan cheering her on there was no way she would fail.

When that day did come that she battled the elders, the small army of Narutos wielding orange pom-poms and jumping up and down chanting, "Go Hinata, go Hinata," were actually a hindrance, since the sight of them first froze her in her tracks and then made the battle drag on and on, since Hinata knew that when it was over the Narutos would stop bouncing happily like that and she never wanted them to stop.

"You made Aneki cry." Oh, she'd tried to hide it, of course. When Aneki was sad and needed to get away from people for a bit, she went to her swing until the rush cheered her up. When Aneki cried, she hid away so no one would know and worry. They hadn't been able to find out where she went or follow her in ages, she was too much better at stealth than them, better than anybody, but they knew.

They didn't like it when Aneki cried. It happened less and less now, though, and they didn't like that either. Only part of it was because they were doing a good job protecting Aneki. Most of it was that Aneki was just getting used to being hurt, and that pissed them off. Aneki was really nice and cheered everybody up, and the stupidhead old bastards kept saying mean things when they were the horrible ones.

No one got away with hurting The Clan, or even friends of the clan like Hinata-nee-san. Of course, Hinata-nee-san knew nothing about this. She was too nice. She'd stop telling them about the things she saw people say in Naruto's hearing if she knew what happened to them.

And Aneki always said that it was her nindo to deal with things like this herself, and one day she'd be the Hokage and they'd all have to grovel for forgiveness, but Aniki had said what Aneki didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

But it would hurt poopyhead jerks who deserved to be roasted and eaten, even though this wasn't the old days and they didn't do that anymore.

Well, the eating part anyway.

They learned fire jutsu first for good reason.

Good reasons like situations like this, when some uppity civilian needed to be taught a lesson and the best way to do that was to paralyze them while you went around doing what it had said in the scroll Ran's daddy had shown her on Take Your Daughter To Work Day down at the police station. It was full of all sorts of good tricks for making it just look like an accident, and how to paralyze them for certain amounts of time so that they'd be able to escape without getting singed any more than the desired amount, although figuring out how fast fires would spread in civilian houses (which were built really stupidly), had taken a little figuring out.

As a thank-you to reviewers I sometimes award 'kiriban fics,' where the person who writes a certain review gets asked for a prompt, after seeing fanartists do this for hit count. Even now that the site tracks hit count, I'd rather reward reviewers than lurkers. After all, without feedback, how can we know what our readers like and thus what they want to see more of?

This one is dedicated to Mikan27lover, the 200th reviewer of this fic on fanfiction dot net. They asked for more with the Narucave pirate fleet.

Sorry for taking so long… I offered a kiriban to the 300th reviewer, but they haven't responded to the offer so far. If I don't hear from them, next kiriban will be at 400.

I'm sorry that this chapter was so delayed – it was partially because as I think I've said before, I stopped watching Naruto at a certain point, so I didn't know many expanded universe characters that I could put in the pirate fleet. It would be a good dumping ground for filler people without bloodlines – the ones with bloodlines would be getting hit with 'Come to Konoha, thereby giving me more clan heads with seats on the council loyal to me who can thus help elect me next Hokage!'

I'm modeling Bay Country a bit on England's and Haiti's history, of course.

"Only if you plant merchants, they don't grow so good," the pirate explained as his cohorts finished loading half of the ship's cargo onto their own vessel. "Come back next year!"

And this time, pay your taxes instead of bypassing Wave, he thought to himself, adjusting the eyepatch he wore. The things really were amazingly practical: keeping one of his eyes in the dark all the time meant that when they went down onto the darkness of the ship's hold, there wasn't any moment of temporary blindness the defenders could use to gain the upper hand.

Half the cargo was the standard 'attempted tax evasion with swords' tax rate: they'd brought it on themselves by bypassing Wave's port and customs, then attempting to assault legally empowered customs agents in the course of their duties. When the carefully-damaged ship made it into the nearest port – Wave's – where they would have to pay the local shipyard for repairs, the locals would make it clear to them how they really should have stuck closer to the coast, and put into the port, because the pirates only attacked in deeper water… Yet still always within Wave's legal territorial waters, oddly enough.

Speaking of tax rates… he put his fingers to his lips and whistled. "Issei!"

"Have you heard the good word of Mother Amaterasu, bitch? Have you?" the small, bouncing sprite that only he could see let off its aggressive preaching to people who couldn't see it but could certainly hear the sermons and feel (and fear) its tiny blade and left the tied-up captives it was terrorizing on the other side of the deck. "Yeah, what?"

"Are we putting down the destruction of expensive clothing as an Asshole Tax surcharge?" he asked as he went back on board his own ship and ordered them to remove the grappling hooks and seperate from their prey.

Issei unrolled a huge scroll that seemingly came from nowhere – the Poncle clan of summon ani-vicious tiny bastards with swords who you'd better not call animals had an affinity for writing.

Most of them, the ones who were out of their hidden village at least, lived in temple monastaries producing religious pamphlets and artwork. First Mate Issei did half of the pirates' paperwork and was also writing a comic book based on their adventures. "Yeah, Asshole Tax. I noted it down before I started letting him have it. Bastard called me a flea, so I cut him down to his underwear. What's the problem?"

"Just, you know, try to do stuff like that before we tie them up?"

"Bastard was talking trash, trying to act like a big guy for his cronies and get some face back after we kicked his ass. Trust me, he didn't have the guts to talk like that when he was actually fighting." Not when he thought he'd really get hurt for it.

Shinta frowned. "That isn't good."

"What isn't?"

"That they think they're safer as prisoners than with a weapon in their hands. Normally, it's not safe to be a pirate's prisoner. A lot of them kill all the victims so there's no one left to hire ninjas, or give descriptions or other information to the ninja their employers later hire. They definitely don't have trouble kicking them while they're down." Was word leaking out that they were technically privateers instead of pirates?

"Know a lot about pirates, do you?" Issei asked, jumping onto his shoulder.

A red eyebrow rose. "Well, yes, that's why I was hired."

Once upon a time, Bay Country had been a pirate haven, an island port defended by mountains. However, over time the increasingly wealthy pirates, aided by the ninja among their ranks, had grown wealthier and wealthier, aided by the (arrogant) policy of letting ships and crew leave alive, with enough money still aboard for them to make another voyage, which let them be harvested a second time. Eventually, one of the city's lords had institutionalized this policy, charging a protection tax for safety within their waters, and boats had sailed through Bay Country's waters whenever they could, since it meant they were safe from less civilized piracy.

Also, Half-Moon Port had booze. And hookers. And wealthy pirates with money to blow on nice things for their mansions. Those brave enough to dock there could be reasonably sure of making a killing instead of getting killed.

These days, Bay Country just had an extremely powerful navy that would blow your ship to shreds if you tried to evade taxes, and most of its income came from the lively trading center at its heart. And the tourism. Couldn't forget the tourism. The fact they were so dependent on ships from outside for the food to support their city, and thus so vulnerable to anything that disrupted trade, like, oh, war, had eventually led them to have an institutional dislike for all ninja except for the independent ones that knew their place and either provided bodyguards at affordable rates or hunted other ninja who dared act contrary to the interests of Bay Country.

Their native ninja had left centuries ago under good terms, given the island that was now Wave Country with the understanding that providing Bay Country with a safe port of call on the chaotic Shinobi Continent, whose governments were perpetually unstable due to the dangers of powerful individuals even now that the Uchiha Horde had settled down would make sure that Wave Country funneled trade that way until they got themselves properly set up.

They'd hoped that Whirlpool Village would exert something of a stabilizing influence on the ninja politics of the continent, until they got themselves too wrapped up in the landlubbers' internal struggles and shortly thereafter got themselves wiped out.

Bay Country had gotten rid of most of its ninja population to avoid an insurrection or any of the other very bad things that could have happened if the continent ninja rubbed off on their ninja too much, but most of them had left willingly in order to escape the crowded city and have vast lands, mansions and training grounds of their own.

Shinta was descended from some of the ninja that remained in Bay Country, and he'd been working at the Heritage Museum doing demonstrations of the ancient ninja techniques Bay Country's ancestors used in their piracy, back in the old, uncivilized days when he received a message about a consulting job.

He hadn't expected the consulting job to be establishing a real pirate fleet, or at least a privateer fleet, but reclaiming the homeland of his distant cousins, helping out an impoverished nation full of pitiful orphans and getting to do all of this for real had certainly appealed.

Back in Bay Country he'd just been a minor functionary too: oh, he got plenty of ooohs and aaaahs from the children, but his jutsu were primarily regarded as entertainment.

"Captain Uzumaki?"

Shinta stabbed the man who interrupted his thoughts in the back with two needles, inwardly frowning in disapproval. If you're going to do a kill-and-replace, you should at least wait to get back to shore and case out the operation before attacking.

And what kind of ninja that could do a henshin and replace one of his men, even one of his men who was silently asking for it by being an easy target who it was easily to get alone and knock overboard, would be fooled by such a simple genjutsu as the captain standing there in the stereotypical captain's pose while he was really inside the open door of the cabin, tallying up the loot?

An extremely arrogant ninja who thought he was immortal, even though he lived in a world full of other ninja who specialized in sneaky killing techniques. "Issei?" Shinta called as the man's flesh pushed out his needles. "I think this one's yours!" One hand signaled for the rest of the crew to stay back a moment before using a quick substitution jutsu, exchanging himself with some of the flotsam in the water in order to get the blood off his hands as fast as possible.

"Blood for the blood god!" the Jashin-worshipper roared.

"Glory for the sun goddess!" came the war cry of the tiny Inquisitor.

This was the third Jashin follower they'd encountered so far: was the church really that much on the rise again, or did they see a nascent pirate empire as something they should take for themselves, something they could turn into a means of indiscriminate slaughter of innocents, use to attack trade and civilization? At least this one wasn't much more powerful than the others: according to Issei anyone really god-touched should be able to see him. Would the church stop these testing probes whenever they did the research and realized what it meant that there was a poncle among the Wave Pirates, or step up their game.

This was something that needed to go in his report. After they fished up Raiju, who despite the name which advertised a lightning-weilder actually specialized in being very, incredibly good at playing dead.

All three reports: in addition to his current employeer, the museum eagerly awaited his articles on the state of modern piracy – this was a rare chance to do real research in their field.

And then, of course, he was a citizen of Bay Country, and an Uzumaki making an alliance with the infamous Uchiha… Well, that bore watching. And watching the watchers – he was well aware that Issei wasn't the only one who had been asked to keep an eye on him, just in case he went to the continental ninja side of the chakra. And it certainly was appealing. He was an Uzumaki: the raw chaos of it all…

"Accept the truth and light and awesomeness of Mother Amaterasu into your heart, or I'll cut your black heathen heart out and expose it to the light of day!"

...Yeah. That.

So, despite my worries about trying to force the humor, I figured I should perhaps post something just so you know that the fic isn't dead. It's just that the writer hasn't had any control over what it is that she writes. Not for years. Currently her brain is mostly on Evangelion (you may have noticed that the writer has an affinity for crack).

However, in the interests of not leaving people hanging for another six months:

I have this nagging feeling that there are some errors, but my internet sucks so I'm not in a position to load wiki pages and reread as much as I would like, and I can't get ahold of the person I normally ask to check canon for me. Would you please let me know if you spot any Naruto/fic continuity errors so I can fix/research tomorrow when I'm somewhere with better net? Other than the stuff that's a consequence of this AU, of course. There's a difference between 'over the top' exaggeration by way of Rule of Cool/Funny (eg. inflating a number) and 'that obviously wouldn't work because canon says blank,' and a lot's been published since I originally decided how this battle would end up.

Years of practice detecting when a kid was about to do something stupid and moving to intercept allowed Sasuke to almost teleport in order to grab the tiger cub his accountant had turned into by the scruff of the neck and retreat back to his branch.

Naruto whimpered up at him, and Sasuke was glad his bandage meant he didn't have to see the kitten's big eyes. He'd thought Sasuke was his friend! What was he doing, acting like a truant officer?

Sasuke gave him a good shake, because Naruto didn't have hands, which meant he'd lost most of his jutsu (Naruto wasn't a big fan of the breath jutsu: he'd rather shoot his mouth off than shoot with his mouth) and he'd been about to just leap into the arms of the enemy nin?

He frowned thoughtfully. On the one hand, he wanted to kill Danzo, and this ninja wasn't Danzo. It was also Sakura's turn. On the other hand, the ninja was fairly powerful, and Sasuke needed practice fighting experienced ninja with tricks he hadn't seen before. Which was, well, most tricks. The Uchiha Clan Jutsu Library contained a large percentage of ninja techniques and strategies, but studying it was beneath the dignity of a clan head. Not that Sasuke cared, but there also weren't enough hours in the day as it was.

If there was some time-space manipulation jutsu in there that would fix that, Sakura would have already used it. Well, no, she'd have made Naruto use it, since he was the one with the insane chakra. Sakura was just insane, not that insanity wouldn't also be necessary to perform a jutsu like that…

Sasuke might have thought that if there was a jutsu like that in the clan library then the clan would have performed it long ago, no matter how many inferior, non-Uchiha ninja had to be drained dry of their chakra in order to power it, but then he remembered right, the true ancient purpose of the clan was to be evil. Giving everyone more time to get things done was something nice people did, even if not having more time in the day themselves would also have made the Uchiha, especially the Uchiha parents, suffer.

Nice people were handy to have around, weren't they? Speaking of which, he needed to get his accountant turned back into a human, no matter how cute a man-eating tiger kitten undoubtedly was.

Although turning him back halfway, resulting in a tiger catgirl with fluffy wings, was an… interesting thought, hybrids like that weren't fertile, and there would go Sasuke's plan to breed Naruto and Hinata to create the seed stock for a clan bloodline specializing in Niceness no Jutsu. As head of the clan he had to think of the future, after all. It wasn't just a matter of safeguarding the strength of the Uchiha bloodline, he also had to think of their strategic position and their acquisition of and control over vital resources. As much as he wished he could get his hands on large, bouncy… as much as he wished he could get his hands on Naruto's chakra supply and breed it into the Uchiha line (giving them fucking unfair chakra supplies in addition to a downright evil bloodline limit), putting him out to stud would ensure the Uchiha Clan's access to trustworthy accountants and excellent babysitters for generations to come. The Senju might allow priceless abilities like this to go to waste, but if Sasuke wasted this opportunity, he would live to see his grandchildren but not much past that, since surely his and Sakura's children would be intelligent enough to realize why their parents had it so much easier than they would. They'd murder him in his sleep if he was the reason they couldn't dump their kids on someone trustworthy so they could have some alone time, and he'd deserve it.

Wait… It wasn't killing intent he detected from the enemy nin, it was acquisitive intent.

Sakura easily spotted Sasuke's shift from contemplation of offense to going on the defensive, ready to retreat with the incapacitated Naruto. Good: it was her turn. She knew that Sasuke needed to fight powerful ninja, both for practice and to acquire the reputation he'd need to be an effective head of the Uchiha Clan, but Sakura didn't have a clan. She hadn't been born into a reputation. She'd need to make her own reputation, and fast, because as soon as people found out that Hinata was Naruto's fiancée instead of Sasuke's, it would be open season on Sasuke. Kuniochi were ninja: Sakura would be insulted if none of them tried to assassinate her. It would mean they thought she was so weak and insignificant she wasn't even worth taking seriously as competition.

As much as it made her fists clench to think of not getting any assassination attempts, of Sasuke's fan club still thinking of her as the forehead girl, clearly just a servant instead of Sasuke's girlfriend, for everyone who thought Sasuke was hot to try to assassinate her would almost be worse.

She'd be too busy to get any work done on her illegal bloodline experiments!

…Oh, and she might die. Or one of them might find Sakura's experiments while tracking her and waiting for the time to strike and decide to eliminate her from the competition by reporting her to the Hokage instead of a frontal assault.

Wait a minute.

Illegal bloodline experiments.

Sakura's jaw dropped. She clasped her hands to her chest and let herself squee. "Orochimaru!" She continued, "I'm such a fan of your work!" Registered as such, in fact: She'd infiltrated the remnants of his official fanclub and spy organization since Sasuke had wanted to find out if there were any more like Mizuki in there who might go after his minion. Partially it was proof that she could be useful to Sasuke, but mostly it was because they had secret copies of the experimental data seized by the Hokage when they discovered his experiments. "You revolutionized the study of bloodline limits!" By discovering new ways of studying them via disposable subjects as opposed to valuable carriers that would be missed.

"Wow," she said, sighing dreamily. "It's such an honor to meet you in person. I've read all of your papers, the way you really apply science to the acquisition of power and immortality, the spirit of ruthless inquiry, it's so admirable! I can't believe they exiled you! You're absolutely right, that scientific advancement can't afford to be held back by petty concerns like the value of human life or the 'need' for transparency, outdated civilian notions that we ninja ignore every day in the service of clients, when clearly knowledge and power are far more important than money! I just can't believe Konoha's hypocrisy, just throwing away research that would have helped all her ninja, especially clanless students! I mean, what about equality? What about preserving the lives of our comrades?"

Attempt to create an elegant persona utterly forgotten, she bounced up and down on her branch. "You're such an inspiration to all of us! Well, me and my test subjects," she continued to babble, chakra going haywire as her normally perfect control was utterly lost along with her composure.

She just went on and on and Sasuke didn't need to see Orochimaru's face to know what had to be going through his head right now. He had to wince in sympathy, even though sympathy wasn't exactly proper for an Uchiha.

Oh Yami no, not a fangirl.

…Wait, had there been something in that babble his brain was trying to tune out in self defense about test subjects? Was Sakura performing unethical experiments? Well, of course she was, but was she performing unethical experiments he didn't know about? Because the test subjects he did know about weren't smart enough to have an opinion on Orochimaru one way or another.

Of course she was, he realized. Sasuke wouldn't have picked her if she wasn't like that. He couldn't invite someone with ethics into the Uchiha clan, his cousins would eat her alive.

Well, there was Hinata, but Hinata kept them too stuffed with rice balls and blood-flavored ramen for them to consider putting Hyuuga on the menu, ancestry or no ancestry.

Hinata was a fangirl, but she was a Naruto fangirl, which at least meant she had taste. Sakura's Sasuke fangirlness had decreased recently, which he'd thought was a sign she was growing up.

That was what she'd wanted him to think, he now realized.

Once upon a time, Orochimaru too had been a young prodigy whose disinterest in girls made him stand out among all his classmates who would have regarded a young kuniochi's inexperienced affections as a means of getting into her pants. That made him a safe target as well as a hot, smart one.

Even though that was decades ago, ingrained muscle memory forced Orochimaru to assume a specific guard position, reflex as trained as any kata insisting that Sakura was about to tackle him, put her hands all over him and go through his pockets in case he was carrying anything that might hint at possible emotional vulnerabilities or recent top-secret research.

He'd sensed that her chakra control was better than most of Konoha's academy students before he struck, but 'better than' was still far from good. Her semblance of maturity had cracked to reveal a typical fangirl center.

Oh Yami, not this again, went Orochimaru's inner child, remembering the ridiculous double standard (Amaterasu help anyone who groped Tsunade, especially someone her own age and the opposite sex, but when the victim was a boy) and that idiot Jiraya sulking and being jealous, as though Orochimaru should be happy about having his lunch money stolen every damn day so various heiresses could fight over who got to feed him their inexpertly cooked box lunches while he was trying to study, dammit.

That was when the fifty-seven D-rank jutsu timed to activate near simultaneously and overload his defenses by first causing him to defend against Sakura's primary element and then hit the weakness of the element that one was weak to, since of course Orochimaru would react instantly struck the ninja, the tree he stood on and the air he was probably breathing.

"I have Orochimaru's blood in my hair. I have Orochimaru's blood spattered all over me," Sakura said raptly as Sasuke grabbed her with the hand that wasn't holding Naruto and got the hell out of there. "I am never washing this dress."

Not when that would destroy valuable DNA samples.

"You replaced Kiba's scroll with a fake?" Since of course they wouldn't give the real scroll to Hinata, not when her fiancé was on another team.

She nodded, then said, "Yes."

"I felt the nod," he told her.

Good: Hinata and Kiba could be counted on to take the unconscious Shino and head in the opposite direction with the scroll Sasuke had taken from Kabuto. It was a double of theirs anyway: he had to wonder whether it was really random chance that Hinata's team had the scroll he needed, or someone was expecting him to demand it from her, since he was an Uchiha, and was hoping that would cause a rift with the Hyuuga. "Take Naruto," he ordered, depositing her on a branch and forming the snake seal.

"Good, so you didn't think you could get away fr-" was all Orochimaru had time to say before he was run over by several tons of hung-over tanuki, Gaara's gear and sleeping bag (stuffed with snoring Gaara) tied around its neck like a panda-themed charm bracelet.

"Stop. Wasting. Booze," growled the demon, glaring at the stream of heavenly sake.

Sasuke redirected the stream into its mouth. "Ten more shots if you carry us to the tower."

Well, Orochimaru couldn't attack Sasuke now, much less do something that would disrupt the ninja's chakra or knock him out, or else he'd piss off one of the components of his invasion plan.

How had that fa-that girl cast all those jutsu.

How she knew that many was obvious: the Uchiha Clan Library. The discipline to learn that many jutsu was rare, but she was a fangirl: the capacity for obsession was clearly there, and a true fangirl would spend countless hours studying their target. If she'd managed to refocus her obsession from the Uchiha to his library, and also to Orochimaru, and thence to his research? It wasn't as though hormones weren't the reason countless male ninja tried to get stronger, so they could impress others with their strength.

Why she'd used a variety like that was also obvious: a single type of energy was a single type of energy. Relying on one jutsu had killed plenty of ninja. When she performed those jutsu was also obvious: that hadn't been chaos in her chakra at all, just chakra being quickly molded into several different patterns, with the elements staggered so she didn't draw enough chakra of one elemental type at any given moment for him to realize that she was powering a jutsu she seriously expected to work on him. Especially when she knew he was Orochimaru, and thus no weak, genin jutsu could touch him. He was expecting a physical attack, an A rank, or nothing.

Using jutsu with only partial seals and clasping her hands like that had hidden a few of her fingers from him, but the mental focus that would take! She'd been so focused, so obnoxiously focused on him that there shouldn't have been another thought in her head…

Deliberately induced multiple personality disorder? He'd experimented with that, but to think a genin, and a Konoha genin at that, would use it against him?

Screw the Uchiha, he thought, not for the first time.

He would need a stopgap, but after that? He found his next host body. A few more years to finish memorizing the Uchiha Jutsu Library would be in order, but then that brain would be his, along with her jutsu knowledge, and her little Uchiha too!

I don't own a certain book, either. 'A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End' is from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, or at least that's where I encountered it.

"It's an insult!" Naruto stamped his foot, looking really pissed. "Putting the Uchiha clan head against a one trick pony like that?"

"The matches were randomly generated," Hinata pointed out shyly.

Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura snorted simultaneously.

"Oh, thanks for reminding me, Hinata!" Naruto snapped his fingers as he realized he needed to find out who put Hinata up against Neji and get some creative revenge for making her have to fight her own family. Nobody should have to do that! That would be like having to fight Sasuke! He'd definitely make them pay for making Hinata do that!

Unless it was Dango-bastard, since Sasuke had eternal dibs on him. Well, maybe he'd let Naruto do something if it was creative enough.

"That aside," Sasuke said, "I'm sure that was the idea. Eliminating someone who only got this far because of their teammates before their weakness compared to the rest of us could disgrace their village," in front of potential paying customers in the arena, "and ensuring I wouldn't take any injuries that might hamper my performance."

"Oh, right," Naruto realized. Sasuke would be representing the Uchiha clan out there, the first time most of these people had seen a Uchiha in years. He needed to uphold the clan's legendary reputation, which contributed to people's idea of Konoha's strength. "But they could at least have given you a warm-up!"

