Chapter Text

"Sa- suk- un?''

He groans and tries to clutch his aching head with trembling arms.

''I- se-- ei! Sas-- -un j-- fa- -int--!''

Okay, scratch that, the arms don't seem to want to cooperate. Wow, ageing REALLY does get to you, doesn't it, he barely had three drinks yesterday and–

Did he have drinks? And was it yesterday? And what was yesterday? He was not quite sure what even happened the last day, and the insane throbbing in his head was not helping him at all.

Someone tried to yank him upwards and--okay, you know, fuck you. He was very close to hurling on whichever idiot decided it was a good idea to move a clearly hungover--or gravely injured since that's what it felt like--person. He took a sharp breath and momentarily opened his eyes, instantly regretting his decision. Bright light filled his vision, and the throbbing in his head has gotten somehow worse. The world spins around him in blurry bright shapes, and he is not sure if he is still laying down, or standing upright, or hanging upside-down. Somebody's hands on his forearms keep gripping him, and the light in front of him gets blocked by a shape--probably the asshole, who tried to move him around.

Motherfucker, he thinks.

And promptly pukes in the general direction of the offender.

Take that, he thinks grimly, and blacks out again.

He wakes up with a start.

The throbbing is gone, and so is the acidic smell of bile. The bastard with a deadly grip on his arms is gone as well. He tries to stir and quickly figures out that he, in fact, cannot move at all.

Is this what being paralyzed is like? He tries to breathe through his nose but finds it clogged--the next best bet is inhaling through his mouth, and his throat burns like he has caught the worst flu. He squirms on the bedsheets (bedsheets! So he did get moved around) and cracks an eye open.

His vision swims again but not as badly as the previous time he woke up. The room around is bright and sterile-looking, smelling of chlorine and something else that he strongly associates with ER. He blinks his eyes, eyelashes glued together, and immediately zeroes on a person across the room.

It's a man, no older than 30. He is twiddling with a cigarette he is holding in his fingers, brows furrowed and staring out the window. He is dressed, frankly, ridiculously--some weird bulky flak jacket over a dark blue jumper with bandages adorning each bicep (what the fuck for?); he got some weird sweatpants on tucked into--surprise--more bandages with--surprise!--more bandages on his thigh, with some kind of... pouch? attached to it. A white sash is hanging over his crotch like the dude is either trying to hide his boner or is cosplaying some weird-ass military surfer. He has got an, uh, tennis headband--this guy just got the weirdest fashion choices--on top of the head full of spiky hair.

Despite the dumb outfit, the Guy is handsome. Stupidly handsome. That still does not explain why the Guy is in the supposed hospital room.

"What,'' he wheezes out at the Guy, finding that it is hard to control his tongue--it's like he both burnt it on a hot potato and forgot how to form words coherently. He opens his mouth and tries again: ''What happened.''

Multiple things happen at the same time: he realizes that his voice is, in fact, not his voice--he sounds like a prepubescent kid that screamed himself raw last night playing some dumb videogame--which shouldn't, no, can't be possible, because he is a grown adult in his mid-20s. At the same time, the Guy lifts his eyes up and smiles wildly, putting the cig behind his ear and taking a step towards the hospital bed.

Also, the Guy speaks. Not in English.

''... Sasuke-kun,'' he finishes whatever garbled thing he was saying, and looks pointedly at the bed. The Guy proceeds to stare down, and crosses his arms on his chest, and starts speaking again.

Nope. This is not better. Either the hangover is still super bad, or he got brain damage, or the Guy is continuing to speak in--uh. Korean? Japanese?

"Sasuke-kun?" the Guy worriedly looks at him, crouching next to the bed.

"What," he stares at the Guy again, trying to squirm away. His body feels--wrong, it feels weak (hangover), unresponsive (apparent paralysis) and, most horrifyingly, small.

The Guy's face looks consistently more and more worried, and he stares at a bedridden form like he wants both to explode with worry and simultaneously be anywhere but here. The Guy garbles out some more Korejapanese and swiftly stands up, throwing another worried--Jesus, what the fuck is he so worried about? He is not the paralyzed one!--glance at the bed, and quickly exits the hospital room.

A number of things happen over the course of the next probably-hour.

First, he realizes he can't remember not only what he was doing last day, but also days before that. Memories come out hazy, and frequently it feels like half the things he is trying to remember is just plots of films because they got a movie-level idiocrasy: someone breathing fire, or producing a fireball, he guesses; a bunch of children throwing knives at each other; a massive empty district with a sad shrine with many aged photos. He also remembers much more normal stuff: the view out of the window onto a busy road junction full of cars; a stuffy smell of subway station; default Windows background on a probable-work PC. Most importantly, though, is the fact that he doesn't remember his name. He wrecks his brain trying to pick out literally any name in relation to himself; then wrecks his brain some more to come up with any name. Literally nothing comes to mind, and he frowns so hard for a while that his face starts to hurt.

Then, the body problem. He does remember being taller, broader, stronger. He also remembers being tiny and surrounded by big things.

Maybe I'm dreaming, because what kinda witchy fuckery is this, he thinks after some time of looking over his prone (SMALL! So small) form on the bed from the vantage point of a pillow.

Then, the people come in. They keep speaking Japarean, or whatever this language is, and he cannot comprehend where one word starts and the other ends--the entire conversation is one-sided, and he keeps his mouth shut and bites on his tongue in hopes that he is really just sleeping and pain will somehow bring him back into reality.

They keep repeating this 'Sasoke-un' stuff, he is not sure how that one is spelt either, but then again, he never participated in a Spelling Bee.

Or did he? It's hard to figure out ANY information about himself or his past self, and half the shit he does remember is just the same knife-throwing tree-jumping samurai-kid-movie-thing. Did he watch some kinda TV series and then just black out? Did he die in front of a TV?

He wants to punch his past self for apparently doing nothing but watching movies since there is virtually nothing else that his brain deemed worthy of remembering of his past life.

Regardless, back to Saska-koun. Since he can't remember his own name (and the people deliberately keep repeating it in his face) (and sudden selective amnesia decided to take out any name he has ever learnt), he will address to himself as Susoke.

Sasuke twitches when one of the people clad in some weird softcore version of a hazmat suit places a hand on his forehead. Doctors usually ask permission to touch, don't they, and he likes his privacy, thank you very fucking much.

Then, more weird shit starts happening.

The hand on his forehead starts GLOWING GREEN, and Sasuke feels like he is gonna hurl all over again. The green stings his eyes, and realistically this shit can't be happening, alright, there was nothing in the hazmat guy's hand to let him shine like a glorified hand-cyborg-glowstick.

Cyborg man's lips twitch in a frown and he turns around to the Guy from before, and says something (okay, whatever, Sasuke guesses no one will deem it important to bring a translator or whip out a phone or whatever) that makes the Guy frown.

Yeah no shit, thinks Sasuke with dark satisfaction.

''Sasuke-kun," says the Glowstick Hand in a surprisingly gentle tone, like he was talking to a scared cat or a small child.

He then says some other shit in The Unknown Language and Sasuke's patience starts to run out.

"Where the fuck am I? Did you kidnap me?" he snarls at the Glowstick, and that makes him frown deeper. "Did you fucking drug me?"

The Guy From Before says something that sounds like a curse, short and sharp, and then the two men start hurriedly talking between each other completely ignoring Sasuke's heated glares from the bed.

"Hey! I'm talking to you!" Sasuke spits out, trying to prop himself up on too-weak elbows.

Glowstick and The Guy turn to stare at him for a change–Glowstick with a look like he was trying to dissect Sasuke with his eyes alone, and The Guy with a strange somber expression of pity. Glowstick spoke again and Sasuke blanched at him.

If Sasuke’s hands did cooperate with the rest of his body, he would’ve probably slapped himself, or pinched, trying to verify that what was going on is real. 

Over the Glowstick’s forehead, in a neat font, letter after letter, a phrase ‘We’d need to do more tests’ started appearing, before erasing itself and conjuring a new phrase: ‘to know for sure’.

And all of that. 

In English.

Sasuke blinked. Then he blinked again.

The Guy From Before smiled sadly at Sasuke, and then shot a side-eye to the Glowstick. Neatly, over his tennis headband on his forehead, new words started forming as well, syncing to his lip movements: ‘I will report to Hokage-sama then’.

‘It is quite unfortunate that this happened to young Uchiha-san’, said Glowstick's forehead.

‘Did you already consult the Yamanaka?’ appeared on The Guy’s forehead, some letters being obscured by him turning a bit away from Sasuke, so he was not completely sure what the Yam–an–a was.

‘Not yet, but we sent after them,’ said Glowstick’s forehead.

Neat, Sasuke thought. Creepy as fuck, but neat.

How the fuck did he trigger the closed captions–actually, never mind, his head hurts as it is. Sasuke decided that everything that was happening was a feverishly mad comatose dream since he apparently drank himself into an early death. He knows nothing about comatose dreams, but he watched one of those dude-in-a-coma-dreams-of-alternate-world series (... did he? He couldn’t recall), and he remembers that the moment the guy died in his ‘dreamworld’, he died in ‘real life’ too.

This entire concept makes no sense, but Sasuke will try to roll with it until he learns more about what the fuck is going on here.

The Guy and the Glowstick are still talking with each other when they exit the room, and when The Guy briefly turns his head to look at Sasuke, his forehead says ‘... –utsu inciden–...’.

And like that, he is gone.

Sasuke’s day couldn’t get any worse.

Sasuke’s day got worse.

A tall guy with a blonde ponytail entered the room alongside the Glowstick--The Guy From Before nowhere to be seen–-and smiles at Sasuke.

‘Hello, Uchiha-kun,’ his forehead says.

“Hn,” eloquently responds Sasuke.

‘Are you feeling better?’ asks The Ponytail. ‘You have gotten hit by quite a nasty jutsu back there.’

Nasty… what? Sasuke furrows his brows.

“Hn,” from what he has gathered, only HE can see the captions. Everyone else expected him to speak Japanese. His English-sounding flailing apparently provided no effect on those people, and worse yet, it made them do aggressive touching of his persona. Sasuke did not want any unrequited touches from men clearly bigger than him.

Better not to speak English for the sake of his own preservation, then.

Fuck, he really hoped he’d get out of coma soon.

‘I am going to look at your head, alright?’ says the caption, and Sasuke squirms away into the pillow before Ponytail can even start moving.

“Mmnh,” Sasuke almost-whines (he does NOT whine, he is old enough not to whine), and Ponytail gives him a mild smile.

‘Don’t worry, I am just trying to see if that justu left any permanent effects on you,’ and he moves closer to Sasuke, as Glowstick and another suddenly-manifested hazmat suit guy immediately pin him down.

Ponytail places a palm on Sasuke’s forehead.

Oh hellllll nah, snarls Sasuke inside his head. 

And then, his vision whites out again.

Memories-–these aren’t his memories, they’re not, they’re–-flash before his eyes, all blending into one big, horrible red haze of terrifying eyes pinning him to the spot, and blood being spilled everywhere, and he sees a woman–- mom- –being stabbed and stabbed over and over and over and over and over agai–

The palm is gone from his forehead and Sasuke is hyperventilating, eyes big and wild and wet. He is thrashing against the hold of the two men holding him, and cries harder, blindly staring somewhere, anywhere, where the world is not painted redredredred.

He barely registers a touch to his neck, and just like that, Sasuke is gone into dreamless sleep again.

Chapter Text

Sasuke did some recon work.

Or, well, he did as much as he could while laying in bed and staring intently at people's foreheads.

From what he had gathered, he is--somehow--a child. Possibly without parents as well, since in almost 5 days that he had spent here no one except The Guy From Before visited him, an 11-year-old kid, or however old he was.

Secondly, despite being a maybe-orphan, every single person knew him and seemed to know more about Sasuke and his (lack of) family more than he did. They also expected him to behave a certain way, as he remembered how Glowstick and The Guy had a stroke when he had shown that his emotional range is wider than one of a toothpick.

For some reason, glowering and staying silent worked fine for everyone. It worked fine for Sasuke as well.

He really was a child again. Or he was a child all along. Despite remembering being an adult, Sasuke's body desperately clung to stupid kiddy emotions, making him almost-cry on multiple occasions. He had caught himself earlier today doing his best impression of angrily stomping his feet--you know, like a baby--at not being allowed to walk in the hallway. If he was slowly losing his adult rationality and completely reversing into a kid state, Sasuke will throw himself out of the window.

Then there was the Jutsu Accident. He still needed to figure out what Jutsu was since it did awfully sound like a name. From what Sasuke had gathered, he was in his school doing whatever fantasy world children do in a school and was hit by a wayward--spell?--from some CRIMINAL being chased through the school district. Sasuke had very few opinions on police force here, and none of them were positive. How the fuck do you manage to chase a magic-wielding criminal into a school district?! How come criminals can do magic here?

Oh yeah, that's right. Sasuke observed it enough times to grimly confirm it: they could do weird magic stuff now, apparently. He did not know the scale of magic-wielding in this, uh, world, but from the mind-crushing Ponytail to Glowstick's hands, to an entire blob of whatever emerging from his body during one of the procedures, he assumes it's not the Harry Potter or even Lord of the Rings-kinda magic. He is still figuring out the details.

Also, apparently, that accident thing has left him with a Chakra exhaustion. He struggled not to sputter when he read that off of Hazmat Suit nurses forehead. Chakra? What is this, a fellow Buddhists' corner shop?

Basically, Sasuke had a lot of time to think. And struggle with teen hormones. His interactions with the outside world consisted of just staring at people's foreheads and grunting whatever he could in reply, so it wasn't like he had a lot of an outlet to his apparent teenage angst.

One thing he noticed was that the less forehead space a person had, the smaller the text was. For some reason, tennis headbands didn't count. Fringes, hats and other stuff that blocked off access to the forehead shrunk the captions down, which just forced Sasuke to wish he could rip his eyes out and just throw them in the general direction of the offending person. He had been squinting so much in the past couple of days his head started hurting each time someone entered the room.

Also, talk of the devil.

Hazmat suit nurse--not the Glowstick, but this one could do the same glow-y thing he did--has entered the room, plastering a customer service-grade smile to her face.

'You got visitors, Sasuke-kun', her forehead said, half-obscured by the hazmat suit's hat.

Oh, joy, thought Sasuke.

It couldn't have been his parents, but maybe--legal guardians?

'HELLO SASUKE-KUN,' said a forehead in all caps, taking all of the free real estate there was on a tiny pink girl's head. Combined with her shy tone and overall very 'I'm with my crush in the same room' vibe, the almost screaming captions looked very out of place. 

Sasuke thought it was hilarious. He bit the inside of his cheek and struggled to fight a burst of laughter bubbling out of his throat.

'ARE YOU DOING better?' asked him the Forehead Girl, with the last bit of the caption scaled down to fit her forehead despite the rest of the text still being all-caps.

"Mmmh," eloquently responded Sasuke, gripping his knee under the blanket.

'I BR-  -UGHT YOU SOME T-.. -MTO --P,' Forehead's forehead was getting redder and redder at an alarming rate, colour obscuring the captions. Sasuke stared with a carefully held blank look, squinting a bit because if he did open his mouth he sure would crack up.

Forehead hesitates, getting more flustered by the second. Her long pink hair--is children dying their hair a common occurrence here or is it her natural colour? Fascinating--combined with the red face and redder dress is making her look like some kinda giant red blob.

Maybe he shouldn't be mean to a child, who is coincidentally the only person that decided to visit him in the hospital.

"Hn," Sasuke says, lowering his head in a polite bow like he had seen nurses do to the doctors (and wasn't that a drag to figure out which hazmat suit was a nurse, and which was a doctor), and stretches his hands out, palms up and open.

Forehead Girl squeaks.

Sasuke retrieves his hands in horror.

A giant pot is placed on his lap that the girl has retrieved from the bag she was clutching this entire time, and he stares, dumbfounded, switching between the pot and her still-red face.

‘--ATO SOUP,’ he catches before the phrase is erased from her forehead as he glances back up. ‘I–-INO-PIG–-I KNOW YOU LIKE IT.’

Sasuke does not like tomatoes. He is fine with eating some raw ones, but god forbid you make a dish compiled exclusively out of tomatoes, or–-Jesus–-give him a glass of tomato juice. 

That shit is a whole new level of disgusting.

The pot in his lap smells suspiciously like a whole lot of tomato juice.

He squints at the Forehead Girl, assessing her. She has long pink hair down to her waist, a red ribbon holding her bangs apart from the rest of her mane, and a red dress–surprisingly, no bandages there. Her face is still an unnatural shade of red as she tries to stare anywhere but at him.

God help me, Sasuke thinks. I don’t want to deal with pre-teen crushes right now.

“Hn,” he nods instead of thanks, and peaks inside the pot.

It does look like tomato soup. Its texture is goopy and seemingly thick; there are a few air bubbles on the surface of an endless red of tomatoes (red like the blood, goopy like freshly spilt blood, like a pot of blood clots, like the pool under his parents’ bodies, like the eyes of the–)

Sasuke sharply looks up at some jumbled words squeaked by the Forehead Girl.

She looks concerned, ashamed and guilty at the same time.

Oh god, thinks Sasuke, I made a child think I got anger issues with her soup.

He carefully dips a finger into the soup and tastes the substance by shoving the finger into his mouth.

Holy shit, he thinks, God-worthy tomato-ambrosia.

Sasuke looks at the soup again, bewildered, and shifts his gaze onto the Forehead again. Forehead’s forehead just says ‘[flustered]’, and this is the first time the captions portrayed anything but actual speech to him.

Sasuke mildly thinks if there were someone to laugh, whether their forehead would say ‘[Laughs in Japanese]’ or some shit.

“Hn,” he says approvingly and dips his finger into the pot again.

He doesn’t notice, being absorbed by the sudden realization of the tastiness of tomatoes, but the girl’s smile is beaming brighter than the NFL stage lights.

‘AND THEN IRUKA-SENSEI SAID THAT AT LEAST FOURTH OF ALL GRADUATES FAIL GENIN EXAMS–’

Half of what the Forehead Girl was saying made no sense. The captions were in English alright, but most of the words the kid used were foreign to him even with English spelling. He spent most of his time wracking his head about the words ‘shinobi’ and ‘genin’ since she kept repeating them on the loop every other sentence.

‘NA– UT– –ADE -UKA– -EI –GRY AND HE SCREAMED AT HIM FOR, LIKE, 5 MINUTES,’ Forehead Girl said with a dark satisfaction as Sasuke only caught about half of whatever she was saying, too focused on the soup. ‘I HOPE HE FAILS THE EXAM.’

Yikes, thinks Sasuke. Magic world kids are mean.

He is almost halfway through the pot just by finger-licking it when the Hazmat Suit nurse is back, motioning Forehead Girl out of the room. Nurse casts a mild look in Sasuke’s direction, focusing on the pot on his lap, and Sasuke tsk’s, wrapping a protective hand around it.

His kid body liked tomatoes. That is the only thing he knew for sure.

Forehead dips into a bow, blushing profusely again, and Sasuke waves his ‘bye’ at her, making her blush even harder. Kids, man. He was pretty sure he was a kid before in his–-well, in the-–in the normal, non-magical life of his--and it wasn’t as hard to navigate life as it is now. 

Even if Forehead’s awkward rambling was annoying, he is glad she came. He doubts they are very good friends out of the hospital, with how furiously she blushed and was afraid of touching him, but she was a valuable source of general information on his life and life outside the hospital in general, as well as just a nice kid, albeit hopelessly absorbed by her crush.

He kinda hopes she will come over again, if not for him to silently laugh at her embarrassed face, but for the feel-good company.

As the Forehead Girl leaves, the process Sasuke became accustomed to begins again: three Glowsticks come into his room, two of them hovering ominously by his sides as the remaining one touches his forehead with a green hand and occasionally writes down some notes in a notepad on his hip. The process is not entirely unpleasant, just annoying, if only for the fact that during it nobody speaks and if they do, Sasuke’s eyes are covered by a broad adult palm.

Being a child is fucking dumb. But also Sasuke feels like he has never been an adult before, even if his vague memories tell him otherwise.

Earlier today the Ponytail guy came over again, shot a look at Sasuke and talked in hushed tones to the Glowstick all the while turned away from Sasuke so he couldn’t even read the captions to figure out what’s going on.

As soon as he gained mobility and the only time Glowstick has left his clipboard in the general vicinity of Sasuke’s hands, he found out he can’t read fucking Kanji.

This is fucking ridiculous, he thought then. Why don’t they caption the obviously-important to the plot text?

At that point, he was trying to alienate himself from this situation by believing he was the main character of some weird action-adventure kid-friendly movie if only to distract himself from the flashes of red that appeared each time he disassociated for long enough. It was easier to think of everything as a part of a weird play or a dream, rather than a new reality or his personal comatose hell.

Currently, Glowstick has removed his palm from Sasuke’s forehead and has been anxiously scribbling in his clipboard, offering Sasuke no mind. Other Hazmat Suit thugs stood on his sides like statues, ominously staring somewhere above Sasuke’s head.

Wow. This is the shittiest child hospital treatment he had ever experienced in his life.

Then, Glowstick raised his head and stared intently at Sasuke.

‘We think you are good to go, Uchiha-kun,’ his forehead says, before erasing itself and conjuring new words again: ‘We will have weekly checkups on you by Ji-sama, and you are to report if anything is feeling off, okay?’

“Hn,” Sasuke responds, relief washing over him, as he clutches the tomato soup pot in his hands and tries to swing his legs from the bed.

He is abruptly stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

‘--ut before that,’ says Glowstick’s forehead as Sasuke tries to catch up with the text, ‘one more check-up to make sure you are fully alright.’

Sasuke groans and throws himself back on the pillows.

The check-up takes another 3 hours to complete. They check his body, as well as weight and height; someone does weird glowy-hand-thing over his stomach; he has to pee in a cup and spit in a tube before he is allowed to get dressed in his clothes and exit the hospital.

His clothes. 

His clothes are fucking ridiculous.

The wide fucking collar is one thing, but the weird arm bracers took him solid 30 minutes to figure out. When he first saw them he tried to pull them on his legs, which also made no sense, but was more logical than having those just hanging freely on his forearms. He had a pile of bandages–-oh god, he was part of the bandage cult–-so he did the next best thing and wrapped them along his legs just like The Guy From Before did. Sandals were the most offensive thing though, and he struggled to walk on the street the first 10 minutes, getting tiny pebbles stuck either under his toes or beneath his heels.

When he exited the hospital with a pot held firmly in his hands, he finally remembered he did not know where he lived.

Sasuke scowled at the pot as if it was the bane of his existence and not the only good thing to happen to him since he woke up, trembling and disoriented. He looked around and picked a direction with the least people in the street.

What he noticed first was that people were staring at him. Usually, they wouldn’t really pay attention to his face, but focus firmly on his back. He knew his shirt had some weird symbol sewn into it, so he was really wondering at this point if it was some kinda prohibited-swastika-like imagery, as most people had very violent reactions to it.

They all tried to hide it, though.

Few people said hi to him, most of it not even registering in the captions-–he just heard anything vaguely resembling ‘Sah-ske’ and nodded a curt ‘hn’ in their direction before trying to go in a different direction.

He had no idea where he lived. 

This was fucking stupid. He should have asked for directions in the hospital, somehow, or thrown a tantrum so someone would escort him back home.

Then, like a dumb child that he was, Sasuke tripped over his own leg–-stupid sandals–-and started falling, still not releasing a steel-grade grip on the pot. 

Then, someone caught him.

“-- Sasuke-kun?” said the voice tentatively even as Sasuke was smashed into someone’s stomach with his pot making a dent in that person’s crotch.

He carefully peaked up.

Warm brown eyes stared at him in concern, face scrunched up in worry. The guy–man–kid had a scar running along his nose, and chestnut-brown hair tied over his ridiculous tennis headband.

Sasuke gaped.

‘Oh dear,’ said Pretty Face’s forehead as he scrunched his nose in worry. ‘Do you need help getting home?’

Sasuke nodded so hard he might have as well gotten himself a whiplash.

Chapter Text

Pretty Face is at the top of his favourite people of this magic world, Sasuke decides.

Not that the list is very big. He currently has 2 people in there, with Pretty Face winning the podium with no competition, and Forehead Girl being left in the dust. She is still there, though.

Despite the same dumb outfit as The Guy From Before (ugh, uselessly wrapped bandages), Pretty Face exudes sunshine and rainbow and puppies, and Sasuke is already mentally plotting his own adoption by this guy.

Pretty Face doesn’t expect him to initiate physical contact–-in fact, Sasuke wouldn’t want to initiate physical contact with any of these magic weirdos-–, but Sasuke stubbornly pushes his (concerningly) small hand into Pretty Face’s bigger palm.

Pretty Face blushes and stutters something out that Sasuke can’t catch due to being at his side, and not in front of him.

CUTE.

He will find where Pretty Face lives and will make sure to make as much tomato soup as the guy wants. He will need to track down Forehead Girl to ask for a recipe or something.

They start walking in the general direction of where Sasuke was heading–-so the opposite of where Pretty Face was going originally, and Sasuke feels kinda bad for distracting him.

Not for long, though. He is already going through a list of words he tried to memorize while in the hospital to make Pretty Face stay nearby for longer. 

They walk through the streets for some time, and Pretty Face catches up pretty early that Sasuke doesn’t want to talk (or more like Sasuke can’t see what the guy is saying without wracking his head around to look at the man's head), which earns him some more bonus points in competition with Forehead Girl.

They reach his apparent house pretty quickly. It is a very empty but clean district, very distinct from the rest of the town–-village?--by the lack of any human presence here. It is clear that someone keeps it clean and looked-after, but the district still looks alarmingly dead to him, and something grips at his chest, making Sasuke try and swallow around a dry lump in his throat.

They walk through a few of the houses until they reach one of the many traditionally Japanese ones populating the neighbourhood-–he doesn’t really know the name for the type of house, but it looks like something you would expect from a quaint old Japanese town portrayed on a stereotypical tourist postcard.

Then Sasuke notices the shrine near the house.

The same shrine from his maybe-memories, filled with dozens of pictures and drawings. Wilted flowers are positioned right under it, with something like an old incense standing right next to it.

Sasuke abruptly stops, forcing Pretty Face to back down and look at him questioningly.

Sasuke feels like he is trembling, eyes never leaving the shrine. He feels an overwhelming sadness and sorrow and–-anger, so much anger he is burning hot with it, and instead of combusting on the spot he squeezes the older man’s hand in a vice grip.

His ears are ringing as he zeroes on a photo in the middle, depicting an honourable woman and a stern-looking man standing together. His vision starts to blur–-is he crying?--as he desperately clings to both man’s hand and a pot under his armpit.

Then, the ringing is gone. The shrine is gone from his sight as well, as Pretty Face crouches in front of him, sad and soft smile on his lips. He squeezes Sasuke’s hand in return and covers it with his free palm.

Stop, Sasuke thinks desperately, or instead of making you adopt me, I will adopt you myself.

‘It’s alright, Sasuke-kun,’ says Pretty Face’s forehead, even if it is not even remotely alright, but Sasuke appreciates the sentiment. ‘You are safe.’

Shut uppp, he thinks, exasperated. You are too good for this shitty magic world. What are you, a godsent child counsellor?

Sasuke frowns and lowers his gaze to stare at his sandals-clad feet. 

Pretty Face starts talking again and Sasuke promptly snaps his gaze back to the man’s forehead.

‘I am very glad you are back in good health,’ Pretty Face’s forehead says. ‘You scared all of us back there.’

“Hn,” manages Sasuke, trying not to drown in Pretty Face’s eyes.

‘And I will be glad to see you back at the Academy,’ the man continues. He pauses and smiles, his eyes crinkling. ‘Can’t have the potential Rookie of the Year slip his grades.’

Mean, Sasuke thinks, mean, awful man.

He mentally subtracts a few points from Pretty Face’s scoring board. In his mind, Forehead Girl fist-pumps the air.

Good news: he will get to see Pretty Face again since he is a teacher at his Academy. Bad news: he is supposed to be good at whatever the fuck they are doing.

“Hn,” he says, exasperated again, turning his eyes towards the blue sky.

Pretty Face laughs (such a nice sound) and pats Sasuke’s head (he is the only one allowed to ever do this, Sasuke decides), before standing up and releasing Sasuke’s hand (he almost whines at that).

‘I will see you after the break, then,’ Pretty Face beams at him. ‘Have a nice day, Sasuke-kun!’

Please don’t leave, Sasuke wants to say. I will be the best-behaved child you ever met.

“Hn,” he says instead, watching longingly over Pretty Face’s back.

He stares at the pot again, trying very carefully to avoid the shrine, and enters the house.

Tomato soup keeps appearing at his doorstep.

Sometimes it’s with Forehead Girl, sometimes it’s without.

When she is not an addition to the tomato soup, she leaves tiny notes with ugly kiddy drawings (he appreciates the effort) and a bunch of Kanji that is probably either poor attempts at seducing him, or warm wishes of fast recovery.

One time he ate the soup on the doorstep, forgetting to bring the pot inside, and by the next morning the pot has disappeared, which meant–-okay, fucking creepy-–that the Forehead Girl kept appearing at his house at random intervals before he was aware she was there. 

So fucking sneaky. She would make a great ninja, or whatever.

So, he starts leaving notes for her as well.

He wrecks his head for a few hours, scouring his massive (so empty) house for any Kanji 101 books, but ends up writing ‘10/10’ for her in the end, hoping they use the same numerals as real-world Japan. He leaves the pot and the note on his doorstep in the evening, and both are gone by the morning.

Damn, Sasuke thinks, Forehead Girl is really good at ninja-ing.

He manages to catch her at the act a few times, opening the sliding door right as she places the pot down. Each time she blushes so violently he is afraid she would have a brain aneurysm and stutters something that even Forehead Captions don’t translate, so he ends up inviting her inside and treating her to some food other than tomatoes just to repay her for the trouble.

The company is not entirely unwelcome too. She is awkward and mainly annoying, but he recognizes that she is a child with an Eiffel Tower-seized crush, so he does his best to act disinterested in her advances, and interested in whatever she has to say about anything else.

Forehead Girl is an insane source of knowledge on the world around them when she forgets about the crush. Despite Sasuke not being able to answer in more than ‘hn’ and ‘tsk’, he enjoys talking to her (or supporting her monologue) when she completely forgets her initial intentions of being here.

He learns that they are classmates, and their teacher is called Iruka-sensei, and they are less than a year away from graduating from the Academy. She says they will become genin, and worries about who their jonin teacher will be, and what mission and training they will receive. She talks about Ino-Pig and how she will become a better ninja (Sasuke slaps his head so hard Forehead Girl offers him a cold towel afterwards-–fucking MAGIC NINJAS?) than her, and that she hopes she will be in the same team as Sasuke-kun because of the uhhh’s and ahhhh’s and the ummmm well’s.

Sasuke has to reassess which fucking world he lives in now.

He is in a magic-wielding ninja world, and Pretty Face said he is supposed to be good at magic-ninja-ing. 

Sasuke is fucking doomed.

Sasuke makes it to the Academy early. He tried to get as much information as possible from Forehead Girl, but it wasn’t that successful since he couldn’t coherently vocalize his thoughts.

He is still in shock how no one has noticed he can’t speak for shit.

He sits in a half-empty classroom since Forehead Girl insisted on walking with him to class (all the while shooting vile glances at some blonde girl, who in turn almost exploded on the spot). Forehead Girl tried to sit next to him but got dragged off by a furious blonde girl (who, from previous descriptions, is probably the infamous Ino-Pig) to shout at each other in the other corner of the room.

Kids fill the classroom gradually, and no one dares to sit next to Sasuke. He feels kind of offended, but also glad that no one will test his captions-reading abilities this early in the morning.

A very sleepy-looking kid sits behind him and promptly blacks out the moment his head touches the desk. A chubby kid sits nearby Sleepy Kid and acts like that is normal, which it probably is.

Sasuke hears a scream. Both Sleepy and Chubby don’t react.

Sasuke turns his head around and.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He thought he was the protagonist of this world, having the entire, you know, amnesia-coma thing going on for a while now.

He couldn’t have been more wrong in his life.

The intensity of orange is biting his eyes with million little needles, and he has to press his fingers onto his eyes to make sure they are not about to fall out of his skull. The Protagonist Kid is not only annoyingly loud out loud, but annoyingly loud in his appearance as well. He has a head full of wild blond hair, massive blue eyes, and suspiciously whisker-like scratches along his cheeks. His clothing choice is the thing that makes Sasuke want to break his neck just to get away from the sight of it–-a disgustingly orange jacket, similarly disgusting orange pants, and a white soft fuzzy collar, stained with something brown under his chin. He has-–joy-–bandages over his thigh, just like everyone else does (Sasuke thinks he needs to start doing this shit as well just to not be the odd one out), with the same gravity-defying pouch, and a pair of green goggles on his forehead instead of the tennis headband. 

The Protagonist Kid couldn’t have been more protagonist-y unless he somehow had a glowing orange aura around him at any time of day or something, or maybe if he had fox ears and a tail to go with the whiskers.

The sight is appalling.

Sasuke wistfully wishes that this was the kid he hurled on when he first woke up.

“TEME!” screams Protagonist, and his forehead helpfully supplies captions with ‘BASTARD!’ written over little space under the hideous goggles. Sasuke has to squint again just to read what’s written there.

He misses a nice and big blank space of Forehead Girl’s forehead.

“Hn,” supplies Sasuke warily, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“Dobe,” growls Forehead Girl behind the orange monstrosity. Her welcomingly empty forehead translates it as a ‘dumbass’. Sasuke can’t agree more. If he can’t learn the language, he will learn all of the insults and roll with throwing them left and right.

He feels bad for calling Forehead Girl by her assigned nickname, since she has been the sole provider of his tomato-flavoured food over the past week, and vows to learn her name to swap it inside his head.

Protagonist Kid wouldn’t get the same treatment, though. Idiot is too much, and he insists on being the most annoying part of Sasuke’s life.

Forehead Girl at least has been unconsciously filling up blanks of the village- and academy-related things (not to mention the SOUP), and he can deal with her hopeless crush by gently breaking it to her when he figures out how to say more than ‘hn’.

Which reminds him. There are no English-to-Magic Japanese dictionaries, so he is probably fucked.

Maybe he will make her whatever food she likes when he finds out what it is.

Suspiciously, Forehead Girl never mentions anything about herself. It’s only ever the same spiel about Annoying Naruto, Idiot Ino-Pig, and Stressful Graduation.

Protagonist Kid jumps to Sasuke’s desk and snarls at him, which, okay, the fuck did he do to this idiot?

“Doh-be,” Sasuke says blankly, which in his accent sounds off from the ‘dobe’ Forehead Girl produced, but it gets the desired effect–-Protagonist Kid snarls and starts talking, pointing at the spot where Sasuke was sitting.

‘It’s MY SPOT,’ his forehead says in a tiny font, and Sasuke squints, both trying to decipher the text and intending to kill the orange monstrosity before it infects him with whatever it is carrying.

“Hn,” he smirks, placing his elbows firmer on the table, interwinding his fingers in front of his mouth.

Just before Protagonist Kid can bite out something else, someone’s bright shout interrupts the entire debacle.

‘NARUTO,’ says in all caps over Pretty Face’s forehead. ‘SIT DOWN.’

This is the best day of Sasuke’s life. The man of his dreams is his teacher.

This is the worst day of Sasuke’s life. The man of his dreams is his teacher who is gonna assess his apparent prodigious knowledge of the magic ninja world.

Fuck this shit.

Protagonist–-Naruto, wow this is the first name he has learned since waking up, what an amazing and truly protagonist-worthy event-–grumbles something at Pretty Face, but Pretty Face furrows his brows and Naruto mewls, plopping down next to Sasuke.

Oh, joy, he thinks yet again.

The next couple of hours is a massive realization to Sasuke. He finds out that he has muscle memory to write down answers to questions without reading things. It is absolutely insane. He was about to cry just at the sight of a Kanji-filled textbook and worksheet when his hand just started writing on its own.

Thanks for being an almost-protagonist, Sasuke breathes out.

Naruto next to him is not having a good time at all.

Despite being a loudmouthed annoying idiot clad in the worst colour combination (orange with orange), he is still just a kid and visibly struggles to keep up with the lesson. 

Sasuke actually thinks the kid can’t read or write.

What the fuck, Pretty Face, he scowls at his paper, you were supposed to be the chosen one.

At this point, Naruto seemed to disassociate to an extreme–-he kept staring at the book like it was a dismembered corpse, hand clutching his pen like he tried to break it in half.

Sasuke sighs.

He can’t be an asshole towards little kids. He might be a little kid himself, this time around, but he had an advantage of being maybe-comatose, he supposes.

He nudges Naruto with his elbow (and if he nudges him too strongly, so what? Sue him) and when the kid sputters and turns around to shout or spit at an offending classmate, Sasuke silently slides his worksheet towards Naruto.

Naruto glances up and down a couple of times like he can’t comprehend what is happening.

Sasuke risks a sideways glance at his classmate. Naruto looks like he is about to cry.

What, no, wait, Sasuke wants to say, but Naruto bites his lip and violently blinks, before mouthing something that doesn't catch on the captions–-Sasuke thinks it’s a ‘thanks’--and starts copying answers to his own worksheet.

Sasuke sighs. This is a fucking drag.

By the end of the school day, he figures out another thing about his desk-mate. 

The kid is probably homeless, by the state of his clothes and lack of food brought for the lunch break.

Sasuke whips out a container with some tomato soup (he sees how Forehead Girl leers at that), and Naruto next to him takes a sharp inhale. When Sasuke turns to look at him, Naruto pointedly turns away, crossing his arms on his chest and pretending that the empty blackboard is the most interesting thing in this room.

Sasuke sighs again. 

For all the annoyance, he can’t let a child starve in his plain sight.

He grimaces at his soup, mentally checking how much of it is still left at his place (enough to feed an army) and taps Naruto on his forehead with two fingers.

Eyes wide as saucers look at him, ready to punch or scream or do whatever other annoying shit is stored inside Naruto’s brain.

Sasuke misses Forehead Girl, despite her sitting a few rows to the side.

He points at the soup container and pointedly moves it to Naruto’s side of the desk.

The same process as with the worksheet occurs again which makes Sasuke kinda worry about the state of Naruto’s living conditions. Then the kid grasps his hand with his, looking him in the eyes with a bewildered look, and goes down to destroy whatever is left of Sasuke’s precious soup.

All while not releasing the grip on his hand.

Oh no, Sasuke thinks, trying to wriggle his hand free of the hold. 

The gleam in Naruto’s eyes was the same as Sasuke had when he silently decided to be adopted by Pretty Face.

Oh no, Sasuke thinks again, pinching the bridge of his nose.

He should have just stayed in the hospital instead.

Chapter Text

Naruto follows him home.

Sasuke should have expected that.

After Naruto's routine of staying at Sasuke’s side for the rest of the day, eating Sasuke's soup and only hissing out ‘teme’ instead of outright screeching into his face, Sasuke still considered the day as a win. He got to see Pretty Face, and he was not feeling too guilty about abandoning the homeless Protagonist Kid.

He did not expect Naruto to have an instant Forehead Girl-scale fixation on his persona, though.

Sasuke knows Naruto is trailing after him because of some sort of a sixth sense–-he could have written it off as one of the magic-ninja senses, but he thinks it’s an exclusively Naruto-thing. He can’t sense Forehead Girl the same way he senses every move Naruto makes.

He does a big detour just to be annoying, going all around the town--village--town just to see if the orange kid leaves him alone.

He doesn’t.

JOY, Sasuke thinks.

He finally enters the compound, almost dragging his feet, keeping his eyes firmly on the ground. The emptiness of the streets made him uneasy often enough, but a single sight of a shrine right next to his door usually rendered him a wailing and raging mess within seconds.

Sasuke did not want to know what that entailed. He had his suspicions, but with the Academy, info-dumping from Forehead Girl, and the overall ‘holy shit magic ninjas’-schtick still booming bright-red at the back of his mind, he did not want to know anything about what happened to the rest of the residents of his neighbourhood.

He had finally reached his door and stopped at the porch. It was surprisingly pot-free (no way Forehead had any time to place more soup on his steps–-she came to pick him up in the morning, spent the entire day in his class, and he waved her a goodbye when he was leaving the Academy barely 10 minutes ago). Tiny hairs at the nape of his neck feel electrified by the presence of someone else (Naruto, his mind sighs) somewhere behind him.

Sasuke enters his house and leaves the door wide open.

He is in the kitchen heating up more soup when he hears shuffling behind him.

Sasuke grips a spoon he was using to re-mix the creamy substance and turns around.

Naruto looks like a sad wet dog–-or fox, not like he has seen many foxes before–-as he sputters at Sasuke’s intense gaze directed right at him. 

‘I was TRAINING,’ his forehead supplies in the same tiny font, having most of the real estate space occupied by the goggles, ‘TEME.’

“Hn,” Sasuke rolls his eyes and turns back to stirring the soup.

Sasuke waits a few seconds, as if considering, and opens his mouth again.

“Dough-be,” he mutters under his breath, still not sure how Forehead pronounced the word.

Naruto screeches something behind him, and Sasuke pays it little to no mind–-he thinks about the homework he had received from Pretty Face (so cruel and yet so pretty), and unconsciously gets gloomier and gloomier.

The muscle memory thing worked out alright at the lessons today. Maybe it was an old material or something Sasuke’s body had learned on the side-–but the fact was, he will never get past the graduation exam.

Naruto shouts something behind him. Sasuke chooses to ignore that as well.

He pulls out two bowls and fills each with some heated-up soup (seriously, Forehead should forget about the entire magic ninja career and go into cooking, she’d make a mean Gordon Ramsey counterpart of the ninja world). Sasuke then turns around and places both bowls on the table right in front of a stinky orange kid.

Naruto actually stunk. Fuck. Was it him or the outfit that needed washing?

Sasuke scrunched up his nose. The foul smell will mess up with the delicious aroma of tomatoes, so despite it being a personally-Naruto problem, this was now a personally-Sasuke problem.

“Hn,” he gestured at Naruto vaguely, trying to convey in one gesture how fucking disgusting the other boy was.

Sasuke then pinched his nose and waved a free hand in front of his face.

Naruto went berserk.

He almost destroyed the table holding the precious soup by how violently he jumped on his feet ('WHAT DO YOU MEAN I STINK' shows on Naruto's sweaty forehead in the tiniest font possible--could it be that the size of font corresponded with one's mental capacity? The world will never know). Sasuke points a finger at Naruto and dangerously narrows his eyes.

“Tsk,” he says full-heartedly.

Sasuke then grasps Naruto’s hand despite the other boy gawking some random jumbled Magic Japanese at him, and drags the kid towards the bathroom.

He ends up drawing a bath for the idiot. Sasuke is not gonna supervise the bathing process, thank you very much, but at least he will make Naruto uncomfortable enough for him to take the opportunity to actually bathe. That seemed to be the only way to push the homeless fox-kid to do anything even closely related to self-care.

Not like Sasuke was an expert at self-care, actually. He had his tomato soup. At his worst, when the maybe-memories of blood, and red eyes, and his maybe-mom being stabbed by one of her most precious people start overwhelming him, Sasuke just walks in long strides around his house, eyes wide and unseeing, bumping into walls and sparse furniture. 

He thinks the next step would be hiking up the local Mount Rushmore and getting lost somewhere in the woods.

Naruto hesitates. He stares at a bath as if he had never seen water before in his life. Sasuke scoffs and ducks out, dashing towards his bedroom and pulling out his own clothes at random.

He returns to the bathroom to see Naruto trying to break his own fingers with how hard he is pulling at them, still fully absorbed by the vision of a bathtub. Sasuke groans and taps on Naruto’s forehead with his fingers again, showing him the fresh clothes and tugging at a disgusting orange suit that the kid refused to get washed.

‘I wash it once a month!’ Naruto sputters and his forehead catches up with wobbly letters. ‘Jiji makes me wash it once a month!’

Clearly, that isn’t enough, Sasuke face radios in Naruto’s direction as he scrunches his nose and rolls his eyes.

The kid smelled like a wet dog. It was fucking disgusting.

Sasuke made a point of tugging fox-face’s jacket upwards, making the other squeak and turn red.

‘---- will undress!’ Sasuke barely catches whatever Naruto was saying. ‘Back off!’

That was fine in Sasuke’s book. He rolls his eyes, biting another “hn” out, and drops the fresh clothes onto a sputtering Naruto, before retreating back to the kitchen. He had a soup to eat and an entire textbook of fucking Kanji to decipher.

By the time Naruto is out, Sasuke is nowhere close to figuring out what the fuck he is supposed to do with his homework. Pretty Face said to do assignments 15 to 21, but apparently staring at them with a killing intent did nothing to improve his understanding of Magic Japanese.

That was when Naruto had emerged from the bathroom, looking mostly the same, but smelling like the finest almond milk Sasuke's shampoo could offer. Plus, he is wearing Sasuke's clothes now. They probably look like disfigured twins from the side.

‘--e y–u –appy now?’ the kid asked, pouting and crossing his arms at his chest. Without the goggles, some of the hair was falling onto his forehead, obscuring the captions, but at least those were easier to read than the teeny-tiny text from before.

“Hn,” Sasuke says approvingly, directing his gaze to the remaining plate of a tomato soup.

If Naruto is not going to eat it in the next 30 seconds, Sasuke will gladly devour it himself.

Naruto huffs and puffs behind a giant collar of Sasuke’s blue shirt, and plops down as if he wants to be anywhere but here. He then proceeds to annihilate 6 portions of Sasuke’s (Forehead’s) soup, continuously blabbering about even more random things than whatever Forehead Girl had ever said.

No, Sasuke thinks. No adoptions. This is the only time I let this dumbass into my house, period.

A shocked gasp attracts both of their attention to the entrance into the kitchen.

Forehead Girl stands there, clutching yet another pot of tomato soup (winner of the best child award, Sasuke decides). She stares in pure shock–-or maybe horror?--at Naruto, who did not stop slurping down the soup, his back still turned to Forehead.

Sasuke guesses it is quite a sight to behold, from Forehead's perspective.

Naruto is clean for a change and doesn’t smell like someone dragged him through a pile of mud. He is wearing Sasuke’s clean shirt (earlier this week Sasuke found out that he owned about 15 versions of the same shirt he wore every day. He also owned 15 versions of ugly arm bracers, so there was no easy excuse to ditch them completely) and Sasuke’s clean shorts. Fox Kid’s face is covered in red tomato juice as he did not bother to clean himself after any of the bowls after eating out of them like a stray dog. Behind Naruto sits Sasuke, clutching homework paper as if it offended him in some kind of intricate way. Behind Sasuke, three empty pots stand completely free of any tomato soup.

Naruto finally turns around, getting distracted from the bowl by finishing its contents. Sasuke can practically see how gears are shifting inside Forehead’s head. Then, the feral child screams.

“SAKURA-CHAN!” Sasuke can’t see Naruto’s forehead, but he hears the phrase loud enough. 

Naruto yells something else and Forehead Girl’s face turned the similar shade of red Sasuke grew accustomed to, only this time her face scrunches into a truly murderous grimace.

Sasuke sighs.

Despite wanting to bash Naruto’s head in, he feels like he has to be a responsible adult between the three of them. Forehead looks like she can kill the blondie with her pinky finger alone, and Sasuke doesn't need his kitchen to turn into a crime scene.

Forehead–-sorry, Sakura-–is a godsend, Sasuke decides.

Somehow, she's gotten herself roped into helping Naruto with his homework--probably just for the sake of staying within Sasuke's vicinity, seeing as the fox-face was not about to leave anytime soon. Sasuke’s weird almost-protagonist reflexes apparently work with his homework as well, hand automatically shaping up words that he doesn’t know how to read.

Instead of focusing on his weirdly possessed hands, he listens-–or, well, reads–what Sakura has to say to Naruto.

She is explaining Chakra theory, completely exasperated, and Naruto looks at her wild-eyed, looking like he is either struggling to stay awake or struggling NOT to ask more questions the moment Sakura shuts up. His questions should be a part of a Kahoot-version for Chakra theory test. Most of them are so ridiculous even Sasuke facepalms himself, despite knowing the least out of three.

Despite his hands doing their absolute best to keep Sasuke as the Top Rookie of the Year, he still understands close to nothing about the magic ninja world.

Nature Chakra fascinates him. Fuuinjutsu sounds fucking terrifying with the extent of what can be done with it. Taijutsu sounds like suicidal Judo.

Thank fuck for Forehead Girl, Sasuke mentally sighs, protectively hoarding the newly-brought pot into the corner of his massive kitchen.

At some point, when Sakura is explaining henges to clueless Naruto (and Sasuke), the idiot manages to break Sasuke's favourite bowl while transforming into an oversexualized Playboy magazine cover, and Sasuke has to remind himself that murdering children is a bad thing as his eye twitches uncontrollably.

He is then saved by Sakura making a possible dent in Naruto’s skull.

Sasuke silently stands up and goes to fetch a first-aid kit.

Sasuke regrets ever helping Naruto out.

He is getting stalked on a daily basis.

While in the Academy, Naruto somehow manages to sneak up to take a spot right next to Sasuke (fucking ninja kids) every single time. Orange monstrosity never leaves him during training sessions in the Academy’s yard, glueing himself to Sasuke’s side the moment he raises his ass from his seat in the classroom. 