"That's what sparring is for." Sasuke would have given him a look if it weren't for the blindfold. What was with Naruto thinking there was some value in giving weak opponents the chance to stab him, even if Naruto was a proper ninja now and didn't believe in 'fair fights.' Some kind of rooting for the underdog, even though now Naruto was a Uchiha, and thus by definition not the underdog? "More importantly, why is Konoha entering so many clan heirs in this year's Chunin Exams? I'm aware of the demographics," that most of his peers were around the same age thanks to the Kyuubi attack, even if Itachi had been older, "but it's almost as though someone is trying to remind the world that we have clans. Or put the focus on our possession of clans." Hinata and Shikamaru were strong enough to be Chunin, but Naruto had just handed Kiba his ass and what was with the Aburame heir feinting off a tree branch like that?

Sasuke would be the first to admit that Harem no Jutsu was a potent technique, but even if that was the first 'public' showing of Reverse Harem no Jutsu, everyone in Konoha should know that Naruto had weaponized sex appeal by now, and they were ninja. Someone planning to watch Naruto in combat against a strange enemy ninja should assume that Naruto would pull out all the stops and use that technique.

Sure, a lot of people went out of their way to watch Naruto's battles because of Harem no Jutsu and its effects, but Shino was in the Chunin Exams, and he was representing his clan. Civilians might be able to miss a day of work thanks to the blood loss from exposure to bounc-to Harem no Jutsu, but the people administering this exam would expect better of ninja.

Damn it… he'd thought that having two clan heirs on her team would keep the dead weight from dragging down Hinata. Well, at least she'd passed the Forest of Death despite them, but if she didn't pass this year? Sasuke would have to do something to make sure they didn't make her fail the next Chunin Exam, or rather, "Naruto? Hinata's teammates need a little toughening up."

"On it!" Naruto declared, forming the handseals for Kage Bunshin.

The door to Sasuke's private rooms slid open and Gaara stumbled through, rubbing his eyes. They heard a tiny yawn, and Hinata and Sakura had to suppress awwws. Naruto had to suppress the urge to jump on him as a form of hello, because a fellow demon vessel!

Man, though, he needed to get those tiger instincts out of his system. He'd popped right back after the pervy hermit guy removed the seal, but suppressing the urge to pounce on Kiba and his dog during their match had totally put him off his game. Although it was cool that the urge to pounce on humans only happened when they were looking away from him. He'd known that tigers were awesome because they had orange, but who knew they were so ninja? Well, it weren't like there were a lot of animals powerful and smart enough to hunt humans.

Sasuke was trying to make sense of what he was looking at. He could see that Gaara was wearing some kind of new outfit, with some seal work sewn in. It had clearly been a rush job, and Haku was far from a master yet, but the smell of fur, and Sasuke could see seals extending out from Gaara's head a little… "Are those panda footie pajamas?" He asked, remembering the outfits some of the Uchibis had clamored for. Lions and man-eating tigers and bears!

"Yep!" Naruto said happily.

"Give Haku a raise again," Sasuke said, because he needed Haku too happy where he was to be lured away by other offers, although Sasuke certainly didn't mind the occasional commission that would increase Haku's prestige. It was hard to find a good new tailor for your clan when the Hokage had the last one disappeared, especially when this meant designing for the demon vessel.

So Haku's first effort for another demon vessel had been panda footie pajamas, for Gaara to wear while wandering around blinking the sleepiness out of his eyes? Never being allowed to go to sleep meant Gaara had no idea of how to wake himself up once he did regain consciousness.

"Was he wearing them when he fought Lee?" Sasuke wanted to know.

"It was hard enough for Lee to even try to hit him as it was," Sakura told him. Good Guy Lee, attacking a sleepy little kid? Kids did their growing in their sleep, so being sleep-deprived for years meant Gaara was a teeny little thing for their age.

"Yes," Sasuke said, nodding. Exactly.

"And damage an outfit that cute?" This was at least A-class cuteness here! Sakura blinked. "I almost said it would have been unfair for Gaara to wear this." She shook her head. "Against Lee, anyway. Damn, I guess I haven't managed to get rid of all those civilian attitudes." Fairness, what was what? "Or maybe it's just that I'm prejudiced in Lee's favor." He wasn't from a clan either: he'd had to work hard to get where he was, even if while she used the muscle in her head he used the rest of them.

Which did result in a nice body, although ugh, that green jumpsuit! It was an offense to the eyes, you just wanted to tear it off him…

…wait a minute.

"I wonder if he's related to Haku?" Sakura found herself wondering. "Or maybe Gai is." Even if they came at clothing from the complete opposite direction. No, that didn't explain the hair.

"We really need to do something about his chakra coils, then!" Naruto said excitedly. "I bet Tsunade could do it." Looking at Sakura, he frowned. "Don't you think so?"

She looked away guiltily, twiddling her thumbs. "I'm sorry, Naruto, but I looked over the ancient clan paperwork matriarchs are supposed to sign, and I'm going to be contractually obligated to hate the Senju." As much as she hated the thought of turning in her badge and retiring as Vice-President of the Tsunade Fan Club. Well, at least Ten-Ten would probably give the position to Naruto.

Naruto snorted. Pish, was that all? "You should have come to me about that right away. Don't worry, I'll take care of that." And all pre-existing versions of the documents. Having an army of forgers was handy sometimes.

Sasuke smiled slightly, sipping his tea and barely making an effort to pretend he hadn't heard that conversation. Minions with initiative were such handy things. He was a busy genin, soon to be a chunin: tradition took a distant second place to having stuff be not his problem.

Gaara tugged at his arm. "What is it?" Sasuke asked.

"My body is still exhausted," since it had years of growing, adapting and dreaming to catch up on. Dreaming was key to maturing and brain development: what was Suna thinking, letting a demon vessel go without it? Well, they had wanted a psychotic attack dog, but even so. "But the discomfort is keeping me awake." He was literally too tired to sleep. Sasuke winced, knowing the feeling. "How do I fall asleep?"

Sasuke patted him on the back, because man, had he ever come to the right person. "We'll start with a bedtime story." He didn't need to remove his blindfold to be sure that he was opening the Eight Swords School of Child-Rearing's guide book (never go home without it) to the right page: he had Go the Fuck To Sleep bookmarked. As for needing to read it? Ha, he had it memorized and could do eight different voices.

There was nothing worse than a horde of cranky little demons.

"Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh!"

Tsunade winded. "You." She'd hoped to fix Yamato and get out with minimal hassle. Not going to happen now, this brat was made of hassle.

"You're in Konoha!" the blond brat (or was it another clone?) exclaimed, jumping up and down. "Now you have to train me!"

Folding her arms, she gave him a long and steady look. Have to? She didn't have to do anything.

"Hold on a second," he said, then the clone dispersed itself.

Did he seriously think he was going to wait? Tsunade immediately turned around and headed back to the hotel. At least the horde of visitors here for the Chunin exams should make it hard for him to find her, since she wasn't going anywhere near the Senju estates.

Only to find her way barred by grinning Blond Brat clones. With barrels on their heads?

As they put the barrels down on the ground, she saw that they were filled with water. Or wait, not water.

One of them scooped a tankard into one of the barrels and handed it to her, still grinning.

The blond brat was associated with the Uchiha clan: if she wasn't the greatest medic nin of the world, she wouldn't have dared take a sip no matter how good it smelled.

Or a second sip.

And she certainly would have been able to resist chugging it.

She ignored the blond brats' clapping and whistling: she was only smiling because it was that damn good. So, he'd broken into the Uchiha Clan reserves to try to bribe her now?

"I'll promise you a lifetime supply of Eight Purification Sake if you stay in Konoha to teach me!"

"Not happening." Wait, was this really Eight Purification Sake?

The sake which, after one sip, made all other sake taste like trash?! Goddammit, she was a Senju! She should know better than to accept Uchiha bearing gifts! Her ancestors must be headdesking in their graves!

(And indeed, at that moment Orochimaru's servants heard pounding noises coming from two certain, very tightly secured, coffins.)

"Or," he continued, having already anticipated her refusal, "if you leave your apprentice in Konoha to train me! Once I've mastered every technique she has, she can go back to you, complete her training and then teach me!"

The holy elixir, Eight Purification Sake. Without having to go to Konoha. But Shizune would have to pay the price for her selfishness… "No," Tsunade said, with the last of her willpower. After this, how could she drown her sorrows and the brain cells which contained certain memories in lesser alcohol? Would she lose her ability to perform medic jutsu at all, the medic jutsu that hadn't saved her loved ones?

"Oh," she heard a soft voice behind her. "Oh, Tsunade… You really do care!"

As hearts rose up from Shizune, "Then train me for the Chunin Exams!" Naruto declared, striking a Good Gai pose.

Ammy pushed herself up out of one of the barrels long enough to paint a sunset behind him.

"Gamabunta may have insisted that I give you a chance to sign the toad summoning scroll," Jiraya told Sasuke, "but first there are certain rituals that must be observed!"

Like getting the prospective signer drunk so their mentor could get enough blackmail material on them to make sure they never misused the power of the toad scroll.

"So." Kakashi said, smiling at Sakura from behind his mask as the strains of "A Sage's Staff Has A Knob On The End" (knob on the end, knob on the end) sung in two-part disharmony rose from behind the Uchiha Compound's wall.

"So." Sakura stood there, alone and disgruntled. She understood why Naruto hadn't made her part of his deal with Tsunade (a true fan's loyalty shouldn't waver like that, and what was Sakura's intelligence good for, if altering the documents hadn't occurred to her), but now here she was. With Kakashi.

"I am your teacher, you know," he reminded her.

"Yes," technically. Her eyes asked what exactly Kakashi had to teach her.

She knew that was stupid: he was a jounin, but then her teammates were being trained, or debauched in Sasuke's case, by two of the sannin. Kakashi might be infamous, but he wasn't legendary, although was The Legendary Pervert really that much better than the Notorious Pervert?

"I can teach you to get away with absolutely anything, down to and including reading porn in public," he told her.

Sakura considered that. Reading porn in public wasn't impressive: she'd been doing it for years, along with most of the female ninja in her class. It said something about the intelligence levels of male ninja that they seriously believed people read romance novels for the plots. On top of that, she already knew how to get away with a lot, up to and including murder (the technique was called Be An Uchiha no Jutsu), but then again her skills were only chunin level at most, and ordinary jounin skills plus Teacher's Pet no Jutsu hadn't saved her idol. "Does this include performing illegal and unethical procedures on human subjects?" she wondered. "That may or may not involve jealously guarded bloodlines."

"How do you think I got my eye?" even though the Uchiha clan wanted to keep the utterly broken Sharingan for itself?

"Sold."

"Blood blood blood blood, blood blood blood blood, bloodbloodbloodblood!" the chant came from the section of the arena where the Uchibis were sitting, along with Konohamaru and his friends, holding signs saying, "Beat them up, Aniki!" and "Come on, throw us a bone!"

"Uchiha?" the Kazekage asked.

"Uchiha," the Hokage sighed. "Is that what I think it is?"

"The legendary Eight Purification Sake?" the Kazekage nodded.

Why did he have some, the Hokage wondered. He was the head of Konoha, and the damn Uchiha certainly hadn't come to give him any of the drinks that clan made him need.

"I put my daughter on a long-term mission in exchange for annual shipments."

The Hokage rolled his eyes under the hat. He'd sold his daughter into slavery to the Uchiha for booze? The other villages might mock 'goody-two-shoes Konoha' all they liked, but this kind of thing was why no matter how brainwashed they might try to make them, their ninja would never be loyal, why they lost so many ninja. Often to Konoha. Only an idiot would be loyal to a place that wasn't loyal to them in return.

Underneath the Underneath helped too, of course.

The Kazekage was utterly unconcerned by the old man's air of disapproval. She wasn't Orochimaru's daughter, after all. Nor was it his liver that he'd be ruining.

He was still thinking 'screw the Uchiha,' but he'd made a mental note to leave him intact enough that he could still perform the sake-summoning jutsu afterwards.

"Hey, Sasuke," Naruto said with aggravating cheerfulness. "About last night."

"Never happened," Sasuke said.

"I didn't know you couldn't sing."

"Never happened."

"You should totally weaponize that. Turn it into a cool jutsu. Sakura said she dug up some jutsu for reviving the dead." Naruto casually threw himself down on the futon so he was in range to elbow Sasuke in the side.

Sasuke would have stabbed him, but obviously Naruto knew he was heading for a stabbing and he'd use a clone, or substitute one for himself at the last minute. Of course, the real reason he wasn't stabbing Naruto, who was evil incarnate and not in the good way for once, was that this would have required moving.

Neither the blindfold nor burying his face in the pillows were helping. He could still feel the evil, evil sun beating down on him. He just knew the damn dog was grinning at his misery… Who knew the Mother of All that was Good was such a sadist? Or was it just because Uchiha were demon spawn? What about sages? Did sages get hangovers, or was the damn pervert blessedly exempt, literally?

"I thought your voice already broke, but the kids said you hit some notes that…"

"Never happened!" Sasuke roared, and then cringed at the volume.

Last night had never happened. There had to be some kind of forbidden jutsu that could make absolutely sure of that. He would go search the Shrine of Stupid.

As soon as his hair stopped trying to stab through his skill to murder his alleged brain. Thinking he could fake getting drunk? With Jiraya?!

No, he couldn't kill himself, even though stupidity really should be a capital crime (and stupidity that annoyed the Uchiha was actually on the books, all the myriad of offenses a cop could charge someone with for the crime of looking at them funny. Loitering with intent, loitering within tent…). He had responsibilities.

Jiraya. He was going to murder Jiraya.

And that was when Naruto took out the kazoo.

"There's no substitute for fighting with every fiber of your body intent on victory."

"There's no substitute for patching up your own wounds while the enemy is still trying to murder you," Tsunade said reminiscently. "Cheers." They drank.

"I'm surprised Gamabunta is so willing to help an Uchiha, but," Jiraya said, "doing that to someone with a hangover is just inhuman. Even if it is an Uchiha."

"I know, right?" Tsunade said, grinning. "It's a good thing I wagered that bottle of sake that at least one of them would die during the course of our training."

"You put him up to it?!"

"Do you know how many clones that brat sent after me? 'Come to Konoha and train me! Come to Konoha and train me!'" Tsunade grimaced. "He tried to buy up all my debt, but obviously no one was selling." Tsunade's debt was hoarded, far more precious than the monetary amount, because age caught up with even Yakuza. Old wounds, the damage that came from bad living: multiple gang wars had been started by mob bosses on their second heart attack, staring death in the face unless they could get the help of the legendary medic nin. Tsunade's debt did more to keep down the numbers of organized crime in the Elemental countries than the police forces of any six nations. "He deserved that," she said, as Sasuke finally managed to get Naruto off him, flinging the damn blond brat into the air. Gamabunta took the pitch, hitting him with the flat of his blade right into the face of one of the statues.

"And I was already glad I managed to herd them into the Valley of the End," Jiraya said as Naruto flung himself out of the crater that was all that was left of Uchiha Madara's nose a moment before it was drenched in flaming sake. "It's a pity that Sasuke still hasn't managed to force Naruto to fight seriously."

Even though the Uchiha was now his student, he still felt an obligation to help Naruto learn to master the Kyuubi's chakra. Naruto still hadn't been pushed enough, but hey, he had a whole month to run him to the bone.

"Fight seriously?" Tsunade said giving Jiraya a look wondering if he was seriously. "He hasn't even managed to make my apprentice focus on the fight."

The first sign that Sasuke was forcing Naruto to his limits wouldn't be the appearance of the Kyuubi's chakra, it would be when Naruto no longer had the luxury to dispatch dozens of clones to sell tickets. And shaved ice.

Jiraya smirked to himself. The other villages had to be looking at this and thinking if this was a spar, what would the actual Chunin Exams be like? Then he choked on his sake.

"He always hated that statue," Tsunade said, leaning back in the beach chair one of her apprentice's clones had brought his teacher as those who weren't as long-practiced at calculating trajectories scrambled to make sure they weren't hit by the rubble.

"You taught him the rasengan?" Jiraya said, after he managed to catch his breath.

"It's cute how you people think you can keep secrets from the medicnin." And their drugs. Lots and lots of lovely drugs.

She'd hoped it would take Naruto longer to figure out how to use it, though. Well, at least the slug summon contract would keep him busy for awhile, if she just hinted at some of the implications of their abilities and left him to figure them out on his own. An enthusiastic idiot could invent a lot of interesting techniques that way: just look at his father. Well, she thought, she might be stuck in Konoha until she the end of the Chunin Exams, but at least she'd be too busy between Yamato's condition and Naruto's voracious appetite for training to think about the past.

Sakura was brilliant, the only one in his class who could keep up with him.

Sakura was not beautiful per se, but she had acquired an elegance that could only improve with age.

Sakura was several hours late for the Chunin Exam's final stage, allowing Shikamaru to get caught up on his cloud watching.

"Father," he said that evening, "I now know who I wish to marry."

His father nodded, because he was also a Nara. "Son, you will soon learn a valuable lesson about life." That the Uchiha were evil and existed just to ruin everything for everyone else.

"Why were you so late?" Naruto demanded a few days later, when he was finally released from the hospital (Konoha had tons of wounded, and to Tsunade, 'apprentice' meant 'slave labor'). "You almost got disqualified!"

"Training," Sakura said calmly.

"Training with Kakashi, I know, but still! Couldn't you have made him be on time for once?"

"Not without failing the training."

"But you could have been disqualified!"

"Arriving late without being disqualified was the training," Sakura explained. "Fashionably late."

The tent bit is a Terry Pratchett reference. Read Discworld. Also, it has come to my attention that there are people who have not read Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds. Fix that.

While I'm reccing hilarious, intelligent SF books, there's also Roger Zelazny's megacrossover A Night In the Lonesome October, which involves Lovecraft, Sherlock Holmes, Rasputin, Dracula…

This is a review milestone (kiriban) thank-you giftfic for XandyNZ. XandyNZ's request is: "How about expanding on the first couple of days after Sasuke gained custody of his family? Or one of the many attempts by Danzo/others to get one of the kids?"

It ended up more character studyish than crack: I haven't been in the proper frame of mind to write crack for awhile, sadly, but after quite a delay I decided I didn't want to keep you waiting forever. I still owe another kiriban fic: that person requested Amber/Eva, which just works better and better the more I think about it. Shadows/broken patterns, "Never trust a relative. With a stranger, there's a chance you might be safe," etc.

What Sasuke had to do was obvious, he knew, sitting there alone in the kitchen, staring at the boxes of supplies the ANBU had delivered. Dried staples, some meat, some vegetables, not enough tomatoes. He wanted to sink his teeth into something and feel the red juice squirt out a lot right now. His mother had gone to a lot of effort to wean him into biting tomatoes instead of her.

His mother was gone.

He had to be like Itachi.

He had to make sure that they were fed, that they bathed and put on clean clothes like Mother. He had to be the one in charge, the one whose wrath they feared, that they had to be good enough to not displease too badly, like Father.

But most of all, he had to be like Itachi.

He had to be strong, competent, able to lead even though he was young.

He had to remind other people of Itachi so that when they looked at him, they'd think that if Itachi was strong enough to kill the Uchiha, than this one might be strong enough to protect them. He had to make sure that when they looked at him, they saw the brother of a killer, someone good enough to be ANBU, not a helpless little boy.

But the ninja of Konoha and the council weren't his only problems: he also had to be in charge of these kids.

And he wasn't their mommies, he wasn't their daddies, he wasn't even an adult. He still had to make them acknowledge him as their boss.

Brute force and terror weren't going to be enough. He was outnumbered and they were Uchiha: they'd figure out that there was only one of him. They'd know that he had to sleep sometime. If he was constantly getting woken up in the middle of the night, if his clean clothes were being fouled, if… there were countless things they could do in order to make it clear to the rest of Konoha that he couldn't handle them. And if he couldn't, then the children would be given to others. Non-Uchiha. People they probably could handle.

Except dealing with civilians, or ninja stupid enough to take in an Uchiha and not expect to be treated like the inferior servant they were, would leave them weak. Unprepared for when the time came that they would face enemies who would come for them expecting Uchiha, not weak little children.

So he had to make them want to follow him. Want to do what he said, want to please him.

The way he'd followed around Itachi. The way he'd wanted to impress Itachi.

Sasuke had to be cool.

He had to make them realize that it was better to stay with him than some dumb civilian who would try to bug them about 'bedtimes' and 'naps' and 'sitting still' instead of letting them run around until they exhausted themselves enough to fall asleep. He had to hand them the kunai and knives himself, and show them how to hold them, so they didn't do it behind his back and get ideas.

Itachi was the one to encourage Sasuke to run wild, and that was why Sasuke was eager to listen when Itachi deigned to tell Sasuke the rules to one thing or another. The conditions under which he'd let Sasuke tag along.

Itachi was cool, and strong, and not in the unreachable way adults were, where Sasuke couldn't see the path from A to B, how he turned into someone the equal of his father or mother, unless it was something to do with how having a headband turned you into an adult. Like Itachi was an adult, even though he wasn't that much older than Sasuke.

He was someone ahead of Sasuke, but someone it might be possible to catch up to. So Sasuke had wanted to run along behind him. Chase after him.

The way he did now. With a kunai. Just like back then.

Only now, when he stabbed at Itachi, well, no, he'd wanted the blow to connect even back then. Because if he could hit Itachi, when Itachi was so cool? That would be something to celebrate.

He wanted to hunt Itachi down, but he couldn't. He wasn't strong enough, not yet, and chasing someone, how was that different from following after them? Like a lapdog, like a child? He needed to be the one the other children wanted to follow. And he couldn't lead them to Itachi.

They wanted revenge too. He had to convince them that if they wanted to kill Itachi, they had to get stronger. If they wanted to get stronger, they had to stay here, in the clan compound, where there was plenty of space to run and train and set fire to buildings (they had far, far too many extra now, which was a good thing because he was hearing crashes as well as the shouts and enraged screams of playing Uchiha in the distance) seeing how much damage jutsu did.

At first, he'd protested sparing the Uchiha children. Partially because nits made lice, but also because if he'd argued to spare him, the Hokage would have thought Danzo was eyeing them for Root. Which was 'shut down.'

His old friend had to suspect that the only reason Danzo hadn't argued even harder to kill the little monsters was that he thought they might be useful.

It was dangerous to leave them alive. It was damn stupid to leave them together instead of scattering them throughout the village, breaking them apart into households, breaking the clan and its unity.

The trouble was that he couldn't snatch them up now, not when Sarutobi was waiting for him to do that. The Uchiha children were a trap for Danzo just as much as for Konoha's enemies. And if Danzo shattered what was left of the clan authority now, moved them away from a centralized location than the ANBU would guard, then someone else would snatch them up. They would be used for the benefit of some other village, not Konoha.

So in order to make sure that they would be useful to him once Sarutobi's suspicions finally went away, he had to help the Uchiha, as much as it stuck in his craw. He had to help them stay together. He had to help the children grow stronger, so they would be decent ninja when he could finally make use of them.

Then there was the necessity of acting innocent. Sarutobi knew he hated the Uchiha (after all, who didn't?) and if he didn't act upon that hatred, that obviously meant he had to have a reason. A reason even more important to him than the desire to fuck the Uchiha (and who didn't?) over. If he really had retired Root, that wouldn't preclude him from taking a couple of them for himself. It was just that he did still have Root, and after reviewing what he was putting those children though, ahem, the training he was putting those children thought, the thought of going easier on Uchiha instead of making them suffe-making them stronger rankled.

That meant he had the pleasure of, ahem, he had the necessary duty as part of his plans to work to make the new head of the Uchiha clan's life miserable trying to discredit him without actually discrediting him. Some people might have said that it was cruel to torment a child while withholding the release of death, even for the sake of the mission. Some people weren't ninja.

Also, Uchiha.