This leaves Sasuke with zero time to spend glued to Pretty Face's side. He will take any extra assignments just to have Pretty Face beam at him as brightly as he did when they first met.

After classes, Naruto has some decency to pretend to go home-–or wherever the kid lives–-but Sasuke can feel Naruto trailing after him up until the compound, with the kid positioning himself somewhere on a tree right across the godforsaken shrine. 

The first time Sasuke had noticed it he glared at the trees where Naruto was supposedly perched up until the kid jumped down with a tiny and miserable whine and a pout, pretending he was actually just passing by and did not intend to follow Sasuke home.

Yeah, right, Sasuke scowls at himself. Just passing through a dead neighbourhood. Very believable.

He keeps leaving his door open just so the dumbass won’t freeze his ass off on the tree branch.

Somehow, Forehead-–no, Sakura–-also takes it as an invitation to freely go inside Sasuke’s house instead of doing the awkward soup-note exchange.

Sasuke decides that he has to move. Most of the houses in the district are empty anyway, so he can just pick whichever one is the furthest away from the shrine.

One day, right after taijutsu practice at the Academy (and wasn’t that fucking nice for his body to automatically react to thrown punches the same way his hand writes down test answers. Sasuke considers it a superpower, even if during the fights, as his body switches to autopilot he is screaming in his head throughout the entire training session, terrified of being in the way of punches), Naruto shows up at his door and breathes heavily for some time, before going back to his favoured spot at the tree. Sasuke had been in his room, laying prone on his futon and staring blankly at the ceiling, trying not to think that his room is the closest to the shrine outside. He lets out an exasperated sigh and raises up, going out to check on the idiot again.

He almost trips over a shape on his porch, barely catching himself before staring dumbly at his feet.

It's a pot.

Orange pot with little cats drawn over its sides.

He crouches near it and opens the lid.

Dude, Sasuke thinks.

It's tomato soup alright. It looks less creamy than whatever Sakura makes, its colour more green than red, but he knows his tomatoes now and can confidently say that this is at least an attempt at tomato soup.

He dips his finger into the pot before licking it.

It's--it's not good, not even remotely, too bitter where it should have been a mix between sweet and salty. Sasuke carefully lifts his head and stares deadpan at Naruto's favoured tree.

Oh god, Sasuke thinks, mortified. These fucking kids are trying to tame and bribe him with food like some kind of a glorified wild dog.

He puts the lid back on and raises to his feet again, blinking at Naruto's Tree, dumbfounded. 

"Hn," he gestures at the tree accusingly with the pot, before motioning with his head for Naruto to come the fuck down and follow him into his house.

He doesn't wait for the idiot to show himself and turns around. There is some sniffling and shuffling behind him as Sasuke walks through the empty halls of his home. He will feed the dumbass again since he apparently spent all of his stipend on ingredients for a fucking soup. For a tomato soup. For Sasuke. That Sasuke likes. That Sakura and Naruto are tolerating to eat whenever they show up at his place uninvited (their fault they keep coming back, Sasuke scoffs), since no one else is as tomato-thirsty as Sasuke is.

The Soup. The recipe for which Sakura refuses to share, and Sasuke suspects she thinks he will stop talking to her (well, hn-ing at her) if she is not "useful" to him anymore. The recipe that Naruto tried to figure out himself to appear useful to Sasuke too.

Why is he the most socially adjusted person in this group, Sasuke ponders mildly, placing the orange (UGH) pot as far away from the rest of the heaven-worthy soups on his kitchen counter. 

When Sasuke turns around with two bowls filled with Sakura's version of the soup, Naruto is already sitting at the table, looking earnest and eager, eyes gleaming happily in the kitchen lights.

Sasuke mentally adds a note to figure out Naruto's favourite dish together with Sakura's. For all that these two seem to spend all of their free time at his place, they never really talk about themselves.

Sasuke regrets ever helping Naruto out.

He should have known it was ramen. 

Picking some umeboshi for Sakura was easy enough, even if he died trying to explain to the shop owner's forehead what he needed to buy, wildly pointing behind him and making wrung-out 'hn' noises.

Maybe it is not too late to jump off of Mount Faux-more. The second head on the mountain looked very appealing to be thrown off of right about now.

Naruto was at his fifth bowl as Sasuke decided his kindness only extends this far; he has done his share of being an attentive friend and will start shutting his door to prevent Idiot and Sakura from getting inside whenever they wanted. He still has to squint hard at Naruto's forehead each time the kid spoke as there was very little space for the captions due to either his fringe or the goggles, and that could lead to an early vision decline.

Yes, Sasuke decided, that's a good enough reason. He is just conscious about his health. And the kids should learn some fucking boundaries.

He never ends up closing the door.

He stops thinking about the shrine as often, too.

Chapter Text

‘Class,’ says Pretty Face’s forehead captions as the man heaves an exasperated sigh. ‘Class!’

Sasuke squints at him from his spot in the classroom, regretting not picking a seat closer to the teacher’s desk. At this rate he will need to get a prescription for glasses, and wouldn’t that be a fun thing to experience, explaining to Hazmat Suit doctors his soon-to-be near-sightedness with his very limited vocabulary.

He is perched at his spot with elbows firmly set on top of the desk and fingers intertwined in front of his mouth because Sasuke had learned over the past maybe-month-and-a-half that appearing anything but unreachable and distant would attract a flock of tiny girls who would dreamily breathe down his neck. Not that they are not doing that already, mind you, but the intensity of breathing would increase tenfold.

Sasuke is still not sure why he is the target of their prepubescent attention when they got Pretty Face hovering in front of them on a daily basis. If he could afford to sigh dreamily at Pretty Face without breaking his carefully crafted anti-fangirl defenses, he absolutely fucking would.

The class around him is in a state of total mayhem. Apparently (he missed it before because he can’t keep his attention on Pretty Face’s forehead all the time if he still wants to do well in the Academy), they are having a Big Badass Ninja come over to the class today to spread the word about the magical world of Magic Judo, and Idiot had been excited about this the entire morning, vibrating in his spot next to Sasuke. Naruto has been especially annoying today, going on and on about how he will make the Big Badass Ninja his mentor and will train to be super strong and will show everyone that he is cool and Hokage-worthy material and no one will bully him again or call him a monster or yadda yadda yadda.

Sasuke wasn’t sure why someone would call Naruto a monster–-sure, his clothing choices have been interesting and Sasuke still flinched when he caught the orange blob in his peripheral vision, and yes, sure, Naruto was an annoying dumbass with half a brain cell and a permanent look of a bewildered animal, but.

Not a monster material.

He did not leave his dead neighbourhood often, walking exclusively between the grocery store, the Academy, and the compound again. Considering Sasuke woke up in this comatose-dream-dimension because he was outside and hit by a passing magic criminal that wasn’t stopped by the ninja police, he couldn’t trust anyone not to hit him over the head again. If he would get involved in another Jutsu Incident and wake up in a different world, Sasuke will genuinely break down.

Besides, he finally found some company in Sakura and Idiot, both of them not expecting Sasuke to talk much if not at all, and he couldn’t give up on tomato soup just yet. 

Also, Pretty Face. 

So no, Sasuke did not know why Naruto was called a monster enough times for him to decide to become a face on Mount Rushmore. Maybe he needs to go out more often, or something.

He risks a glance at a gushing girl on a row next to him.

Perhaps not.

‘-- LASS!’ Sasuke whips his head around just to catch the erasing letters from Pretty Face’s forehead. 

Pretty Face has got a Disappointed Mother look on his face, hands braced on his desk as he surveys quieted down children.

‘I am so,’ he sounds pissed off, ‘DISAPPOINTED in you.’

Wow, thinks Sasuke. If the kids will even attempt to disrupt the silence again he will strangle them himself just to not hear the words ‘disappointed in you’ come out of Pretty Face’s mouth–-uhh, forehead–-ever again.

Sasuke shrinks down in his seat, even if the words weren’t directed at him specifically. He’d do anything to wipe off that look off of Pretty Face’s face. Maybe he should bring him some tomato soup as well.

He’s sure Sakura won’t mind that he is distributing her culinary genius left and right. Everyone should know that she is the next top chef of Konoha.

Pretty Face pinches the bridge of his nose and looks over the class again.

‘At any point now a Jonin will come to give you lot some tips on taijutsu training,’ his forehead says as the man continues to sound like a scolding matriarch. ‘I expect you all to behave yourself and pay close attention to what our guest has to say. He is one of the most elite Jonins of Konoha, and you can learn a lot from him as a graduating class.’

Everyone nods minutely, still sitting sheepishly in their seats.

‘Now–,’ starts appearing on Pretty Face’s forehead as the door slides open and Sasuke’s world turns upside-down again.

He has to rub his eyes because this can’t be fucking right.

He mentally apologizes to Naruto for calling his fashion choices a disaster.

Sasuke has no words to describe what he sees right now.

Bowlcut is the thing he notices right away. It’s a shiny thing, bobbing up and down as the man all but runs into the classroom. The giant bushy brows are the next point that Sasuke’s gaze fixates on, and he audibly groans-–there is no fucking WAY he will see ANY captions with what little space Fashion Disaster has on his forehead. He would have to have Naruto be his personal interpreter for the duration of this Meet-and-Greet event–-no, scratch that, he will ask Sakura to do it, with her nice and big and blank canvas of a forehead.

The intensity of green of Fashion Disaster’s clothes is… concerning. He is wearing an honest-to-god green jumpsuit and a similar shade to Naruto’s everything leg warmers. A stupid local flak jacket that no adult seems to ever take off is practically blending with the jumpsuit, and if Sasuke squints hard enough that his vision starts to swim, the Horrible Jonin turns into a massive blob of disgusting green.

Horrible Jonin is wearing his tennis headband as a belt, which--thank fuck, that leaves at least a little space on his forehead unoccupied. 

There is a distinct lack of stupidly wrapped bandages on his persona.

Of course, Sasuke sighs, the only person not subjected to the Bandage Cult is the weirdest fucker in the town.

‘--lo Gai,’ says Pretty Face’s forehead when Sasuke gathers his marbles that were scattered when the Horror has entered the room.

“HELLO IRUKA-SENSEI,” and Sasuke nearly suffers from whiplash from how fast he turns his head to gape at the green monster.

There are–-there are no captions. He is hearing Horrible Jonin’s honest-to-god voice, speaking in English. Sasuke pinches his hand and hisses when nothing happens.

“HOW TRULY WONDERFUL IT IS TO BE AMONG SO MUCH YOUTHFUL POWER,” booms the apparition.

There is something wrong with his voice, though-–it’s like there are two voices and two sets of speech saying different things as if English is overlapping Magic Japanese, as if like…

The green monster is dubbed . The only person to ever speak English to Sasuke is the most hideous and horrible ninja he has seen in this village.

‘--u a– –ree to –art whenever you’re ready,’ supplies Pretty Face’s forehead as Sasuke still stares, dumbfounded, at a horriblehorrible horrible green beneath the bowl cut.

“YOSH,” screams Sasuke’s nightmare.

I am going to die, he thinks.

“MY NAME IS MAITO GAI,” holy shit, “KONOHA’S SUBLIME GREEN BEAST OF PREY! IT IS AN HONOUR TO BE INVITED TO SHARE THE WILL OF FIRE WITH SO MANY YOUTHFUL FRIENDS!”

Green Monster's name is Guy . Sasuke thinks he is hallucinating because surely nothing that is happening right now can be real.

“WE SHALL TRAIN TOGETHER TO MAKE FAIR SHINOBI OUT OF YOU WITH HARD WORK AND BURNING PASSION OF THE WILL OF FIRE!” Guy keeps screaming as he strikes a pose and gives the entire classroom a wink and a thumbs up. “I SHALL SHARE MY YOUTHFULNESS WITH MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS OR I SHALL RUN AROUND THE VILLAGE ONE HUNDRED TIMES ON MY HANDS!”

Sasuke sneaks a glance at Sakura, finding her as terrified as he is, staring in horror at Guy who is still striking a dramatic pose at them. Sasuke shifts his gaze at Naruto and–-

Oh JOY, Sasuke screams inside his head.

Naruto’s eyes are wide open and he is looking like he just got a free pass to eat ramen for free for the rest of his life. His eyes are gleaming and he is actually visibly vibrating in his spot, hands clenched in fists as he does a vaguely more exciting version of I-need-to-pee dance.

Sasuke has to hide. With Naruto’s attachment problems Sasuke is going to get dragged right to Green Horror’s side by the kid and he will remain there for the rest of the horrible, no-good training session.

Inviting this Guy was mean, Pretty Face, Sasuke sulks, mean, awful, terrible Pretty Face.

“WE SHALL PROCEED TO THE TRAINING GROUNDS,” booms Guy, and Naruto is the first one up from his seat, excitedly babbling something with his head turned away from Sasuke.

Then, to Sasuke’s horror, Idiot clasps his hand around Sasuke’s wrist in a death-grip.

And drags him to the Green Guy before anyone else has managed to rise to their feet.

Sasuke locks eyes with Sakura who looks positively mortified, all colour gone from her face. She mouths something that no one would ever be able to hear from that far away, but her forehead gets a message across clearly enough.

‘I’M SORRY, SASUKE-KUN,’ it says.

Someone is going to end up dead by the end of today. Sasuke has a strong suspicion it is going to be him.

Chapter Text

“Hn!” Sasuke exclaimed, trying to stall Idiot by twisting his hand out of another boy’s grasp and planting his feet firmer on the ground, successfully preventing Naruto from running forward and making him stumble and turn around to look at Sasuke questioningly.

‘Come onnnn,’ Naruto’s forehead says in his trademark tiny font. ‘I have to show him how cool I am, dattebayo!’

You are not cool, Sasuke wants to say. You live in a tree near my house and feed off of instant noodle soup. I had to force you into a bathtub earlier this month. You don’t brush your teeth! Have you seen what you are wearing?!

“Hn,” Sasuke rolls his eyes and stuffs his hands into his pockets. There is no way he is staying at Naruto’s side when the barking atrocity of a man is this close to them. Sasuke’s self-preservation instincts are screaming at him inside his head–-even if the Green Guy was not speaking in double-voiced English, he would rather stay the fuck away from him anyway.

‘Please, Sasuke-chan,’ Sasuke sputters, glowering at Naruto’s begging eyes, ‘I have to make Bushy Brows Sensei my sensei to become a strong Hokage!’

Yeah, right.

Sasuke was still not sure about the entire -kun, -chan and -sama addons to everybody’s names, but he is pretty sure the -chan bit was reserved for girls and toddlers.

The last time he checked, he wasn’t a toddler. Just because of that, next time Naruto occupies the Naruto Tree in Sasuke’s neighbourhood, he is not going to leave the door open for him.

He thunks his fist on Naruto’s head, making the kid hiss with internationally-understandable ‘ow ow ow’ and swings his hands upwards, irritated, punctuating everything he thinks about Naruto becoming the president and Green Guy being a sensible sensei with a sharply bitten “hn” .

‘Pleeeease, Sasuke,’ Naruto’s forehead says in a wobbly sequence. Kid looks downright miserable right now, and were Sasuke a bigger person, he’d sigh and take Naruto’s hand and drag him to the Green Monster himself.

Sasuke wasn’t a bigger person. Sasuke wanted to stay the fuck away from that Guy guy.

Then, Naruto slinks up to him like a kicked puppy, eyes big and determined despite the overall sad-dog vibe. He blinks at Sasuke, unusually firm, but still looks like an awkward and miserable moron that Sasuke basically picked up off the street a month ago.

‘When I make the Hokage,’ his forehead says, ‘when I make the Hokage, I will make sure that no other kid is bullied or kicked out of the grocery store.’

Sasuke has questions. Sasuke has also never seen Naruto this determined in his life.

He sighs. The things he does for the well-being of weird ninja-children.

“Hn,” he grumbles and grasps Naruto’s hand as the Idiot instantly turns back into his cheery dumb self.

They stalk after Green Guy, leaving most of their classmates behind.

“YOSH,” shouts Guy and Sasuke cringes again.

This entire double-voiced schtick was getting old, fast .

He spies Sakura standing behind with the rest of their classmates, huddled with Ino-Pig (he had never seen them standing this close to each other with all the angry catfighting both girls have been doing), and wishes he was hiding behind her, or something. She’s been taller than him by an inch or two when she wasn’t huddling to seem like a meeker version of herself, and with how hard Sasuke had seen her punch Naruto during the few impromptu study sessions the three of them held at Sasuke’s house, he’s sure she’d stand a better chance against the horrible Guy guy than him.

He and Naruto are standing in front row, though.

Naruto is still vibrating with excitement at the prospect of getting a sensei out of this weirdo. Sasuke just wants to go back to trailing circles around his empty neighbourhood.

“TO BE A TAIJUSTU MASTER YOU MUST KNOW THE VALUE OF A HEALTHY WARM-UP!” Green monstrosity strikes a pose by planting his feet wide on the ground and putting one hand on his hip, the other clenched in a fist in front of his face. “TO SEAL THE YOUTHFUL POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, I WISH FOR YOU TO SPLIT INTO PAIRS FOR A MOST FRIENDLY RIVALRY COMPETITION OF THREE-LEGGED VILLAGE-WIDE RACE!”

No no no no. Fuck no.

Sasuke wishes he could just magic himself out of this shit by just vanishing into thin air like he had seen some Flak Jacket Ninjas do.

‘YES, GAI-SENSEI,’ says Naruto’s forehead as he grips Sasuke’s hand tighter.

I think the fuck not, snarls Sasuke in his head, attempting to shake off the dumbass again.

He hears his classmates whine behind him and covers his eyes with his free hand even as Naruto keeps bouncing on his heels and jolting Sasuke’s entire frame up and down.

This would be a good time for some enemy ninja to hit him with another Jutsu Accident, Sasuke bitterly thinks, groaning into his hand. 

Naruto starts blabbering away and Sasuke doesn’t even have the strength to lift his head to look at Idiot’s forehead to decipher what other dumb idea his half-a-braincell came up with.

He “hn”s in response, not bothering to check if his intonation was right for whatever Naruto had said.

Their classmates are reluctantly slipping into pairs--he sees Sleepy and Chubby stand close to each other with Ino-Pig deciding that Sakura is not the worst bet to be paired with; Dog Kid shuffles closer to Zombie Eye Girl as she keeps shooting shy glances to oblivious Idiot. Everyone rearranges silently, seemingly still not sure how to act around a Force-of-Nature Jonin that keeps beaming at everyone, still keeping a sharp eye on them.

This guy is trouble, something whispers inside Sasuke’s head. No way was he was acting this ridiculously loud for nothing. Ninja world was dangerous and weird, and if this Guy guy could afford to be that loud with all the magic criminals and redredred of dead neighbourhoods, he meant trouble. 

“AH, MY YOUNG STUDENT,” Guy guy smiles sharply into the crowd behind them. “IT SEEMS LIKE YOU ARE LACKING A PAIR FOR OUR FIRE-FULL RACE.”

Sasuke glances in silent question at Naruto but his forehead is carefully clean of any comments. Wrong fucking time to say absolutely nothing, Idiot, thinks Sasuke.

“PERHAPS YOU COULD PAIR WITH THESE TWO YOUNG WILLS OF FIRE!” Sasuke nearly collapses as a heavy and broad palm slaps on his shoulder. Naruto is not fending any better, wobbling in place as Guy guy’s other arm insists to push him to the ground. 

Guy is… crying now? Yes, those are definitely tears in his eyes. Everything about the green monster feels off and Sasuke will never wish to be left alone in the same room as this Jonin.

“YOSH! THE SAKURA TREES ARE BLOOMING EARLIER THIS YEAR AND SPRING IS NEARLY UPON US; SUCH FIERCE BOND BETWEEN FRIENDS WILL BRING OUT THE TRUE MEANING OF THE SPRINGTIME OF OUR YOUTH!” 

‘--s -u- -ay –ai- an,’ says a tiny space on the weird kid’s forehead that is not hidden by a gray headband. 

In fact, most of the Weird Kid’s body is hidden away by a massive gray coat. Sasuke isn’t sure he had ever seen his face with a collar wider than his own, and round glasses perched upon his nose.

Fuck. Sasuke will have to request people to fucking undress before they start talking to him. Way to earn the title Pervert of the Year, instead of the Rookie one.

‘Say, say, Gai-sensei!’ appears on Naruto’s forehead in bold letters. ‘I and the Bastard don’t need another teammate!’

Ah. Maybe Naruto doesn’t know Sasuke’s name, with his trouble writing and all.

Sasuke still punches him in the shoulder for good measure.

“NONSENSE!” Guy guy strikes a pose again. “IT IS TRULY A GLORIOUS DAY TO EXPERIENCE THE VIRTUES OF SOLID TEAMWORK! TO FEEL THE BURN OF EACH OTHER’S WILL OF FIRE! TO–”

Sasuke just tries to drown out the voice by sighing and casting another glance at the Weird Kid.

‘--urame Shi–o,’ he manages to narrow his eyes fast enough to catch the writing on the Weird Kid’s forehead. ‘Pl– -re to –e acq– –d.’

This is even worse than he imagined. Sasuke can barely read what the Kid is saying.

“Uzumaki Naruto,” Sasuke doesn’t even need to see Idiot’s forehead for that, “... , dattebayo!”

Whatever he said after his name was probably the same thing about becoming Hokage. 

“Hn,” Sasuke offers tentatively, as both gazes turn to him. “Uh.”

‘Bastard’s name is Sasuke!’ finishes for him Naruto’s forehead, apparently fully taking in his role as Sasuke’s personal translator.

‘Uchiha-san,’ nods probably-Urame Shio. 

Sasuke just hopes Urame guy doesn’t speak too much so his forehead caption-display wouldn’t overstrain itself. It seems to manage short sentences well enough.

He nods in return, deciding to just keep his mouth shut. Naruto can manage the talking for both of them.

“WE WILL BE FOLLOWING THE FLAG-MARKED TRAIL THROUGH THE VILLAGE TO THE NEXT TRAINING GROUND!” booms Guy guy’s unsettling double-voice. “AND THE FIRST TO TAKE THE JOYOUS BURDEN OF VICTORY WILL GET THE PRIZE OF DOING A 50-LAP EXERCISE ROUTINE WITH ME!”

Fuck no, Sasuke thinks, he is making sure his team is coming dead last.

Kids around him groan and someone slumps to the ground while not even remotely apologetic Pretty Face starts handing out ribbons for kids to tie their legs together with.

‘What is our STRATEGY?’ Naruto asks with the same excited gleam in his eyes as he turns to preen at both Urame Shio and Sasuke. ‘We have to make it there first!’

You are kidding me, Sasuke tries to project at Idiot through a grimace.

“Hn,” he rolls his eyes and looks at Urame as he starts speaking again.

‘-e mus– posit–n o–selves by –ur he–ight,’ Urame decides. ‘Why? B- –ause -e –eed to –atch o– –r stride –ength.’

‘Cool!’ Idiot smiles broadly. ‘--nd then I can say which legs go first because I’m a team captain, obviously!’

Sasuke regards Naruto with the most unimpressed look, trying to convey that nothing about the Idiot is captain-worthy. When he manages to shower on his own without Sasuke forcing his hissing form into a bathtub, maybe then he will reassess his decision.

‘--at i– – -ood id– a,’ nods Urame Shio. ‘Why? So –e –re in sync.’

Naruto looks at Urame with the same childish wonder as he looked at Sasuke when he agreed to participate in Idiot’s stupid antics. Naruto would seriously need to work on his attachment issues if he continues to turn into a puppy each time someone throws some backhanded praise at him.

“Hn,” Sasuke nods. They are clearly at a disadvantage, having three people tied together instead of two, but that is a very good thing--the less there is a chance to get to the finish line first for an exclusive training with Green Horror, the better.

‘--e sh– –ld tie –ur non- –ominant legs –ether,’ Shio decides. ‘Why? Bec–’

‘I know, I know!’ Naruto interrupts. ‘So in case we can’t walk fast enough we can just jump on our dominant legs to the finish line, ‘ttebayo!’

Nope.

Sasuke will just lay down and let these two drag him to the finish line. 

In the end, Sasuke was in the worst possible position.

They put him in the middle , with Urame on his left and Naruto on his right.

Urame wasn’t half as bad as Sasuke had initially expected, but squinting hard to figure out what he was talking about due to close to no forehead space meant Sasuke’s head was pounding. He needs to come up with a convincing story to make sure no one wears anything on their heads when he is in their general vicinity.

Naruto kept bouncing up and down on Sasuke’s right, and only magic ninja Gods know how the ribbons didn’t get untied or ripped off with this much aggressive enthusiasm.

The three of them wobbled to the starting line, where most of their other classmates were already ready to go. The gates out of the training yard of the Academy were turned into a full-on spectacle--as the kids stood in one long line, tied to each other, random passersby stopped at the fence, curiously watching at the entire debacle. They were probably paying more attention to an overly-energetic Gai more than anyone else, who started doing push-ups on his pinky fingers at some point because apparently, they were all taking way too long.

Pretty Face was looking at all of this with a tiny smile. Sasuke hadn't decided if the smile was mildly apologetic, mildly mean, or mildly concerned.

Maybe it was all three combined.

“YOSH!” Guy guy clasped his hands together and stood in front of them outside the Academy yard, hands planted on his hips and another wide ( mad, Sasuke thinks) smile on his face. “I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST OF LUCK! SHALL YOU MAKE MANY RIVALS ON THIS JOURNEY OF SPRINGTIME SPIRITFULL-NESS!”

Sasuke can’t contain a groan.

Kill him.

He shoots a look back at Pretty Face who smiles at him warmly despite being the meanest, nastiest person present in the yard.

“--et, set,” what, no, wait, he missed the first cue? “GO!”

Rogue magic criminals, Sasuke prays as everyone rushes forward and he is, too, pulled outside the yard with Naruto in a tow, I am here, giving you my full consent to curse me into the next dimension. 

Chapter Text

They don’t make it further than the first Flag Mark about 100 meters from where they’ve started, which is an achievement in itself.

Walking, not even to mention running while having half of his limbs rendered useless by being tied to a struggling person (and one unnaturally still one) proved to be more difficult than Sasuke had anticipated.

The three of them stumble around even as Urame Shio struggles to match his pace to Idiot’s and Sasuke’s awkward flailing.

Naruto wants to run ; the dumbass had completely forgotten about his idea of being a team captain and counting the steps to keep them all in sync. He just rushes forward, eyes wide and betrayed when he stumbles as if he did not anticipate having to wait for the rest of their team. Sasuke keeps his silent promise to stall them all as if his life depends on it, and deliberately chooses the slowest pace to avoid the Green Horror. He will make sure to keep all of them on their feet instead of tumbling right down like Dog Kid and Zombie Girl did behind them.

Surprisingly, Sakura and Ino-Pig are doing better than anyone else. Both girls are powered by sheer stubbornness as they stride forward in an identically angry jog, seemingly not even aware that their strides match each other wonderfully.

Both girls pass them and a bunch of struggling and jumping kids, raising some dust and sand from the road, deliberately looking exclusively forward as their movements unconsciously sync with each other.

Huh , Sasuke blinks. 

Naruto whips his head around to glare at Sasuke in an outrage.

‘What the hell, Bastard!’ his forehead demands as Idiot clenches his fists and bares his teeth. ‘Do you want to lose?!’

Yes, Sasuke wants to snarl back, don’t you see the Green Guy is weird?! He reeks of danger, what the hell Pretty Face was thinking putting him in charge of a bunch of school kids ?!

‘--e sh– -d re- -ad- –ust -ur wal– –ing pace,’ offers Urame in an impassive voice. Sasuke still has no clue what the fuck the guy is saying. ‘--is is sub– -ptimal. Why? The–s no way –e –ill –ake it to t–e fi–ish li–e if we –re not in –ync.’

Suboptimal, his ass, Sasuke glares at Urame. Participating in this entire thing is fucking suboptimal.

‘We should try again,’ Naruto’s forehead decides. ‘Follow my lead, ‘ttebayo!’

Idiot yells out something that could have been any random word, but in the given context is probably some kind of equivalent of ‘one-two-three’ in Magic Japanese. Words make no sense to Sasuke still, but he gets the rhythm easy enough.

They stumble and trip to the end of the block, turning to the right to enter a small alley with another flag hanging at the end of the street. After seeing their next target, Idiot speeds up, forgetting the controlled rhythm they held up until now, and Sasuke hears Urame yell something out before the three of them tumble face-first onto the ground, following Naruto's tug when he tries to go faster than the rest of their team.

(And if Sasuke wasn’t following Naruto’s command as diligently as he should have, it is absolutely not his fault.)

‘-o!’ Naruto screams as his forehead catches up with the captions. ‘Why are you doing this?!’

The Idiot has a look of pure betrayal on his face. He looks at Sasuke with angry watery eyes, completely ignoring Urame Shio, struggling to get to his knees next to them while still partly attached to Sasuke’s leg.

‘Do you want me to fail?’ Naruto demands from Sasuke. ‘Why do you hate me ?!’

What the fuck, Sasuke blinks, trying to keep eye contact with the Idiot while laying down on a dirty road, barely supported by his elbows to keep half of his body unmarred.

He doesn’t hate Naruto. He is scared for this clueless dumbass who thinks following a dangerous Jonin will make him any favours at getting liked , or whatever. Naruto is a dumb kid; a bullied kid, apparently, and his mindless rushing to anyone who could possibly provide him with more respect and trust from other villagers is scarily concerning.

Sasuke snarls. 

‘Go to hell!’ Naruto screeches, struggling on his side and reaching with dirty fingers to start hastily untying the ribbon connecting his and Sasuke’s legs. ‘I will do it myself if you hate me just like everybody else!’

Why the fuck is he jumping to conclusions so fast, Sasuke thinks desperately, trying to bat Naruto’s hand from their conjoined legs, because there is no way to explain to an aggravated Idiot that no one in the right mind would ever hate the dumb annoying kid. He had his flaws ( many ) but it wasn’t nearly enough to try and bully a child to such an extent that he would rather kill himself than miss an opportunity to get some minor recognition.

Naruto is overreacting hard and Sasuke is not ready to deal with this. He just gets more and more frustrated, anger bubbling in his throat, because Guy guy is clearly dangerous behind all of this silly-goofy persona, and Naruto, the oblivious dumbass, will get hurt. Idiot also has no right to assume what Sasuke thinks of him because Idiot got everything wrong .

Naruto snarls and tears the ribbon away, jumping to his feet and throwing another betrayed glance at Sasuke. 

He then turns around and runs, going for the Flag Marker at the end of an alleyway, before a shadow grows from under the ground, blocking the kid from exiting the tight space between the buildings.

Shadow turns into a person, Sasuke realizes. It takes a shape of something clad in a long robe, face obscured and unrecognizable. 

Sasuke freezes, blood pumping in his ears, and he feels Urame still against him.

Naruto yells something in pure anger, pointing an accusatory finger at the Shadow Person , before the creepy shape abruptly thunks the kid across the head, making the Idiot’s prone form fall to the ground.

Shadow picks up Naruto, turning its head towards Sasuke and Urame, somehow freezing them both to the ground.

Sasuke feels consumed by fear . 

He is paralyzed, body cold and unresponsive, and he stops feeling Urame’s warm calf against his own. It’s like he has been transported into the coldest tundra, body freezing and organs failing, and he is trembling, body shaking in violent shudders. 

The world around him dims, colour getting sucked out of everything, before eventually even the orange of Naruto’s outfit is gone as well, replaced by eye-gouging black. Sasuke’s ears are ringing and his muscles are so tense he feels like something is about to tear--he hears the strain of his organs that are trying to keep him alive despite the absolute terror surrounding Sasuke’s entire being.

Sasuke sees the Shadow readjust its grip on Naruto’s prone form--not dead, not dead, not painted in redredred --and cast a possible glance in their direction.

Then, it leaps upwards and out of the alleyway.

As abruptly as it started, the immense fear is gone, leaving Sasuke heaving on the ground, trying to control his shaking limbs to get to his feet.

Urame says something that mixes with the ringing still persistent in Sasuke’s ears. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to look at Urame, head still pounding and body screaming to run .

‘We should notify Iruka-sensei,’ says Urame’s forehead, surprisingly clearly despite Sasuke’s earlier struggling with reading the captions. ‘Gai-san as well. They can call an ANBU squad to handle this. Why? This seems like a threat to the village. No one knows what might happen to Naruto-kun if we are too slow.’

This--this is the clearest he had seen the captions ever before. It feels like his eyes are picking out the text faster, burning it into his mind as the world slows for Sasuke to read through the caption. Urame moves to untie their legs and he looks like he is doing it in a slow-motion, fingers too slow and world too sharp , which just frustrated Sasuke further, biting words held back just by the lack of vocabulary to express them.

Sasuke shifts his gaze where Naruto was just recently laying, body so small and defenseless against the Shadow.

Fuck this fucking ninja world, his mind screams, skull throbbing with the intensity of the world around him.

Urame finishes untying their legs just in time for Sasuke to leap to his feet, looking sharply-- but also too slowly; everything feels too fast and too slow at the same time, what the fuck is going on --at the roof where the Shadow and Naruto have just disappeared.

“Hn,” he motions with his chin towards the other end of the alley, trying to convey that while getting help of ninja police is good (even Guy guy, for all he seems dangerous it is good to have a dangerous man on their-- his side right now), Sasuke has to follow the Shadow. He is not about to let a fucking child die just because the kid in question is stupid and neglected . 

Urame Shio ducks his head, looking at Sasuke from behind his dark glasses. With the world still being too sharp  Sasuke can’t figure out what the hell the weird kid could be possibly thinking.

‘Very well,’ Urame decides, ‘I will insist on leaving a tracking bug on you before you leave, though. Why? So my clansmen and I can find you if anything were to happen.’

Oh, something will happen for fucking sure, Sasuke wants to say. It will either end up in his and Idiot’s death, or the death of the Shadow. Sasuke is aware he is a child that flinches at punches being thrown at him during Magic Judo training where only weird instincts are the only thing to save him, but he can’t leave the Idiot alone.

Not after the fucking dumbass all but imprinted himself on Sasuke, together with Sakura distracting him from thinking about the shrine and the woman ’s tiny smile on a photo in the centre of it, and the painredbloodbetrayal of something he cannot grasp the concept of.

Sasuke sharply nods, glancing at Urame Shio once again, as the kid extends one finger with his palm up in Sasuke’s direction, and a tiny… bug? emerges from under Urame’s skin.

Was Sasuke not completely terrified about the Shadow's encounter and still riding the adrenaline that was pumping in his veins after he gained control of his body, he would have visibly shivered with his entire body at the sight.

The bug flies to Sasuke’s shoulder, and he glances semi-questioningly at Urame.

‘Go,’ Urame’s forehead says, text still bright and unnaturally bold in Sasuke’s vision, ‘I’ll get help.’

Sasuke leaps up before he even registers the end of the sentence, mind blank and body moving with the same single-minded instinct that helped him write out Kanji in his answer sheet, his eyes sharp and brain thrumming with no more red, no more blood, no more death.  He will kill the Idiot himself if the Shadow doesn't do it before him.

Chapter Text

Sasuke can see the Shadow, carrying a small limp orange body on its shoulder like a bag of rice, dashing through the roofs as he follows it. Blood is still thrumming in his ears and the village around him is unusually bright with colourful shapes. Shadow is, too, seemingly illuminating light, but--it’s dangerous, something that Sasuke wants to shake off and never look at again.

He would have been terrified of how fast he is jumping roof-to-roof, not fearing slipping and plummeting to the ground like a giant rock, but if he stops to think about it the Idiot will be taken away, kidnapped for no reason. There is no way in hell Sasuke would let a dumb kid ( preciouspeoplepreciouspeople, screeches at him something from the back of his mind in a voice that isn’t his) get into a Jutsu Accident with the incompetent ninja police this village seems to have.

He is angry, feeling nearly the same rage as he feels when he looks at the shrine near his house, needing to kick and punch and hurt the asshole that decided to get into his life and take away more normalcy than he had already lost. There's very little Sasuke remembers of his pre-Accident life, dim flashes of technology that he misses, or comfort of his old flat, or smudged faces of people he said hi to on a daily basis. There are also similarly dim memories he has of his life here, from Before; of trips to a pastry shop while gripping someone’s bigger hand, and hugs from the Warm Woman, and stern and cold glances from the Frowning Man, and desperation to be seen as more than just a little brother to everyone around him. Both of these lives were taken away from Sasuke, erased, leaving him with a butched sense of belonging to nowhere, and just when he started figuring out ins and outs of this new place, finding things he likes and dislikes, finding people he likes and dislikes, some asshole dares to hurt a stupid dumbass that Sasuke found to semi-adopt since he is the only responsible adult in their Academy class.

He pushes off of the edge of the building with his feet, seeing a dash of an ugly light of the Shadow turn to the edge of the village, towards the trees, and he almost snarls, clenching his fists.

Motherfucking magic ninjas .

He lands in the clearing between the trees when the Shadow decides to end this wild goose chase. Shadow dumps Naruto on the ground, uncaring, and turns to Sasuke.

Its face is obscured by a--a tiger mask? What the fuck are the fashion choices of these fucking ninjas--and he spreads his arms, taunting Sasuke to fight him.

Tiger Mask drawls something in an annoyingly mocking voice, and he doesn’t understand what it is saying--both the stupid Magic Japanese and the lack of face to read captions off of--but he doesn’t care, charging at the ninja with a shout just as Tiger Mask charges back at him.

Tiger Mask goes for a sharp blow with the side of its hand-- really? Magic Judo?--and Sasuke acts before he even thinks, his head pounding, Tiger Mask’s hand blow repeating before his eyes again and again and again in a slow-motion before he intercepts it with a roundhouse kick that should have shattered his own bones and was probably overly dramatic for this situation, but it sends the hand of Shadow back under an unnatural angle. 

Tiger Mask sounds like it curses out. Sasuke chose this moment to lash out again.

He whips out a knife from the butt pouch everyone seemed to wear and which Sasuke reluctantly started wearing not so long ago too after Sakura’s wondering comment about where he stores his knives and ninja stars. Sasuke didn’t store them anywhere, because what the fuck really, going outside permanently armed, but if every single one of his stupid kid classmates and scary Flak Jacket Ninjas were stocked on knives at any given time, he should probably be precocious too, even if he had no fucking clue what to do with half the pouch contents.

Sasuke grips the knife with his right hand, skidding around and trying to slam it into Tiger Mask’s thigh, but the knife slips on a seemingly incorporeal flesh, dropping to the ground just as Sasuke’s desperate hands try to push himself off the ground where Tiger Mask has him pinned in a flash of a single movement he didn’t seem to notice.

He buckles under the heavy weight, writhing on the ground as ninja's leg pushes between his shoulder blades, and tries to kick the Shadow with his shin, elbow, anything , just as a loud “OI!” echoes between the trees, and both Shadow and Sasuke turn their heads to the source of the sudden voice.

It’s Chubby and Sleepy, perched up in the shadow beneath the tree branch, ribbon connecting them nowhere to be seen; they both look simultaneously determined and angry, Sleepy’s lethargic look completely gone from the boy's body. 

‘You need help, Uchiha?’ asks Sleepy’s forehead, and why can he read from this far away; Sasuke wants to yell back that yes, actually, he needs help, but what the fuck are these two being taught at the Academy of Ninjas that they don’t know what basic stealth is?!

“HN,” he bites out even as the knee pushes him harder into the ground.

Chubby breaks out from the tree line with a yell, within moments turning into a giant ball rolling right at Sasuke and Tiger Mask, and the latter jumps up and out of the ball’s way in two split seconds. Sasuke’s world freezes around him, Chubby’s Ball-Form almost slowing down but unwaveringly going towards Sasuke to squish him.

What kind of fucking help is that, Sasuke screeches inside his head, that kills the person that needs the help?!

He rolls out of the way just barely, catching himself on his hands and knees and jumping up, eyes burning in his sockets.

Sleepy is doing weird hand movements, Sasuke notices, and then his shadow extends forward, going under a sharp angle and blending with Tiger Mask’s before ninja can even turn around to glance at Sleepy, too preoccupied dodging Chubby in their clearing. It is pure miracle they haven’t killed Idiot with random flailing around, and Sasuke finally snaps his gaze to Naruto’s body, scrambling to get to the kid’s side.

Suddenly, moving around him stops, and Sasuke lifts his head from checking on Naruto’s well-being to blink at what is going on with Tiger Mask.

It is immobilized, standing still and rigid as Sleepy is raising to his feet and making a few steps forward. Tiger Mask mirrors Sleepy’s movements, taking same-strided steps forward. Sleepy lifts his hand to his face and Tiger Mask mimics the movement, their shadows still interconnected.

This shit would have been very useful during the stupid three-legged race, Sasuke thinks bitterly.

Just as Sleepy is mimicking the motion of removing the mask ( don’t remove the fucking mask before making sure the asshole can’t run anywhere! All of them are going to get killed ), Tiger Mask barks something out and disappears in a cloud of smoke.

All of them sans blacked out Naruto gape at where Tiger Mask had just been. 

Stupid, stupid magic ninja criminals, Sasuke thinks desperately.

“--uke,” he hears a groan from below and sees how Naruto opens his eyes, looking loopy and bit green to his face.

‘You got super creepy eyes, ‘ttebayo,’ Naruto informs him and then at least has the courtesy to turn to the side to empty his stomach right next to them.

Sasuke blinks. 

Fuck you, he wants to say, next time you are kidnapped by enemy ninjas I am just going to go on with my day.

Creepy eyes, his ass.

They help groaning Naruto to get to his feet and basically drag him back to the village, where mildly concerned Urame Shio ( well, presumably,  with the entire ‘covered head-to-toes’ thing going on with him) is waiting for them, arm at his eye level and looking at a couple of bugs.

‘Uchiha-san,’ Shio’s forehead says, still sharp in Sasuke’s vision, ‘Nara-san, Akimichi-san. Naruto.’

Naruto groans like a baby that he is.

‘I can’t seem to find any adults in the village,’ his voice sounds off-put. ‘I’m glad you didn’t get hurt in the attacks.’

Attacks? There are multiple crazed out ninja criminals roaming the streets?

Where the fuck is ninja police?

Chubby seemed to ask the same question and Urame curtly nods, still looking like he was silently conversing with the bugs in his hand.

‘We should get back to the Academy,’ says Sleepy’s forehead as he furrows his brows. ‘Then we can hide on the basement level to let your kikaichū gather intel on the attacks and see where the rest of our class is.’

Shio’s eyebrows twitch as if he is surprised but doesn’t want to show it.

‘Nara-san,’ his forehead says, ‘I see you are aware of Aburame Clan techniques.’

Naruto picks this moment to wake up from his dazed coma and jump up from Sasuke’s and Chubby’s hands that were supporting him from each side.

‘I will fight them!’ he announces, eyes narrowed, fists clenched and trembling. ‘How dare they take away all adults, even if they’re mean! Iruka-sensei and Ichiraku-san and Jiji are not mean and don’t deserve to be taken away!’

God help him. Naruto already looks completely unaffected by getting his brains whacked the fuck out. What kinda super-regeneration he has that lets him just stand up and walk out scratch-free?

Sasuke rolls his eyes.

“Hn,” he nods at Sleepy as more bugs fly out from Urame’s hand.

The village looks empty. How did none of them notice that when they started the race? There were obviously people on the street next to the Academy--all of the civilians getting free entertainment from Guy guy’s stupid exercise routine. Where the fuck did all of them go?

Was Pretty Face alright?

Something drops in Sasuke’s stomach at the thought of Pretty Face being taken away from him as well.

Tiger Mask had this-- aura around it, and if Sasuke could smell it, it would ooze foul stench of bloated corpses and rot.

If something like that went for Pretty Face, or for any of them again--Sasuke already felt bone-deep exhaustion--none of them would stand a chance.

Sasuke still didn’t know why Tiger Mask ran away, but none of what was happening felt right in his head. Something was off, with everything around them, and Sasuke wanted to go back to his house and hide under the bedsheets of his futon.

Instead, the five of them take off in the direction of the Academy.

‘SASUKE-KUN,’ yelled Sakura’s forehead from a mile away, ‘I’M GLAD YOU’RE SAFE.’

He would probably be able to see the text even without the weird sharpness that was now a permanent fixture of everything around him.

Sasuke grunts and waves at Sakura as she sprints to them through the dirty tiles of the basement floor and stands at an arms’ reach away from him, knowing he will get away from her hold if she tries to hug him.

‘I’m also safe, Sakura-chan!’ quirps Idiot’s forehead who was not safe mere minutes ago.

Sakura has the decency to sigh in relief. For all that she talked Sasuke’s ears ( eyes ) off about how annoying Naruto was, she seemed to have warmed up to him in the past month of soup delivery.

Almost everyone from their class was here, sans the adults. Dog Kid was anxiously trailing circles around Zombie Eye Girl who was staring at Naruto with the most relieved expression, and Ino-Pig was peeking from behind Sakura’s head, eyes not leaving Sasuke.

Other classmates were sparsely distributed over the basement floor, some of them nursing scratches and bruises, and other ones looking ready to cry.

“Sasuke-kun,” he hears and turns to look at Ino-Pig, slowly blinking at her and struggling to keep upright. 

‘What is wrong with your eyes?’ her forehead asks, and Sasuke furrows his brows, giving her a deadpan look.

What the fuck is everyone saying about his eyes? 

He looks around to find a mirror or something just to check if he didn’t start accidentally bleeding from his tear ducts or turned into a carbon copy of the Zombie Eye Girl, when the building of the Academy starts shaking, dust rising from the surfaces around them.

All of the kids immediately quiet down and look at the tiny window near the ceiling leading outside, towards the training grounds in the Academy’s yard.

A giant dark figure is looming over the window, eyes wild and mad, giving all of them a look that a rabid dog might have had.

The ugly, mad, wrong face’s lips split into a delirious toothless smile.

Sasuke barely has time to react to cover his nose with the arm bracer when the entire basement is filled with smoke--no, gas --as a horrible face disappears from the window in a flash of light and his classmates around him start to scream.

Chapter Text

Guess the arm bracers weren’t that bad of a clothing item to own. Whaddayaknow.

Sasuke buries his nose in his forearm and barely manages to shove Naruto’s head into Idiot's fuzzy white collar. Sakura and Ino-Pig nearby aren’t as lucky and get a generous inhale of the gas that's been filling up the room. 

Sleepy is fast on his feet, his nose buried in his jacket that he had tugged off, as he rushes to open the door out of the basement. He screams something over everybody’s heads and motions with his free arm, urging everyone to run out.

Naruto dashes forward and Sasuke moves after him before some instinct tells him to turn around.

Both Sakura and Ino-Pig are standing struck, looking like they suddenly had lost one of their core senses and are too afraid to move, disoriented just by being upright.

Dog Kid and Zombie Girl are not faring any better, looking completely lost and blinking owlishly around, seemingly putting all effort just to keep themselves from tumbling onto the ground.

Sasuke grits his teeth.

The fuck kinda poison was in this gas?! 

Sasuke dashes for Sakura, grasping her hand with his and tugging her forward, but she only trips over her own feet and falls to the ground, staying there, unmoving, on her arms and knees. 

This looked a lot like what happened to Sasuke and Urame in the alleyway when Tiger Mask had stolen Naruto, but at the same time it didn’t --something was off, the others could still stand upright until forced to move. Earlier, Sasuke and Weird Kid dropped like puppets that had their strings cut off.

Not like this situation is any better, Sasuke groans into his forearm.

He feels a hand on his shoulder before it actually reaches him, which--huh, a weird concept to grasp--makes him whip around, looking at Urame Shio, collar zipped tighter around his face.

‘Uchiha-san,’ his forehead says, ‘I’ll help you move them.’

Ninja Gods better bless the Weird Kid, Sasuke thinks, “hn”ing at Urame and nodding gratefully as Bug Boy attempts to lift Sakura off the ground again. The only competent person with self-preservation instincts.

Moving a body with one arm while trying desperately not to inhale at all provides… difficult. He tugs at Ino-Pig and she falls the same as Sakura, trembling. Not good enough. 

Sleepy appears out of the corner of his eye and Chubby is there with him, face uncovered, the boy stumbling on shaky legs with the same expression as the paralyzed four in the basement, but moving nonetheless.

‘What a drag,’ sighs Sleepy, suddenly turning into his lazy self. ‘Choji, help me move Ino and Sakura.’

Thank you , Sasuke mouths. And if he mouths it in English, well. No one can prove anything. He is under extreme distress. Whatever anyone saw, they were hallucinating.

Sasuke moves to Urame Shio and holds his breath, removing his forearm from his face and burying his nose in his own deep-ass collar. He meets Urame’s eyes (probably meets his eyes--the glasses are obscuring the view), and “hn”s, stuffing his hands under Dog Kid's shoulders, successfully preventing him from falling to the floor as soon as he was moved. Puppy, tucked in Dog Kid’s collar, pitifully whines at that (or maybe at everything), scrubbing its nose with a tiny paw. 

Aw, thinks Sasuke.

He would’ve silently gushed at that if he wasn’t in a possibly- poisoned room together with a bunch of prepubescent children.

He tries not to breathe as he drags Dog Kid to the exit door, silently praying the gas is not some kind of neurotoxin. He isn’t sure how neurotoxins work, but that sure would have a nasty fucking effect on everyone around him.

Come to think of it, Chubby is not covering his face at all. Maybe the others know the gas isn’t as dangerous as it seems to be?