Once again, a hiatus caused by being too burnt out to manage the manic tone of this fic. Trying to get the energy back: now that certain fics I was trying to finish are finished, this fic is closer to the top of the priority list, as promised.

I'm just not sure whether I should go for weekly updates and try to get it to an 'ending,' possibly with the end of the Chunin Exams, or monthly and try to sketch out something more free-wheeling/give myself more time to have crack occur to me. Thoughts?

Sasuke's blindfold would have hidden the black eyes, but those weren't the only injuries Naruto'd handed him. Having a trainee medic nin gleefully practice on him was clearly not a good idea (Naruto had never seemed so much like Sakura as in that instant…), but there was no way the head of the Uchiha Clan could appear in front of the Council with a split lip courtesy of a genin, genin himself or not. And Tsunade was a Senju, so he absolutely couldn't let her mess around with his body.

Fortunately Sakura was on hand to mix up some hair dye, because with ten minutes before the start of the afternoon's council session, Sasuke did not have time to catch Naruto and bang his head against the wall until he undid the tiger striping of Sasuke's hair. "You should be complaining that it's only half orange, not wanting to get rid of the orange!" his…

Of course the dye was still obvious to all the ninja in the room, but not dying it would have been a blatant invitation to Danzo and the other fossils to bring up that maybe he wasn't capable of keeping the Kyuubi brat under control after all, and what about the Uchiha brats, then?

"Our tests show that the sample is a chimera: half the cells contain Orochimaru's DNA, and the other half that of an unknown ninja."

"Bloodline?" asked the Sandaime, because of course Orochimaru wouldn't settle for less.

"A minor regeneration factor and a powerful immune system that should have given them immunity to all normal toxins and diseases," Kabuto's father reported: Sasuke could hear the disapproving scowl, even though unlike most of the room, he was aware that it had to do with Kabuto's extracurricular activities, not Orochimaru's. The nin part of medic nin was there for a reason.

No one needed to state the obvious: Orochimaru must have picked a bloodline like that in order to make sure…

"What? But wouldn't that…"

Sasuke allowed himself to roll his eyes freely, thankful for the blindfold. No one would have needed to state the obvious if there weren't civilians on the council.

"It's possible that he wanted to test his ability to take over even hosts with natural resistances," was the obvious answer, but they were ninja, and Orochimaru had been testing this for how long? Of course that would have been one of the earliest check boxes to tick off, if Sasuke knew Sakura.

The most likely explanation was that he was training his ability to take over difficult hosts. Ones with poisonous demonic chakra, for instance. Like, oh, Uchiha.

"We should cancel the chunin exams," said Danzo, obviously.

Sure. Leave Sasuke a genin for even longer. When his brother was ANBU at what age? Comparing him to Itachi could be used to make it seem as though the Uchiha were weak and he was unfit to lead them already, without him waiting until when to make Chunin? Wave was one thing, but allowing the Uchiha Clan Head to go to another ninja village for their Chunin exam? When Danzo could whisper in people's ears that he might defect, and say out loud that of course the other villages would try to capture him for breeding or eliminate him in revenge for something or other?

Then all he'd need to do was keep another Chunin exam from being held in Konoha. He'd been laying the groundwork for years by telling everyone who would listen that he didn't want foreign (synonymous with enemy, to Danzo) ninja in Konoha?

The Sandaime wanted Naruto to pass the exam, provided he could do so on his own merits: it was obvious that the Hokage favored the blond. So if Naruto passed and Sasuke didn't? Then if Sasuke couldn't manage to use his political power to arrange another exam, that would be a sign he didn't deserve to be a chunin and a clan head, in 'Old Man Hokage's' book.

"Orochimaru… he has become an embarrassment to Konoha," the Sandaime said with a sigh. "I would have dealt with him long ago, if I was able to take the time." He couldn't leave to clean up his old student's mess when his old friends would make an even bigger mess of the village council the instant his back was turned. "It won't hurt to have the world watching."

To remind them that even though the Sandaime was old, he was far from weak, 'jutsu geek' or not. With Tsunade and Jiraya both in Konoha, that gave the village three Kage-level ninja. Seeing them destroy Orochimaru in an show of force? And of course it wouldn't be a show put on for the villages, just a teacher and his fellow students having a personal quarrel. So sorry for the inconvenience and craters, preferably near the arena where bystanders could be shielded.

He'd have to tell Sakura so she could make whatever plans she felt like making to get more samples or observe Orochimaru's capabilities and reverse engineer whatever he'd done to get them or whatever, or he'd never hear the end of it. He didn't think she'd pass the information on to Orochimaru: Sakura wouldn't be in his fanclub if she didn't think he was a good enough ninja not to have figured that much out on his own. And if he died, data!

"Um, Sasuke?" Naruto said, looking a little shifty.

"What is it this time?" Sasuke asked, remembering when Naruto told him about the kyuubi.

"I kind of may have sort of joined an ancient conspiracy that might try to kill me if I ever choose loyalty to the Uchiha over them, I mean, I don't think it will, not for another century or so at least, but I didn't think I could survive saying no to Tsunade but I had to at least warn you…"

"Well, finally, it was getting annoying not being able to talk about it." Pity that Sakura wasn't likely to get invited, not when she was an Orochimaru fan and allowing him to pursue the organization's goals in isolation and ignorance helped distract ninja and made them assume that those who opposed Orochimaru couldn't have even similar but even greater plans.

"You already knew? Oh, right, you guys have been rivals for ages, of course you'd know!"

"Rivals?" Sasuke said, blinking behind the blindfold. Who? Couldn't be Tsunade. "I wouldn't dignify Kabuto with the term rival."

"Kabuto? What does Kabuto have to do with the Senju? Is that where he was adopted from?"

"Oooh," Sasuke said, enlightened (only not really, because that rarely happened to demons). "You mean the Senju conspiracy." He nodded. "Remember what I told you about the Kyuubi?"

"…Your evil conspiracy can top my evil conspiracy?"

Well, given which one Tsunade had chosen to initiate Naruto into first… Whatever the Senju were up to (besides oppressing the Uchiha, but everyone knew about that, thought the Uchiha) couldn't be more important than the secret plans of the medic nin, or else Tsunade would have used that to test if Naruto could be trusted.

As has been said before, the other clans were not all that fond of the Senju. They didn't hate them as much as the Uchiha, because come on, Uchiha, but there was just something about the holier-than-thou bastards.

And the way they went about being holier-than-thou even while they were being completely irresponsible, like Tsunade. Or like the Hokage who wielded the power to use wood chakra.

Any other ninja clan would have immediately started a breeding program centered about an ability like that, if there wasn't one already underway, and the person in question would have had to damn well suck it up. The life of a ninja was no place for morality or civilian taboos, like those about underage incest.

A ninja's abilities were the product of their clan's breeding program, and they didn't just need to pay it back, they needed to pay it forward. If not, if their descendants died because their ancestors hadn't passed on their advantages?

What a civilian would have considered 'eww, no,' other ninja clans considered basic decency. If a ninja had a rare ability like mokuton, they needed to breed until it bred true. And if they had inherited that ability from a relative, then that relative was presumably also a ninja and should damn well do their duty to future generations by breeding the ability (and by producing more carriers of the ability for other clans to get their hands on, so they could start breeding for it).

Unfortunately for the clans of Konoha and future generations of Senju, the First Hokage was of the opinion that he'd done his bit by providing the city with plenty of evil-purifying big ass trees (that would, just incidentally, suppress the powers of the Uchiha and weaken them enough that they'd have a hard time pulling off a coup, but would still be at full power when fighting outside of Konoha), and the clans could swear at him as much as they liked, he wasn't going to become a literal mothe- Ahem, well. Also, his parents were married.

While rare and unlikely abilities did have a tendency to just show up in the Senju bloodline, exactly as if someone up there really liked them, the First Hokage came by the mokuton honestly. Well, by ninja standards of honesty. His father marrying someone who had just appeared out of nowhere under a false name still counted as honesty because come on, that wasn't even trying to seriously deceive anyone. Everyone would know they weren't whoever they said they were, at least anyone who deserved to call themselves a ninja.

Marrying a tree might have raised a few eyebrows, but Sakuya's two boys didn't think it was anything worth fussing about, really. They were Senju, and stranger things had happened on both sides of their family tree, and also there was Madara Uchiha, who just would not shut up about how one of his ancestors had scored with the Kyuubi, and the Senju had been handling moral instruction for centuries by pointing at the nearest Uchiha and saying 'don't be that guy.' Divine ancestry or not, the Senju were still ninja, and appeals to abstract notions of right and wrong just weren't a ninja thing, but appeals to good taste were another matter entirely.

A lot of ninja considered Tsunade silly and superstitious for believing in curses, but her grandmother was a tree.

A peach tree.

That was where the First Hokage got the mokuton, and where the Second Hokage got his arsenal of thousands of undetectable poisons, lethal and otherwise. Many but not all of them water-soluble.

(At this point, a reader of the Bingo Book or citizen of Konoha might have asked what? The Second Hokage wasn't a poisoner! Tsunade might have given them a smirk that said exactly. The Senju were Senju, but it was never a good idea to forget that not only were they ninja, they were one of the most ancient ninja clans, and they wouldn't have kept doing it for that long if they weren't suited to it.)

Plants had been using poisons to kill the bastards that kept eating them for millions of years, and many of them had learned that if a poison killed immediately, then the damn herbivores would be forced to quickly evolve a countermeasure, but slow poisons kept them from living long enough to breed too many times, and the bastards could have fun dying of liver failure and cancer from mutagenic poisons.

To understand plants, it is good to keep in mind that there is no plant matter that isn't poisonous. Sure, there are some parts that are designed for specific animals to eat (for instance, peaches), but they don't remove the poison from them, goodness no. That would be just as unplantly as not being a bastard would be unUchiha. They just packaged the antidote with the poison.

Future generations would often wonder why the first two Hokage were willing to let the Uchiha into Konoha. After all, they were Senju: they knew that the Uchiha were evil. They knew that letting them in would bring suffering upon future generations.

It made much more sense to Tsunade, because Sakuya wasn't just a peach tree, she was a Konohana, a breed of evil-dispelling trees that purified areas of evil energy. By eating it. Where an ordinary Senju would have looked at the Uchiha and seen demons, the first two Hokage had looked at them and seen lunch.

Also, the people who would suffer because of the Uchiha would just be humans. Some of whom might even be vegetarians, who clearly deserved what was coming to them.

It would have disgruntled the rebellious Uchiha with their persecution complex even further to know that the clan Konoha's leadership secretly hated and was working to undermine wasn't the Uchiha. It was the Nara.

Those bastards kept deer. Clearly they were evil incarnate. Well, so were the Uchiha, obviously, but deer. Clearly the Nara were on a whole other level.

Anyone who knows what deer do to young trees would know why the First Hokage was secretly convinced that the Nara were breeding an army of ninja deer in order to stage a coup and have him eaten alive.

The Aburame were welcomed to Konoha with open arms because who wouldn't want a literal army of pollinators? Also free janitorial staff: termites only ate dead wood. The Inuzuka with their dogs and the Akamichi with their love of barbeque were brought in to help keep down the populations of those bloody herbivores.

Since Tsunade's ascension as not only Secret Grandmaster of the Medic Nin, but also Secret Secret Grandmaster of the Medic Nin (not even the Third Hokage had realized that the ninja who seemed to be the center of the international conspiracy of medic nin was also truly the leader of the international conspiracy of medic nin, instead of a ruse intended to tie him up wondering if another of his students had gone to the Uchiha side of the chakra and distract him from discovering their true leader), she had begun to use herself as a test subject to forward plans to-

Well, that would be an amusing way to end the fic, wouldn't it?

What do you mean, the last chapter ended oddly? Why, there was nothing suspicious about it at all. Medic nin conspiracy? Well, of course there's a medic nin conspiracy, they're ninja, but it's not like it's important at all, or like they've gained the power to penetrate the fourth wall.

No, I'm not laughing nervously or glancing down at the empty air by my throat where there is absolutely not anything resembling a knife, why would you ask something like that? Especially if you like breathing…

Sadly, shotguns haven't been invented yet (but taxidermy has). What's Sasuke going to do when the Uchibis start dating, or the equivalent...

This jumps ahead to after the exams, but it's a series of events I'd had in my head since around the beginning of the fic, and trying to do things in order has caused me to write fewer things, since the bunnies don't get cleared out and make room for new bunnies. I can change the chapter order later, but if things don't get written, they don't get written.

Sasuke tried to glare, knowing it was less effective through the blindfold. He tried to muster every ounce of Strangling Intent he could, but the aura radiating off his target was downright nauseating.

It reminded him of how Hinata got sometimes, but that couldn't be right. Uchiha were demons: they weren't capable of something like love. Obsession and acquisitive intent, sure: Sakura was tolerable because she'd never loved him, even when she was still enough of a civilian to tell herself that it was love instead of greed. She saw him as an extremely valuable possession, which appealed to his pride as a Uchiha. He was Konoha's most eligible bachelor, and Sakura was smart enough to know it.

He'd hoped that she would serve as a role model for the girls he had to raise, since Hinata was obviously too squishy, but this? Was evidence that plan had backfired horribly. "Orochimaru?" he demanded for the third time.

Ran stamped her foot, glaring at him. "Why can't you be more supportive of my delicate feelings, aniki? He's meant to be mine! I found this really awesome cookbook in the Shrine, Ammy helped me find all the ingredients I want, and Naruto's been giving me stealth lessons so I can sneak into his village and bring him boxed lunches at work! That'll absolutely make him mine!"

Hinata couldn't possibly have had any idea, the dog was the not-damned dog, but Naruto had done "What," Sasuke asked flatly.

"Well, I didn't tell him who I wanted to poison,' Ran explained.

"Poison?"

He heard a book opening and his cousin pointing helpfully at the page. "He's so evil," she said, sighing dreamily. "I want him to be mine for ever and ever, so I might have poisoned Shigure and brought him as a present because he's annoying," and Orochimaru had to like her if she brought him a victim: who didn't like victims? "But if Orochimaru is immortal and doing research on humans like big sis Sakura, then he'll be looking at people who aren't me." The fangs were bared now, and the killing intent might have been disturbing if Sasuke wasn't busy sighing with relief.

"I'm going to kill him and have him stuffed and mounted so I can look at him and think about how wonderfully evil he is and have him all to myself so he'll never think of anyone else but me for ever and ever," Ran continued happily. "I asked Hinata-nee-san, and she said the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and at first I thought she was just talking about avoiding the rib cage when I stab him, but then I realized that since he's so good at murdering people, it would take a really long time to wear him down in a fight, and fighting fair is for Senju, so she must have meant using a poison to stop his heart!" She might be able to kill him now that way, instead of having to spend years training first! True, crushing her first crush in a bloody battle where people got all sweaty and got their clothes cut off like in the jutsu books they weren't supposed to know about was really romantic, but working hard wasn't cool at all.

"Alright," Sasuke said. "You have my blessing."

She shrieked with joy and tackled him: fortunately calling her attack gave him enough warning not to stab her. "You're the best, aniki!"

He'd thought he was going to have to not just give one of them the talk, but talk them out of a relationship. What if they bred? He had too many damn kids to look after already! Thank goodness this was just the demonic homicidal tendencies acting up instead of actual (ick) love.

"I'm making Mandragora Soup with…" Sasuke tuned out the fangirling, activating the Smile and Nod autopilot, and with the blindfold on he couldn't see the printed image of a smiling priest next to the recipe, with the testimonial 'One bite will slay even a golden dragon!'

Of course, little did Sasuke know that 'you're amazing and it makes me want to murder you' was the basis of all Uchiha relationships. If asked, Sasuke would have said that the person he wanted to murder the most was Danzo, but that would be an irritating chore, ridding himself of an irritant more than anything. The person he knew he'd have the most fun killing was Naruto. His best friend.

Even if they'd bonded over childcare instead of 'you're really strong and killing you would be fantastic,' which was the reason Sasuke had followed Itachi around all the time.

Since Uchiha normally only had best friends, or attempted to have them, in order to kill them later, obviously they selected them by who would be the most fun to kill.

Romantic relationships were the same, except there it was more likely that seduction techniques would be among the methods employed to try to distract the victim. So it was really too soon for Sasuke to relax and tell himself that there was no need for any horrible mental images, Ran wasn't going to be doing anything perverted to the snake, just murdering him and mounting him on a wall somewhere.

It was Ibara-no-hime sitting up, stretching, idly blocking a sword-stroke while yawning, and giving him a look that said 'Wow, that's it? You suck in bed even worse than you suck as a ninja' before wandering off in search of someone who knew how to make love to something other than their own hand that made Ryusuke so determined to spend the rest of his life trying to kill her (even just a little death!) that he proposed.

And if Ryosuke hadn't been so busy using swords other than the one he was born with, he might have remembered anatomy class well enough to convince the kuniochi he wished to crush that he hadn't failed at it for life and if she ever wanted to have even half-decent sex ever again she was going to have to get herself some concubators in the marriage contract. Nothing was worse than getting all turned on by someone viciously trying to kill her and then being left with blue ovaries because of some lightweight with no idea what he was doing or the endurance to last long enough to start figuring it out.

Since his attempt to make her jealous just resulted in her patting the women in his harem on the shoulder and saying 'you poor, poor dears' (just to mock him and inspire him to try harder to kill her, of course: pity was un-Uchiha) and giving them directions to shops where necessary items could be obtained? If his crush was sleeping with people other than him, obviously the only option was to kill them all.

"Kabuto. There are fangirls in the air ducts. Deal with it," was the order that sent his minion out of the office after a bow.

"Why are there fangirls in the air ducts?" Orochimaru demanded as he breathed and tried to calm his (stolen) rapidly beating heart. 'Why do we even have air ducts!' he would have asked, if the contractors hadn't insisted that every evil base had to have air ducts, and offered a very appealing booby trap arrangement designed to bait infiltrators and deposit them in his labs to provide him with test subjects.

Since they would have charged extra for the seal work necessary to keep the air breathable at this depth without ducts, it was really the only option.

Of course, since this was a ninja construction company, he'd known that they were planning to use the air ducts to infiltrate and spy, but there were only so many seal masters that skilled in the world. He'd expected Jiraya in the women's baths and obviously placed additional traps there, not looking up in his office when he heard giggling in time to see a small head vanish into a vent. Fangirls leaving bento boxes on his desk painted with cute fuzzy animals? Ugh, how childish. The good thing about children was that they were easy to lure with promises of candy, dango and cool powers, but…

He peered closer. Had that bunny been disemboweled?

"Day three," Inner Sakura narrated. "I have discovered six more incredibly inventive booby traps. Right now, I'm too busy to study them, but I had Ran use her Sharingan to examine their inner workings so she can reconstruct them for me later." What Sasuke didn't know about Sakura drop-kicking the children into spike traps… Well, he'd probably be fine with it, since Sakura was sending in a few of Orochimaru's minions first just to make sure Ran wouldn't be in too much danger, and every ninja needed to gain experience with booby traps. At least Ran was experimenting with the hazards of relationships in a controlled setting with supervision and proper control groups, like the bundle of unconscious Sound ninja Sakura was sitting on.

Stalking was also excellent training: Sakura was far from Naruto's equal in the stealth department, but she and Hinata were the second and third best in their year, thanks to their respective first crushes.

"Orochimaru fed it to one of his minions!" Ran said happily as she chopped up the still-squirming eyeball and attached ichor-dripping demonic nerve Ammy had brought back to the compound and dropped on her doorstep. "He noticed the lunch I made him! The ninja I captured and tortured even said that he immediately analyzed the poison!" Orochimaru was thinking of her, maybe even right now!

The traditional thing was to kill everyone that Orochimaru had ever loved first, but since Orochimaru had never loved anyone but himself, killing him would make him all hers! Killing all his minions, though, slowly leaving him all alone in the world with no one else daring to breathe the same air as him, even daring to look at her evil, evil victim… Well, except Sakura, so she got to live. For now. Also, Aniki would be pissed, but ninja that weren't Uchiha were just tools anyway, and a tool looking at Orochmaru didn't count.

Next to her, working at a counter that didn't have a smoke hood over it to keep the vapors from escaping and poisoning the entire compound, Hinata sighed happily. Hearing another young girl in love was making her think of Naruto.

Ran sighed happily too, and continued to cut the screaming carrots into cute little shapes. Maybe Orochimaru hadn't been stupid enough to eat the Mandragora Soup with Lamb Chaos, but she was going to keep experimenting! And if you had to eat vegetables, then who wouldn't want to eat vegetables that had been magically been granted sentience and little mouths that let them scream in agony?

And if killing your best friend got you the Mangekyo Sharingan, what kind of power would killing the person she would love if she was capable of that emotion give her? She couldn't wait to find out! And then she'd be reminded of Orochimaru and how wonderfully evil he was every time she killed someone...

Synchronized happy sighs filled the kitchen.

In Okami, there's a fetch quest where Ammy gets ingredients for the imp that's Orochi's head chef, which has this major crush on him. Since the Uchiha are something like Okami's imps, having the love of evil hit one of them that way's been an idea since way back. I was thinking just ninja lunch delivery, but the yandere amused.

Slayers reference, although it would be really hard to get actual ingredients and directions out of that particular chef. He probably just said "It's a secret," and they were stuck trying to reverse engineer the recipe.

A dreamy young Uchiha girl with a crush drawing disemboweled animals on things instead of hearts and roses... Or rather Silphium seeds and roses. The modern Valentines heart symbol doesn't look like a real heart because it's not meant to be a heart: that symbol is actually the seed of the Silphium plant, the ancient Roman equivalent of the birth control pill. The Romans were so 'Hades yes' about being able to have all the sex they wanted without worrying about having to worry about the risks of pregnancy and death, that the image of the Silphium seed is still the single biggest symbol of romantic passion worldwide even over a thousand years after that plant was harvested to extinction. I suppose the modern equivalent would be drawing squares with circles inside all over notebooks...

The matches here are occurring in the opposite order from canon, with two substitutions in the roster: Hinata for Neji & Sakura for Kankuro.

Kankuro grumbled. Sure, withdrawing before the end of the exams was part of the plan, but not being able to compete in a single match in the third round because that damn kid got his puppet smashed? At least they were going to get to conquer Konoha and kill that brat's family in the line of duty and also bloody revenge!

Below him in the combatant stands, Gaara and Temari were powernapping, the sealwork built into her fan keeping it blowing cold air over the two of them. It was getting hot out here, and intelligent husbanding of resources like sleep was a Chuunin trait.

Back in town, bringing Kakashi his munchies and more 'incense' to burn at the grave marker for Obito as part of her training (running errands for her teacher established that she was a good, obedient sort of student that wouldn't perform unethical experiments on clanless academy students no matter how much they begged or turned puppy dog eyes on her), Sakura was equally annoyed. She was going to be fighting a clan heir who keeled over unconscious at the sight of Naruto's Reverse Harem no Jutsu. A civilian with no family defeating a clan heir? Of course hurting Shino's chances of advancement would get taken out on her, maybe not so much by the Aburame as by the people with ideas about clan privileges. She couldn't even take advantage of Uchiha privileges because Sasuke couldn't trade favors for the benefit of a secretary, and if she wanted to be clan matriarch then she darn well needed to make it very clear that she'd established her own reputation. If she was the only member of her team that didn't pass the exams?

Sasuke reached up to take another cup of shaved ice from Haku and resisted the urge to show weakness by pressing it to his forehead. Maybe he should pick a color other than black for his blindfold and outfit. Even adding more red or some other color would help a little with the heat that came from standing in the sun.

A drop of sweat gathered on his cheekbone and rolled down.

Alright, that was it. He leaned over the banister, glad he could slam his hands down on it now even though it didn't have chakra to sense. Thankfully, the air around it was coming from the battleground. "Alright, you two!" he bellowed. "Stop f-" Flirting. "Knock it off! Some of us have meetings to get to!"

The first of the exhibition matches, and it was already three hours past noon? Sure, Naruto and Hinata would get extra marks for showing off, since that was the entire point of the Chuunin Exams, to show how ready to be chuunin the participants were and to get clients for Konoha, but they all knew that Naruto was just a chakra whore and Hinata was radiating enough love power he'd already had to duck inside to reapply sunscreen. Sure, he wanted his minion and the person people thought was going to be the next matriarch of the Uchiha Clan to pass, but enough was enough.

Hinata and Naruto moved in, but not for the kill. It would be obvious to the kages and other high-ranking ninja here that the two were conferring amid the seething mass of clones. Tsunade's slug summons might be able to regulate the chakra in a shadow clone so that a single hit didn't disrupt them, but Hinata had figured out how to set off chain reactions that left several staggering away, limbs dissolving into fireflies as chakra flaked away.

So, after the two of them demonstrated their fighting prowess and ability to handle endurance matches, they were conferring and making an intelligent decision as teammates?

Sasuke rolled his eyes behind the blindfold. Maybe how blatantly the two of them were checking off all the qualities required in chuunin would get points taken off? Sasuke and Hinata didn't need to worry: their promotions were mere formalities now that they'd made it this far, but Naruto and Sakura had spent some time conferring while Naruto had his shadow clones train and Sakura was late for her training with Kakashi, whatever he had to teach her.

A Naruto came flying out of the scrum and hit the wall, staggering around dramatically before reaching up to the heavens, doing everything but saying, "Oh, I am slain!" before keeling over.

Wait, did Sasuke actually smell blood? Naruto must have used some medical jutsu to produce it without breaking the skin and warned Hinata in advance, he told himself. Naruto wouldn't have wanted to risk Hinata rushing over to comfort the boy who was not her fiancé.

With people afraid of the Kyuubi's host, Naruto showing that he knew his place would be far more reassuring than a victory. They wouldn't want to reward him for his strength: they'd say he was just handed it by, oh, being a demon.

He only listened with half an ear as Hinata was declared the winner, time for Sasuke to fight Gaara.

It was still possible for him to die if he did something stupid, but Gaara wasn't going to try to kill him. Not when that would cut off Gaara's supply of sleep. That was a problem.

Gaara knew jack about how to subdue people without killing them, a huge hole in his capabilities that Sasuke was going to have to fix immediately. To skilled ninja, it would be obvious that Gaara didn't know what he was doing, and beating a half-trained kid didn't exactly take a chuunin.

As Temari carefully poked Gaara awake with an extendable pole, Sasuke consoled himself with the knowledge that he'd be going up against Hinata in the second round, and someone working on blind fighting who was far from an expert against someone with the Byakugan? He'd have to break out the toads and other impressive jutsu to stand a chance, and everyone would know it, so he'd be establishing that Hinata wasn't a pushover while reminding everyone of the Fourth Hokage and Jiraya. He was aware that the pride of the Uchiha meant that he should feel bad about leeching off of other people's reputations, but he was a ninja. Quick and dirty was the way to win, and he needed a reputation and fast for the clan's survival.

Under the circumstances, the only way to capitalize on this match was with speed, and the contrast with the match before it would make that even more effective. The strategy Sakura gave him for dealing with Gaara's sand the first time they met him should do well enough.

"Begin!"

Sasuke started forming the Snake seal.

As anticipated, Gaara's sand was more interested in intercepting as much of the sake as possible than attacking the bartender. Then Sasuke followed it up with the Grand Fireball no Jutsu, leaping back to avoid the spreading molten glass as the alcohol burned and melted the sand, blue flames mixed with the biju's chakra tinting the arena an unearthly color like that of a swarm of ghosts that Sasuke didn't see because he was wearing a blindfold.

There came a great rumble that quickly became a roar: "You. Burnt off. My booze!"

Orochimaru leaned forward avidly, glad that he'd gotten the message out not to have Shukaku's appearance be the signal for the start of the invasion after Gaara unleashed it so casually in the Forest of Death. "That's my" victim's "boy!" he cheered when Gaara, or rather Shukaku, forced Sasuke to summon the Boss Toad.

In any summon battle, he rooted for Manda and whoever was fighting Gamabunta. Forcing the head of the Uchiha Clan to burn off all his chakra sustaining such a powerful summon would leave him in need of assistance… No, he'd be fighting his fiancé in the next match, and the Uchiha Clan's jutsu tutor after that: they would make sure he kept up appearances, if they were ready to make Chuunin. Still, fighting a biju would weaken Gamabunta. It was a pity Tsunade's student hadn't summoned the Boss Slug in his previous match: the Hyuuga had quite a few techniques developed for disabling summons, and obviously the girl had adapted one to deal with those durable shadow clone chakra constructs. That would have left the Boss Monkey as the only powerful summon with a summoner with the chakra to handle it in Konoha, and Orochimaru already had plans for that in place.

Gamabunta was limited by the size of the arena, while Shukaku had gone utterly berserk, charging up Gamabunta in order to grab the Uchiha and wring more sake out of him. Sasuke was trying to placate the biju using that sake-summoning Sharingan technique, but unlike his minion Naruto he wasn't made of chakra.

The Old Fool looked like he wanted to do something, but until one of them actually breached the sides of the combat area, for the fight to shut down would be considered the fault of at least one if not both the combatants, and he had his Uchiha and the village's reputation on one hand and the son of an ally he didn't want to offend on the other.

In the end, both boys were disqualified by mutual knockout: chakra exhaustion and alcohol poisoning. The blond minion, who had managed to make himself even more amazingly useful somehow by convincing Tsunade to teach him, barged in and insisted on using his slugs to transfer chakra to the Uchiha and leech poisons out of the demon vessel.

Fortunately, Sarutobi wasn't looking at Orochimaru when both of them winced, remembering what Tsunade did to the first person her sensei allowed her to interrogate after she found out that the slug contract included leeches.

A reviewer mentioned that it was odd to see Naruto throw the match, given how determined he always is to win. Naruto is determined to win here, it's just that his win condition here is "Operation Get All My Precious People To Pass The Chuunin Exams With Me." It's a good thing that he's not advancing and can focus his attention on strategy for something other than the next fight, because Gaara just put on a very poor showing, losing control like that, and Naruto is going to have to go bribe and blackmail up some votes so he can still pass.

A lot of times missions have secondary objectives, or the mission is to do A not for the sake of doing A, but to cause B for the purpose of C, and since ninja are supposed to be sneaky, a lot of the time they're probably supposed to seem to be doing A for the purpose of not-A.

In the series, Sakura's a test-taker, with strategies that are good for that… and she probably doesn't want to see this isn't that kind of test. Naruto's used to being made to fail tests and Sasuke isn't interested in the exams other than as a means to an end and doesn't put much thought into it because of that. So they've all got tunnel vision that means that they're missing that the purpose of the Chuunin Exams is to show that they've got what it takes to be chuunin. Their goal is not to solve math problems, or survive for a week in the forest while getting scrolls, or to win the generic shonen tournament, it's to demonstrate that they deserve to be Chuunin. Commanders of small units of less-trained ninja who need someone with experience who can look out for complications even in combat to look after them.

Naruto sucks at working with others due to a complete lack of experience with working relationships of mutual benefit. It's not his fault he completely lacks the skillset, since he never had a chance to learn it, but he still lacks it at that point.

Here, though, Naruto's used to working with small children, and there's a reason one of the subcommanders of D.D.D. in Log Horizon was a kindergarten teacher. He and Sasuke know how to keep groups of sneaky little ninja under control and make them do their (home)work instead of running around setting fire to unauthorized things (or at least if they do it then they'd darn well better make sure there are no witnesses and it doesn't cause a problem for the clan/mission). Hinata's less on the discipline and more on the bribery, but ninja in Narutoverse are mercenaries that do missions for pay, so motivating troops with actual incentives is not a bad strategy. Sakura just unleashes Inner Sakura to threaten them with graphic violence – very inventive graphic violence, thanks to reading all those scrolls – so they think she is the coolest. Even if she is a total jutsu geek.

Firehedgehog requested more kitty!Naruto for her reviewer giftfic, but I seem to have gotten my muse back when it comes to the Chuunin Exams, so it may be a bit before… actually, why don't I have it happen in the course of plot.

"Hey, old man!" Naruto said happily as he climbed up and plopped himself down as though he owned the kage's box. It was only a matter of time!

"Naruto, how did you get in here?"

"With Chuunin-like ninja skills!" the blond said, radiating cheerfulness. "By which I mean a cunning combination of stealth, bribery and my incredible original jutsu!" Hint hint.

"Yes, Naruto," said Sarutobi almost dotingly, and his former student could translate that into, 'Yes, my adorable little ticket back to retirement and digging my toes into the sand while admiring minions bring me drinks with fruit in them.' "What is it?"

And Naruto had even brought him a drink, Orochimaru saw, seeing the deliberately cute child proffer a bottle. Yes, he was definitely keeping the blond, as a trophy of his victory over Konoha. Minions were easy to find, but intelligent minions that weren't afraid to anticipate your needs were a treasure.

It certainly hadn't hurt the genin's chances of getting past two kages' security that the stadium was still recovering from the onslaught of Shukaku's biju chakra. Many of the civilians had run screaming, hence the current intermission while the spectators were rounded up since showing off was much of the point of the exams, and even the majority of the ninja had left logs or clones in their place while they went to get a stiff drink now that the threat was over, especially those that remembered the kyuubi attack.

If people thought you were weak, more of them would attack you, and eventually one of them would get lucky. Ninja knew never to let anyone see them have a flashback, or any other sign of PTSD. It was a reason that therapists had never gotten very far in the ninja world, after seduction specialists stopped filling that role. Sympathetic conversation was a part of the job for a high-level companion, and if that sympathetic conversation just happened to be on topics that a fellow ninja would understand very well, like having to kill some kid who didn't realize how outclassed they were, well, seduction specialists had to cut a lot of idiots, if they did missions in areas where the civilians didn't assume that anyone in the profession, but especially the streetwalkers, was at least as deadly as a genin medic nin.

The people who knew how to put you back together just knew how to take you apart. The people who knew how to inflict pleasure could inflict terrifying amounts of pain, which was why interrogation used to be nearly the sole province of seduction masters.

The difference between being killed by a mugger and being killed by trying to shoplift from a Konoha prostitute was that your family would be sent a very large bill for the professional's participation in your incredibly stupid personal fantasy afterwards.

That was the law. Not because of actual rape attempts: for most of Konoha's history, the Uchiha police force had a waiting list for who got to cover the Vice Beat. Before the massacre, Konoha's red light district was one of the safest places on the Shinobi Continent, to the point that renting a room there was commonly and only half-jokingly known as a relatively inexpensive way to obtain A-ranked bodyguard services.

The fact that women could go to hotel rooms with people they'd just met at a bar in the certain knowledge that if their partner tried anything they hadn't agreed to and wouldn't take no for an answer assistance would arrive within seconds of the scream or pulse of panicked chakra meant a lot more of them did, so Konoha was known as one of the best places for easy, stress-free casual sex on the Shinobi Continent.

Which was only fitting for a village built around a temple dedicated to sacred exotic dancing.

Since people having to be afraid of rape meant less sex for everybody, even the hard-line ('human rights? What are those?) traditionalist ninja had never seriously challenged the law that said that the attempted rape of a civilian within the village was a death penalty offense. Putting the 'civilian' in there allowed the ninja clans with breeding programs to move to Konoha without worrying that the law would be applied to them.

Because of this, attacking prostitutes was one of the few forms of so-called 'Konoha Suicide' that generally was, in fact, suicide. Many ninja were painfully aware of how many enemies they had, and how important their physical conditioning was. A lot of them couldn't bear the thought of growing decrepit, old, helpless, and ninja also tended to fantasize about their perfect, glorious deaths, just like Hinata dreaming of saving Naruto.

If you couldn't die saving a loved one, or the village, then dying of sexual exhaustion in someone else's bed was generally considered a fairly decent way to go. If the ninja hadn't saved up and didn't have the money to hire a genjutsu specialist to return them to their lost youth and stamina for one last glorious night, they were sometimes desperate enough to see attacking a very fit young woman showing a nice amount of skin, who might crush their head between her thighs as better than being killed slowly by an enemy or dying alone.

During one of the village's periods of peace, civilians seeing fights with fatalities in the Red Light District had threatened to ruin its reputation as a safe place and threatened the village's tourist industry and plentiful supply of hot foreigners looking for a place where they could have all the sex they wanted without having to worry about the sex they didn't want. That was when the mandatory fine was added to the death sentence for rape, and those who went in clearly intending suicide could get imprisoned 'until they paid the fine' so there was some humiliation in there to discourage the ones wanting a quick death that supposedly established that they still had a sex drive when they died.

Uchiha loved the Vice Beat. Ninja from other villages especially seemed to often end up pain kinked, and then there were the ones raised to think of themselves as tools in the service of their clan or client. Konoha's BDSM whorehouses did a roaring business, and Shunshin no Shisui had gotten so good at the body flicker by getting in good with the dominatrices at one of the larger locations, becoming their requested police representative and trying to supervise them having sex with foreign ninja in up to two dozen rooms at once without missing any of the good- he meant the important bits.

That was how he'd learned the importance of protecting precious people, even if they weren't Uchiha. Yes: he would protect Konoha with his life, because it contained his precious people. Sexy, sexy, playfully sadistic precious people.

It was a solemn duty: the village had to be sure that nothing too bad happened to guests from other villages for liability purposes, of course. Then there was the matter of keeping an eye on the foreign ninja present in Konoha, not just the clients but the ninja that came with them to stand guard and ensure that the dominatrices didn't try to extract information from their comrades. Then there was protecting the dominatrices from the threat that the foreign ninja might try to put them under control so they could extract information from other clients.

Other villages often put their sex workers under mind control jutsu so that other ninja couldn't: Konoha just kept a very close, personal eye on the safety of its professionals. Generally a red eye with spinning tomoe.

Orochimaru abducting civilian tourists to serve as surrogate mothers for some of his bloodline experiments was still an S-class secret for a reason. Letting it slip to an outsider was punishable by death, just like revealing that Naruto was the kyuubi's host.

However, the fact that the rape laws were more loopholed when it came to ninja kept ninja, even those who completed academy training without officially graduating, from entering Konoha's sex industry, except for genjutsu users acting in support roles without having sex with the clients. This was not an accident or oversight, and there was a reason besides personal enjoyment that the Uchiha kept such a close eye on the profession.

Destroying the Uchiha had damaged Konoha's reputation. The ANBU and others called in to patrol the area had tried their hardest, but they didn't have the institutional experience and a few widely publicized incidents had caused a massive reduction in the village's visitors. Those who remembered the glory days were almost desperate to restore the Uchiha clan and their police force before they became too old to take advantage of it when things finally got back to normal.

Orochimaru almost had to wonder if that was Danzo's intention. Even though he harvested orphans and children put up for adoption, visitors that came to Konoha introduced civilian genes into the village's gene pool and could potentially remove valuable ninja offspring from the village, even though that was generally the last thing any of them wanted to do, and one of the things they'd come to Konoha with its medic jutsu and advanced birth control to avoid.

Well, soon he too would be dead. So many things to look forward to.

"You see, Gaara is just pretending to be totally incompetent and untrained, with no tactical skills whatsoever. Promoting him will show Suna that you see through the ruse, while everyone else will just think that it's a political promotion and praise your acumen." Naruto looked at Orochimaru, supposedly Gaara's dad, for support. "Everyone knows that a ninja village wouldn't let a demon vessel go untrained and then send it out where just anyone could capture it, or secure its undying loyalty with a better seal that would let it sleep. You wouldn't really just let Jiraya walk off with Suna's weapon, even if you're cleverly making sure that your village is underestimated, right, old man?" Naruto gave the Kazekage his best prankster's smile. "And you don't even have to give away your plan, because people will think the old man had to promote Gaara, because he had a mutual knockout with the Uchiha, and not promoting the Uchiha clan head?" Of course that wasn't an option, not unless Sasuke did something incredibly stupid. "Not promoting the person that knocked him out would make it look like Sasuke lost to a genin!" Demon vessel or not.

"Your teammate's promotion is likely safe, Naruto," the Hokage told him, tapping his fingers against each other. "How many jutsu is Sakura at now?"

"I don't know, she's been all weird since she started training with Kakashi. Different weird."

"It's wonderful to see the two of you so determined to follow in my footsteps." Naruto as Hokage, Sakura as the next Professor, master of a thousand jutsu.

Translation: the old man was the patron of the two clanless members of Team 7, and would take it as a personal favor if they were the first team since the Sannin to all pass the Chuunin Exams on their first try. He'd be willing to trade the Kazekage's help with that for help passing Gaara, and Temari as well if she needed it.

However, something like that would dramatically increase Konoha's prestige: the Elemental Countries and their clients would be watching the new Golden Trio. Meaning that the representatives of other ninja villages would be trying to make sure that at least one of them didn't get promoted.

Naruto and Sasuke had both put on impressive performances, but Sasuke was the one that lost, while Naruto had surrendered obviously enough that even the civilians could see it. The civilians from outside Konoha that didn't know that Naruto was the Kyuubi vessel.

It all depended on Sakura's showing, Orochimaru knew. Civilian-born ninja were expendable (see him). If she did poorly, all would be well from the perspective of the other villages. If she did better than the Uchiha? If they could force the head of Konoha's hated Uchiha Clan to fail his first Chuunin Exam?

However, if they couldn't make that happen, then passing ninja from as many other villages as possible would prevent Konoha from being the only village to have any ninja pass this Chuunin Exam, and Gaara and Temari were the only non-Konoha ninja to make it to the finals. Making the Fourth Hokage's student's team's feat seem less impressive by trying to argue for some of the ninja eliminated earlier would also be a good thing, and if they kicked up a fuss, trying to convince people that Konoha had arranged the preliminaries to eliminate teams from other villages?

Of course the village that held the exams was going to rig them, that was a given, but Konoha marketed itself as the ethical alternative to all those other inhumane ninja villages.

The two remaining matches in the quarterfinals were Sakura, a civilian, against the heir of the Aburame Clan, and the Kazekage's daughter against the heir of the Nara. If the fangirl somehow managed to win both her match and the next one, then not promoting her would be an insult to the prestige of two of Konoha's major clans and its ally.

Of course the Hyuuga heiress would be skipping the semifinals, since the match that should have produced her opponent was a mutual knockout, meaning that she would have time to rest and observe her opponent while Sakura would be fighting her third battle in a row when they fought.

Orochimaru considered the other options. Relations were always rather cool between the Aburame and the Hyuuga: the Hyuuga, who prized vision (it was how they marketed themselves) said that anyone who would give it up, and let bugs eat their eyes? While the Aburame, who kept hives and mounds and colonies of all sorts of insects, had views on the subject of family hierarchies and over the decades both clans had spent in Konoha, the Hyuuga had picked up on the fact that the Aburame had a sort of cool contempt for them, although normally it was overshadowed by the Inuzuka's more open feelings of disgust for the other clan.

The Nara tended to weigh in on whatever side would keep the peace, although Orochimaru had reports of them favoring the younger, smaller clans. The Ino-Shika-Cho combination teams, in particular, allowing the heirs of minor families the benefit of Nara leadership and giving them ties of gratitude and camaraderie with the Nara. It wasn't as though the Nara didn't have a large power block of their own, but having younger, less lazy clans with less to lose take point in council sessions…

The Snake Sannin preferred his clanless dictatorship model, obviously, but the Hokage so far had tried to set things up so that Konoha would run itself as much as possible so they weren't bothered more than they had to be, and clans were pre-existing power structures that could be hijacked for this purpose, like the Uchiha-dominated police department. After the Kyuubi attack forced the surviving clans to turn their focus inwards, Sarutobi must be drowning in paperwork, which neatly explained why he was going to the trouble of raising a successor just in case one didn't show up on their own. Of course Orochimaru wasn't even considered.

If he wasn't a ninja and therefore an utterly selfish conniving snake, he would have thought to himself 'she doesn't take after you, old man, she takes after me,' and started rooting for the civilian, just remembering his own Chuunin Exam, and all the people who made those calculations about how he and Jiraya were expendable, and 'Shouldn't you want to hide your true power? You are a ninja' that was really 'You shouldn't outshine the clans, it makes the lesser clan members question why they're being forced into breeding and training if an outsider whose family didn't have to go through all that can outdo Senju and Uchiha.'

Young genius or not (and Konoha prized its geniuses: even the ones that didn't come from clans were ways for clans to avoid inbreeding without allowing in weak genes), Orochimaru was an orphan with no choice but to wear whatever his sponsors dressed him in. He'd hated those useless butterfly clothes the way he assumed Naruto must hate orange.

"Where is Sakura, by the way?" Orochimaru's teacher wondered.

"Training with Kakashi. She's going to be pissed she missed Sasuke's match."

"Sasuke's match?" Naruto didn't think that his teammate didn't care about him succeeding in the Chuunin Exams, did he?

"Well, it wasn't like there was any suspense in mine, and we figured that Kakashi was going to keep her late." So no, Naruto wasn't hurt that Sakura hadn't made it. "But Sasuke got knocked out! She's going to do something nasty to Kakashi for not letting her be here when her teammate got hurt."

"Yes. Her teammate," Sarutobi said with just a hint of emphasis and a twinkle in his eye. "Have I mentioned how wonderful it is to see the youth embracing the Will of Fire? I'm glad your and Hinata's teamwork is likely to survive being paired up in the matches, and I'm sure it will continue to grow stronger."

The Kyuubi vessel looked shifty. The old man patted him on the head.

"It's getting near the time the next match should start, but why don't we prolong the break so that those affected by the biju chakra can finish getting their drinks. Is that acceptable?" Sarutobi asked, turning to the other Kage courteously.

There was no need to ask him, not when this was Konoha's facility, but the 'Kazekage' simply lifted his own jar of Eight Purification Sake in a salute to them both and took a swig.

Alcohol intensified emotions, and right now his predominant emotion was knowledge of his inevitable victory. It was hard to want to ruin Sarutobi's day early in such a petty way when he was looking forward to Sarutobi's blood all over the leaves. Let the old man enjoy his dreams now, it would make crushing them all the sweeter.

"Hey," Naruto said, nudging the Sandaime. "Old man, is it okay if I stay here for the rest of the exams today?"

The Hokage looked around them, at the ninja that remained in the stands and the ones that were still returning. "Yes, why don't you stay with me for now."

The last time biju chakra flooded the village was the Kyuubi attack. Orochimaru had looked forward to reviving the terror of that day, but since the inhabitants of the village were fool enough to blame their savior, it wasn't safe to be Naruto, not at the moment. Anyone who touched him in the Hokage's presence was a fool that should be removed from the village, especially the ranks of its ninja.

If this was Sound, Orochimaru would have told the blond to get lost and go practice his killing on anyone that attacked him, but his teacher was always soft.

Sasukemuse is 'Oh no you don't, that's my trophy blonde!'

And of course Naruto would have to look down at himself to check before asking, "Don't you mean trophy blond?"

After being told that Orochimaru was an orphan, I really have to wonder what a 'verse where Orochimaru was Naruto's mentor, Tsunade was Sasuke's (both from major founding clans that don't have many members left) and Jiraya was Sakura's would look like. Besides utter crack, of course.

Orochimaru's sponsors intended to marry him to Tsunade and use him to make themselves powers behind the throne while strengthening that bloodline. Because of that, his deportment instruction was rather… tilted. As in, he was acting like the male version of a cock tease, coming on to every single female ninja of his generation even though he had no interest in sleeping with them. If Orochimaru ever finds out that the reason female ninja kept flirting with him was because he started it by flirting with them, Just As Planned, Sasuke is going to have serious competition in his quest to murder Danzo.

That's why he's still annoyed that Jiraya and Tsunade had no sympathy. They thought he knew what he was doing so they were like 'Dude, if you want girls to stop following you, you could stop leading them on.'