Or maybe they are stupid kids who don’t know better, Sasuke scoffs and nearly drops Dog Kid when he starts to struggle as soon as they are out of the basement.

‘MY CHAKRA,’ he wails, clutching at his jacket and making Puppy whine louder, lapping with its tongue on Dog Kid’s chin. ‘I CAN’T FEEL MY CHAKRA.’

That’s it? Sasuke blanches at him. You just don’t feel some stupid magic and that’s why all of you got braindead back in the room?

‘T–the chakra pathways,’ Zombie Girl stutters as she slumps to the wall, still supported by Urame. ‘It b–blocked our ch–chakra pathways.’

That still doesn’t make any sense, Sasuke wants to scoff. He doesn’t feel anything blocked. And even if he did, he wouldn’t just get a random brain aneurysm out of not feeling metaphorical magic.

He glances around most of his classmates. Some other ones managed to cover their faces fast enough, and the other ones that were dragged by Sleepy and Chubby earlier had already gone upstairs--he can hear their voices and see the mild shapes move around.

Through the wall.

Huh.

Sasuke pinches the bridge of his nose.

That’s some weird Ninja Magic shit, he decides. And here he thought Idiot was the protagonist of this fucking world.

Wait a second, Sasuke pales.

Naruto.

“Hn,” he points a finger at Sleepy, seeing as he was the first one out of the room. “Naruto?”

‘Ah,’ Sleepy shrugs. ‘He went to fight Toothless outside. What a drag.’

Sasuke blinks. 

For all that Sleepy was a genius, he was so fucking stupid. Letting a dumbass of NARUTO’s grade go out and try and fight a child-poisoning monster?

Sasuke throws his hands upwards again, exasperated. That seems to be the only emotion he had been feeling on a regular basis in the past few hours since this entire disaster had started.

Sleepy pales a bit as Sasuke frowns at him, eyes burning. He wishes he could do the Disappointed Matriarch bit Pretty Face is proficient with.

“Sas–,” one of them throws after him as Sasuke turns on his heels and runs up the stairs.

‘If you ever lay a hand on my friends,’ Naruto’s forehead projects across the field, ‘I’ll kill you!’

Ohhhhhhhhh goddddd, Sasuke wants to tear his hair out of his head.

Creepy fucker with no teeth is standing opposite Naruto, clad in the same dark robe as Tiger Mask was. His eyes are seemingly staring at both Naruto and Sasuke, who had just appeared to observe the entire thing with a panicked look.

Toothless laughs hysterically, hiccuping, flashing mad eyes from under his eyelids. 

‘You think you can go against me?!’ his bald head says. ‘Your chakra is blocked off. You are not even a genin! You will die .’

Listen to him, you stupid idiot! Sasuke thinks. You blacked out from one single hit on your head not even an hour ago! This Ninja feels stronger!

Naruto takes a stance, gripping ninja stars between his fingers.

‘Why don’t you try then?’ Idiot snarls. ‘I’ll strike you back a thousand-fold!’

What the fuck! 

Sasuke is done with this shit.

He sees Toothless charge forward as Naruto throws ninja stars at him. Toothless dodges--it was so clear in his mind that Toothless would dodge, like he had seen it happen moments before it had happened--and before Sasuke can even react, can even move from where he is standing, completely hopeless but fully aware of each next move like he had seen this fight play out before, Toothless runs towards Idiot, leaping in the air and fully intending to annihilate kid’s head together with his neck with a hook kick. 

Sasuke opens his mouth to wheeze out a weak “No!” as he sees the punch almost land on Naruto in repeat in front of his eyes.

He is so useless. He can’t save Idiot because he is weak and useless and not strong enough . He hadn’t been strong enough to save everybody; anybody Before as well. That’s why he needs to get stronger. That’s why–

Toothless flies across the yard, smashing into the wall where the classroom for first-years is located. The wall is broken , completely destroyed, and Sasuke can’t even see the ninja anymore, his form completely crippled and disfigured, half-hidden by the debris. 

He takes a breath, realizing he hadn’t released one since he saw Naruto challenge the asshole.

Then, he turns his head to the Idiot.

Sakura is standing there, fuming, shaking her fist like she accidentally hit it on the edge of the table instead of sending a full-grown man 10 yards across the field, destroying half the building while she was at it.

She still looks kind of shaky and pale from the gas in the basement, legs not quite as steady now that the threat is gone, hands mildly shaking--how can he even notice that, standing this far away?

She turns to Naruto, the same fist she used to annihilate Toothless coming down on a blond nape, making the dumbass hiss and jump on one leg, whining something and repeating ‘Sakura-cha–a–an’ for an optimal pity effect. 

Naruto’s Sad Dog Mode usually works on Sasuke like a charm. It gets no effect off of Sakura.

Sasuke looks at the disaster of a wall where Toothless was laying, seeing Ino-Pig and Sleepy crowded around him, clearly doing some ninja magic, or whatever.

He didn’t care.

He was very tired.

Sasuke closed his eyes, wobbled on his feet, and collapsed to the ground.

“Sas– -e? Sasu– –e– –un?”

Sasuke groans, body feeling like he is falling, and he twitches, opening his eyes with a sharp breath intake.

The world around him is less sharp than before. The colours are a bit dulled, and he doesn’t see the weird glow around people anymore, everything being muted in a nice and calm way. There is no weird sixth sense pricking at his skin, and despite his limbs feeling thrice as heavy as they usually do, Sasuke feels kind of relaxed.

He closes his eyes again.

Then, panicked, he twitches and realizes he is standing upright.

Fuck!

Naruto and Sakura and Sleepy with Ino-Pig and Toothless Monster and Tiger Mask, all adults gone from the village and them having to deal with an enemy ninja all on their own. His kiddy classmates were poisoned and he was a coward that couldn’t move and–

“CONGRATULATIONS, YOUTHFUL LEAVES!” The voice abuses Sasuke’s senses harder than the weird deja vu he had been experiencing in the past couple of hours. “THIS WAS AN EXCEPTIONAL SHOW OF TEAMWORK! THE WILL OF FIRE BURNS HOT WITH THESE ONES!”

What the fuck.

“IT HAS BEEN A DELIGHT TO WATCH YOU USE YOUR FIERY POWER OF A SPRINGTIME OF YOUTH TO DEFEAT AN OPPONENT WHEN LEFT WITH LIMITED DEVICES! I APPLAUD YOU!”

No, no, no.

“THE THROES OF TEAMWORK PROVED TO BE A GREAT FOUNDATION FOR HEALTHY RIVALRY BETWEEN FRIENDS! I WAS DELIGHTED TO SEE SUCH A BRIGHT BURN OF WILL OF FIRE IN SO MANY YOUNGLINGS, WORKING TOGETHER AND SHARING THE BURNING PASSION OF SPRINGTIME YOUTH!”

No.

“WHEN FACED WITH A FOUL ENEMY THAT DESTROYED CONVENTIONAL MEANS OF FIGHT, THE SPIRIT OF YOUTHFULNESS HELPED YOU USE THE TAIJUTSU TECHNIQUES TO PROTECT THE ONES CLOSEST TO YOU, RISKING YOUR LIVES FOR YOUR COMRADES! SUCH IS THE WILL OF FIRE!”

Sasuke can hear sobbing. It is probably coming from the Guy guy.

“YOSH! THIS WAS A GREAT EXERCISE! I SHALL REWARD ALL OF YOU BY INVITING YOU FOR A FRIENDLY RACE! WE SHALL RUN ONE HUNDRED TIMES AROUND THE VILLAGE ON OUR KNEES TO STRENGTHEN OUR BOND WITH THE YOUTHFULNESS OF OUR BODIES!”

Everyone stays silent.

Sasuke tries to lift his eyes to glare daggers at the Monster, but the tiniest movement of his head makes him sway and careen backward. His legs are shaking, still tied to Naruto and Shio, and he is falling before he can catch himself.

Instead, he is caught and spooned from the back by a bigger body, someone’s arms holding him upright in a tight embrace. Sasuke squeaks, and if he wasn’t so tired right now he would definitely try to get out of the hug.

Maybe.

After a little bit.

Pretty Face’s voice sounds too close to his ear, saying something in a comforting and apologetic tone, and Sasuke can feel his face heat up , tiny hairs standing up on his nape.

A woman appears out of nowhere, curly hair bouncing and spilling over the weird bandage wrap(UGH)-red mesh blouse-one sleeve ensemble. 

She shoots an accusing eye towards Guy guy.

‘--o more races,’ she bites off sharply as captions appear on her forehead, and gestures in a general direction of Sasuke and his classmates, everyone unsteady on their feet. ‘I agreed to help with the training, but I will not stand putting kids through physical exercises after going through my genjutsu. You already made some of them reach near-Chakra Exhaustion!’

Guy appears a little sheepish. Wow, this feels forbidden to look at, Green Monster’s face lacking a smile.

“I’M SORRY, KURENAI,” he says as a warm hand gets into Sasuke’s hair and he almost mewls, relaxing into a hold even further.

It’s hard to move his limbs, entire body heavy and pliant, and when Sasuke feels like falling asleep he does just so, completely relaxing into a warm hold.

Chapter Text

Going through the second round of chakra exhaustion has been… less than ideal.

Sasuke fought tooth and nail to avoid the hospital when Pretty Face, still pressing him gently to his chest (Sasuke will be seeking the high of this moment for the rest of his life), offered to take him there to a disheveled Naruto. Sasuke’s tongue felt too heavy to form words in any language, and his “hn”s paled in comparison to furious refusals by Naruto and Sakura, both insisting he hated hospitals and would get better just by laying down at home and eating some more warm soup.

Huh.

He promised himself that he would get further into logistics of sudden mind-reading two children have been apparently doing to him over the last month.

Later.

Since the Gai Incident, he didn’t experience the same sharp vision and clear understanding of his surroundings like he did inside the genjustsu ( ADULTS HERE ARE INSANE , Sasuke screeches inside his mind). 

No one has ever commented on his eyes, too, so maybe it was just a whim-of-the-moment thing. Maybe he just looked a particular taste of scared throughout the entire ordeal.

Which he was.

Fuck ninjas.

After the Gai Incident (and wasn’t that too many Incidents over his short stay here?) Pretty Face made it his goal to visit Sasuke at least once a week, whisking him out of the dead– sadsadsad –neighbourhood for a walk.

Sometimes they’d pick up Naruto, who would inevitably drag them to Ichiraku Ramen, whining the entire time that Pretty Face wasn’t treating him to it often enough.

At this point, Sasuke feels he had tried every single dish at Ichiraku’s, dutifully dropping all fishcakes into Naruto’s bowl were he to find any in his bowl. Naruto has never shown an explicit preference towards anything, agreeing to eat any ramen-like dish, but Sasuke could see underneath the underneath. He had some maybe -years to hold over Naruto’s head even if he didn’t remember being an adult the same way as he didn’t remember being an Uchiha child.

Sakura had joined them at the ramen place when she could, probably tracking them down by Naruto’s loud and annoying voice. 

Idiot consistently begged Pretty Face to wear his flak jacket or Special Tennis Headband, or look at his weapons pouch, or generally touch anything that looked like a Grown Flak Jacket Ninja thing to own . Pretty Face always denied those requests, squinting at Naruto and then playing with his headband like a glorious asshole that he was. 

Pretty Face was a perfect evil wrapped in a mix of gentlest of browns.

Sasuke adored him.

When Sasuke tried to take reigns over his meals in his own hands and attempted to bake a pizza, Naruto had to hurriedly fill buckets with his own bathwater (because the dumbass still refused to take showers without Sasuke angrily crowding him in the corner) to spill all over the oven, trying to reduce the damage done by fire.

The house had smelled like burnt wood for the next month, despite Sasuke attempting to clean it out multiple times.

He avoided his kitchen, burnt smell associated with something he wasn’t quite sure of, going into a full-blown panic when he was around it. He insisted on eating at Ichiraku’s with Naruto for two weeks, and Idiot was obliviously happy before a determined Sakura showed up one day after the Academy with what seemed like military-grade cleaning supplies.

The burnt smell was gone within minutes.

Sasuke had to deal with the chlorine taste of the air for the next week or so.

It was still ten times better than the burnt and awful sensation on his tongue.

The only time Sasuke had been to Naruto’s place, he was absolutely terrified of touching anything around him.

The smell of instant ramen permeated the place, hanging heavy in the air. When the Idiot told him he needed to take his homework from his apartment for a study session led by an indigent Sakura, he dragged Sasuke along with him (Sasuke still perfectly happy to avoid his kitchen). Sasuke first fully expected them both to climb the tree near his house to discover an assortment of Naruto-themed stuff hanging around the branches.

Turns out, Idiot actually has an apartment.

When Naruto beelined to take a sip out of a milk carton laying on the ground, Sasuke slammed a fist into Idiot’s stomach, terrified of how old the contents of it were.

The next day, after the Academy, Sasuke silently dragged Naruto to the grocery store, buying the protesting Idiot an assortment of different vegetables.

If he pointedly bought more tomatoes than was necessarily needed, well. Naruto has to learn to love fine cuisine.

The only time Sasuke had been to Sakura’s place, he was absolutely terrified of her force-of-nature parents.

He and Naruto dropped by to deliver homework with Ino-Pig, who was giving him heart eyes the entire trip to Sakura’s house. Sakura had gotten herself sick, he was told, and Pretty Face generously gave him a stack of papers that were required to be delivered to Sakura’s place.

He tousled Sasuke’s hair, smiling at him brightly, and Sasuke would agree to deliver boulders to the top of Mount Everest if Pretty Face just kept smiling like that.

Naruto, the oblivious lovesick idiot that he was, attached himself at Sasuke’s hip the moment he overheard the conversation. Ino-Pig, the other oblivious lovesick idiot, attached herself to Sasuke’s other hip, motivating it by showing the road to Sakura’s place, dreamily breathing down Sasuke’s neck the entire time.

They had taken three wrong turns because Ino-Pig forgot she was supposed to be showing them the directions.

Sakura’s parents were–

Yes.

Before Sasuke could open his mouth, he was swept into a bone-crushing hug, homework papers crinkling between his and Sakura’s dad’s bodies, Sasuke’s eyes all but bulging out of his eye sockets. Sakura’s dad terrifyingly reminded him of Guy guy, and he was still cautious when walking down the streets, flinching when seeing an overload of green in his peripheral vision.

Sakura’s mom heaved a tired sigh and wrenched Sasuke out of her husband’s hold, which just opened the man the opportunity to destroy Naruto’s bone structure next.

Ino-Pig carefully held herself a couple of meters away from the entrance into the house, aware of the man’s ability to kill people by squeezing them so hard that he managed to sever the blood flow to their vital organs.

And she hadn’t warned them.

Traitor.

They weren’t allowed to see Sakura as she was apparently coughing herself into another dimension, but all of them were forced to sit down and have dinner with the Haruno household, which just turned into Naruto squeezing himself into Sakura's dad's side, begging for more deadly hugs. 

(When the three of them were leaving, gratuitously thanking Harunos for the food--and Sasuke just 'hm'ing, trying to squirm away before he is yet again rendered semi-unconscious in the man's hug-like chokehold,--Sakura's mom motioned him to wait and came back with a very familiar pot smelling like tomato soup. 

'I was long wondering where Sakura's sudden desire to learn how to cook came from,' woman's forehead said as Sasuke squinted at her, reading out the words behind her fringe, ' and she insisted on spending most of her piggybank savings on tomatoes that she never liked before. Take the pot, kid.'

She cast a glance at Naruto who smelled of ramen breath despite eating other food today. Her face was showing deep contemplation, and she hummed, disappearing into the kitchen again. 

In the end, dumbfounded Naruto had his arms full of five different containers of miso soup, and Ino-Pig clutched a bag of fruit to her chest. Thankfully, their hands being occupied with precious food contents saved them from getting hugged again, even if Naruto was visibly distressed at not being killed by Sakura's dad's arms.)

You aren't Pretty Face , Sasuke wanted to snarl at the teacher's desk, go the fuck away. 

Pretty Face was off today, they had learned. Bandanna Guy with a mean look of superiority over a bunch of kids (seriously? He was an adult and they were barely twelve ) and a head of silver hair was forcing them to read through different paragraphs of Konoha's history book out loud.

Instead of actually teaching them something. 

Sasuke couldn't read a single caption on Bandanna's forehead with it being entirely obscured, but hushed whispering from Naruto near him and tiny Naruto-branded font on his forehead informed him of the task anyway. 

It seemed like Idiot was catching up on the fact that whenever Sasuke wasn't looking at the person that was talking, he was at a complete loss of what they were saying. 

Good observation skills, fishcake for brains, Sasuke thought. 

Sasuke still didn't know how to read Kanji. He honestly tried to learn the language, genuinely concerned about what would happen when he graduates, and gets separated from his personal translators (Naruto's loud and bold tiny text and Sakura's massive and helpful forehead). Who would his Jonin Sensei be? What if he was covered head-to-toe like Urame Shio? What if it was Guy ? 

He wasn't very good at learning new languages, and having zero point of reference to Magic Japanese was of little help. He still did not know any of the sentence structure, much less any distinction between the words, everyone’s speech just blending into one jumbled and unending word with way too many ‘i’s. Seriously, ‘i’ seemed to be the dominant letter in whichever word was thrown at Sasuke over the past almost half a year that he had spent here.

Sasuke did learn some words, not that they were of any use to him in the everyday life. He knew ‘dobe’ means idiot and ‘teme’ meant bastard; he was painfully aware of the sound of Naruto’s ‘one day I’ll take over the Hokage’s name and surpass all the previous Hokages!’ that he seemed to repeat at least 20 times a week. 

Come to think of it, Sasuke could probably lip-sync the phrase as well.

There have been a lot of words that made Sasuke snort, too. Lots of them were of an obviously English origin, which must have meant English was a thing somewhere in this world.

Or it was just Magic Ninja Japanese.

Go figure.

In the list of loanwords Sasuke had been writing down to use in ninja's butchered version of English were: ‘cheemu-waaku’ for teamwork, ‘neenja-academee’ for Ninja Academy, ‘pote-chi’ for potato chips , ‘baabe-kyu’ for barbecue, and ‘miruku’ for milk, as an example.

Not that it would be super helpful for him to know that the words ‘penis’ and ‘rival’ are the same in Magic Japanese as they are in English, but pronounced as if twenty marbles were stuffed into somebody's cheeks.

Sasuke hopes to never have to say ‘penis rival’ to anybody as long as he is alive.

Despite the success of figuring out the English equivalent of English-sounding words (and Sasuke was so proud of himself for translating shit correctly), Kanji was still a mystery. Ask him to write his own name consciously and he’d rather throw a punch and run. Apparently, the magic superpower of writing stuff was only available to him as long as he was completely disassociated.

So, yeah. Reading out loud? Not a fucking chance.

Besides, Bandanna Guy was suspicious as fuck as well, Sasuke thought grimly as the substitute teacher kept throwing glances at Naruto throughout the lesson.

Sasuke’s turn to read was next, Naruto being right after him, and he contemplated just bolting out of the classroom, because how the fuck is he going to explain that he doesn’t understand the language despite still understanding what people were saying?!

The kid in front of him stopped reading out the paragraph, and Bandanna Guy shifted his creepy gaze to Sasuke. Sasuke gulped. He opened his mouth, still staring at their substitute teacher, arms clenching the book, eyebrows twitching, and leg nervously tapping the hardwood floor.

“Mizuki-sensei!” Sasuke hears Idiot shout out next to him, and he whips his head around to be able to catch the text on Naruto’s forehead.

‘Sasuke has a really bad cold,’ Idiot says earnestly. ‘He can’t read out loud, his throat hurts real bad, ‘ttebayo!’

Sasuke closes his eyes.

Then opens them again.

“Hn,” he supplies and then coughs into his fist. 

Naruto is the perfect image of a helpful classmate, blinking innocently at Bandanna Guy.

Did Pretty Face teach you to lie? Sasuke wants to ask, hands still crumpling the pages of the study book.

Bandanna Guy says something that Sasuke has no way of reading out, and Naruto flashes him one wide smile before bending over his book, placing a finger on Kanji of the next paragraph, and starts trailing it down the page, forehead talking about some Warring Times and Senju Trees and whatever else.

Sasuke crowds Naruto after the class, pointing at the book they had to read out of earlier, brows furrowed and eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Does the Idiot know Sasuke can’t read Japanese? Is he smarter than he looks?

“Hn,” he says, still pointing an accusatory finger at the book.

‘I know you don’t like speaking much, Bastard,’ Naruto says cheerily. ‘Iruka-sensei never asks you to read in the classroom! It’s mean of Mizuki-sensei to ask you to do that, you know!’

You sweet, stupid, innocent dumbass, Sasuke wants to say. 

The tension is gone from his body and he has a brief thought of hugging Naruto before dismissing the idea with a shocking amount of disgust.

He didn’t manage to force the Idiot to wash his orange monstrosity of a jumpsuit in a while now, Naruto figuring out counterattack Magic Judo tactics to avoid getting drowned in Sasuke’s bathtub. Despite Idiot clearly starting to shower on his own, he still had no concept of washing clothes .

Just this morning Naruto was rolling on the Academy grounds, wrestling with Dog Kid, covering himself in a thick layer of dust and dog feces.

Gotta buy Idiot more ramen as thanks instead, Sasuke decides.

Chapter Text

Naruto leans on a tree, crouching on a branch, and squints at Bastard's house.

The door is closed, which is--unusual. Bastard usually has his door open. He only ever closes it when they argue about something. He always leaves the windows open, though. Naruto can usually get in if he wants to.

Sasuke seemed okay enough at the Academy for most of today. During the break between lessons, when Iruka-sensei had let them go outside, Sasuke sat down against a tree in the yard, Naruto plopping right near him, eagerly digging into teme’s backpack. Bastard never minded Naruto getting Sasuke’s packed lunches, and he packed way too much anyway (Bastard probably didn’t know that a person only needs one lunch box, not two). 

Naruto doesn’t get it. How could someone have so much food and waste it away by bringing in too much for such a short lunch break? He decided to be generous and started helping the Bastard get through all the food together. It would go bad if not eaten anyhow.

Sasuke doesn’t talk much these days. He didn’t talk much before either, but he has been very quiet recently. Naruto kinda likes it that way. They argue much less than they used to.

Sakura was off weaving flower crowns or doing some other dumb girly things with Ino because they had kunoichi classes while Naruto and Sasuke had a break. He didn’t really understand why girls got to have less free time at the Academy and why he didn’t get to have special classes like Ino and Hinata and Sakura, because--well. The more he knew the better Hokage he would be, right?

That’s what Iruka-sensei had said.

Naruto didn’t like studying. He was--he was bad at it, okay, and no one had ever helped him, and he was bad at reading, and his writing was slow and wobbly. He didn’t have cool parents like Sakura had to help him out with homework or give him hugs or give him food. Studying was hard, and Iruka-sensei could only do so much because he was a teacher and a real ninja, and Naruto understands and doesn’t want to impose, or whatever. If he is too annoying to Iruka-sensei maybe he would leave Naruto and would start treating him like Totetsu-san at the grocery store, slamming doors in Naruto’s face when he tried to come over to buy some food.

Totetsu-san’s store was the closest to Naruto’s house, but he had learned not to go there because of angry looks and bitten off monster’s and hateful looks.

Naruto didn’t want Iruka-sensei to treat him like that, too. Maybe he just doesn’t know that Naruto is a monster, yet, but he will learn soon enough; maybe if Naruto is too annoying he will go and ask around about him, and people will tell sensei that he is bad. 

He didn’t want to lose Iruka-sensei.

Things were getting better in the past months. Naruto was getting close to graduation, and even if he still struggled with some jutsus he needed for graduation, he was getting better at remembering things. Sakura-chan was helping him when they would sit in Bastard’s kitchen while he was heating up their soup or doing dishes or listening to Sakura together with Naruto. Sakura-chan was super smart and she wasn’t avoiding him anymore, so Naruto would take what he could, while he could. He needed to enjoy every single moment with Sakura and Sasuke before they would also learn to avoid him and start hating him, too.

When Sakura explains things, Naruto doesn’t get all of it, but he grasps what’s happening during the lessons better each time they work on homework and stuff outside the Academy. The company is nice; it’s comforting. He doesn’t have to stay in his apartment, hiding from people that spit and growl and kick him, and he actually gets better grades and doesn’t skip as much since he is not as afraid to be asked during the lessons as he was before.

Sasuke used to be super mean and annoying before he almost died from that jutsu that hit him months back.

Naruto remembers that day; they were doing laps around the Academy yard, and a guy leaped in the middle of their training ground seemingly out of nowhere. He was carrying a giant scroll in his hands, and he looked kinda green and sick to his face. 