Yu-gi-oh Abridged reference.

& here we jump around again, because I found myself writing a bunch of snippets in the outline notes document. What happened is that the canon that was revealed after I started writing turned out to be on even better crack than the theories of the time that I based my earlier crack on.

There are several reasons why not all Uchiha have the Mangekyo Sharingan, but the most obvious explanation is that it's due to the following three factors:

First, Uchiha aren't all that likely to make friends.

Second, friends are great things to have.

Third, Uchiha are incredibly arrogant.

While Naruto was an extreme example, it took a special kind of person to get an Uchiha to acknowledge them as their friend without their fingers crossed behind their back. (Or, if you asked Madara about Hashirama, sometimes they were just plain 'special.')

The selfishness of Uchiha meant that most of those they came to value were actually valuable to them in some concrete way. Providing them with opportunities to get stronger, providing them with cookies, helping them forcibly redraw the political map and overthrow centuries of ninja traditions, that kind of thing.

The arrogance of Uchiha meant that once someone's life was that valuable to them, they were likely to realize that, 'Eh, I don't need the Mangekyo to fuck people's shit up: I'm an Uchiha, I already kick ass. As long as you continue to amuse me, minion, I'll kill you last.'

"Brother, Tobirama keeps salting me."

"I'm glad you had fun," Madara said without turning around as they ran back to camp.

"No, not assaulting me," which would be fun: Tobirama was an inventively cruel opponent, "Salting me. He stands over my head on a tree branch or roof with a salt shaker, and when I look up he summons a knife and fork into his hands and tries to grin fiendishly." 'Tries:' no Uchiha would admit that a non-Uchiha had succeeded. "He has also been trying to sneak mineral supplements into my food. I have already told him that he is not my type." Ugh, Senju. Tobirama especially was disgustingly holier-than-thou, literally. There wasn't enough sunscreen in the world for even an Uchiha that was into guys to want to be anywhere near that naked body. It was a miracle that even people without the Sharingan couldn't see the halo.

Telling a fellow ninja that 'I'd like to eat you alive and keep you fed properly so that you'll be tasty when I do, probably in the bedroom over a period of decades. Probably' was fairly normal courtship for Uchiha: both of the sons of the clan head had paid enough attention to the inferior outsiders to know it wasn't normal for them, but it was intelligent of Tobirama to try to court the Uchiha using the obviously-superior traditional Uchiha methods.

Madara wondered if Tobirama would have a little more luck attracting Izuna's attention if he took Izuna seriously and broke out his armory of paralytic and other poisons, but a Senju was still a Senju, and not good enough for his little brother. Especially when Izuna had begged, ahem, nobly volunteered to be offered up to the Nibi to satisfy the cat-demon's voracious appetite for a particular piece of manflesh so that his brother would be freed of his duty to spend a full nine years as one of the kyuubi's leashed lesser demons in order to bring the resulting offspring back to the clan. That contract was made when he was a younger son, with no prayer of getting out of it alive: the kyuubi had promised to return him mostly intact afterwards now that he was the heir, but only an idiot would trust the Uchiha or one of their relatives.

Many people asked Hoshirama what he could possibly see in that, that Uchiha.

The first person other than his brother and mother (who could taste it for themselves) he managed to explain it to was Mito who nodded, enlightened. "Ah, so his aura tastes like chocolate." That did explain everything.

"It's more on the level of bacon," Hashirama said. "Really crispy bacon?" Madara was fantastic at cooking bacon, too: no one beat the Uchiha clan when it came to precision application of fire.

"Chocolate," Mito said firmly. "That bitterness, your body trying to warn you that this may be poisonous but it's so sinfully good… So exterminating the Uchiha would be like someone exterminating the cocoa tree?"

"I wouldn't…" go that far, Hashirama started to say, since to a half-tree that sounded almost as though Mito was casually comparing killing a few enemies to genocide, but then there weren't all that many imps or higher-level demons running around these days, other than the Uchiha. Partially because of the Senju and Poncle Clan extermination efforts, partially because the Uchiha themselves captured all the demons they could to forcibly breed them to try to maintain their bloodline. Madara was engaged to the Kyuubi no Kitsune and far from happy about it: sure, he could escape the leashes she put on her pets easily, but it was the principle of the thing. "Hey, I can use that!" The Senju had to care about maintaining their good name: if he could convince them that wiping out the demons would actually be genocide, because hey, weren't they part-human, and weren't holy beings supposed to lead Mother Amaterasu's children towards happiness?

No, for the sake of his and Tobirama's future children, he practically had a duty to make sure that the Uchiha, instead of being exterminated for the good of the human, tree-chopping world, bred and bred true. They were an important part of the ecosystem that kept humans from overpopulating and exterminating everyone else, after all.

"Maddy!"

At least 'Maddy' was better than the kyuubi calling him Spot. One of these days, he was going to make her hold still and make himself some popcorn with fire jutsu while Hashirama used that painful Senju holy chakra to beat the crap out of the damn fox. Accursed creature, stealing all the tofu Hashirama sent him after Madara had just fried it perfectly!

Madara glared at the Uzumaki, who was clearly failing to do her job as Hashirama's jailor, he meant wife. He had only been best man at the Senju's wedding (kidnapping and replacing the Senju-clan approved one with a henge) because he'd foolishly assumed that once he was married, Mito would have to take over the job of keeping him from tackling people and rubbing himself all over them just because he was happy to see him. "Can't you put him on a leash?" he demanded. Seriously, what was it with the Senju and their relatives and their unhealthy suppression of dark emotions? Was a little constructive jealousy too much to ask?

"I do," she said, laughing, "but no matter how I tinker with the seals, he's always out of them five minutes after the sex stops."

"It's fantastic practice," Hashirama said happily. "You should try it, Maddy!" Since he was worried about the Kyuubi's leashes.

"Oh no," Mito said, no longer laughing. "I'm barely getting any sleep as it is. Earth and water, the two fertility elements, and instead of calm they're adding up to endurance." Normally the Uzumaki was the one with more stamina in any relationship. "It's not you," she told Madara apologetically, since the Senju philosophy of 'love everyone' and the Uzumaki's… Uzumakiness meant that they were even more inclined to hugging than Hashirama and less inclined to being clothed while hugging (for the Uzumaki, shame was something that happened to other people and a major liability in a ninja), "It's that I do a lot of my brainstorming and come up with my best ideas in my dreams." So she felt bad about it, since Madara was her husband's best friend, but she really couldn't take the time to train him in escaping from S-ranked traps while under the effects of afterglow.

"That explains so much," the Uchiha thought to himself. So, the Uzumaki harnessed the power of insanity, potentially meaning sleep deprivation could be used to keep an Uzumaki from producing their dangerous, genius ideas, making it possible to subdue them? Of course, first you would need the Uzumaki to put up with sleep deprivation, and… No, if even Hashirama couldn't bang an Uzumaki's brains out, that strategy wasn't going to work. The Uzumaki didn't act like there was anything but fluff under that red, but they were descended from one of the spawn of the Sage of Six Paths, the one that looked at his elders and said, "Ya know, we could stand here all day having a pointless argument, or we could go and have some fun," before rolling his eyes and wandering off.

When he came home a few years later to introduce his kids to the family, and found that they were still arguing over that nonsense, the Secret Goal of the Uzumaki Clan had become rigorous scientific testing to settle once and for all the question of which was more important: power or love, so they could deliver inarguable proof and make the rest of the family stop being morons and stop starting wars over the best way to have peace.

Of course, this being the Uzumaki, they had decided to approach the issue in terms of "Which is better: hugs or explosions?" And started cataloguing all the different possible types of hugs and explosions for further testing.

The preliminary conclusion a few centuries later was that there were a lot of really incredible types of hugs, especially in the 'sex' subcategory, but explosions were also fantastic enough that it was possible that the upper-level explosions could compete. Well, it couldn't be definitively ruled out, not without proper testing. Unfortunately, until someone came up with a jutsu that would allow the Uzumaki to put the planet back after blowing it up (it was where they kept all their stuff, except for the loot hidden in alternate dimensions until the heat died down), they couldn't actually test the greatness of those upper-level explosions.

…Other villages discovering the Secret Purpose of the Uzumaki and going 'oh gods, those lunatics are going to kill us all!' may have had an impact on three villages deciding to put aside their differences and sacrifice their chance to defeat Konoha by going after the Uzumaki.

Still, until someone built on Tobirama's work and managed to create a jutsu that would revive the entire planet, probably with no one left alive to use as sacrifices, the Uzumaki were forced to table the issue until they could perform definitive tests.

However, one thing was certain: a world without hugs would suck. A world without explosions would also suck: the Uzumaki were trained as true connoisseurs of explosions from a young age. Madara had once driven several Uzumaki and a woman with mouths in her hands (ugh, all those non-Uchiha bloodlines were so pathetic) to tears of rapture when his extensive arson experience and traditional clan knowledge of flammability sent a stone castle shooting ten meters up into the air before it blasted apart and rained rubble down on the entire battlefield. Idiots should have guarded their granaries better. It wouldn't have saved them, but he would have had a little more fun on the way.

Then he remembered that sleep-deprivation also caused insanity. Damn the Uzumaki: how dare their unfair advantages be almost as potent as those of the Uchiha!

When Sasuke finally got the whole thing explained to him, reincarnations of the sons of the Sage of Six Paths and also Madara and Hoshirama, he asked the question that mattered to him. "So I was destined to meet somebody that would insist on becoming my friend, becoming Hokage and doing all the paperwork?"

Other people got destined enemies, or destined love (ick). He got a destined minion! "Best. Destiny. Ever."

Omake (written as a review reply to pdeneroff3204):

"Okay, time for the next planetary explosion test! Everyone, put on your safety goggles!" one of the red-headed fiends yelled at the huddled civilians.

"Why?! They'll just get vaporized along with our bodies!"

"Following proper experimental procedure and writing it down are the differences between science and screwing around! Which is why everyone will be wearing proper protective gear when we run the screwing around tests next week."

"Next week?" They'd only keep killing everyone over and over for one more week? "And then you'll be done? No more blowing up the planet?"

"Of course not! Experimental results aren't valid if they can't be reproduced by other scientists! So, week after next, the Uchiha will be blowing up the planet, and oh, right, I have sign-up sheets for the orgy the Nara will be supervising since all the remaining Senju are participating in the study if anyone wants-"

Kaboom.

Hashirama loves Madara like Naruto loves Ichiraku's. Madara thinks that he is a strange, silly person, who has a jutsu that can grow soybeans that produce amazing tofu that is perfect for his favorite food (come to the Light Side, they're the side that's nice enough to give you cookies)... but what's this about building a superpowerful village that will be able to annihilate any force stupid enough to attack Madara's clan?

Tobirama is using mineral-rich salt: plain salt in the soil is not all that good for trees. Know those nutrient spikes gardeners pound into the ground? Imagine impaling someone with several of those, although you'd probably have to make the holes with kunai or somesuch and put the spikes in afterwards.

Of course, he was probably trying to creep Izuna out more than planning to murder Izuna and bury him under Mom as fertilizer (guess what happened to the Uchiha they killed in battle?). (Tobi is a good boy, and also a good ninja, meaning good at bringing home the bacon.) (Uchiha: the other pasty white meat.)

The Dickensian explanation for one of the traditional skillsets of ninja not really being present in the Narutoverse is that it's a kids series. The Watsonian… Well, here's the Uchibiverse explanation(s).

Hearing someone at a meeting growl, "The Uchiha? Fuck the Uchiha," was Shikamaru's first exposure to a certain four-letter word.

When he asked his father what it meant, he was told: "It means a lot of people don't like the Uchiha. Except in bed. Their Sharingans also allow them to copy seduction techniques, and their clan library…" His father had stopped talking then, and Shikamaru already knew the signs of anger, quickly stamped down.

Once, long ago, there were five major ninja arts.

Then everything changed when the doujutsu users attacked.

First, the Sharingan and Byakugan decreased the effectiveness of genjutsu, forcing genjutsu specialists to also use techniques from the other three disciplines, which meant fewer practiced enough to attain the level of genjutsu geniuses, and when there were no strong ninja among the genjutsu users to improve their reputation? What intelligent ninja would specialize in a weak type of jutsu unless they had no option? The Uchiha had slowly taken genjutsu as their near-exclusive domain, and then abandoned it since they refused to be associated with anything weak, even if they were the ones to make it that way.

The third to be reduced to a minor art, unable to compete with nin- and taijutsu, was fuuinjutsu, the sealing arts. The terrifying power of the Uzumaki clan brought about an alliance of the majority of the continental villages, except for Senju-dominated Konoha. Unbeknownst to anyone but the Senju, the Uzumaki ability to comprehend the universe on a level that no mortal could and therefore draw seals that only one in a million could have ever become enlightened enough to invent came from the summoning and marriage of gods.

When Kushina was sent to Konoha at a young age, to be burdened with the task of containing the demonic Nine-tails, her family summoned Gekigami himself into a human vessel, to ensure that she would not be alone and undefended there.

When the Uzumaki were nearly eliminated, the majority of knowledge of sealing arts was lost, and those who specialized in it did not advertise the fact, or deliberately allowed it to be considered merely an accessory to their other ninja abilities. Jiraya became one of the greatest living seal masters, but compared to his ability to summon the toads and enter sage mode? Exploding tags became nothing more than standard ninja tools, and a seal master became no more prestigious than a weapons master.

The seal masters themselves worked to ensure that their art became considered only a minor art, because now that there were only a handful of them left, the ones who controlled that handful might have gained a power that no one could counter. They had no wish to be acquired, and so, being ninja, they worked to deceive the world about how much power they truly possessed.

The second of the five great ninja arts to be demoted to the second tier, something a ninja that intended to be great would do no more than dabble in, was seduction.

Like genjutsu, it perishes at the hands of dojutsu users, but not just because of the eyes themselves.

The Harem War decimated the greatest seduction jutsu users of the Elemental Countries. Simply to know any of their most potent techniques was to mark oneself for death, and the survivors of many of the great bloodlines burned many of their technique scrolls, so the Uchiha would believe that none still living among the clan knew those techniques.

When it was safe for them to practice their techniques again, the successors holding only the scraps of a once great art were weak compared to the practitioners of the unravaged arts of ninjutsu, taijutsu and fuuinjutsu.

The greatest strengths of seduction users used to be interrogation and serving as bodyguards on prepared ground, defending dignitaries from assassins.

Genjutsu specialists, no longer strong enough to serve as field ninja very often, had taken over interrogation and guarded it jealously, while those sent to assassinate daimyo were among the most powerful ninja, and so seduction users who would have easily defeated jounin-level enemies found themselves easily defeated by S-ranked ninja.

Simply in order to survive a pitched battle, instead of being able to rely on their specialty, seduction users now had to also learn some of nin, tai, gen and even fuuinjutsu, to cover the 'weakness' of being a seduction specialist. For the majority of them, trying to be competent in all the arts meant becoming the master of none of them.

And the Uchiha had no intention of allowing the practitioners of sexyjutsu to regain their former status.

Since bodyguards had to remain in the presence of their lords and ladies, the families of high-ranking nobles would often hire sexyjutsu masters to act as good influences on their children, and what kind of ninja was a young noble going to want to hire for themselves? Sexyjutsu masters could teach them the courtly graces, and how to please their partners in alliance marriages so a war narrowly averted didn't restart in the bedroom.

Having a trained confidant who could not be captured and interrogated gave the rulers of the Elemental Countries someone they could share their secrets with. If the heir to the throne was incompetent, a sexyjutsu master could guide them through formal appearances and make sure that the other countries didn't realize it and see it as an opportunity to invade. Very few rulers were inclined to be despots, because when underlings were too afraid to make decisions, all the paperwork got sent to the top, and who would do more than the minimum amount of paperwork when they could be having fantastic sex?

With the former shadow rulers of the Elemental Countries dethroned and no longer powerful enough to regain the positions they once held, the chaos of the Harem War never ended, not for anyone but the Uchiha.

Rulers that lacked training, counseling and intelligence made less intelligent decisions. Alliances fractured and new ones rarely lasted more than a generation. It became easy for the ambitious to seize power, especially if they hired ninja to eliminate the competition.

Once the powerful were no longer guarded by sexyjutsu masters, far more ninja were willing to undertake assassination missions. Facing the master of another form of ninjutsu, death was the worst thing that could happen to you, and many ninja were bred to see themselves as disposable tools. A ninja defeated by a sexyjutsu master, however, risked falling in love with the victor, or being 'befriended' if the sexyjutsu specialist was currently in an exclusive contract. Ninja that were raised to put their clan or master above all else were easy targets: once someone was already trained not to think for themselves, it was easy for a sexyjutsu master to steal that mindless allegiance. Those trained not to have emotions often found themselves unable to handle suddenly having emotion: those raised without love or kindness were devastatingly weak to it. No organization like Danzo's ROOT could risk taking a mission that might put their expensively trained operatives up against a sexyjutsu master: they would be handing their personnel over to the enemy.

Any clan that attempted to train real sexyjutsu masters once again would have been the target of hundreds of assassins, determined to shut down this threat to their livelihoods.

It was a golden age for ninja as a whole. Not only did high-paying assassination jobs become plentiful, once-peaceful countries now needed caravan guards with impoverished peasants reduced to banditry. Many turned to the sword, rallying to anyone who could pay them, and someone from a ninja clan, against even a volunteer army? Forget the conscript forces called up by ambitious lords.

That was when the Elemental Continent began to be known as the Shinobi Continent, or to the merchants and pirates of Bay Country, Chaos Continent. Not realizing that the descent into near-anarchy was caused by the lack of specific ninja instead of by the presence of too many powerful ninja, certain captains' alliances began to seek a way to make the Uzumaki leave Bay Country without an open war that would destroy their trade-dependent nation.

No one would ship food into a war zone where it would simply be stolen by ninja: as Bay Country prospered and its population grew, its survival hinged more and more on maintaining a stable level of anarchy. Yes, there were massive strategic reserves of drinking water and the alcohol needed to make it safe to drink buried in the cliffs, which would provide calories that could be nutritionally supplemented by the lime trees planted all over the city and fishing the surrounding region, but at some point the rum would be gone, private(er) individuals would raid all the surrounding countries for beer and chips to go with the fish on their own authority and Bay Country would be at war with everybody.

In Konoha during the youth of future Hokage Naruto Uzumaki, the majority of the ninja considered the Nara to have a cripplingly overspecialized ninjutsu bloodline that wasn't really anything to write home about.

Those who learned their history, like the Sandaime and Sakura, knew that the Nara were the descendants of a once-great seduction bloodline that had carefully bred the ability to manipulate shadows into their clan because shadow bondage was sexy and having a bloodline limit that people knew about kept them from wondering what else a certain clan was accomplishing with their breeding program.

The Nara had given up on their breeding program when they moved to Konoha, even though that meant proximity to the Uchiha. There was no point in optimizing ninja for jobs and jutsu that didn't exist anymore: they needed to find a new strategy for the survival of their clan. It was somewhat surprising that the clan still bred true generations later, but Konoha had a lot of Senju (divine love) and Uchiha (evil is sexy) genes floating around in the population.

Shikamaru was born optimized for the job of lying around all day having lots of sex and playing shogi with the fates of nations. Oh, sure, there was also some ass-kicking required every once in awhile, but ninja on field missions had to travel around and it was all very troublesome. If the client wasn't attractive, that was what genjutsu were for. If the client was having all their most extravagant personal fantasies come to life, did it really matter that the sexyjutsu user was sitting in the corner making handseals instead of lying on the bed?

Many days, staring up at the clouds, he had reflected glumly that he had been born in the wrong century.

He was going to have to actually (he shuddered at the thought) work for a living.

At least, he consoled himself, he wasn't going to have to do any work today.

The sun was drawing towards the west, the shadows were lengthening, and he was going to marry Haruno Sakura and spend the rest of his life lounging around all day except when he was needed to provide intelligent input on her research and political goals or in the bedroom. He'd considered manipulating the Kazekage's daughter into developing a crush on him, so he could drive her to overthrow her father (who was clearly up to no good, several factors confirmed it) and become the next Kazekage, strengthening the alliance with Konoha.

Apparently the sunbathing in Suna was incredible.

However, Sakura's intelligence was comparable to his own, and if the Nara were ever going to get to stop doing (another shudder) D-rank scutwork and missions that involved camping and live the way their ancestors intended, then someone needed to make sure the centuries-long breeding program wasn't completely ruined.

Also? Sakura was the reason he wasn't going to have to do any work today. Just a few more minutes until they announced that he and Temari would be holding their match early, to make time for Sakura to get here. After her match with Shino it would be dark, meaning the semi-final and final matches would have to be postponed. Sakura would have a chance to get some sleep before fighting Temari and then Hinata instead of fighting three opponents on the same day.

…perhaps he should actually defeat Temari instead of surrendering once he had her in a shadow bind so that he could fight Sakura tomorrow.

No. No, definitely not, he thought, blinking as he wondered what had come over him. That would definitely be troublesome.

"Where were you? Your match was originally scheduled to start five hours ago!" Even if the Uchiha heir was still fighting a biju then: now there was a future hero, he'd even summoned the Boss Toad, just like the Fourth Hokage! And everyone knew that he had the Kyuubi under control. Head of the clan at such a young age: now there was a future legend! For a mere genin to take down one of the tailed beasts, even if it meant he also fell in battle, instead of running like so many of the ninja in the stadium: if he wasn't promoted, it would be a disgrace! People were already saying he should be promoted straight to Jounin, since he was obviously the true successor to the Fourth Hokage!

"I am so sorry!" Sakura gushed, holding the bottles of specialty tea from the Inn of the Celestial Stags. "Kakashi had me running errands all day, and I didn't even…"

"Say no more," the gate guard said, grabbing one of the bottles. Everyone knew about Kakashi. And about this tea.

Sitting there in the kage's box after the rapid end to the third match, Sarutobi very obviously wasn't saying that the Nara were not one of the secretive clans, so Temari should have damn well known that she was running right into that one.

Orochimaru just gave him a look right back, because the Nara boy releasing her like that, and forfeiting? As though it wasn't 'fair' for her to have to fight him in conditions that gave the win to the Nara unless the other ninja had a plan up their sleeve like a ninja damn well should?

If he'd cared at all about defending Temari, he might have thought that she was so busy working on the invasion plan and reporting to 'her father' about Gaara's changes that she hadn't had time to research her competition, but when did the life of a ninja ever have anything to do with fairness? If Orochimaru wasn't attacking tomorrow, he would have made damn sure to veto any attempt to promote Shikamaru to Chuunin. Surrendering because he couldn't be bothered to take the victory, when ninja were supposed to accomplish their mission no matter what, or because it 'wasn't fair' to his opponent… Someone wasn't cut out to be a ninja. Meaning they should be cut up for tissue samples, so their abilities would go to more deserving candidates.

Actually, maybe he should have voted to make him a Chuunin, in that hypothetical. It would mean a mentally incompetent ninja getting sent out of the village on missions more often, where he could be snatched.

Much later, when Shikamaru was asked if he surrendered to Temari because he was worried she had some trick up her sleeve (since obviously Gaara's sister wouldn't be trapped so easily, when she had spent her life evading Gaara's sand traps and it was politically expedient to consider her competent since otherwise they were going to end up with a friend of the kyuubi brat's as Kazekage) that might disable him and keep him from fighting in the invasion which he might have had some clue about, being a Nara, he just remained silent and looked as Nara-like as possible.

Well, modern, taciturn strategist Nara, anyway. Looking traditional Nara would have involved sending a clone to do the work of talking to the council while he lay around in someone else's bed all day.

Why was he born in the wrong century?

Sasuke is ruining generations of Uchiha plotting by breeding Naruto and Hinata together in order to produce future generations of babysitters with enough 'niceness' no jutsu and innate 'befriending' ability to even control Uchiha children. Too much risk they'll produce Nanoha. Not that he has any idea or would give a damn even if he did.

Comparative advantage vs. absolute advantage: the Uchiha as a whole wanted to be better than everyone else by making everyone else's lives suck. Sasuke wants to be better than everyone else by actually being strong and making things more convenient for himself, even if this benefits other people as a side effect.

There's a quote: "Some people are concerned about the difference between right and wrong. I'm concerned about the difference between wrong and fun."

The 'good' Uchiha are the ones who realize that being evil is not necessarily the best way to have fun. Well, at least not one hundred percent of the time.

Rum being such a 'serious' thing in Pirates of the Caribbean is only sensible. 'Grog' is water with alcohol added to kill the germs and make it safe to drink despite sitting around in casks on a boat for weeks being stagnant. If you were on a ship back then and you were out of the alcohol you need to make grog, then you had no more safe drinking water. Desert island plus no safe water equals death by dehydration or disease, take your pick. This is why Jack reacted that way to Elizabeth burning the rum: she should have slit their throats, it would have been a less painful way to die.

While there were many who hated Itachi, a lot of people would have been surprised to learn that Tenten was on that list.

Some civilian kids had lemonade stands. Tenten had a family business and a craving for sharp pointy things. Seeing her true passion for the field, her father decided to put it to work: she could have the weapons she wanted, provided she did a good enough job of demonstrating them that she was able to meet sales quotas.

He was envisioning a cute little girl practicing in front of his shop, drawing in civilian parents who would be reassured to see that their children could own sharp things without hurting themselves with them.

However, Tenten was usually in the shop when the Uchiha police force came by to collect their protection money, and her father had explained to her what was really going on.

A future ninja, Tenten was very able to put two and two together when those twos were 'Daddy will give me weapons if I get money by demonstrating weapons, which means stabbing things' and 'if I have weapons, I can threaten to stab people and they will give me money.'

So, all she had to do was find some people who had money she could extort from them! Since she'd seen her Daddy give them money just last week, little Tenten headed over to the Uchiha district.

Which was how Uchiha Mikoto found an adorable little ball of sunshine on her front porch. (Note that while most people associate sunshine with warmth and love, the affection of Amaterasu, Mother of us all, the Uchiha considered it fiery death, and thus still awesome). Smiling up at her and threatening stabby mayhem if the clan matriarch was foolish enough to not want to buy kunai and explosive tags.

And indeed, anyone who didn't want blades and fire was clearly Senju, civilian or defective and had no right to live. And why was this intelligent child picking a fight with an Uchiha? Because she wanted a sword of her very own, and was willing to risk torturous death to acquire a weapon with which to inflict torturous death on her enemies.

Aww.

If this was the old days, Mikoto would have kidnapped her then and there, but there were laws the Uchiha had to pretend to obey and Tenten's father was one of the best sources of stabby things in Konoha.

How to acquire this cuteness for herself and those weapons for the Uchiha clan?

Clan matriarchs did not survive long as clan matriarchs without having the ability to generate plenty of wonderful, awful ideas. "Itachi, dear?" his mother called.

"Yes?" her son answered.

"Draw your sword and show it to this little cutie," she told him.

He complied.

"Would you like to marry my son?" Mikoto asked as Tenten examined the blade.

Tenten had barely begun her ninja training, but she had devoted herself to learning the business of weaponry already, or as she preferred to think of it 'getting the money to buy all the shiny stabby things by selling them when I get bored with them.' "Does he come with the sword?"

Hook, line and sinker. Kushina's partner in crime smiled. "He comes with lots of swords. Let me show you my personal armory." Every so often the Uchiha needed to take in non-demon blood to avoid inbreeding to the point they started showing physical signs of their true nature, but they absolutely couldn't afford to dilute the clan's passion for blood, fire and steel.

This would do nicely.

When the Uchiha Massacre occurred, Konoha lost its most prestigious clan and Tenten lost her tall (well, -er than Sasuke), dark and handsome fiancé, a good portion of her door-to-door sales income (Mikoto wasn't the only Uchiha who found small and stabby absolutely adorable) and the goddamn Sword of Totsuka he could summon with his sharingan, the blade wielded by Izanagi when he killed Kagatsuchi for burning Izanami to death. While the contract could have entitled her to possession of Sasuke, she was no fool: without a clan, she wouldn't be able to do much about the Council's pressure to revive the Uchiha Clan if she revealed its existence. They'd want her to retire and get to work on that early, and the hell with that.

That was why when she eventually picked out a replacement boyfriend, she went for someone from a Branch Clan who didn't want to have any kids to serve his cousins. It wasn't that Neji didn't like Hinata, but her marrying Sasuke made it near-certain that the next Clan Head was Hanabi, and she was a brat.

Neji didn't see the appeal of weapons, but eh, people rarely married taijutsu specialists like Lee or Neji for their brains. Not when they had all those lovely muscles.

At least it meant she could count on him not to run off with her goddamn swords.

Before the massacre, members of the Uchiha Clan avoided Naruto so people wouldn't think they were associating with or trying to free the kyuubi. Sasuke was the first Uchiha Naruto encountered, and then he made friends with Sasuke and all the younger members of the clan. Uchiha were never really mean to him, not by the standards of a boy who had to worry about getting beaten up by strangers. When Uchiha tried to beat him up, they were only playing. Except Sasuke when Naruto ruined the lunches, but he totally deserved that.

While most people were jerks, with a handful of exceptions like the Old Man, a hundred percent of the Uchiha Naruto had met became his friends.

Naruto was aware that different clans had different traits, like the Inuzuka had friends that were dogs. So it made perfect sense to him that one of the traits of the Uchiha clan was that they had friends that were Naruto. Which meant that all Uchiha were good guys! The best!

Well, Itachi was evil, since hundreds of Uchiha? If it weren't for Itachi, Naruto would have hundreds of friends!

That meant Itachi was the exception that proved the rule that Uchiha were great people. He had to be really evil to kill so many good people, but killing good people was what evil did, so Itachi definitely had to be evil. It made perfect sense to Naruto.

Sure, Sasuke said that the Uchiha were evil incarnate, but that was just to make Naruto feel better about the kyuubi. Since Sasuke was the best, and so were the Uchiha.

A week before the final stage of the Chuunin Exams, a Naruto came running into where Sakura was sparring with one of Kakashi's water clones while their sensei read his book and giggled. "Sakura, help!"

"Wrong Sakura! What do I know about chakra control exercises?" Or control in general.

"Oh, right!" Naruto exclaimed, remembering.

Two minutes later, another clone yelled. "Sakura, help!"

His teammate didn't look up from her book to see the librarian's kunai take out Naruto's shadow clone.

"Come on Sa-" Kunai'd.

This one managed to run up to her without yelling in the library, but when he grabbed her tight enough to make her vanish into a puff of smoke.

"Oh!" he realized, hitting himself on the forehead to dissipate himself before the kunai could hit him.

Back at Sakura and Kakashi's training ground, Sakura's real body was running an obstacle course while she and Kakashi read their pervy books. Since she read so fast, she was already at the juicy part where the 'name changed to protect our publishing house from being burned to the ground' Uchiha-based character was on his hands and knees begging the redheaded 'Uzumaki because they love to read about themselves having sex almost a tenth as much as actually having sex' heroine to return to him, crying that he couldn't live without her anymore and would accept his place as her slave and do whatever she wanted for the rest of his life. "You idiot!" she said when she saw Naruto. "Of course I was going to use my real body for physical training!" Meaning the Sakura in the library had to be the shadow clone. "Don't just manhandle delicate maidens! Unless they're Hinata," she added hurriedly, because she liked it when Naruto dragged her along enthusiastically and she didn't want to ruin that for her.

Also if she got over her crush on Naruto then maybe she'd decide to actually take advantage of her engagement to Sasuke, and then Sakura would have to kill her.

"Well, I thought you'd put Inner Sakura in the clone," Naruto said, although in hindsight that did make sense, yeah. Sakura would think of those kind of things.

"Because she's the real me?" Sakura asked him, rolling her eyes.

"I'm the real me!" Inner Sakura yelled.

Sakura nodded. "I'm the harmless civilian girl personality I created in order to be accepted by my peers."

Naruto and both Sakuras burst out laughing.

"Yeah, right," Sakura admitted. "I wanted people to worship me and my intellect, so I created this me to be a good girl and do all the boring things like studying."

Naruto nodded. That was Sakura! He probably would have thought of something like that, if it weren't for the fact that no mask he could wear would make most people like him, when they thought he as the fox, and Old Man Hokage would have seen through any mask an amateur could put together anyway. "Even thought I can summon the Slug Boss without storing up chakra in advance, the Old Lady says I need to do it anyway! You've got great chakra control, and you've been reading all the jutsu, so you know some great chakra control exercises, right?"

Sakura rolled her eyes again. "I practice my fine chakra control by refining jutsu outside my elemental affinity and other useful stuff. I need chakra control exercises like a fish needs a snorkel or you need exercises to increase your chakra supply."

"But my shadow clones do exercise and develop my chakra pool…"

"Exactly!" she agreed. "Naruto, remember doing that research into everyone's learning styles?" Naruto learned best by running his mouth, which wasn't all that useful here, but second-best by doing. "Get out of my hair and get to it," you idiot. "I'm not going to teach you a shortcut!" Not when he was already ahead of her! Especially not when they had the last stage of the Chuunin Exams to look forward to. In theory, there was no way she was facing Naruto. In practice, rearranging the matches at the last moment was a very unfair and hence ninja thing to do, and even though part of the exam was seeing if the Chuunin would have the intelligence to spy on their probable foes, research them and plan their strategies and training accordingly…

"But it's haaaard," he whined, clearly just to get to her but Naruto always knew just how to piss her off.

Stalking over to him and hitting him upside the head that hard disrupted her shadow clone, but it was totally worth it. Naruto could punch and kick people freely with his, but that was because he had a stupid amount of chakra in addition to being stupid.

"Guys, guys," Konohamaru had to catch his breath after running over to the clan compound. "I went to check on the Boss, and Tsunade's got this thing where he has to sit there glaring in a mirror at his forehead to make a chakra jewel, and he's really bored!"

A dozen black heads turned towards him. "Naruto's bored?"

"Naruto's bored!" Yay! He'd been too busy training for the Chuunin Exams to get properly bored and play with them properly in ages!

Elsewhere, Iruka felt a shiver down his spine, the ninja's reflexes automatically making him duck and cover.

"So you're the Senju?" the brat hanging upside down from the tree by her knees asked. "Is it true that you're total losers that'll believe anything?"

"Oh, oh, I know this one! She's the Legendary Sucker!" another one exclaimed, pointing at her.

"So Naruto must have tricked her into teaching him all of her jutsu." Two of them nodded at each other. "It's still not cool to learn jutsu, but Naruto's not an Uchiha." So he could never be that cool anyway. Still, making a Senju his minion was good! First a Sarutobi, and now a Senju!

Tsunade's eye twitched. She might have considered killing them (they might look like children, but it wasn't as though Uchiha were people), but she was pleasantly buzzed and the dark energies the Uchiha radiated were the one thing she'd missed about Konoha.

"Is the Awesome Clan going after the Fan Girl?" one of Naruto's clones asked as the original Naruto groaned and stared harder at a certain point in his forehead. There didn't seem to be anything there yet but a wrinkle from all the creasing his brows were doing as he concentrated: there had to be some way to make his Shadow Clones do this! Except Tsunade didn't want him to try adding that level of complication before he demonstrated that he could at least do the basic stuff right, and that did make sense. He didn't want to spend years making a crystal and then find out it was built wrong and he wouldn't be able to use it.

"Nope, Aniki bought her! Since all the fans should belong to the Uchiha." Listeners nodded. The fan was the Uchiha Clan symbol and the Uchiha were the best: no one else deserved to have any fans. Especially when that would make people hot and miserable and that was the secret purpose of the clan!

Hmmm, Tsunade thought. Eight Purification Sake-marinated Uchiha… She would have to be around the next time Jiraiya found an excuse to get Sasuke drunk for blackmail material. The quiet hilltop she'd chosen for Naruto to train so that all the biju chakra he was broadcasting uselessly instead of forcing it into the chakra jewel would be safely absorbed without panicking Konoha was overrun with excited children eager to plot some fresh devilry.

Grandma Sakuya's leaves looked greener already.

This chapter is (finally) firehedgehog's kiriban gift chapter. They requested a chapter with kitty!Naruto, and I realized that would happen in the process of plot, it just took me awhile to get here.

The saying was 'you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,' but every ninja should know better than to trust what everyone said. Sakura's parents were fond of camping during Konoha's pleasant spring season, and her father drank lemon and honey to deal with the pollen.

Know your target.

One of the extra-large capacity storage scrolls that Naruto found when he went through the clan compound to find useful things could contain several barrels of vinegar. The aging process had been quick and dirty, but that didn't matter when the liquid turned into vinegar was Eight Purification Sake.

Sakura knew that the Aburame could override the instincts of their insects, but would Shino be able to impose that control in time when his insects reported that the pools of heavenly drink only contained a low dose of a common insecticide that the Aburame had bred their insects to have immunity to? Especially when the liquid contained enough chakra to offset the effects of the poison?

Immunity to poison, yes. Immunity to lightning jutsu conducted through wires into liquid, not so much.

With the majority of his techniques shut down, Sakura and Shino both knew that he wouldn't be able to pass the Chuunin Exams at this point, not unless he managed to do something impressive enough to make up for his earlier blunder in the eyes of the visiting nobles. She had just killed thousands of his insects: while an Inuzuka would have had to make at least a token effort to avenge their partner or damage the clan's relationship with their dogs, the Aburame were known to be more cold-blooded.

At this point, attempting to defeat her would either give her more opportunities to embarrass him and his clan, or Shino defeating her despite such a massive early disadvantage might just make her look bad enough to outweigh her earlier move, which would keep two Konoha genin from passing the exams.

Shino moved his head so she could see that he was glancing at the position of the sun through his dark glasses before forfeiting.

She would have to make it up to him after the battle to avoid setting the Aburame Clan against the Uchiha.

Just enough time left there might be time for her match against Temari to conclude before the civilian spectators would no longer be able to see. That meant she wouldn't have to fight Temari and Hinata back-to-back tomorrow.

On the other hand, it was possible she hadn't prepared to fight Temari today. Her teammates' antics should have pushed the exams late enough that she would know who her opponent was going to be and would have time to prepare for them overnight. For someone like Temari, knowing that her opponent was going to be Sakura was only slightly useful, but Sakura had limited chakra and had just as good as declared to the ninja world that she was going to specialize in being a 'tricky ninja.' Someone who reached the Hokage's age and had his technique library stored away was able to handle any eventuality, but a genin from a civilian background was still assembling their bag of tricks.

But the Aburame would know that Sakura had access to a clan library, and the Uchiha's at that.

If she beat Temari, that would establish her as more than a one-trick pony and make Shino's loss less shameful. If she didn't beat Temari, the Kazekage's daughter (and Kankuro's sister) would be far more brutal to an Uchiha retainer than another Konoha ninja was allowed to be to a comrade. Especially when Shino was Hinata's teammate and Hinata was Sakura's friend insofar as Sakura had friends.

If Temari beat Sakura, then it would make her look like she was just as much a one-trick pony as she'd made Shino look just now. A ninja who could spring a booby trap, but not adapt to situations on the battlefield. The spectators would find that credible: of course the nobles had been handed bios on potential chuunin, since half the point of the exams was to advertise the competitors so the villages could sell their services for a higher price.

Sakura was theoretically an Uchiha retainer, and Sasuke had a clan of children to defend. It made perfect sense for her focus to be on defense instead of offense. It wouldn't even make her less marketable: nobles had assassins to worry about. Ninja who could shut down attackers before pitched battles could damage castles and artworks were highly cost-effective, especially if they were only genin. Some of them out there in the audience would be rooting for her to fail, and not just the nobles from outside Fire Country who didn't want too many Konoha genin to pass and make Konoha appear strong.

What Shino didn't know was that the Kazekage had just sold Temari to the Uchiha Clan, meaning Temari had instructions to lose but make it look good so hopefully both of them would pass if she went up against any of Sasuke's other minions. Meaning Sakura could count on winning a battle that would end just when Sakura was beginning to run out of chakra enough it would affect her ability to put on a good show tomorrow.

Up in the Kage box, Orochimaru asked himself if he really cared about watching another set piece like when the kyuubi vessel fought the Hyuuga heiress, even if there was more real chance of something going wrong and someone losing an eye in this battle when Temari and Sakura hadn't even sparred before. A pity neither of them had valuable eyes.

The biju chakra meant that it had been a long and trying day for Konoha's ninja, and they would want to think that anything they detected was a false alarm at this point. Sakura would be trying to impress the crowd with flashy low-power jutsu, which would distract the nobles but also the ninja savvy enough to see and appreciate what she was doing. His old teacher was also as tipsy as he ever allowed himself to get, courtesy of Orochimaru's future accountant's blatant bribery.

He sent the covert signal for the invasion to begin.

"I won't let you attack the old man!" Naruto shouted, pointing a finger at Orochimaru.

The Snake Sannin's pointy finger was far more effective, hitting the genin in the center of the seal Orochimaru had placed earlier. Very few people outside Fire Country knew the pressure points that put tigers to sleep.

An adorable little tiger kitten hit the roof yawning.

Teacher and student were momentarily united in their desire to go "Awww…" and pet his little head.

A gnarled old hand bumped into a younger one.

This meant war.

If only Naruto was outside the barrier, but with Naruto inside? There is a chance he might survive, so he couldn't let Orochimaru take away his precious retirement plan. It was so on. "You know, I'm so sick of this job that I wouldn't really be motivated to fight my own student, except…" The old man shook his head mournfully.

"Why, Orochimaru, why would you use Konoha shinobi for your experiments?" Sarutobi implored him. "Why would my brilliant student do something as stupid as condemning his comrades to death when there are hundreds of perfectly good enemy shinobi out there?! Now I can't make you Hokage and retire! Not when you didn't see that it was all a transparent plot by Danzo to disqualify you so that you would focus on your research so he could steal it from you! I can't retire and leave Konoha in the hands of one of Danzo's puppets, no matter how tempted I am!"

Orochimaru's jaw dropped. Further than a human jaw could normally drop. A stolen palm hit his forehead.

Nobody could know that he, the Otokage, had been played that badly. It was a good thing his future accountant was asleep, but just in case he'd do a little extra memory wiping during the brainwashing process. A pity about his four minions that were forming the barrier.

He'd have to finish Sarutobi off quickly, and then? Kill Danzo.

His eyes narrowed when he realized that he'd have to head over soon to avoid the rush. He could think of three people off the top of his head who would want to try to assassinate Danzo while they could blame it on the invaders. It was a good thing the head of the Uchiha Clan and his right hand were unconscious and couldn't give the order.

Time to break out his Edo Tensei technique.

"Go Grandpa!" Konohamaru yelled as loud as he could.

"Are we allowed to cheer for the Senju puppet?"

"The snake man tried to grab Naruto. He'll take Naruto away!"

It was a conflict between clan loyalty and personal interest. It was over very quickly. "Go Senju Puppet! Nobody steals Uchiha minions!"

"You can't just stay here to watch the Hokage fight Orochimaru!" Ebisu attempted to scold them. "There are enemy ninja in the village!"

The kids sitting in the stands just stared at him, waiting for him to get to the point. He didn't really think this was news, did he?

"Oooooh," Shigure finally realized. "You mean other people's enemies." Of course there were always enemies of the Uchiha Clan in the village, Danzo and the other stupid Senju puppets.

Another ninja appeared out of a swirl of leaves. "Hey! Which of you kids wants to help me slaughter Orochimaru's minions?" Anko asked, leaning forward to get a closer look at the potential pieces of bait. "I'll let you have first pick of their body parts," she added seductively.

Shigure looked up at Anko, and then further up at two big, gorgeous eyes full of bloodlust.

He heard one of the cousins pipe up behind him. "Ooooh! Me, me, pick-" The Uchiha War Fan snapped out and hit Shigure's cousin in the solar plexus.

"I'm the oldest, so I get to go with the pretty lady," Shigure said firmly.

"This is perfect timing," said Tsunade, putting down her jug. "I needed a new liver." Her healing technique accelerated cell division, which accelerated the damage to DNA that produced 'aging' and also, possibly, cancer. She periodically swapped out organs that were especially at risk, especially ones exposed to carcinogens, since the last thing she wanted was for an organ to fail halfway through an accelerated healing. It wasn't like anyone cared that she was killing people for spare parts as long as she stuck to enemy ninja.

"Isn't there a young lady with an ice bloodline?" Shizune asked the messenger, thinking of the list of patients, especially shinobi, who could use new organs. Of course Shizune and Tsunade were aware that Haku was one of the rare male ice users biologically, but it just wasn't done in Konoha to argue about people's genders. It was a man's prerogative to be a man, a woman's prerogative to be a woman, a peach tree's prerogative to be Perfect and a ninja's prerogative to stab anybody who disagreed with them. No ninja ever got anywhere by letting the laws of physics dictate what they could and couldn't do, and biology was really just the manifestation of physics that died when you stabbed it.

Also, ninja were mercenaries and it took a high-level medic nin to do sex change operations, so the ninja villages had a monopoly on the procedure. Trying to ban it was trying to cut into the income of the people who determined whether you lived or you died, so the only one of Konoha's leadership who was against it was Danzo.

Not on moral grounds: he was too much of a ninja, but because the new organs generally weren't fertile.

"You tried to use my own jutsu on me?" Tobirama was bent over laughing. "You thought you could use my resurrection jutsu to control me?" Thanks for bringing me back to life, sucker!

Hashirama stood there with his arms folded and a disapproving expression befitting someone who could not believe that they had been dragged out of a threesome for this.

"You kill my minions," Sarutobi said, folding his hands in front of him. "You try to steal my retirement plan. And now you embarrass me in front of my teacher." Who could be counted on to never shut up about it.

It was at this point that Orochimaru decided "Fuck it, if I at least kill Danzo then no one can say that this invasion was a total waste."

"You see," Danzo explained, showing Sai the newest assassin now trapped in genjutsu, "very few have the will to suspect and break an illusion that shows them what they want to see, even when they should know that their fantasy would never happen in real life." Brutally murdering Danzo, for example, was the happy place of a truly amazing number of people. He saw it as proof of how effective he'd been at serving the greater good of Konoha.

"So I should fill my genjutsu with dicks." Sai nodded.

Danzo peered at him. If he was a weak civilian, he would admit that he should probably be worried about this boy, but that would mean there was something wrong with his training program and it probably wasn't worth all the murder of potential Konoha shinobi.

Nah.

And now Sarutobi has three potential replacements... I realize that is very little kitty!Naruto, but he will remain trapped in this form for awhile, including and especially the next chapter, so I hope that makes up for it.

There's this one video-game-derived manga scanlation where a dead character appears before someone and it's supposed to be a touching moment, but the tilt of his lips made me interpret his expression as 'I got dragged out of a threesome in the afterlife because of this idiot?!'

"Truly if there is a god of destiny he is fond of plot twists." I love the Lunar games, especially Eternal Blue.

I'm sorry: I know I promised monthly updates on this, but life. Also my brain. I owe two thank-you chapters and I have a lot of notes on what scenes to do next and what lines to include, so at whatever point I start working on the fic properly again I'll have a lot of ideas and scenes ready to go!

Trying to get myself back to working on the fic, I wrote out this scene and then the muse died on me. I thought I'd at least post this so you'd have something.

One of the thank-you chapters will be for KalicoFox, who made a tropes page for the fic! I am very flattered, although all this proof that people like the fic, while touching, has helped guilt-trip me into trying to update... So keep it up, I suppose? I'd like to get to the promised Hinata and Haku chapters before the end of the... year... Oh dear.