Masked Ninjas--and Naruto knew of them well enough, some of them lurking during the night at his windows or following him at the distance since he could remember himself--were after Scroll Guy, one with a Wombat mask and one with a Cat mask landing at their yard soon after.

Naruto had to admit that he was super scared when they appeared. He froze on the spot and felt like he wouldn’t be able to move even if he tried to. 

Scroll Guy looked very panicked as he clutched the roll closer to his chest, and then did some weird one-handed justu stuff, which would’ve looked kinda cool if the guy wasn’t looking so scared. A giant wave of red had lifted itself from under the ground and wavered over everybody in the yard. Naruto barely had time to think that he’d die if he kept standing still before a kunai flew right into Scroll Guy’s shoulder and he crumpled to the ground, groaning.

Then, the wave of red crashed down.

Naruto didn’t really feel anything from the wave. When he opened his eyes (and he didn’t close them because he was scared, alright, he just had to blink at that exact moment), the Scroll Guy was laying on his stomach, whimpering, as Cat Mask was holding his hands behind his back with a knee on his head, and Wombat was holding tight the heavy scroll.

Naruto had heaved a sigh of relief he wasn’t aware of holding, and then someone had screamed.

He whipped his head around to see Bastard on the ground, convulsing, limbs almost snapping out of their joints as he was writhing on the dirty floor. 

Naruto was frozen in fear.

Sure, he didn’t like teme all that much. He was frustrating and taunting Naruto and beating him down in all of their practice fights. He called Naruto names and scowled at him and didn’t treat him the same as the people that knew Naruto was a monster, but it reminded him of them anyway.

He didn’t want Bastard to die, though.

So when Wombat mask had lowered themselves over Sasuke and tried to lift him off the ground as Bastard kept shaking and gasping and wrenching out of Wombat’s hold only just to puke afterward and go scarily limp in masked person’s hands, Naruto was scared.

He didn’t want the jerk to die. He didn’t care much for him, but it felt wrong for Sasuke to die like this.

Today, Bastard didn’t act out of the ordinary during lunch break, but before they left the Academy, Naruto got up from his seat to wait for Sasuke to finish packing and had noticed that he was--somehow!--taller than teme.

What!

Naruto vibrated with excitement. For as long as he remembered, Sasuke was always taller than him at least by a tiny bit, and Naruto was envious and jealous and bitter about it. Sasuke was smarter, faster, Taller, and not a dead-last-monster-kid.

Bastard was acting much nicer these days, and Naruto didn’t consider him too bad because Sasuke kept doing things for him, heating up soup and being annoying about showering and hanging out with him during breaks, and never insulting him the same way as he did before, but.

This height thing was leverage against teme’s genius.

“Sasuke-chan,” Naruto leered, grinning with all of his teeth as bastard turned around to give him a deadpan look (never looking Naruto in the eyes directly; his gaze was somewhere a bit higher, always, with everybody he talked to. Naruto had just assumed it was a Sasuke thing).

Despite the nasty look, Naruto was getting better at seeing what Sasuke was trying to say while staying silent. He could see Sasuke’s questioning eyes and twitch of the corner of his mouth, and he didn’t look annoyed one bit, which meant he was just waiting for Naruto to say something.

Like whatever Naruto would say mattered to him.

“I am taller than you,” Naruto snickered, raising his hand to his forehead and extending it forward to show a formidable difference in height. 

Sasuke rolled his eyes and “tsk”ed, throwing his backpack over his shoulder. 

“I will grow even taller and you will stay super tiny,” Naruto continued, moving his hand in the space between them, measuring their difference. “People will start confusing me for your older brother, otouto!”

Sasuke stilled.

Naruto looked at him questioningly, unsure of what he had said wrong. He was just dicking around about their height. Sasuke didn’t need to get too defensive.

Sasuke went rigid as he looked anywhere but at Naruto, hands still gripping his backpack, fingers turning white. 

“Hey, Bastard, it was a joke,” Naruto furrowed his brows, pouting. “What–”

Sasuke bolted out, not waiting for Naruto to finish his phrase. He ran out of the classroom, leaving Naruto just blinking after him, not reacting fast enough to catch Bastard’s hand to prevent him from leaving.

What did I do, Naruto wanted to ask, suddenly terrified that Sasuke won't hang out with him anymore. 

He had to fix this.

He can’t have teme start calling Naruto a disgusting monster, too.

He had to fix this.

“Naruto,” Sakura growled, fist clenching, and Naruto flinched, raising his hands and trying to cower away from her. “You can’t just say stuff like this! Sasuke-kun has issues with talks about his family!”

Naruto wants to argue he said nothing about Bastard’s family, but he guesses Uchiha’s brains work in mysterious ways.

“How was I supposed to know!” he squeaks out as Sakura’s fist comes crashing down his head.

“Think before you talk!” she screeches, hitting him again for good measure. “Didn’t you notice he was avoiding that family shrine each time we were outside his house?!”

Come to think of it, Naruto did notice that. The shrine had dozens of pictures, both coloured and black-and-white, all of them showing different people Naruto didn't know. There were wilted flowers right underneath and a soaked old incense as if no one had taken care of the shrine in a really long time.

Sasuke’s gaze never went to the shrine, despite how close it was to his door. He always rushed inside, or chose to look at Naruto and Sakura, or had his nose buried in his stupid collar.

Naruto knew, theoretically, that Sasuke’s family had died. His entire clan died, and Sasuke was like him now, alone and abandoned, but with much fewer masked creeps lurking at his windows at night.

He groaned, slapping his hands on his cheeks.

“You go,” Sakura said, fist still in dangerously close vicinity of Naruto’s head, “and apologize. And don’t call Sasuke-kun a bastard while you’re doing it!”

Naruto squeaked, face heating up with embarrassment. He didn’t want to make Bastard--Sasuke--sad. It was just a stupid joke. Naruto didn’t want to make him feel bad.

“I will,” he promised Sakura-chan and turned on his heels not bothering to say bye, mind too preoccupied with Sasuke’s blank expression and terrified face.

He heard Sakura mutter something about why are boys so stupid behind him, but was too busy running to protest.

Which was why he was now in the Uchiha compound, hand clutching his prized cup of ramen that he always saved for later, maybe for graduation, because it was a special flavour that Naruto had traded with Kiba earlier this year.

Closed doors weren’t too much of a problem; he could break in and track Bastard this way, but he thinks Sasuke (and Sakura, Naruto shudders) wouldn't appreciate forced break-ins.

There is no movement inside the house, no noises of kitchen appliances being moved or methodical thumping of shuriken crashing into a wooden log in the backyard, but the lights are on in each window.

Naruto sucks in a breath.

He moves down from the tree, walking gingerly towards the front door, hand raised to knock before he stills himself.

What if Sasuke doesn’t want him here? Naruto had said things that made Sasuke upset, and he ran off, and he locked his door, and closed his windows. Maybe Sasuke hates him now, and Naruto realizes that he is scared of it. He came to enjoy Sasuke’s company because Sasuke never interrupted him, and listened to him, and sat next to him in class; he made Naruto eat and shower, and gave him his clothes, and he walked him to grocery stores where no one dared to spit on Naruto because Sasuke was nearby. He showed Naruto answers to tests regularly, and trained with him, and always left his door open, and let Naruto sleep over several times when going through the dark street of drunk and angry adults was too scary.

Losing that, losing what Naruto shyly calls his friend in the safety of his own head, is terrifying.

Maybe Naruto should go.

Maybe it’s better if he is not bothering Sasuke since he made him this upset; maybe Sasuke would be better without him. 

Naruto blinks his tears away.

The door slides open.

Sasuke is looking at him, surprised, arm bracers and sandals gone as he blinks a couple of times at a crying Naruto.

Naruto furrows his brows and angrily wipes out his tears away, feeling defensive all of a sudden, scowling at Bastard even as he continues crying for no reason like a stupid baby.

“What do you want, Bastard,” he chokes out as if Sasuke came to his house in the evening just to weep like an idiot before his front door.

Sasuke looks up and down, eyes fixating first on Naruto’s forehead, then on his red and wet face, and then on his hand, still clutching a cup of ramen.

Then, with a great lurch, Sasuke launches himself at Naruto, fingers gripping Naruto’s jacket, heaving a choked-off sigh that sounded like Bastard was barely holding his tears back.

Naruto breathes through his teeth, hugging back (or more like he was the one doing the hugging, with Sasuke just desperately clinging to him instead), spots dancing in front of his eyes.

Bastard is shaking, face muffled in Naruto’s shoulder, and he looks--small, huddled onto himself. Even after the Scroll Guy’s jutsu, when Sasuke looked bewildered and lost after coming back to the Academy, he hadn’t been small and desperate. Naruto felt like he really fucked up.

They stand there, clinging onto each other for some time, before Sasuke forcibly detaches himself, seemingly having reached the limit of physical touch for today. He looks wrecked and it’s a very wrong look on him, with no annoyance or boredom or exasperation in sight.

“I’m sorry,” Naruto croaks out.

Sasuke wipes his face with his forearm, angrily glaring at it like he didn’t expect to see tears despite still crying. He lifts his eyes back to Naruto.

“Hn,” he nods, and takes Naruto by his wet sleeve, tugging him inside.

They fall asleep slouched together at the kitchen table, ramen cup split between the two of them, Sasuke not touching him but still staying close enough for Naruto to feel his body heat.

And if both of them pretend in the morning that none of the events of yesterday had ever happened, oh well. It’s for the best.

Chapter Text

Sasuke wakes up to Naruto’s red face mere inches away from his own, Idiot’s breath ghosting over Sasuke’s cheek.

Disgusting.

Naruto wails something out, fisting his hands into Uchiha's sleeping shirt, and tumbles to the side as Sasuke shoves him off. Seriously, he lets a kid or two sleep over at his stupidly giant house and they decide that creepily watching over him early in the morning is an acceptable form of gratitude?

Sasuke raises his fist under a Sakura-patented angle and Idiot whimpers, sweating, forehead surprisingly lacking the usual goggles, specs dangling around his neck.

‘HIDE ME, BASTARD,’ Naruto and his forehead screech in unison as the kid tugs on Sasuke’s blanket, covering himself underneath it.

Sasuke pushes his face into his hands and groans long and loud.

What did you do, he wants to ask, shaking a trembling dumbass on his futon. Are magic criminals after you again? Did you anger the ninja police? Did you draw a dick on the shopkeeper’s face while he was sleeping, again? 

“Uchiha-san,” says a carefully-neutral voice behind them.

Sasuke jumps regardless, because--the fuck. When did his house become a shortcut between the Academy and literally anywhere else?

It’s--it’s two adult ninjas, creepy porcelain masks sitting firmly on their faces. Both of them are not dressed in a blue-green-flak jacket ensemble, somehow managing to pick out even more ridiculous costumes, black clothing covering the entirety of their bodies except their shoulders and biceps like they forgot to put armour on, or something.

Sasuke mildly wonders what happens when Masked People spend too much time outside during the summer, and if their dumb no-clothes-with-sleeves policy gives them an especially stupid tan. With that tan, anyone would probably be able to pick Masked People out of the crowd anywhere, regardless if they were wearing their Masked People Uniform or dressed in civilian clothes.

They must wear a stupid amount of sunscreen, Sasuke thinks giddily, chewing at his lip as he looks over two ninjas that apparently chased Idiot right into his bed.

Oh shit, his eyes widened with sudden realization, how is he going to read any of the captions from the Masked People’s faces when they probably had those things hot glued to their foreheads?

Naruto whimpered under the blanket, then hissed out at Sasuke something that could’ve been equally ‘tell them I’m not here' and ‘I forfeit please don’t throw me in a ninja prison’.

Knowing Naruto, it was probably the first thing.

One of the masks--Cat mask--starts talking just for Sasuke to barely contain an awkward and squawky and unbelieving snort of laughter.

‘Naruto-kun, you can’t keep doing this,’ caption says, stretching over Cat's right unbranded-by-the-tattoo shoulder. 

Another person--Wombat mask--looks like they want to slap Cat across his head but are held back by sheer professionalism.

‘You won’t be able to do it again,’ Wombat corrects, captions appearing on their branded shoulder, ‘not anymore.’

Naruto gives up the farce of pretending to be a limp corpse Sasuke had dragged onto his futon earlier today and jumps up, pointing an accusatory finger at Cat and Wombat. He screeches something out that Sasuke doesn’t catch because he is still vibrating with the realisation that captions can shift body parts.

How super convenient, like everything that has been happening to him.

Well, apart from the green monstrosity and nightmares and flinching when seeing too much red in one place.

Sasuke wonders if someone were to get fully dressed up and then kept speaking to him, randomly baring different parts of their body, whether the captions would be swapping places too, or if it was just the Mask Cult thing.

Actually, scratch that. Sasuke doesn’t want to find out anything about baring people's body parts. The thought of that made him bodily cringe, barely holding back an annoying childish ‘ewwww’.

Stupid tiny body with stupid kiddy brain.

‘The Hokage monument will be under strict supervision from now on,’ Wombat’s voice seethes with annoyance. 

Sasuke wonders if it’s because Wombat was assigned to watch over the mountain instead of doing whatever Masked Cultist Ninja did in their free time.

‘You will be taken to clean out the Hokage Monument,’ Cat’s shoulder gently supplies, and--okay, Cat wasn’t half as bad. 

At least he knows how to speak to children without looking like he was seconds from strangling them.

“Anbu-sa-a-an,” Naruto moans out.

Then Idiot plasters himself over Sasuke’s back like he is just a piece of furniture to lounge over.

The Idiot then says something and Wombat answers bitingly. None of that Sasuke manages to catch because he is way too busy trying to figure out into which part of his very clean shirt Naruto’s disgustingly sweaty forehead was pressed.

Cat says something in an apologetic tone and Wombat huffs out some other string of garbled words.

It felt like Masked Cultists were now just bickering with each other.

Sasuke feels like he is third-wheeling in his own bedroom.

Stupid child ninjas, stupid adult ninjas.

He shrugs Naruto off of his body, Idiot yelping like he didn’t expect that to happen, and finally does land his fist on Naruto’s temple with the force that would probably make Sakura proud. 

“Hn,” he says, rolling his eyes, tugging at the blanket under Naruto’s ass which makes Idiot tumble over yet again. 

Sasuke drapes the blanket over his shoulders and walks out of the room, pettily closing every single window so that the three dunces in his bedroom would have to do the entire walk of shame through his hallway to exit the house.

All of them do end up having to walk through Sasuke’s hallway where he is sitting half-asleep, blanket cocooned around his body.

Only Cat has the decency to look a little sheepish about ruining Sasuke’s morning with stupid thoughts of people undressing and re-dressing.

He shivers again at the thought.

‘Sasukeeee,’ Idiot whines even as he is being directed away from Sasuke by Wombat’s steady hand on his shoulder. ‘Come with me to the Monument, ple-e-e-ease!’

Naruto ducks his head so that half of his face disappears in his fuzzy collar, and then clasps his palms together, lifting them slightly above his head.

‘--ll ge– you more soup!’ pitiful dumbass whines, captions obscured by his hands in front of his face.

Fucking damn it, Sasuke thinks.

He’d go, but not for the soup--Naruto’s cooking skills were atrocious and Sasuke often worried dumbass would blow his kitchen up just by boiling water. It was the Sad Puppy Eyes that Sasuke consistently was failing to refuse anything, remembering the desperate and sad Idiot as he said he’d become Hokage just so no one would spit on him in the streets.

Sasuke’s stupid, bleeding heart.

He was supposed to be the stoic one, damnit.

“Hn,” he reluctantly agrees as Naruto cheers, Puppy Eyes long gone and Sasuke’s irritation with the kid returning tenfold.

He just needed to get dressed, and brush his teeth, and pack some food for himself and the Idiot because otherwise he’d get dragged to Ichiraku’s again. He has nothing against Teuchi-san, the man is a god in a kitchen, but eating out meant Sasuke was paying because Naruto was a sad orphaned fool living in people’s trees and Sasuke had an entire district all for himself.

Sasuke lifts on his feet and then gets swaddled into a hold with an undignified squawk, Cat’s hands holding him as the masked bastard leaps out of Sasuke’s house with him in tow, still donned in a blanket.

Sasuke hears Wombat behind him holding Naruto, if adult’s curses and Naruto’s shrieking were any indicator.

Sasuke clutches to Cat because he doesn’t want Masked Cultist to drop him to die, but he does press his fingernails hard into naked skin on Cat’s shoulder.

He hopes Cat gets sunburnt so hard he wouldn’t be able to lift hands for a month .

“Sasuke-kun?” asks bewildered Ino-Pig. 

‘Why are you–’ she trails off, obviously assessing his blanket ensemble.

“Hn,” he explains for the umpteenth time, wildly gesturing at a grumbling Naruto who was scrubbing at Fourth President’s face with a single-minded determination.

“Ah,” Ino-Pig says, seemingly unsure of what to do with barefoot Sasuke that was sitting on his blanket on top of the Hokage Mountain.

The traffic in this area is insane today, Sasuke thinks grimly, looking at how Ino-Pig was trying to gather her marbles, face scrunched up in an attempt to connect Idiot-Naruto-cleaning-up-after-stupid-pranks to Sasuke-wearing-his-pajamas-in-the-middle-of-the-forest. 

After a long moment of silence, both of them just listening to Naruto’s pitiful mumbles into the side of Fourth President’s cheek, Ino-Pig looks back at Sasuke and bites the inside of cheek as if considering to do something that Sasuke might not like.

Sasuke tenses. He managed to ‘hn’ his way out of Sakura’s crush even if she was still hopelessly deep in it, just less obvious and less scared of acting like herself.

He didn’t interact much with Ino-Pig though, and she was as weird about being around him as she was the first time he came to the Academy.

‘Do you,’ she starts, words appearing on her forehead before erasing themselves as the girl gulped. ‘Do you want some flowers?’

Sasuke blinks at her, eyes shifting from her forehead to an arrangement of different bouquets in her hands.

‘-- –as gathering some flowers for my parents’ shop,’ she starts blabbering away, awkward under Sasuke’s eyes, forehead barely catching up with the speed of her talking, ‘and I found a lot of cool ones and–’

“Hn,” Sasuke gestures at the spot on the rock next to him.

Ino-Pig blushes so hard he kinda wants her to go get checked up in a hospital for any possible allergic reactions.

“Hn.”

‘That’s Alstroemeria.’

“Hn.”

‘It means devotion or support. Like long prosperity and strong bonds.’

“Hn?”

‘No, hydrangeas are representing heartfelt love for your family and togetherness within it. Alstroemeria is for friends and stuff.’

“Hn.”

‘That’s a gardenia. It represents young children and purity and hope. I was gathering these ones for my baby cousin that had just been born, she is so cute and tiny and–’

Sasuke was diligently nodding along with Ino’s (not that much of a Pig if she wasn’t doing the awkward preteen flirting thing) explanations. He had spent the past hour pointing a finger at different flowers in her bouquets, demanding the meaning of each flower until the girl had relaxed enough to start blabbering away about flowers she didn’t even have in her hands, and the flowers she had in her parents’ shop, and what different arrangements represented, and what the best bouquet to give for grandfather’s birthday was and–

“Teme?” 

Both Sasuke and Ino whip their heads around, looking at a confused Naruto, who was observing both of them, both kids hunched over a pile of flowers on Sasuke’s blanket.

Sasuke glanced downwards to see the monument as clean as it could possibly be, Masked Freaks nowhere in sight.

Naruto was done with the cleaning. That was pretty fast.

Sasuke looked back at Naruto who had a very weird look on his face, one Sasuke hadn’t seen before. It kind of looked sour, like he was bitter about something, looking between Ino and him, like he was–

Jealous?

Sasuke almost groaned.

Stupid kids and their stupid attachment problems. He is not going to stop hanging out with Naruto just because he is on a wild Rehabilitate Ninja Children journey whenever he has the time.

Sasuke huffs and looks down, moving the flowers in the pie between him and Ino, clearly searching for something.

Aha.

He stretches out his shitty makeshift bouquet, a bunch of yellow roses mixed with yellow buttercups.

Naruto takes the flowers only because they are shoved right in his face, dumbfounded, looking between Sasuke and a sea of yellow in his hands.

Ino snickers next to Sasuke and doesn’t even try to hide her amusement as Sasuke rolls his eyes and pulls the Idiot down by his jacket to sit and stare at flowers with them.

Despite being a giant childish dumbass (buttercups) Naruto had no competition as his stupid adopted friend-brother-reluctant son (yellow roses).

Sasuke needs to figure out how to ask Ino to explain to him which flowers meant ‘dumbass’ so he could throw them at Idiot’s face whenever he felt like it.

Chapter Text

‘--f course he had failed,’ snorts a kid sporting a newly-acquired Academy Graduate’s bandanna instead of a forehead protector like everyone else seemed to have, font curving over his eyebrow as if trying to get more space on a stupidly covered forehead.

Of course the one with a bandanna is an asshole, Sasuke scowls. First that substitute teacher guy, now this one.

Sasuke senses a pattern .

‘What, you expected him to pass or something?’ sneers another kid with a forehead protector wrapped around his waist--which just defied the fucking purpose of the Forehead Protector , but Sasuke digresses.

He wasn’t expecting much brilliance from two stupid bullies anyway. 

‘Yeah,’ laughs Bandanna Idiot, small ugly eyes gleaming with a mean and giddy look. ‘A stupid dead-last monster would never become a shinobi. My mom always says--’

A fist comes crashing into Bandanna Idiot’s stomach and he falls to the ground with a silent oof as Sasuke stands over him, glaring daggers at the moron, teeth bared in a snarl. 

‘--at the hell, Uchiha?!’ hysterically supplies Bully Number Two when Sasuke turns to look at him, kid's face covered in blotchy spots of red. 

Sasuke punches him too, then, fist connecting with Bully’s jaw as he wails and staggers back, clutching his cheek, dumb eyes wet with tears.

‘--ll tell Iruka-sensei!’ Bully Number Two says, not even attempting to fight, as Bandanna Idiot scrambles to his feet already wailing like a toddler. ‘I’ll tell my mom!’

Tell your mom she birthed a dickhead, Sasuke wants to answer, but instead raises his fist again, making tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber sob and turn on their heels, running away and shouting something to the crowd of chattering mothers that turned to look back at two beaten up kids and fuming Sasuke, his fists still clenched and shaking.

All of these stupid kids and their stupid mothers could go and complain to each head on the President Mountain for all he cared. Naruto didn’t deserve to be treated like trash by ninja midgets and their ninja midget caretakers.

Sasuke turns around to where Naruto was sitting, trying to spy him from under the tree, but the Idiot was gone while Sasuke was dealing with his newest headaches.

God damn it. Sasuke punts the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

The Graduation day was a long and stressful affair as it was, and he didn’t want to deal with Naruto being sadder than he ought to be for failing the exam.

It went like this:

Sasuke, his classmates and a bunch of kids he had never seen before were pushed into an empty classroom where Pretty Face explained to them that they’d be running through a bunch of jutsus in order to prove they are ready to become tiny teenage mutant turtles to serve for the good of their tiny ninja turtle village.

Sasuke liked Pretty Face, he really did, and Pretty Face tried hard to provide them with good education to prepare for the magic ninja world the best he could, but he still was a part of the stupid magic ninja system. As far as Sasuke knows, the education stops as soon as they graduate (at the age of twelve ), and then they’d be sorted into teams of three and appointed as apprentices to a ninja sensei or whatever, and would start climbing through the ranks of magic ninja police-slash-army, taking more missions until they would also become a magic ninja sensei or a Masked Cultist or--which Sasuke liked much more--a magic ninja teacher.

Sasuke didn’t like the idea of graduating at twelve one bit. They graduate so early , barely into their teenagehood, and there was a possibility of mad ninja criminals attacking them left and right as soon as they’d start doing missions under their Jonin sensei.

Not ideal.

Sasuke wasn’t prepared to graduate. Sure, he had learnt a lot in the past year, Sakura’s and Pretty Face’s help much appreciated, but he wasn’t strong enough to go out and fight for the sake of their village. He didn’t want to fight for the sake of their village at all, actually. He only needed to become stronger to protect himself and his friends from the crimson of bone-crushing sensation of red eyes , visions of them often haunting him in his nightmares where he had to relive memories he wasn’t supposed to have of corpses littering the streets of his dead and empty neighbourhood.

Sasuke will not hesitate to kill the Shape--the owner of those eyes if he ever encountered it ever again. 

The shape--never with a face attached, just the horrifying bleeding red of scary eyes glowing in the dark--won’t be allowed next to his friends. It killed off all of those people in the pictures of that godforsaken shrine, and Sasuke is not taking any chances of allowing it to damage his life more than it already did.

Having not-memories was a weird experience. It helped him with studying and writing and folding weird symbols with his hands that triggered ninja magic (and Sasuke was so fascinated by it, a sequence of hand gestures to weave magic out of thin air), but it wasn’t helpful to have a PTSD-grade-reaction at things he wasn’t even aware he needed to avoid.