"I told Sasuke that I was going to be in the Senju conspiracy, because I kind of had to," Naruto said cheerfully, and ducked her punch. "I didn't tell him the details!"

"Good," Tsunade said, because it was tradition at this point to watch the Uchiha assume that everything was about them and snicker.

"I still feel kind of bad about it. I mean, Sasuke wants there to be an Uchiha-Shika-Cho team with one of the kids. The Clan of Fire plus the Clan of Meat and the Clan of Barbeque." It was agreed among the Uchibis that if they had to be a member of one of those inferior, non-Uchiha clans, then an ice-cream bloodline was good but also a bloodline whose powers came from eating barbeque? That, well, of course the Akamichi sucked because all clans that weren't the Uchiha sucked, but but meat and fire. "If I help the Senju Conspiracy destroy the Nara, then where are they going to get the venison? Maybe the invisible deer in the Forest of Death?" Naruto mused.

"There are invisible deer in the Forest of Death?!" Tsunade's chakra-infused yell shook the hospital, and then they were surrounded by the beeps of patients flatlining from the force of the killer intent and the smell of busted equipment.

It was almost ten minutes before Shizune was able to get away long enough to start trying to talk Tsunade out from under the desk, where she'd barricaded herself in with stacks of paperwork so the invisible deer would have to eat them to get to her. The fact Konoha's tamper-proof ink (designed by the Second Hokage) was deadly poisonous to deer was one of the reasons the first two Hokage had never taken any steps to reduce the amount of paperwork that flooded their offices.

The Sandaime wasn't part tree: He didn't have to worry about deer tearing off his skin to eat the bark strip by strip after they finished off his fingers, but he was enough of a ninja to notice that his predecessors seemed to regard the quantity of paperwork in the office as a vital part of the Hokage's defenses, so he'd kept up the tradition instead of taking steps to reduce his workload.

Tsunade could have told her sensei that there was no reason he couldn't reduce his workload and have time for some actual sleep, but if he didn't bother to find out why the paperwork and the ink that covered it were so important so he could be sure the system wasn't reliant on any other components and didn't remove or damage those?

Then it was his fault for making assumptions instead of being a proper ninja, and also revenge for convincing her and her fellow students that doing his household chores using jutsu was totally practice for being ninja. Right, totally. Just like D-rank missions were a Vital part of the learning experience for genin instead of scutwork intended to give the village a steady cash flow instead of just the irregular amounts from large missions. And if you believed that, you weren't ready for promotion to chuunin.

"Naruto, as your sensei, I am assigning you an important training mission," she said when she was out from under the desk. "Exterminate the invisible deer."

Oh! Naruto perked up. "Can I do it with fire?"

"Yes," she agreed, feeling a momentary pang of guilt for the trees in the Forest of Death but she was a ninja and it was her or them. "Kill them with fire."

A week later, Tsunade wasn't quite sure how to feel about being swarmed by Uchiha children declaring that she was the best, um, you know, out of the Senju 'cause the Senju are all stupid but you can be the least stupid Senju?

Then she realized that her clothes were covered in barbeque sauce handprints and spilled broth from messily eaten bowls of Ichiraku's special edition Miso Invisible Venison Ramen and her inner conflict over whether she had gone over to the Mist side of the chakra by ordering the extermination of a chakra-using bloodline (after all, if the Uchiha approved of your actions? And only a truly depraved soul or a civilian should think that Uchiha were cute) resolved itself.

"Yes, now that the village will no longer be able to offer C-rank missions to hunt invisible deer in the Forest of Death, we'll be able to charge more for our venison," Nara Shikaku told the clan. "In order to increase the rarity value over the short term and remind Konoha that we're the largest supplier of bulk fresh meat that doesn't require a D-rank," hiring genin to carry it to Konoha quickly while keeping it cool added the cost of shipping to the price of the meat, "hold back more of this year's females so we can use them to increase our herd."

And they wouldn't have to worry about the invisible deer sneaking in to mate with their herd anymore! Yes, invisible deer sounded like something a ninja clan should have, but chasing them down when it was time for the slaughter was just too troublesome.

He'd missed having Senju in the village: it was so fun to manipulate their plans to undermine his clan so they worked to the benefit of the Nara. And this time the Uchiha's determination to ruin everything was ruining the civilians of Konoha's ability to purchase meat while filling the coffers of the Nara clan! Being even more dependent on them for meat would increase the Akamichi's gratitude to the Nara, too.

He might have had to contemplate (horror of horrors) thanking the Uchiha for this, if he hadn't been observing the market actions of the Uchiha investment manager for some time now. Thankfully, Uzumaki Naruto was an Uzumaki, not an Uchiha, so it was perfectly fine for a Nara to thank him for this side effect of Naruto's plot to drive the grocers who used to cheat him into bankruptcy.

Dedicated to Tenchifew. Their request was a chapter with adequate levels of Hinata. I'm hoping this counts?

"Where did I go wrong?" The Third Hokage wondered, hiding a sigh as Orochimaru vanished. He allowed himself a moment to fantasize that maybe one of his much-younger-looking predecessors could be talked into taking his job, but yeah, no, not going to happen.

Oh, yes, right. That pesky faith in humanity. The belief that despite all the evidence, not everyone was a totally brainless bastard.

The personality trait that made him think that, forget the Fourth Hokage's wishes, the residents of Konoha wouldn't be stupid enough to piss off the only thing holding the Kyuubi back from eating them alive.

The part of him that listened to Itachi when he said that they were just little kids.

The part of him that let Danzo live because he was an old friend, and let Orochimaru live because he was Sarutobi's student.

Well, he consoled himself, Orochimaru's research was valuable, and now he was pointed at Danzo instead of Konoha. Genius was due a certain amount of leeway now that Orochimaru was experimenting on Sound shinobi instead of Konoha's ninja. Trained ninja didn't grow on trees! Sarutobi would have thought that someone who fought a war would know that, but nooo, he grumbled under his breath. Not even running his own village seemed to have taught him that death meant paperwork.

Sometimes he really did think that Konoha would be far better off if only he was one of those ninja who were convinced that people were worthless and there was nothing good in the world. He really should try to cultivate more misanthropy, stop caring about people so much.

Something rubbed against his ankle.

Oooo kitty.

"Who's an adorable little future hokage," he wondered, picking up Naruto.

The little winged tiger cub spread his downy wings in an attempt to be impressive, but the feathers were a disorganized mess of fluff.

Such an adorable little retirement plan.

"Naruto!" he heard the Hyuuga heiress cry, an avalanche of black-haired children in formal kimono with the Uchiha emblem following after her. "Is he alright?" she asked, skidding to a halt in front of him. "Thank you for saving him, Hokage-sama!" she added belatedly, bowing when she remembered her manners.

"Don't eat our mice, we spent a lot of time training those!" one of the Uchiha children pleaded, ducking past Hinata to look at Naruto imploringly.

"Go Senju puppet!" One of them whacked him on the back in what passed for friendly by Uchiha standards. "You're much better than the Fan Girl's brother's puppet!" the little demon said enthusiastically.

"Boss can turn into a cat?" Konohamaru's eyes narrowed: he was going to learn to do that too!

Blasted kids restoring his faith in humanity, Sarutobi thought as he handed a preening Naruto over to Hinata for cuddling. Guarding. He meant guarding.

Naruto was putting out his little paw… counting the children. "Mew, mew… mrow," a discontented yowl as some of them moved around throwing off his count.

Old or not, the Third Hokage was still a kage. Orochimaru's minions probably had some secondary objectives, but they would be steering clear of him. That made this rooftop the safest place for a bunch of children with valuable bloodlines.

"Where's Shigure?" Hinata asked, finishing her own count.

"He went with the pretty lady," one of the older boys told her. "She said he could have all the fingers he wanted! I want some fingers!"

"Special jounin Anko," said the young lady who'd taken over collecting the protection money. "The lady who gives us dango for her donations to the orphans fund."

"Oh," Hinata said, nodding. Someone with a bloodline like hers would know Anko's story. She wouldn't let the doujutsu fall into the hands of her old teacher. "Oh, Sakura, you're back?"

"I lost him," the civilian-born ninja reported sadly, not looking up from the coffins and other remains of Orochimaru's resurrection jutsu. "I was hoping I'd get to see him in a real fight," not just a genin like her trying to get clear, "but I guess that's a kage for you," shutting Orochimaru down with words alone.

Sarutobi nodded, pleased to see an awareness that words were weapons as well as some adequate flattery from retirement plan #2. It was a good thing that Naruto returned Hinata's feelings now instead of continuing to pursue Sakura: last time he'd allowed his two retirement plans to hook up, and look what happened. Both of them dead in the same incident: a kage should know better than to put all his eggs in a single basket.

"Will Sasuke and Gaara be alright at the hospital?" Hinata wondered, looking at Naruto, who looked smug. "But your sensei isn't there: I saw her with Haku and Zabuza removing organs from enemy nin."

Sakura took off running without wasting breath on an exclamation. Hinata watched her go, clearly aware of what Sakura intended.

Good, good. Although Sakura was a student of ninja history and knew how important it was to obtain valuable bloodline abilities for her children and that meant that within a decade there would be more Uchiha spawn, it was still good to see the Will of Fire in action. Well, that and a young kuniochi's heart. And her unrestricted access to the Uchiha jutsu library.

The children were crowding around one of the edges of the roof now, watching a jutsu battle in the distance. "Don't get so close to the…" Hinata and her adorable burden vanished in a swirl of leaves.

A scream came from the side of the building. Sarutobi appeared there himself, to find that he and Hinata weren't the only ninja using their chakra to stick to the wall. Until the Sound Nin lost control, at least.

A tiger clawing at his eyes would be rather distracting.

Naruto tried to spring up off him back to Hinata, but all sticking out his wings did was cost him momentum due to the air resistance – they weren't even enough to let him glide, not yet. Hinata had to run down the side of the building a few steps to catch him.

A bowl of cream? No, Naruto would probably still prefer pork ramen – tigers were carnivores.

Had Orochimaru sent one of his more disposable minions, or had Danzo ordered one of his minions to take a Sound forehead protector and try to snatch him some Uchiha spawn? Either way, it was exactly that kind of tactic, treating expensively-trained ninja as disposable tools, that meant they could never be allowed to run Konoha. If Danzo hadn't figured that out, after all these decades, then maybe he really was too stupid to live.

"Tiger Fist no jutsu is taken," Hinata said, Naruto perched on her forearm. "Do you think you'll be like this long enough for us to train what we just did as a combination attack?"

Naruto wrapped himself around her forearm, sticking his paws out in front, claws out and jaw open to display tiny little fangs.

No ninja who had done a certain D-rank would ever underestimate the utility value of a weaponized Tora.

Sarutobi had decided that if Danzo was so determined to treat ninja as living weapons, then Sarutobi would treat him as a living weapon, and allow that kunai to remain in his armory up until he found something to throw him at. He should probably start looking, he conceded. It was one thing for Danzo to keep the Uchiha clan in check, it was another for him to pursue courses of action that pitted him against Sarutobi's retirement plans and might lead to Danzo deciding to remove one of the obstacles to his acquisition of Uchiha.

Too bad Orochimaru's poor excuse for a ninja war was a bust. Now he had to think of another way to productively get Danzo killed off.

Hinata walked back up to the rooftop and started to do kata, punching forward with Naruto and his pointy bits on the end of her arm.

"You should totally call it Tiger Fist no Jutsu!" one of the Uchiha-spawn said. "Just kill all the ninja who use the other jutsu until the survivors start calling it something else."

Black heads nodded.

Hinata can understand Naruto as well as she does for a few different reasons, come to think of it. Naruto's divinity gives her some paladin perks, which is part of how she's able to subdue Uchibis so well & get them to temporarily behave.

It also makes her also immune to the Uchibis subconsciously using their demonic power to buff their charisma stats, which is a way to fridge logic everyone paying more attention to Sasuke than they logically should have in canon. If you're a helpless orphan, you need the adults to give you protection and training. If you're responsible for a bunch of other orphans, on the other hand, it's better to invest those stat points in making those kids do what you say, which is why Uchibi!Sasuke's charisma manifests in Naruto doing stuff that Sasuke wants instead of Naruto spending years stalking him in order to get him back even though Sasuke did not want.

Hinata didn't crush on Sasuke because her pre-existing crush on Naruto meant she was defended against Sasuke's power trying to get people to irrationally dote on him – Kakashi focused on Sasuke to the point of ignoring Naruto's training because having a demonic eye hooked up to his brain made him weak against demonic brain screwery.

This chapter is dedicated to KalikoFox, who asked for me to check in with Neji and Haku.

The Legendary Medic-Nin Tsunade was one of Konoha's greatest assets.

The presence of injured comrades just made it certain that Gai would bring his team to defend Konoha's hospital, even if distinguishing themselves in this invasion wasn't chuunin-like behavior.

When they arrived, they found Tsunade prepared to depart, the staff of the hospital falling over themselves to assure the Senju heiress (such a great inspiration to them – Tsunade's example had lit the flames of youth in many of Konoha's kuniochi) that it would be an honor to have her entrust the hospital's safety to them in her absence.

At first Gai assumed that Tsunade was leaving the hospital in order to personally deal with her traitorous teammate, but then she revealed her true mission. Of course the legendary medic-nin's first priority would be ensuring the health of her patients, both the elderly and those injured in the defense of Konoha.

As Tenten unsealed one of her scrolls of blades so Tsunade could verify that she'd sterilized them properly before sealing them and the seals had held, protecting them from outside contamination that might damage the valuable organs, Lee returned carrying Haku on his back, having sworn that he would beat even her apprentice Shizune back with the ice-user or bring Tsunade one hundred unyouthful enemy hearts.

Neji might have had an advantage retrieving his 'friend,' but Neji was aware of his cousin's dislike of harming others. His fondness for her and desire to have both a fair fight and an impressive one for his Chuunin exam had caused him to say some unwise things during their match.

Hinata had come to his bedside afterwards to apologize for believing his words and reacting so harshly, when she should have known that her beloved cousin would never say anything so unyouthful except as a strategem, but the passionate fire of love was one of the few forces that could rival the flames of youth, and for Neji to deliberately inflame a heart consumed with young love!

Lee had been driven to tears by Neji setting such a harsh challenge for himself (it did bring a tear to the eye of his teacher as well, so see how much progress Neji had made) and sworn to emulate his rival Neji by courting the teammate of Hinata's beloved.

Sakura was well-known to be passionate in her training, and to view unwanted advances as opportunities to test the fruits of her training. For Lee to set such harsh training goals for himself as to dare the wrath of a mistress of subtle ninjutsu when he had no chakra to defend himself: it proved that Gai had succeeded in teaching Lee that there was no limit to what he could achieve, even without chakra!

"That can't be healthy," Shizune said worriedly, watching the streams of manly tears roll down Gai's face as he came back to them carrying two subdued enemy nin and threw them onto the portable operating tables Tsunade had carried out of the hospital to set up near the Hokage tower, where enemy nin after the valuable secrets and paperwork contained in the tower would have to come to them.

"Don't worry, he makes sure we all get plenty of water and electrolytes," Tenten told her, readying one of her knives, face still slightly flushed after receiving Tsunade's approval. That amount of liquid loss really wasn't anything compared to how much Lee and Gai would sweat when they really got into it – their sensei knew how to handle it.

"Get back here with our beer cooler!" a voice bellowed in the distance.

"A missing nin in Konoha?" Shizune asked when Kisame dropped down from a roof in front of them.

"Damn, a rare bloodline. His organs won't be compatible with any of my patients," Tsunade said, annoyed. "Make like a tree and leave: I've got useful people to slaughter!"

"Speaking of the actual slaughter, Lady Tsunade," said Gai. "I would be happy to have myself and my students handle the removal of blood from the enemy bodies for you." He would have to teach Lee a more exhausting technique without chakra, but it would be useful precision practice for him.

It was well-known that Tsunade couldn't handle the sight of blood after the tragic loss of her love, but "That's what genjutsu is for," she told him, irritated. What kind of kage-level ninja couldn't easily overcome such a simple handicap? An aversion to shedding blood would drastically limit a ninja's choice of combat techniques, but avoiding simply seeing it was no obstacle when controlling what people did and didn't see was a cornerstone of the ninja arts.

"I guess all your swords and knives aren't a waste of time and money for once," Neji said behind them. Sharpening, sealing and otherwise tending to her blades did eat up a great deal of Tenten's hours, hours that could have gone towards training.

Gai could sense his student's chakra flare as she twitched. "When I… If Haku breeds with you Neji," Tenten corrected the slip. "It won't be for your brains." While it was part of his students' training for them to attack each other, doing so when the village was under attack would be most unyouthful.

"While I appreciate your dedication to your training, Neji, this is not the time to work on your banter," Gai scolded him. At least this was progress compared to Neji lecturing his opponent about fate (when everyone knew the flames of youth were much more fearsome than the mere prospect of certain doom), but he still needed to work on both his timing and delivery.

Even if the pressure of the Chuunin Exams could only add to Neji's motivation, perhaps Gai had chosen the wrong time to tell Neji that he must improve his psychological warfare capabilities enough to pass a test of his sensei's devising by the end of the month, or he would have to run around Konoha a hundred times pursued by civilians enraged by Neji's comments about their mothers, assets or other things close to their hearts.

"Master Kisame is a guest of Master Zabuza," Haku said, intervening between Tsunade and the rogue Swordsman of the Mist.

"Meaning a guest of the Uchiha clan."

"Where are all the long-haired hotties with good taste in swords?" Tenten lamented as she turned away from Neji to make the first cut on one of the bodies, opening up the chest cavity. Tsunade wouldn't be very impressed with a kuniochi who just stood around while there was work to be done. "I wouldn't care if he was a dumb blond with the brains of a jellyfish, but if I'm dreaming I might as well ask for someone with an ancestral blade. A better ancestral blade," she added as Zabuza arrived to join his friend, followed by a very brightly dressed young man. "Made with booze and… " She grimaced.

As a sensei, Gai should have hunted down Itachi to avenge his student's broken heart.

As a taijutsu master, he owed a great deal to one who avenged the extinction of so many taijutsu styles and bloodlines.

"A blade made of alcohol would be good for sterilizing cuts," Shizune said, sticking her hand into the other enemy ninja's gut and yanking out their liver in a smooth motion, not even needing handseals to create the chakra scalpels on her fingers. "Haku, would you mind putting down a first layer of ice in the boxes, and then icing over the organs?" she asked the long-haired ice user.

"Getting foreign chakra out makes organ transplants less work. Lend me you and your sword for a bit, and I'll make it worth your while," Tsunade was telling the missing-Mist nin

"And why would I clean your catches for you?" Kisame wanted to know. "You haven't got that kind of money." Not with her debts.

"I'll get you on the short list for Ladies' Night at Underneath The Underneath."

Gai's eyes widened. He immediately gave Kisame his brightest smile and a thumbs-up: yes, he must accept this offer!

"I can camp out," Kisame said, puffing out his chest a little. He wasn't afraid of the fact that the lines to get in were a free-for-all zone (the club permitted it so that they could referee) and he had a bounty on his head.

"The short list for performing," you dunce, explained Tsunade. "This is Konoha. Bloodlines are sexy."

"You can do that?" He looked at the Legendary Sannin with new respect.

"My grandma owns it."

"Hope the beer cooler's got a lot of chakra, because you're going to need a lot of ice," he said, drawing Samehada.

This chapter is for Neogoki, who requested Hinata, and there was an incident I alluded to way, way back in Chapter Seven…

I spent way too long trying to get around my personal lack of social fu to write someone at a much higher level, apologies.

You see, proper ninja parenting, like proper ninja anything, is invisible and cannot be confirmed as ninja activity. So when the clans see a child being neglected, they assume that whatever adult is responsible for their care is doing it right. The Eight Swords School of Parenting is the flashy jutsu-equivalent, and traditionalists would absolutely never stoop to allowing a child to ride around on their shoulder: that's being visibly affectionate instead of acting from the shadows.

Hiashi appeared on the roof, accompanied by two Branch House Hyuuga. He signaled for them to rejoin the battle before approaching the Hokage and beginning his report. That was more deference than he truly needed to show, and even the Council would admit that since his eyes were unprotected by the Caged Bird Seal he had a right to an escort during an attack on Konoha, in the Hokage's presence or not. After all, for him to allow the Hyuuga eyes to fall into the hands of enemies of Konoha?

If anything, he should have summoned two more Branch House ninja to provide an escort for his still-unsealed daughter, or at least reassigned them to her and returned to the Clan compound for another escort for himself before rejoining the battle, but this invasion took place during the Chuunin Exams.

Normally he wanted to give his clan the idea that he didn't quite trust Hinata to protect herself, but there was clan prestige to consider. Giving a Hyuuga genin a public vote of no confidence in front of the Hokage at this juncture would send a message to Sarutobi that Hiashi did not want his daughter promoted.

"Orochimaru sent a strike team into our clan compound almost as soon as the invasion started," he reported. "Somehow, Orochimaru's research allowed him to give them a means of bypassing our secret protective seals. Their goals appear to have been to acquire as much tissue as possible while exposing themselves to minimal threat, or something similar."

"Or something," the Hokage echoed dryly.

"Thankfully, none of our active duty ninja are among the casualties, and the Hyuuga will be able to continue to contribute to the defense of Konoha."

Sarutobi knew that was admitting that there had been casualties, and fatalities for that matter, but the Hyuuga weren't going to display weakness.

"Glad to hear you didn't suffer any real loss," the Hokage said, and smiled, looking at Hiashi's hands, red up to the elbow.

"Yes, Hokage-sama," Hiashi agreed, and smiled. He wasn't going to say anything as blatant as 'if anything, those ninja who somehow were able to walk right through our protections to reach a certain part of the compound have done us a favor. Their targeted assassination of the clan elders purged our clan of a dangerous weakness.'

The kind of weakness that you'd think Orochimaru would have exploited, not helped eliminate. Not when he'd left Anko behind as evidence that he was experimenting with seals on the human body, and that was a field of study of great interest to the Branch House Hyuuga.

The idea that some Hyuuga might have killed one of Orochimaru's agents and taken their forehead protector to blame the deaths on the invasion was ridiculous, of course. Everyone knew the Branch House members couldn't have been the ones to kill the elders, not when they wore the Caged Bird Seal, and why would the clan head or his daughters possibly kill those who spent their time policing the rest of the clan for disloyalty and supporting his power?

He turned towards his daughter and frowned. "Why are you here when you should be guarding your fiancée?" he demanded. "Your blindness to the responsibilities of your future position will reflect badly on the Hyuuga… And what is that unnatural beast on your shoulder?"

One of her hands rose to shield the winged tiger protectively.

Ugh, the words were all wrong, crude and blunt and not cutting as they should, must be. He had been unable to help Neji when he asked for help with Gai's assigned training, but he could-he must push now, and persevere. Hizashi could have pulled this off, he was allowed to be vulgar and insulting, but as the heir Hiashi was never allowed to be anything but refined and diplomatic. He'd admitted his inability to Neji when his own flesh and blood was faced with Gai's psychological warfare test and the penalty for failure: why had he overestimated his capabilities now? Perhaps he should have switched with Hizashi, but she was his daughter.

At least Sarutobi's stare was definitely 'you have got to be kidding me how did you make jounin like this' (damn master of a thousand techniques making everything look easy) instead of 'I will murder you,' so it was safe to continue to threaten Hinata with a breach of the Third's Law.

To carefully provoke her, alluding to shapeshifting when it was one of the legendary abilities of a certain creature, and oh, fighting in multiple bodies? Those who were there that day remembered the Kyuubi sending nine smaller foxes (only human-sized) swarming over them and laughing.

Implying that the Uzumaki was the one to slay those people and laugh…

A hand hit his throat, his daughter moving so swiftly that Naruto couldn't keep his perch on her shoulder and fell to the ground as she struck twice, four times, eight, sixteen… it would have been thirty-two, but she wheeled to catch Naruto before he hit the ground.

Hiashi opened his mouth and found that he couldn't speak. The byakugan let him see the nature of the damage she'd done to his voicebox and the associated chakra, without damaging his breathing or his brain.

From the reports of her training with Naruto's slug-summon assisted clones he'd suspected that she was working on her ability to target specific systems.

He'd expected her to knock him out to keep him from violating the Third's Law, wanted the stress of the invasion and her anger on behalf of another to push her into letting him get a glimpse of her true abilities, but for her to act with such precision, even enraged?

First the chance to use the excuse of Orochimaru's invasion to eliminate the clan elders, and now, the very day it became safe for Hinata to show her true power without dooming Hanabi, he had proof of his daughter's dedication to learning and building on the clan techniques?

Hyuuga did not shout 'Yes!' or loudly proclaim the present day the best day ever. With his voice stolen, he couldn't have even if he wanted to. It would take Tsunade to repair damage like this: worth it.

Thankfully he had a pen and scroll on him – paperwork sprung eternal.

It was hard to think of what exactly to write: he didn't have much experience praising Hinata. He could not afford to have experience praising Hinata, not after growing up with Hizashi at his side. The Caged Bird Seal on his twin brother's head.

"I meant no insult to the Uchiha retainer." Politics were easy by comparison. "I needed to see your true power, and I knew that he was the quickest way to your true heart."

Once upon a time, it was hard to walk the streets of Konoha near Naruto and not hear the ignorant commenting 'subtly' on the demon brat. The Uchiha put a stop to that months before approaching the Hyuuga about Hinata for Naruto's sake. Hinata hadn't attacked those people back then, but he knew she would remember, that the anger would still dwell inside her, and now that she had the power to act on it?

Hinata gasped. "You knew?" That she was in love with Naruto, not Sasuke?

"I am your father, you know," he wrote. "I do take an interest in the lives of my children."

What he didn't write was that he'd needed Hizashi to point it out to him, since Hizashi was the one who could visibly appear to favor Hinata (he could pass as his twin brother in front of other ninja, but enough scars and other differences had appeared over the years that if a Hyuuga closely inspected 'Hizashi' the deception would be revealed, so the best protection was that no one would think to look) but his brother was the one who suggested that he claim, "I have feigned ignorance in order to avoid sabotaging your plan to save your sister from the Caged Bird Seal. I am very pleased with your choice of husband – how quickly you realized that I was deliberately overlooking your skills and encouraging Hanabi's in order to keep the Elders from making a decision and began to improvise your own ways to improve on my plan for the sake of your sister proved that it would be a great tragedy for our clan to lose you to the Uchiha." For her to be wasted as the Uchiha matriarch instead of the head of the Hyuuga Clan.

Her eyes widened, touched.

Peering down at the scroll, the tiger looked suspicious but, after glancing at Hiashi, chose to return to grooming his feathers and say nothing. Hinata's happiness was the important thing to Naruto.

Thank goodness for Hizashi. At least one of them had time to spend with the kids and learn decent Father skills, although Hizashi claimed it was because of the techniques in some book he'd found.

Hiashi would read the book, but as the Hyuuga clan head he really couldn't take instruction from any 'Eight Sword' school of anything, even parenting techniques instead of combat. He couldn't be seen admitting that kenjutsu had anything to offer the Hyuuga in their supreme mastery of taijutsu.

Well, supreme as long as one ignored the existence of Gai, but Hiashi had a lot of practice concealing that he was running away from the spandex. Otherwise, he might have become the jounin's victim instead of Kakashi, and he simply did not have the time for Maito Gai's constant challenges.

The Hokage loudly cleared his throat. "Is the middle of an invasion really the time for a ninja responsible for the defense of not only Konoha but his clan to tempt fate?" Even if the Hyuuga vision gave them an advantage in the use of hand signals, which they abused as ruthlessly as ninja should abuse their bloodline advantages, what if Hiashi found himself needing to give verbal orders? Or what if Hinata had avenged Naruto's honor in some way that rendered her father unable to fight?

Hiashi rolled up the scroll a bit to write, "As my heir and a future Chuunin," ahem, Lord Hokage, "I trusted that my daughter would take the invasion into consideration."

They couldn't have the Uchiha clan head being promoted to Chuunin before the Hyuuga clan heir after he got knocked out in his Chuunin Exam Match, by a biju or not.

Considered alternate title: 'The Controlled Detonation of a Yamato Nadeshiko.'

I'm like 'this is worldbuilding...' Then I went 'hey, infodump works for David Weber.' Well, not always, but still. (Also the Nemi said post, and it does not do to offend the muses, especially the Muse of Crack.)

Guess who's re-reading Honor Harrington and realizing that no wonder she thought she was ugly when she was rooming at the military academy with Lady Gloria Michelle Samantha Evelyn Henke, cousin of the Queen, who is described as what a Manticoran would think when they think Princess Classic.

Ruth Winton has the 'Sleeping Beauty' Princess Classic looks, but to a Manticoran citizen, she is very obviously an adopted commoner (her mother was gallantly rescued by a Manticoran prince, who adopted Ruth when the fairy-tale ending ensued). Meanwhile, Michelle looks like such a centuries-of-tradition princess that one might assume that if she started singing princes would flock from light-years around, and if she ever had a bad hair day bluebirds would come through the wormhole all the way from Old Terra and work tirelessly until her afro was once again as fluffy as a cloud.

So on one bed in that dorm room there's a vision of space fairy-tale perfection, and in the other there's Honor, who between boosted metabolism, life-extension tech extending adolescence and martial arts could not keep an ounce of fat on her (which is discussed as a very clear problem – she's starving to death because of it at one point), meaning she was at least in her thirties before she could fit into an A-cup and finally graduate from training bras.

And this is why our protagonist went "I give up," despite her mother reassuring her that she was just a late bloomer and in a few decades she could stop sighing over all the unattainable hot people and start collecting her bisexual harem.

Embarrassing parents are embarrassing. "Moooom, quit telling me to tap that ass! He's my executive officer, it's against military regulations!"

In any case, while I try to pry my brain loose from rabid draconic AI mad scientist gods long enough to write about the previous Hokages, have some random worldbuilding spawned by the desire to incorporate some Okamiden stuff and figure out how I'm handling the Uchibiverse version of Kaguya. When yes, there is an Okami character referencing that myth.

To understand the Moon Tribe, there were two primary facts to keep in mind.

First, that they were blonde. So very, very blonde.

The term 'bubble-headed' would also be appropriate both literally and figuratively, when they lived in a place where there was no air unless your head was surrounded by some kind of bubble to hold it in.

Their blondness was why they kept misplacing their kids during trips to the planetary surface. Also why they generally assumed, 'Oh, I must have just misplaced my jetpack, it'll turn up eventually,' after trips to the hot springs and then went home with the so-friendly locals willing to give them a place to stay until they could get back to the moon without asking what it was those locals were hiding behind their backs.

Second, that they were geniuses.

Anyone who knew Naruto or remembered the Fourth Hokage would shudder at the thought of an entire (extremely) Hidden Village of people more so than the Uzumaki, who were normally very much redheads, not blondes. Explosive very much yes, but absent-minded, no. If… no, when, an Uzumaki blew things up, it was because they had darn well meant to cause explosions, and any standing around blinking innocently and saying, "Oops," would be exactly as blatant a lie as member of Bay Country's Foraker family admiring the results of the explosives they'd tricked the enemy navy into loading aboard their ships.

Then again, Bay Country was home to both the Uzumaki clan and to pirates, who traveled the world, automatically stole any objects of power that weren't nailed down and were very big on telling hot blondes about the advantages of joining up and becoming pirates. Why, they'd gotten one of their best Queens that way!

And while the pure-blooded members of the Moon Tribe tended to be oblivious to their attractiveness, between their general obliviousness to anything that wasn't technology and the fact they came from a place where their looks weren't anything special, their half-blooded children tended to possess enough human practicality to be very aware of the effect they had on others and, if they'd been raised to be pirates, take serious advantage of it.

So the odds that the Foraker family of navigators possessed no Moon Tribe blood whatsoever were rather slim.

That second characteristic of the Moon Tribe was why they were never really all that concerned about the misplacing of kids or jetpacks.

After all, wait around sixteen or so years, and the kid would build a spaceship out of bamboo and make it home on their own. If the locals weren't as friendly as they'd made themselves out to be, they could build themselves another jetpack, maybe use programmable fibers in a nice pink this time.

Between their beauty and intelligence, as a rule, 'consequences' were something that happened to people who weren't Moon Tribe, the way 'conscience' was something that happened to people who weren't Uchiha.

While the Moon Tribe's blond moments frequently had consequences, very few of those consequences couldn't be immediately cleared up by either building something to fix the problem or just existing while extremely hot until this spontaneously inspired other people to make the problem go away.

When their mistakes couldn't be so easily fixed, this was a problem, because a member of the Moon Tribe could easily make it to two hundred without ever needing to take responsibility for their actions for longer than five minutes.

Which was why they were terrible at it.

When the member of the Moon Tribe known to ancient ninja legends as the Tengu Sage found out that the interdimensional spaceship he'd built to visit the Celestial Plains and see if the gods had any good hot springs had unleashed the Ten-Tails from the void outside creation, he immediately had to be stopped from doing something about it, because the weapon he'd built to harness the power of Amaterasu, Mother of Us All and Origin Of All That Is Good to utterly annihilate it would have turned the planet into a cloud of plasma.

Yes, the maternal energies of the sun gave life to the Earth, but not in that quantity.

In his defense, Yami had nearly exterminated the Moon Tribe as well as the inhabitants of the Celestial Plains, and now it had turned its attention to the human world, which was far less able to defend itself than the land of the gods and the land of people of the Moon Tribe, known in their own language as the People of Luna Sea.

After the ten-tailed embodiment of Yami was sealed within his spaceship and his girlfriend and voice of divine wisdom's canine avatar was turned to stone, the Tengu Sage wandered the planet wearing a very ridiculous outfit to hide his true appearance because while he appreciated the compliments, he did have a girlfriend and was intending to get her back one of these decades.

Unfortunately, the spawn of Yami continued to ravage the world. Amaterasu, in her blessed wisdom, had forbidden him to make any more guns, or bombs, or teach the inhabitants of the surface world how to make them - which was a strange thought, because who needed to be taught to build a death ray?

The ninja arts of the Moon Tribe, known as Sciens, allowed Ushiwaka to be in several places at once using his mecha bunshin, but it occurred to him that it would be much easier for the humans to defend themselves against the attacks of the Yami-spawned demons if they could, well, defend themselves.

Inhabitants of a world with very little in the way of natural energy, the Moon Tribe's techniques relied entirely upon mental energy. The techniques that were suited to their castles beyond the air did not come quite so easily to the inhabitants of a more earthly domain, although it is rumored that seal masters have jealously guarded his books of Calculus because they can allow seal masters to do calculations in a mere handful of lines that non-initiates require countless scrolls to perform, passing them from master to student for millennia, and many have been drawn to the path of the medic nin after hearing that the Tengu Sage stated that the true key to mastering the universe rested in the knowledge of 'Physic.'

Eventually, Amaterasu, Mother of Us All and Origin of All That Is Good awakened, and the Ten-Tails was defeated.

What few know was that Yami could not be truly destroyed, being eternally reborn from the darkness within all living things, and so it was sealed within the moon, to be guarded by the reborn Moon Tribe.

When Yami invaded the Land of Luna Sea, while another people might have guarded their more helpless members, all the people of the Moon Tribe were practitioners of Sciens, and since it, unlike chakra, did not rely on physical strength they did not consider age or youth reasons to deny someone the right to defend their homes and families. (Although less charitable storytellers have remarked that it might simply not have occurred to them that they might lose, being blonde.) All those who dwelled on the Moon went to war and were slain, save for a few babes who were set adrift in Ships of Space, but some of their lost, misplaced, and vacationing members survived on the world below by being completely clueless about what was going on until it was all over.

They returned over the following two centuries to rebuild their home. They alone would not have been enough to reestablish the tribe, but there were many descendents of the Moon Tribe on the planet. Every so often a throwback would be born with blood pure enough to have an instinctive command of the art of Sciens and the desire to build a Ship of Space. Even without knowing their heritage, many of them decided to make the Moon the first stop on their journey into the unknown, so they might learn more of the arts of Sciens from the legendary people who dwelled there (and of course, to these just-slightly-more-practical children of humanity, the fact that the Moon was inhabited by legendary beauties also gave it a certain attraction).

These days, the members of the Moon Tribe double-check to be sure that their instinctively inquisitive children haven't wandered off; don't swim or bathe naked in the wilderness without first setting guards of wire seals, death rays and mecha bunshin; and will interrogate the natives at death-ray point if their jet packs go missing.

This is universally agreed (by the inhabitants of Earth, anyway) to take all of the fun out of it for everyone. Sometimes they didn't even put rabbit ears on their giant mecha anymore!

The rumors that some of the Uzumaki went on past the moon to the Red Planet and have built a giant temple that is a combination death ray and distance explosion seal targeted at either Yami sealed in the Moon or the Earth itself are entirely baseless slander by the villages that attacked Ushizogakure and there is no need whatsoever to panic.

Yep, Moon Tribe tech in Okami & the sequel falls under Raygun Gothic and/or (Sufficiently Advanced) Bamboo Technology.

There's a dash of Ayashi no Ceres's explanation for bloodlines of smart/pretty people descended from aliens all over the world, although it's really not deliberate in the Moon Tribe's case. Waka would be Naruto's grandfather, so he's a quarter Moon Tribe from that and a little more from what came in on the Uzumaki side.

They descend from Tsukuyomi, Amaterasu's brother. The name means 'moon-shadow,' not 'moonlight.'

Of course, Amaterasu is still Origin Of All That Is Good: in European fairy tale terms, the Moon Tribe in this are 'soulless.' This does not actually mean 'evil.' It does mean Blue & Orange Morality, and it absolutely does mean dangerous since you can't quite predict what they'll think it's okay to do to you. Even if they like you 'that would be wrong' is not necessarily going to occur to them. Waka would have met the requirements to have a soul by now, though, although that's moot since that mythology doesn't apply here and instead the supreme god gets Distracted By The Sexy.

Speaking of the fact this fic actually has a plot, while I was trying to write about the revived Hokages, my brain reminded me about another dead Hokage. So, have a jump back in the timeline.

Thank goodness for ninja training, and the fact Kushina was an Uzumaki. She'd known he was a god from the beginning, so he'd been able to brief her and make plans for when this happened. Instead of speaking to ask why he hadn't found their son first, she used hand signals to confirm that Naruto was alive when he left the living world and shouldn't be joining them anytime-

"Leaving so soon?"

Minato froze. Horrified eyes watched fog pour into the corners of the room.

Maybe Naruto would be here before they got back.

Kushina went for a weapon, only to find they hadn't made it into the afterlife with her. Her hands went in front of her chest to make handseals, but she was dead, without living energy to mold into chakra.

He grabbed her hand before the fog could hide her from him.

Fortunately, remaining calm and rational enough to act effectively no matter how screwed you knew you were on the inside was a valuable life skill for any ninja who wanted to have a life for more than a few missions. He might not be mortal, but the host body definitely was.

Squeezing Kushina's hand, he turned and bowed towards where the voice had come from. Of course the speaker was shrouded in the fog. "Honored Grandmother Izanami."

"Grandson? Grandson of that rat Izanagi." The ex-husband who ditched her in the land of the dead. He could sense the fanged smile, and even in a human body his spirit's nose was still a tiger's. He could smell the dried remnants of flesh rotted away so long ago that a human would have smelled nothing but dust and bone. "Unlike him, you were smart enough to find your way here in time that she's still pretty. How shallow all of his children are, and how ungrateful."

Gekigami wasn't descended from the son who burned Izanami alive as he was born, but he knew that wasn't enough to make her let him go. Not when Amaterasu was born when Izanagi tried to cleanse himself of his shame after abandoning Izanami.

Could a mere thunder god defeat the ruler of the land of the dead, The Mother of the Land?

Before he could decide if he wanted to risk letting go of Kushina's hand to attack, knowing that if he did he would almost certainly never see her again, the presence withdrew.

"Kushina?" he asked.

"That's the red-hot habanero to you," was her answer, and he relaxed, identity confirmed by the pass-phrase. "Is there anything we can do about this fog?"

"Well," if she wanted to brainstorm desperate measures and million to one chances, he wasn't going to just give up either. "It will lift. Eventually."

"When will it lift?"

"When humans gain the strength to face the truth instead of lying to themselves. When they are no longer willing to accept easy answers, but instead seek the truth until they have seen to the hearts of those around them."

"So… when ninja are out of business." Meaning: never. "How long ago did I die?" she asked him.

"I gave orders for seals to be put in place, that will buy us some time… Unless those ninja joined the defense against the Kyuubi."

"We're not getting out of here before severe brain damage sets in at a minimum." A dead body wasn't going to be breathing. He felt her leaning forward. "We can see vague outlines at a distance. The fine detail when I get close is… good enough if I'm close enough." For Plan B.

Since her face was right there, he kissed her before her mouth could start to taste of rotting flesh. "Let's start looking."

A god's blood for the ink, a tiger-god's tail hairs for the brush, and Kushina would be able to create working seals even without chakra.

The mind remained intact in the Underworld, but the flesh would already be weakening. They needed to find the remaining supplies so Kushina could build and transfer herself to a puppet before her eyesight and dexterity started to go: a mistake with the seals would be disastrous.

He sniffed the air carefully. If they could find the corpse of an old tree that would make this much faster. If not, this was the Underworld. There was plenty of bone lying around, and Izanami might even grow suspicious if he didn't kill any of her soldiers he came across.

His sense of smell gave him some ability to navigate the fog, and a puppet body enhanced with divine power would let Kushina defend herself, at least against the Yomotsu-Ikusa and Shikome.

She might be dead, but she would never accept being dead weight, and having to carry her and cover her when they were attacked would slow down the search for an exit. If they did find one, there was no way they were getting out without a fight.

Pissed-off Uzumaki were audible at long distances. "I am missing his first birthday, I am missing his first steps, I am missing his first word, I am going to kill Madara!"

Approaching from downwind, Hashirama took a step back and folded his arms. "Well, I was going to help them, but how dare they threaten the father of my children."

"Will you stop calling me that?"

"Maddy, dear," Hashirama said, patting him on the shoulder. "You cloned an army of half me and half you babies. You must have known that I was never, ever, going to shut up about it. Therefore, in your adorably teeny-tiny Uchiha heart, you must have wanted me to start thinking of us as co-parents. And clan gene pools being what they are, two people don't normally have that many children unless they either really like each other or were forced to marry." Hashirama shook his head. "Why couldn't you have just proposed like a normal person? It would have made it much easier to get my clan to go along with our plan to dominate the ninja world and reshape it to our liking," since the Senju were motivated to believe in the Power of Love by the power of 'we're right, you're wrong; suck it, Uchiha!' "And most of your elders could have dropped dead of apoplexy. Or poison disguised as apoplexy. If you were just a little more in touch with your feelings, you could have saved us so much trouble!"

Madara stared at him. His jaw dropped. His palm hit his forehead.

"I know, right?" Hashirama agreed, nodding.

"You think I'm in love with you, and your mind immediately goes to how you could have used that to kill annoying people." Madara thought he might be in love. Just a little. Well, if he wasn't an Uchiha.

"Well, I am a Senju. Our clan believes in the Power of Love, but we're still ninja. So if we have a powerful technique, of course we're going to use it to kill people. And nothing's more powerful than love."

"Explosions are better," Madara replied automatically.

"Maddy, dear, what would be a more painful death: burning alive, or thinking that the clan heir had become idiotically besotted with a Senju?" Hashirama grinned. "You could have called me nauseating pet names in front of them."

"That's evil."

Hashirama nodded, then frowned. "Seriously, though, Maddy, you should have thought that through better."

Madara rolled his eyes. "I've heard the 'ninja being honest about their feelings avoids a lot of unnecessary bullshit drama' lecture before, Hashirama."

"No, the army of half-me and half-you babies part. You gave them my crazy and your crazy and then you left them to run around without adult supervision?"

"I know, right?" was Madara's first reaction because yes, unleashing Uchiha versions of Hashirama on the world was the most evil thing ever.

Then he remembered that he had ensured his own resurrection. Meaning he would have to live in a world with Uchiha versions of Hashirama.

He had to do something before he suffered the direct consequences of what he'd done onto others. Why, that would be fair.

A thunder god vs. Izanami – the 'official' name of Persona 4's main character is Narukami Yu, or 'You Thunder God.' So who knows, Gekigami may have an actual chance.

Amaterasu is The Mother Of All That Is Good (in Okami, anyway), which may explain why Izanagi's incarnation is too dumb to live and well over the Moral Event Horizon in the novel that inspired the MegaTen game franchise (of which Persona is a spinoff). It doesn't seem to occur to him that the puny humans are people and it's wrong for gods to abuse them until he finds himself at the non-existent mercy of a stronger god and needs Izanami to save his idiotic ass.

In a sense, isn't that how PCs see NPCs? That they're not real people? And he prettymuch does have protag powers like Yu's.

Just re-read Seventh Horcrux. 'My mother's love is fire?'

Reading the legend of Izanami, since I doubt she wanted everyone else to have a better time of it than she was having, this kind of thing is why the Egyptians preserved their bodies for the afterlife. Madara made his body more demonic, so he's not having problems - this is the natural habitat. Trees can end up being even more filled with life after they die than they were before, so Hashirama would still have chakra access and be effectively alive, except for the whole 'in the land of the dead' part.

Hashirama clones are not going to work out as well for Madara as Naruto's clones do for Sasuke, no.

Story ID:	8222842
Category:	Naruto
Genre:	Family, Humor
Language:	English
Characters:	Haruno Sakura, Hyūga Hinata, Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto
Status:	WIP
Published:	2012-06-16
Updated:	2015-09-11
Packaged:	2015-11-13
Rating:	M
Chapters:	48
Words:	92,978
Publisher:	www.fanfiction.net
Summary:	Crackfic, AU. The Third Hokage granted Uchiha Itachi's request to spare the Uchiha children, only to realize too late that they were all horrible devil children. Literally. Which may be why Naruto fits right in with the rest of the little monsters Sasuke's too busy raising to brood.

Uchibi Sasuke by Laryna6

Table of Contents

1. Prologue

2. All Hail Orange

3. With Bells On

4. Kakashi's Noble Sacrifice

5. Do You Know How Far Away Wave Is?

6. Oh Hi There

7. A God's Life

8. Dogged

9. Meanwhile, Back At The Ninja Ranch

10. Obligatory Beach Episode

11. Souvenirs, Check!

12. Good Girl!

13. Gimme!

14. Talking to Himself

15. Sad Panda no Jutsu

16. Checking In

17. Bloomin' Horde

18. So Uchiha

19. The Corrupt Court is in Session

20. The Cheating Exams

21. Clan Precepts

22. Goodbye Nurse

23. Reverse Harem no Jutsu

24. Burning Bright

25. The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

26. One Night In Konoha

27. Only You Can Save Neji

28. Internal Affairs

29. Something Completely Different

30. Customary

31. A Young Maiden's Body Count

32. Valuable Life Skills

33. So Study Hard, Be Evil

34. In the Wake of Itachi

35. Nature, Green in Branch and Root

36. Someone Hurry Up And Invent The Shotgun

37. Shockingly, Kill It With Fire Doesn't

38. It's Generally Danzo's Fault

39. Favorite Foods Are Serious Business

40. When It's Not the Uchiha's Fault

41. Why Sell Cookies When There Are Kunai?

42. Replacement no Jutsu

43. Attack of the Invisible Deer

44. Needs More Misanthropy

45. His Banter Does Need Work

46. Traditional Ninja Parenting

47. On The Moon

48. She Got The Dead In The Divorce