So, Sasuke had to become stronger to be ready to kill if needed--both the Shape and all of the magic enemy ninjas. 

Graduating at twelve and increasing the chances of meeting the Shape was less than ideal.

They were called out of the classroom one by one after Pretty Face had announced the goal of the exam, and Sasuke was one of the first to go out.

He ended up dragging his feet to another room, empty of any desks, Pretty Face and Bandanna Guy perched behind the table filled with tennis headbands-- forehead protectors --and a stack of papers laying around.

‘Hello Sasuke-kun,’ Pretty Face smiled gently and Sasuke almost-preened at that. ‘I will be going through the list of jutsus you have to perform and will be giving you a minute between each to do them. Alright?’

“Hn,” Sasuke answered, and if he failed at containing a stupid smile at Pretty Face, well. No one but Bandanna Guy was there to see him fail to keep up his carefully-crafted neutral facade.

‘Alright,’ Pretty Face answered for him, looking down at a paper. ‘First off: Clone Technique.’

Okay, that was easy enough. Sasuke had stayed up until late looking at a textbook with super convenient pictures, circled by Sakura earlier this week to show which ones were needed at the exam.

She did that for Naruto, but Sasuke eagerly stole the textbook back after their study session, trying to memorise the hand signs in case his automated responses failed him. After all, they only acted well when he wasn’t focusing , making Sasuke stumble over his feet whenever he actually wanted to perform well instead of relying on his body.

It kind of felt like taking a guitar in his hands after not playing for many years and picking out a song he used to know by heart, fingers plucking the strings on their own if he didn’t focus on what he was doing very much. Sasuke wasn’t sure if he even could play the guitar--he never tried it here. Vague maybe-memory from Before in either this world or the other one staying vague and uncertain to which of his bodies they belonged.

As far as Sasuke was aware, though, this body was always his. Despite feeling awkward being a child after clearly growing up to be an adult, he didn’t feel like he was possessing a body or something. It felt natural being who he was.

Sasuke furrowed his brows in concentration and went through a sequence of hand movements: first lifting his forefingers, hands clasped together, both thumbs straight up; then lowering his wrists and curling his fingers into his palms; then intertwining one hand's fingers with the other’s, right hand horizontal and left hand vertical; and then slapping his left hand flat on right hand's wrist.

Two other Sasuke’s appeared next to him, one on his left and one on his right, their hands still forming the same sign he did last, looking very much real and tangible.

Sasuke felt giddy each time he managed to do the jutsu right; this time was no exception. He carefully hid his excitement by closing his eyes and ducking his head, showing a perfect mask of boredom, all the while feeling the heat climbing up his neck anyway.

‘---y good!’ he caught before the phrase erased itself from Pretty Face’s forehead. ‘Now: Transformation Technique.’

Sasuke picked out the hand signs he had memorised earlier this year, going through them carefully and methodically.

He had to do seven jutsus total, each time earning praise from Pretty Face and a hum from Bandanna Guy before Pretty Face dropped the paper on the table, and brightly beamed at Sasuke again.

Stoppp, Sasuke thought, tips of his ears warm with heat.

'Congratulations, Sasuke-kun,’ Pretty Face said, long fingers picking up a tennis headba--forehead protector from the table and extending it to him. ‘I knew you’d pass with flying colours.’

I am going to marry you when I grow up, Sasuke thinks. 

That would be weird though. Pretty Face was basically his middle school teacher. Marrying his pupil would be an awkward experience for them both.

Sasuke cringes inwardly at the thought, regretting he wasn’t old enough yet.

Then he thought of the screeching fangirls who would definitely be more aggressive if they were older.

Nope, Sasuke gulps, he is fine the way he is.

He plucks out the headband-- forehead protector out of Pretty Face’s hands, and “hn”s at him, Bandanna Guy looking incredibly annoyed even with a carefully neutral face.

‘Would you mind calling Inuzuka Kiba into the room next?’ Pretty Face asks and Sasuke nods earnestly, still clutching his forehead protector in his hand.

He ties it around his forehead as soon as he is out of the room, giddy with excitement at passing despite still being scared of the thought of being counted as an Adult Ninja from now on.

Well, as long as his Jonin sensei wasn't a mummy, covered head-to-toe with bandages, one creepy zombie eye peeking out from beneath them, he should be fine for at least some time.

Right?

Naruto wasn’t in his shoddy-ass apartment, and he wasn’t hiding in Sasuke’s trees, and Teuchi-san didn’t see him at a ramen stand since yesterday. Sasuke had checked the President Mountain and went to look under almost every rock in his neighbourhood, and even went to check Sakura’s house in case the Idiot was being consoled by Sakura’s dad’s traumatising hugs.

It’s like he had completely vanished from the village.

The Idiot could be sneaky when he wanted.

Sasuke was--he was worried. With Naruto being so excited about graduating, and getting his own forehead protector, and getting closer to becoming Hokage, the failure to pass the exam surely would have hit him harder than anybody else. 

Sasuke had found out Naruto had failed only after all of the kids were out of the Academy, their parents cheering for midget kids becoming ninja midget kids, Sasuke spying Naruto sitting on a swing near their favourite tree, head lowered, hands clutching the goggles on his forehead like he wanted to rip them off instead.

Oh, thought Sasuke. This wasn’t good.

So, obviously, he bumped into arrogant little bastards on his way to talk--or grunt, he supposes--at Naruto, who had distracted him for long enough for Idiot to escape from the yard completely.

Stupid ninja midgets.

It was getting dark now, lampposts getting lit on the streets, and Sasuke still didn’t know where the dumbass went. He trailed the streets like a hunting dog, dashing towards any blob of ugly orange he saw in the streets.

It was never Naruto.

As Sasuke was busy angrily kicking at somebody’s forgotten orange backpack left on the side of the street, he had noticed two adult ninjas dash towards the Hokage building which was sort of like both the president’s house, a city hall and all administrative buildings in one, he had guessed. It was kind of convenient, actually, having all of that shit stuffed under one roof.

Also kind of dangerous, considering enemy ninjas could just blow up one building and effectively destroy all administrative power of Konoha.

Oh well. What did he know. 

Now that he noticed the grown ninjas anxiously dash through the street, he paid closer attention to his surroundings as well, because--what if yet another mad fucker had invaded the village? What if Guy guy went berserk and started murdering people left and right, screaming in his creepy double-pitched English? What if the Red-Eyed Shape was back and Sasuke wasn’t ready and Naruto was still missing ?

Stupid fucking ninja village.

He needed to find Naruto, and fast.

Sasuke sprinted down the street, anxiously picking out anything resembling the disgusting orange outfit in the low light of lampposts, praying the Idiot was safe.

Sasuke didn’t get home that night, hunting for the dumbass on the streets for hours before coming to Naruto’s apartment and slumping at his door, blacking out in the same way little exhausted kids can black out, no care for the world and deaf to anything happening around them.

He woke up to someone tugging at Sasuke’s shoulder, shaking him way too excitedly for such an early hour, and he groaned, trying to bat the stranger’s arm away, disoriented at where he was and what was happening.

He opens his eyes and, catches a glimpse of an orange monstrosity of a costume, and promptly punches Naruto in the face.

Idiot starts hissing, falling on his ass, as Sasuke crawls over to him and latches on Naruto’s collar, shaking stupid fucking dumbass , making sure the kid’s head thunks on the dirty ground with each shake. Feeling like that wasn’t enough, Sasuke punches Naruto in the stomach, hearing the breath come out in a strangled oompf out of Idiot’s mouth, before lifting Naruto's upper body from the floor by his shoulders and wrapping his hands around him in a brief but strong hug that should’ve rivaled with Sakura’s dad’s bone-crushing embrace.

He lets Naruto go, looking at him, furious and worried, thinking of punching him again, and only then notices a shiny forehead protector on his head.

Oh.

Idiot passed the exam.

Thank fuck the Idiot had passed the exam.

Naruto opens his mouth and starts pitifully whining, hand pressed to his swelling cheekbone, and Sasuke shoves Naruto’s forehead protector up a bit, trying to catch what he was crying about.

‘--o me-e-ean, Bastard, why are you punching me, I just fought a bad guy and now you’re o–’

Sasuke shoves Naruto’s forehead protector down again, this time making sure it covers Idiot's eyes as the dumbass shrieks something out, flailing underneath Sasuke.

He sure fucking hopes he is not in the same team as the Idiot, Sasuke thinks bitterly but relieved, watching the dumbass try and take his forehead protector off of his eyes, because otherwise, he’d go grey before hitting puberty.

Stupid ninja midgets.

Naruto included.

Chapter Text

Sasuke barely had time to take a brief nap before he had to drag himself back to the Academy, body aching and trembling like he aged 50 years overnight. All of the nervous energy he’d wasted yesterday, chasing the supposedly-distraught Idiot around the village, hadn't had the time to recuperate before the orientation meeting for newly graduated genin.

While he was sitting in class, half of his face hidden in his arms and eyes scanning groggily over way too excited classmates, Sasuke thought back to the night before the Graduation. He slept even less that day than he did today, and it was definitely not doing him any favours, energy all but drained from his body. When Aburame Shino walked by and politely nodded at Sasuke, he barely managed an exhausted glance in the weird kid’s direction, weakly grunting in return.

If his future Jonin sensei was going to make him run through some test exercises or do anything other than just say 'hello ninja master' and fuck right off, Sasuke might drop down dead.

Stupid ninja midget body.

Naruto had plopped beside him some ten minutes ago, chattering excitedly about how he had learnt a new Jutsu or whatever, and Sasuke genuinely tried to look at the kid's forehead for longer than thirty seconds, he did, but his eyelids were sliding shut the moment he focused on one spot too intently. His lack of reaction made Naruto shut up eventually, Idiot fuming next to him. He was probably pouting and trying out an angry version of Sad Puppy Eyes right now.

Sasuke suspected he looked even more bored and disinterested today than usual, which made squealing girls even more excited about harassing him, kids fighting to sit beside him. Tiny ninja kids’ loud hissing noises right above his head and sounds of petty face-slapping--shocker--still had no effect on awakening him any further. 

Sasuke was fucked.

When Sakura and Ino had busted into the classroom, wide strides fast and similar to the horrible three-legged race, Sasuke barely glanced up, trying to focus on tracing his gaze over the intricate Kanji on the opposite wall, eyes sliding up and down the strokes that Pretty Face had drawn out last week. 

It… was kinda lulling him back to sleep.

Damn it.

Sasuke heard some fussing on his right and shot a brief look at Ino and Sakura, who were fighting Naruto over a spot next to him.

It was more of an Ino fighting Naruto to sit near him though. Sakura was dragged right into it because she resisted to lose to Ino’s insistent crushing--or resisted losing to her at anything in general. Naruto, despite fuming and stomping his feet at Sasuke ignoring him earlier, was clutching the desk with his fingers like he’d get blown away by a strong wind if he let go before he was thrown on the floor by a much stronger Sakura and a screeching Ino. The rest of the fangirls suddenly found their way to his desk as well, a wailing bunch of prepubescent ninjas trying to land their tiny asses on a chair next to him.

Then, Sasuke felt Naruto’s ramen breath ghost over his cheek.

The concept of personal space surely must exist somewhere in Idiot's tiny brain, he wanted to sigh.

‘--y are you such a bastard today, teme?!’ Naruto’s forehead demanded, silver Konoha symbol askew, allowing Sasuke more access to burn holes into Idiot’s temple with his eyes. ‘What crawled up your ass and died, ‘ttebayo?!’

He was crouching on the desk, hands on his knees, eyes squinting and bottom lip stuck out in an angry pout. 

The Idiot kinda looked like an oversized orange frog.

Sasuke was really in need of a nap.

Then, a kid in front of them shifted on his chair, glancing behind to see what the sudden commotion was all about, and the impact of it had shifted Naruto’s precarious Squatting Frog position, the dumbass dangerously careening in Sasuke’s direction.

His reflexes were gone to shit as he realised he had to dodge the dumbass way too late when Naruto’s disgusting ramen-stained lips planted firmly on top of his own mouth.

The room around them stilled.

Was it too late for him to quit being a ninja, Sasuke thought, eyes big and wide awake as both he and Naruto bolted apart with a screech, wiping furiously at their faces and making an entire show out of pretending to puke out the contents of their stomachs.

While Naruto was being dragged into a pile of seething girls, Sasuke planted his forehead on a tabletop with a loud thunk, groaning loudly while no one was paying attention to him.

This is gonna be a long day. He was not looking forward to it at all .

Naruto whined something, his head sticking out of the room, glancing around the empty hallway as Sakura’s reddening forehead projected loud and clear ‘STAY STILL, NARUTO’ at him.

Team sorting went well, all things considered.

He was only partially awake when Pretty Face had shouted out his name, and Sasuke blinked dazedly, glancing around the room to see Naruto dancing in his seat and Sakura shooting him a wide bashful smile from where she was perched right between them.

Ah. Alright. So the three of them were in a team together.

Better this than the Zombie Girl, he guesses.

He had nothing against her, but looking at her face made him feel very unsettled, still not used to her blank pupil-less eyes. That made reading the captions fairly difficult, seeing as he had to have her eyes in his line of sight at all times.

Troublesome, as Sleepy would have said.

All of the other teams had already left with their respective Jonin sensei (Sasuke had spied the wild-haired woman in one-sleeved bandage dress from Guy guy’s stupid genjutsu exercise, and The Guy From Before that grinned wide at sharp at Ino's protesting cries), so the three of them were left alone, sitting and waiting for their turn for the past 2 hours.

Sasuke considering sleeping here--he was not concerned with blacking out in front of Sakura and Naruto, he did that plenty enough when they ambushed him in his house--but he stubbornly kept his eyes open, angrily staring at Pretty Face’s desk and trying desperately to survive stupid orientation meeting, promising himself to get holed up in his bedroom afterwards to fall asleep for the next 24 hours.

Sasuke shot a tired look at Naruto climbing up the wall with an eraser in his hand, Sakura standing right beneath him, hands propped on her hips, half of her face turned away from him. He saw a disappearing string of ‘MAN, YOU’RE ASKING FOR IT’ on her forehead, and despite her trying to be her most annoyed self, she was kinda unsubtly looking like she was enjoying it.

Pranking their missing Jonin sensei with a dusty eraser, propped between the wall and the side of the sliding door. As if a grown-ass ninja would ever fall for it.

Just as Naruto was done securing the eraser and climbed down, doing a stupid jerking dance in front of Sasuke’s desk, the door slid open and a head popped inside the room.

The eraser dropped down with a loud smack, dusting the head in white-grey leftover chalk.

Not like it did much to help the eraser's impact to be seen. The head had silver-grey hair that stood upright like a horrifying combination of a bedhead, aftereffects of electrocution, and some weird gravity-defying forces that were definitely a part of the head’s hair care routine.

A lone eye stared at them all, assessing them, as the door slid fully open and a Jonin had entered the classroom.

If Sasuke had any power left in his body to groan, he would. This was by far the worst possible person to take over Sasuke’s team, being a horrible conglomeration of all things Sasuke had feared the most when he thought of being put into a team after graduation.

He had to give Jonin some credit--he was the first person in their ninja village to actually look like a ninja

His entire face was hidden away. Like, every single inch of his face under one or the other piece of cloth. If it wasn't for the weird bird nest of a hair, Sasuke'd say he wouldn't be able to pick out this guy on a street were he to remove the mask off his face. 

Life got harder after everyone around Sasuke started wearing twenty different variations of forehead protectors at all times. Fonts got smaller and smaller, insisting to stay in their rightfully deserved spot, and Sasuke could already feel like his shit-for-nothing vision was getting worse.

Thank fuck for Sakura, though. She kept hers tied as a ribbon. Nice, smooth, big forehead was still a beacon of light in his soon-to-be blind life.

Lanky McNinja's face had a tight fitting mask hiding his mouth and nose, going down his neck and blending into his standard Adult Ninja attire--did he actually order a custom-sewn shirt just to have a mask attached to it? What a fucking weirdo--and a forehead protector, slanted askew across his face, hiding one of his eyes away which shouldn't be super practical when you had to ninja your way around, probably going off on killer sprees on a regular basis. 

The guy didn't look that much older than them--he was maybe 25? 27? Not old enough to be their parent that's for sure. It was hard to tell his exact age with McNinja's masked face--and Sasuke feared for a brief moment that the ninja pirate look is the consequence of becoming a toy ninja soldier at a tender age of 12.

The guy being young also didn't give Sasuke much confidence in his teaching skills. Wasn't a Jonin supposed to be super experienced in the field, top-notch ninja and the greatest, deadliest asset to the village?

Lanky failed to dodge Idiot's eraser and looked even closer to falling asleep than Sasuke did.

Kinda makes you think whether he'd be able to protect a team consisting of Zero-Concept-of-Silence-and-Stealth, Loud-Angry-and-Short-Tempered, and Can't-Speak-Right-Now-Call-Back-Later. Either they were fucked, or their Jonin guy was fucked.

Maybe he was late because he tried to bargain his way out of taking them because Sasuke was painfully aware of what a weird trio they made were someone to look at them from the side.

Sasuke silently sighed. He guesses he'd need to find out what the fuck was going on just by social queues. Maybe he can just trail after Sakura and ask her to repeat what their sensei has said, pretending to be lost in his thoughts to really notice what's going on. She wouldn't mind, still super oblivious to anything that involved Sasuke, ready and eager to do anything for him to a scary degree and--he was working on it, okay, Sasuke was not exactly a specialist at human behaviour and psychology. 

Maybe he should be. With how much better he became at picking out subtle face movements after straining himself thin staring at people's faces all the time, he could probably make behavioural studies his chosen field if this ninja shtick doesn't work out.

“Maa”, McNinja drawled out in a double-pitched voice.

Sasuke was awake in an instant. 

“How can I put this?” NO, Sasuke would screech if he could force the words out of his throat, “My first impression of you guys… well.”

The three of them stilled, Naruto and Sakura unsure of what the masked guy could possibly say next, and Sasuke just hyperventilating in his spot. 

“I hate you,” masked mouth cheerfully supplied.

He needed to revisit all of the facts he had gathered on Forehead Captions that weren't really forehead-centric anymore, with Masked Cultists having them on their shoulders. Could these people control where their captions went? Could that mean, then, that Lanky McNinja and Guy guy just refused to have their captions be displayed, somehow willing the text into its audible existence? 

The logistics of it was hurting his head. Sasuke kept staring at their sensei, hoping to be wrong, hoping for the next phrase to be said in the same jumble of Japanese, waiting for the text to appear somewhere on the two inches of visible skin. 

Dubbed people were dangerous , Guy guy becoming a fixture in Sasuke’s nightmares for a solid week after that shitty training session he pulled out of his ass. Sasuke woke up more confused than terrified, though, because the plot of his nightmares never changed, but creepy crimson eyes now had the body of Guy guy. It just looked too ridiculous to be afraid of. 

Nothing in this stupid world made sense, Sasuke kept reminding himself, with magic ninjas and red-eyed monsters and people being able to hypnotise you to put you through hell and back in your own head just for their own amusement. 

Sasuke hated it.

Viciously.  

Their horrible, no good, dangerous sensei is leaning on a railing of the Academy building’s roof, his arms crossed firmly over his chest, deceptively lazy eye regarding them all with an unimpressed look. Sasuke knows not to trust these theatrics; Guy guy looked like the most oblivious bastard before turning around and putting them through the stupid amount of real combat simulations without ever telling them . 

Like the maniac that he was. 

Lanky Face was the polar opposite of the green monstrosity to a comical extent. It was so clear in Sasuke's mind that the two ninjas were just fucking with him.

He is not going to let this bastard touch him or innocent stupid ninja midgets he was paired with, Sasuke promises to himself grimly, planted on his ass on the steps in-between Naruto and Sakura. 

Loud and happy or late and lazy meant trouble in the magic ninja world, which Sasuke knew for certain. They were all taught to be silent and discreet and fast in their judgements and reflexes. The fact that Lanky was currently doing the opposite of that was suspicious. 

“Let’s see,” Lanky says as Sasuke keeps staring at him from under his eyebrows, muttering curses in sensei’s general direction from under his intertwined fingers. “First off, let me have you guys introduce yourselves. Your likes, dislikes, your future dreams. Hobbies. Things like that.”

Oh god, Sasuke thinks, this guy exists just to make Sasuke's life worse.

Sakura mutters something next to him just as Naruto points an accusatory finger at Lanky Face.

Naruto whines his “anosa, anosa” which Sasuke still didn’t find a consistent translation for, captions swapping it from ‘look-look’ to ‘hey-hey’ to ‘wait-wait’ or whatever the situation demanded the most.

‘--ey! B– –at –re – –tell us about yourself?’ shit, wow, the font has gotten even smaller, Sasuke barely recognized letters in the tiny space of Idiot’s forehead.

It might have been his fault, partially. He did beat this dumbass up earlier this morning, Naruto's cheek still bruised and red against whisker marks.

Then Sakura has beaten him up again, paired with Ino and a bunch of overzealous little girls, mere hours ago.

Oof. 

Sasuke will find a magnifying glass to offer to attach to the Idiot’s forehead. Maybe he can motivate it by being a great perception training for becoming a Hokage.

Or the Idiot will think it’s a hip fashion accessory. If Naruto had shown up to the Academy with spoons or magnifying glasses or cat shit attached to his face, Sasuke would just think it was intended and move on.

Hopefully Naruto will grow out of his orange phase soon, Sasuke thinks grimly.

“Me?” yin to green monster’s yang says, droopy eye getting droopier . “My name is Hatake Kakashi. I don’t feel like telling you guys about my likes and dislikes.”

Wow.

“I’ve never really thought about my future dream,” ninja asshole makes a show out of pretending to think like he’d suddenly remember he wanted to become a Four-Star Michelin chef or something. “As for my hobbies, I have many.”

Sakura slaps her forehead with an open palm, groaning. Naruto dramatically falls backwards, jabbing his spine on the side of a step and hissing out like a snake. Sasuke pinches the bridge of his nose.

In the end, all they really knew was Lanky’s name.

Guy guy had offered more information about himself in one sentence. He offered more information without words, actually. The green suit said enough.

“Next is you, guys,” an excuse for a sensei looks like he is smiling with his eye .

This is just a test, Sasuke thinks.

He also doesn’t need to turn his head to read Naruto’s captions. He can lip-sync out the Hokage bit as fluently as Naruto’s Ichiraku order.

“-- Uzumaki Naruto! – cappu-ramen, — Iruka-sensei– – Ichiraku no ramen!” and would you look at that, Sasuke was right, “-- — ramen. – – cappu-ramen, dame-dame!”

Sasuke glances at Sakura who just has a bewildered look on her face. Sasuke thinks she is still not over Lanky-- Kakashi-sensei-- falling for their eraser prank.

“-- – Hokage — ‘ttebayo!” exclaims predictable dumbass as Sasuke mouths into his hands another one of Naruto's  ‘I will surpass Hokage, and so I’m going to get the entire village to acknowledge my existence, believe it'.

He refuses to mouth around the ‘ttebayo bit.

He can pretend to be a convincing Naruto even without the knowledge of Magic Japanese if he listens to him say the same thing over and over again for one more year.

Lanky points at Sakura next, motioning at her with his chin.

‘I’M HARUNO SAKURA,’ her forehead says, hands fisting in her red dress. ‘WHAT I LIKE– I MEAN, WHO I LIKE IS–’

She looks at Sasuke pointedly and he resists rolling his eyes. Gentle pushes. The gentlest acts of friendzoning. She is a child, he reminds himself.

Sasuke jabs her side with a pointy elbow.

‘I like trivia games,’ her forehead instantly corrects itself, slowly turning redder and redder under Sasuke’s unrelenting gaze.

What the fuck, Sasuke blinks in confusion at a shift in caption font size.

‘I dislike spicy food,’ she quickly adds, font still unnaturally small for Sakura's standards, speaking up before another jab can land under her ribcage.

“Your hobbies? Your future dream?” supplies Kakashi.

Sorry? Sasuke wants to snarl. Pot, this is kettle calling. 

‘I like to read,’ the caption erases itself when she looks at Sasuke again, her eyes darting all around his face, and she shies away, smiling dopily. 

‘MY FUTURE DREAM IS…’ the captions are back at it, words taking the entire space of her forehead instead of being a reasonable size like the weird stint from before.

Huh.

Lanky-sensei then looks expectantly at Sasuke. Lanky was scary, sure, Guy guy levels of messed up and insane, but Sasuke lived through Sakura’s dad’s hugs. He can bite out a few rehearsed words from his self-made Magic Japanglish dictionary.

“Hn,” he straightens out, body rigid. 

‘--astard’s –ame –s Uchiha Sasuke,’ Naruto instantly interjects before Sasuke can even open his mouth again, getting way too close into Sasuke’s personal space.

Again.

‘He likes to beat me up,’ Naruto’s forehead continues, ‘and I beat him up in return!’

‘He also likes tomato soup,’ says Small and Unnerving font of Sakura’s captions.

‘He hates Ramen even though he eats it with me all the time anyway.’

‘And he doesn’t like when Naruto doesn’t shower.’

‘Sakura-chan!’

‘He also hates when people speak to him when he isn’t looking at them.’

‘I don’t know what is his dream, though,’ Naruto peeks back sheepishly at him as if two idiot children didn’t just save Sasuke the embarrassment of trying to piece together how to pronounce ‘tomato’ correctly. ‘Kaka-sensei, is it alright if Bastard doesn’t have one?’

Lanky looked like he had expected this meeting to go in a completely different direction as he stiffened, eye flashing with something akin to panic. It felt like he had been rehearsing lines to a play, and then his stage partner had just suddenly decided to dive head-first into an improv instead of following the script.

For that brief second Lanky looked like a scared, sleep-deprived twenty-something year old that he probably was.

Sasuke assessed him with sharp eyes again.

Alright, maybe Lanky-sensei wasn’t dangerous for now . It would be disastrous to have him and Guy guy together in the same room, though. He kinda looked like a sad wet cat to Naruto’s occasional sad wet dog--pitiful and moronic, in need of a bath and a piece of jerky, or something.

If they all want to survive the stupid dangers of the magic ninja world, Sasuke would have to make sure their stupid, weird, dangerous sensei fucking eats well enough not to be blown away by the wind. Sasuke isn’t strong enough to protect himself and his team's two morons; he isn't strong enough to kill the Shape if it were to attack again, but deceptively-lazy Lanky looked like he was deadly enough, having the entire Guy guy vibe around him like a stormy cloud.

So, it was only natural that Sasuke would have to make sure his team’s greatest protection asset is alive for long enough for Sasuke to take over the mantle.

And if Lanky-sensei ends up throwing them into a genjutsu, well. Sasuke had learnt how to dispel it soon after the Guy Incident. And then he and Lanky will be having words .

It was supposed to be a familiar sort of dynamic--an aloof genius-Rookie of the year, a civilian-born girl, and a dead-last kid from their class. It was not an ideal team, but Kakashi lived through a similar experience for long enough to know how to deal with it.

The Last Uchiha had reminded him of himself from what Kakashi had read from the kid’s Academy file. Distant, orphaned at a similarly young age, still able to remember days when life was easier and brighter with his family around him.

The civilian-born girl--Sakura--had a painfully obvious crush on The Last Uchiha and a lot of hidden determination behind her eyes.

And sensei’s kid--well. Kushina always said if she were to have a child, she wanted them to be like Obito. 

It felt like staring directly at the sun when looking at Naruto, simultaneously feeling the warmth and the burning agony of it.

Kakashi did some intel gathering before Team Seven was shoved into his hands by the Shodaime. He watched over some of them for a week, hiding in the shadows, assessing his future genin from the distance. It looked like the file wasn’t really outdated despite Hokage saying it was--The Last Uchiha frequently dragged sensei’s kid through the mud, both of the boys hissing at each like feral cats, and Haruno girl trailed after Sasuke wherever he went, albeit mostly only stomped in his general direction if prompted by a small Yamanaka girl who had very different levels of obsessed with him.

Kakashi didn’t expect three tiny genin to form an almost-battle formation in front of him, Uchiha sitting protectively in front of the other two, sensei’s kid and Haruno girl mindful of the flanks beside him. 

And how aggressively the three of them had defended each other; how the Uchiha kid had derailed Haruno from giving insincere information on her likes and dislikes, and how sensei’s kid stepped in to speak in Sasuke’s stead when the kid suddenly struggled with picking out the words well.

They were already doing much better than Kakashi’s version of Team Seven.

He just ran them through the usual spiel--they are not genin yet, he will give them another test, 66% or higher failure rate, Don’t-Eat-Breakfast-You’ll-Throw-Up–-before nervously shunshin-ing away, hoping none of his panicking was registered by the kids.

Sasuke’s eyes never left him since he had entered that godforsaken classroom, first looking absolutely terrified (did he know about Kakashi’s Sharingan?), then looking defensive and tense, and then shifting into something that Kakashi had seen on Kushina’s face before, the mean kind of I-Will-Adopt-You-And-You-Have-No-Saying-In-This look.

Kakashi didn’t drink much, but he found his legs bringing him to a Jonin bar anyway.

He just hoped not to kill them the same way he did all the other people he was tasked with protecting. 

(Kushina will be waiting for his ass in the Pure Lands to punch him through a wall if he gave up on sensei's kid, though.)

It was supposed to be a familiar sort of dynamic, Kakashi thought desperately. Whatever the fuck these three gremlins were, they were not something Kakashi was familiar with.

He is going to borrow (steal) a guide on teaching from Gai’s apartment. 

Where the fuck are you when you are needed the most, sensei?

Chapter Text

Nope. Fuck the magic ninja career. Fuck Pretty Face for letting him graduate. He should’ve told Sasuke everything is just going to go downhill after getting his stupid forehead protector. 

Masked asshole of a sensei could go and sit down on one of Sasuke’s kunai. And rotate . 

Sasuke was so done with dubbed people’s fuckery.

Jonin sensei, master of ninja arts, his ass. Master cocksucker is what he was.

Sasuke will kill him the moment he is freed from being tied to this tree stump, tiny useless legs flailing beneath him as remorseful Naruto and Sakura sat on his sides, lunch boxes on their knees, while the bastard child of Captain Hook and Super Shredder kept reading his ugly little oh god orange book. He didn’t give a fuck if Lanky and Devious was at least fifty times stronger than Sasuke--at least he was going to try .

He almost landed that one hit today anyway.

Sasuke’s stomach growled. He scowled in return, struggling in his bonds.

‘--d you like some food, Sasuke-kun?’ Sakura’s forehead says in that unsettling tiny font of hers that she had developed in the past 24 hours and Sasuke wants to say he doesn’t want it, but the last time he ate was probably in the last century and dirty riverside water that he had inhaled after getting thrown head-first into it by Lanky did not count as food anyway. 

He also threw it up afterward.

“Ah ah,” says Lanky Fucker, lazy eye minutely raised from his stupid tiny book. “Didn't I tell you the conditions of staying a genin? The two who are not tied up get to eat. The loser has to watch the rest and then gets returned to the Academy. Do you want to go back to the Academy, Sakura?”

Sakura mumbles something, abashed, and Sasuke goes to kick one of his legs out, too far away from Lanky to really hit him but trying nonetheless.

He knew Lanky was trouble. He had predicted it before Lanky had ever opened his mouth, but Sasuke let himself let his guard down by the Naruto-esque sad face ninja guy was sporting yesterday.

Of course it was a ruse. Of course it was the same as Guy guy Incident. Lanky Face was just much more subtle about it.

The only saving grace of that Kakashi guy was that he is, indeed, mad fucking competent. When Sasuke gets booted back to the Academy--and he is almost fine with it, not having to do adult ninja shit for another year--McNinja would be able to take proper care of Sasuke’s ninja midgets just fine.

If he stops looking in that ugly book of his. Seriously, what the fuck could he be possibly reading that required such an ugly cover?!

Sasuke thinks back to earlier today when Ugly and Lanky had announced that in order to pass, the team of three had to acquire the bells. 

They also needed to try and kill the guy. Sasuke was apprehensive about the idea, seeing how some of the Jutsus were fucking dangerous, alright, and he did not want to maim anybody by spawning a goddamn log on top of their head to crush them underneath it.

Turns out Lanky and Sneaky was way too good at his job. They didn’t come anywhere close to getting the bells over the span of the awful maybe-4 hours that Ninja guy had spent having them run themselves thin to get even remotely close to him.

There was also a thing about Lanky and Evil having only two bells, which meant--yikes. Only two of their team would make it further.

So, Sasuke decided to sacrifice himself, because if Naruto wants to take a fast track towards the Hokage position and Sakura wants to beat Ino at every single turn they take, Sasuke didn’t need to be a stupid ninja to get stronger. He can train on the side, or whatever. He had the study book from the Academy and he could probably try the Puppy Eye technique on Pretty Face for him to take Sasuke in as his own apprentice. 

They all fought alright, Sasuke supposes. They weren’t good, no, not even remotely , but it was better than their sparring matches in the Academy grounds, and all of them were desperately trying to make as many holes in Lanky McNinja’s body as they could.

Naruto obviously was the first one to charge without waiting for anybody else. Sasuke had screeched inside his head because if he planned to do the entire Almost-Protagonist-Sacrifices-Himself-For-The-Greater-Good thing, he needed Naruto to cooperate with him. Not that Idiot would ever stop and listen to anybody when his plans of becoming a Carved Mountain Head were in danger.

Naruto had leaped forward, snarling at Lanky Bastard’s face, but was quickly stopped by a teleporting asshole, who had stuck his--fingers?--up Naruto’s butt and sent him flying over the fucking trees .

If that was one of the commonly used ninja techniques in the field, Sasuke didn’t want it. He’d go and sell his soul to the Shape thing before he voluntarily sticks anything inside anybody’s anywhere . Just the thought of it makes Sasuke cringe all over.

Then, as Sasuke had noticed Lanky fuck off somewhere to the side of the forest clearing, still reading his stupid book of whatever it was (probably not the ninja midget teaching theory, judging by the Ass no Jutsu the guy had performed earlier), he dashed after him, aiming to just get instantly knocked down so Naruto and Sakura get an auto-win, or something. At least that’s how it seemed to work from Lanky and Lazy’s shit-poor explanation from before.

Sasuke did get rendered immobile then, yes. He had maybe not thought this plan all the way through. For it to work, he needed Naruto and Sakura nearby to snatch away the bells while he was being beaten to a pulp by the Lazy Pervert’s horrible ass-violating fingers. 

But Naruto was somewhere off involuntarily catching fish in the river, and Sakura was--Sakura didn’t follow him, of course , because he didn’t say anything to her and wouldn’t be able to explain his plans anyway in whines and grunts without the use of proper words.

So Sasuke was thrown into the river, then got thrown into a tree, and then Lanky Fucker jumped at him from under the ground (if Sasuke screeched at that hysterically, jumping away from the breaking soil under his feet, no one would be able to prove he did it) before flailing in the air as he tried to take control over his poorly coordinating limbs. He almost scratched the side of Lanky’s face with his foot as he was trying to make sure not to land face-first on the ground and back out before his stupid baby teammates make it here.

Sasuke is just going to count it as a personal win of his--McNinja looked mildly surprised for a split moment at almost getting slapped across the face with a tiny leg.

Then, the Adult Bastard tied him up with a glowy ninja string.

“SASUKE-KUN!”

Oh shit oh fuck no , Sasuke writhed on the ground and watched in horror, glowy ninja strings still painfully pushing into his sides, as Sakura froze in the clearing somewhere before him, head turned away. 

Her pink hair was disheveled, with tiny branches and leaves sticking out of it. She looked like she also dove head-first into a tree, lost consciousness, and was chased through half the forest by one of those creepy Nara deer they had learned about in the Academy.

Was there more than one Lanky and Pervy to ambush her too at the same time? Or did she just stumble over her own legs and roll down a steep hill while Sasuke had his ass handed to him by a self-proclaimed Ninja Book Club leader?

Then, he noticed himself across the clearing too.

Oh, fucking Ninja Face is gonna get punched into another dimension. Sasuke doesn’t care how many years it will take for him to get strong enough to do it, but he will put all his energy into getting revenge against that asshole .

Other-Sasuke was barely standing on his own feet, bloodied, kunai and needles stuck too deep in his wretched out body. He looked like a victim of torture, kept alive for too long but just barely, pale with blood loss, sunken eyes staring wildly at Sakura.

Was this another genjustu mind-trickery bullshit? Why did all dubbed people think it was a good idea to traumatize children before most of them had their voices break?!

Other-Sasuke gurgled something out, voice his own but unrecognizable from the damage dealt to his throat, speaking Magic Japanese by the sound of it. He extended an arm forward, trying to move, dragging one of his feet behind like the bones in that leg were shattered .

Sasuke choked on a gasp.

Sakura unfroze, then, like she had heard him struggle to breathe while laying bumfuck somewhere behind her, hidden by dirt and leaves. She snaps , hurling a kunai at Other-Sasuke with such rage and disgust that Sasuke himself flinches when it collides with his other-self.

Other-Sasuke disappeared in a cloud of dust, bunshin-dispelling sound a quick but relieving ‘pew’ ringing between the trees.

Sakura drops to her knees, heaving like she wanted to puke.

GOOD JOB, Sasuke wants to shout. TAKE THAT, YOU WET DOG-SMELLING BASTARD.

Sakura just keeps trembling there for some time and Sasuke struggles to break the stupid fishing wire wrapped around him. When he cuts deep enough into his own flesh for it to probably scar later, Sakura is already gone.

“FUCK,” he screeches then, wriggling in his spot like a midget worm.

If any other Ninja Bastards have heard him speak not in a Magic Japanese, they can kiss his fishing string-damaged little ass.

Sasuke was brought back to where they had dumped all of their backpacks earlier by an impassive asshole of a sensei who just kept shooting Sasuke weird looks with his stupid one eye that Sasuke wanted to scratch the fuck out.

He was tied to a tree stump ( FANTASTIC teaching methods) next to Naruto and Sakura’s tired and beaten-up forms, although these two were free of any ropes, food containers in their hands. Good . At least they are not gonna be subjected to whatever the fuck Ass Pervert-sensei was going to do to him.

Sensei guy had then dangled the bells in front of all of their faces, squinting with his stupid eye like he was having fun at this little class trip to hell, and announced in his stupid creepy voice that Naruto and Sakura had passed, and Sasuke was a sore dumb loser who needed to start the Academy from the start if he didn’t want to suck as much later in life.

If Sasuke could speak Magic Japanese, he’d sneer back that it was not a bad fucking idea. If he can manage to stretch out his graduation until 18 years old or something, he’d have a better chance not to turn into One-Eyed and Creepy over there.

Lanky had also said not to feed Sasuke anything despite him being close to just chewing off the dried skin off of his lips.

Supposedly, just because dubbed people were assholes like that.

He left then, his stupid book still in his hand, and waved at them with one arm raised while not turning to look at bewildered kids at all.

The three of them waited for long enough for Lanky and Cranky to disappear just for Naruto to whip his head around and shake Sasuke by his stupid wide collar, forehead smeared with dirt and sweat.

‘What happened, Bastard?’ he shook Sasuke against the tree stump, Sasuke’s head hitting the wood behind him with metronome-precise rhythm control. ‘You were gone and I was worried he killed you, or something!’

Oh yeah, as if Idiot had a leg to stand on questioning people’s fighting choices. 

Sasuke decided to tell him just that by biting at Naruto’s finger that was in a dangerous vicinity to Sasuke’s mouth.

The Idiot had yelped, jumping back, shaking his hand, and ‘ow ow ow’ ing as Sakura shot both of them the most unimpressed look like she was the one who had to deal with protecting two clueless ninja children.

Sasuke had learned the definition of a missing-nin half a year ago and he was now considering the pros and cons of becoming one. He had heard the landscapes were beautiful in the Land of Rice Fields or whatever it was called. They had renamed it recently in the textbooks, Sakura mentioned. Land of Sound or something--another stupid ninja name to swap a perfectly fine previous denomination. 

‘--e hell, you ugly bastard?!’ Naruto wailed while Sasuke was still considering the size of his future farm in the Land of Sound. He is going to grow so many tomatoes he’d be able to survive on them for ages . Maybe he can even start trading. Become a full-fledged ninja businessman. Maybe the Shape wouldn’t find him if he were to hide under the guise of a tomato farmer instead of an active duty ninja soldier .

‘STOP IT YOU TWO,’ ah, Sakura’s regular font size was back. It was very comforting. 

She landed her fist on Naruto’s temple and before Sasuke could laugh at Idiot’s funny face, Sakura punched him dangerously close to his crotch.

Ow.

‘I’m just trying to find out why the Bastard wants to go back to the Academy so much!’ Naruto’s forehead might as well be a billboard with how bright the letters stand against his skin. ‘Why does he want to leave me so hard?!’

Ohhhhhhhhhh gooooooodddddddddd , Sasuke wants to groan.

NOT his intention. He was still going to look over Lanky McPervert guy and Naruto with Sakura when he was shipped back to Pretty Face-sensei. He would be able to avoid dubbed people much easier this way.

And he can trail after multiple Jonins to learn from them instead of being stuck with one of the two most creepy ones the village had. 

“HNN,” Sasuke bites out, trying to empathize that he was the victim here, tied to a fucking tree stump and getting demoted to a kid ninja again (not that he complained about the last part).

‘If Sasuke-kun is going back to the Academy, then so am I,’ Sakura’s Serious Font says firmly as she grips her lunch box in her kiddy fingers.

‘So am I, dattebayo!’ Naruto throws his hands in the air, looking like Sasuke was dying, or something, instead of just being tied up. ‘Those who abandon their friends are worse than scum!’

Where the fuck did he learn that from, Sasuke wonders mildly.

Also, none of the kid’s logic made sense to him. Unless they have imprinted themselves on him like ugly ducklings, there is no reason for them to stick together this hard when they could just go off and pursue their dreams of midget ninja-ing.

Sasuke digresses. He stopped understanding what was going on long ago.

Naruto looks like he is about to cry. 

‘--- eat our lunches, then?’ Sakura’s forehead offers tentatively. ‘We can all share. Since we are all going to the Academy anyway.’

Naruto wretches open the lid of the lunch box with such force Sasuke is unsure how the rest of that thing is still intact.

‘Open your mouth, Bastard,’ Naruto’s forehead says as he forcibly shovers crumpling onigiri into Sasuke’s mouth, trying and failing at being a helpful teammate and instead going for something closer to Potential Murder Suspect.

Sasuke chokes and kicks Naruto in the shin. Naruto hisses out and keeps pushing more food into Sasuke’s mouth as Sakura, half of the nori sticking from between her teeth, tries to wrestle Naruto away from Sasuke by punching the former in the face.

Such a healthy team dynamic, Sasuke would sigh if his mouth wasn’t full of cold rice right now.

Naruto and Sakura are full-on wrestling on the ground right now, one lunch box upturned and the other abandoned next to Sasuke’s feet. He mildly thinks if he will have to cook for all of them when this shit is over.

Maybe he will take them all to that BBQ place. He was the one with all the murdered-people money after all.

Then, suddenly, hell gets loose.

A giant explosion of smoke appears out of nowhere around them and Sasuke thinks he yelps even as his mouth is still full of sticky rice. Naruto and Sakura who were just recently rolling on the ground are back up in an instant, their ninja midget reflexes acting up as they stand in front of Sasuke in their best attempt at a fighting stance.

Mad and Lanky appears out of the smoke explosion with a completely batshit crazy expression, charging at them, before swiftly stopping himself with a swipe of a leg on dusty ground.

“You defied the set rules. That means you know what's coming,” Mad Ninja-sensei says, voice dangerous but still looking his deceptively-lazy self. “Do you have something to say?”

Sasuke grits his teeth, because of course, this fucking guy is even madder than Guy guy, holy shit. He tries to wrangle one of his arms free to reach for his weapons pouch, struggling against the tree stump.

Naruto starts bawling something out, voice angry and pissed, like he wants to bite his way through Lanky-sensei’s throat. Sakura’s firm but shaky voice supplies something, the girl shouting out jumbled words, and Sasuke fucking hates that they had to turn away from him to address the Lanky Fucker, because he can’t see what they are talking about.

“The three of you are one, eh,” Crazy McNinja growls out, taking a step forward and earning a hiss from all of the kids.

Then, he bends over, murderous expression gone from his face.

“You passed!” 

All three of them regard Lanky-sensei with the most unimpressed looks.

Naruto makes a very undignified squawk and Sakura sounds shaken to her core.

Lanky Fuck goes on and on about the importance of teamwork and Sasuke feels like crawling out of his skin. Okay, he sees Lanky’s point, and he does agree with it, but did he really need to go through the Dubbed Bastard’s Mad Deception Act just to tell it to them?!

Naruto hiccups and it sounds suspiciously like crying.

Then, Ninjaface strikes a pose, one hand on his hip and the other one extended in a thumbs-up.

Ohhhhh godddddddddd, Sasuke thinks. He is going to bite at Lanky’s stupid creepy ankles the first chance he gets. Sad and sleep-deprived and mentally crippled from years-long ninja fighting or whatever, Sasuke will not hesitate to bribe Sakura to punch Ninja Face through the wall as hard as she can. 

Lanky-sensei is SO much like Guy guy it makes Sasuke sick. He wants to shake the Ninja man by his collar and demand answers. Is he and Guy guy just super ugly twins? Is this what happens when you are a ninja for long enough? Will Sasuke become the same after a while?

Maybe Sasuke’d get Lanky to do therapy or something. Surely that thing exists to some degree here, with Pretty Face being normal and competent. 

Then Sasuke will make Lanky learn to fucking cook  because holy shit those packed lunches he had brought? Fucking disgusting . Worse than anything Naruto had ever tried to make. 

No wonder Lanky and Pervy is so fucking crazy. Living without good food was his first fucking mistake. Sasuke is going to change that if he has to stick with this nightmare of a team longer.

As a final act of revenge, he is going to sic Sakura’s dad on this guy. 

Lanky Ass will get mentally killed off in an instant. 

Chapter Text

After passing the crazy people’s graduation test, newly formed Team Seven ends up chasing a disgustingly old cat on at least three different occasions.

The cat is so old Sasuke thinks it might’ve lived through lifetimes of at least three out of four Stone Ninja Heads. 

Sasuke just wants to put the creepy thing down. It seems to run away on purpose just to get accidentally stabbed by incompetent tiny ninjas to end its meaningless immortal existence.

Currently, Idiot had been nursing 50 different bruises while an ugly ass balding feline with an honest-to-god pink bow tied into its fur evidently had decided that if it can’t escape meeting sweet death alone, it will bring Naruto down as well.

Only the iron clasp dumbass seemed to have on that thing saved him from getting written off as another lost ninja-child soldier.

Sakura was busy making kissy noises like the bumfaced old cat was something to preen over, her body slouched and strategically removed from the immediate radius of cat’s claw attacks. Naruto was sitting on the ground, spitting out of his mouth something that looked suspiciously like cat hairballs.

Sasuke pressed a finger to his ear.

“Hn,” he supplied into the earpiece, rolling his eyes as the Idiot shrieked out at the cat’s attempt to break its own neck together with Naruto’s.

“Good job,” an extra creepy version of Lanky-sensei’s voice tells them from their earpieces, the uncanniness of double pitches amplified by a distorted static of shitty radio connection. “Team Seven has completed a Retrieval Mission: Target Tora. We will debrief at the Missions Desk.”

Sasuke catches a glimpse of a just-formed ‘HELLLLLLLL-’ on Naruto’s forehead as the cat decides that it had enough and Naruto’s death is imminent and coming for him right now .

Sasuke sighs. Then, because he is nice like that, goes to wrangle the cat out of Naruto’s grasp, ready to bear the battle wounds on his own.

(He is going to shove the cat to Sakura as soon as wrestling with the horrible claw monster gets to be too much. That’s what she gets for being all mushy-mushy with Genin’s Worst Nightmare award winner (and no one else had won this award since the founding of this village, with how fucking old that cat is.)

As soon as Sasuke yanks the cat that was busy adding more whiskers to Naruto’s cheeks, the stupid ugly thing quiets down and starts mushing its face all over Sasuke’s chest. It’s making some noises, it’s-- purring , oh god--wrapping a shabby tail around Sasuke’s arm and just sits there, content, looking at the genin with a half-blind ugly eye.

They all stare at it. Then they all stare at each other.

No one dares to say anything as they walk back to the Missions Desk, too afraid to disrupt the sudden peace offering the cat has decided to offer them and all of the Konoha genins. 

A guy at the entrance into the Hokage tower blanches at them, then rubs his eyes like he can’t believe what he is seening, and lets them in without further comments.

The cat gets returned to a big and loud maybe-royal woman and starts bellowing again (how this doesn’t affect the lady Sasuke doesn’t know --her skin must be made out of metal or something).

Sasuke then spends the rest of the day plucking out cat hair out of his clothes, hair, and body orfices.

‘Awwww,’ says Naruto’s forehead, ‘it’s a cute widdwe potato!’

Dumbass has been cooing over a tiny baby, vibrating with unreleased energy as an infant clutched at his finger. 

‘Tiny widdwe potato fingews. Tiny widdwe potato cheeksies!’ his forehead continued and Sasuke was going positively green at the spelling.

It’s like the Caption Overlords or whoever the fuck had supplied them (maybe it was just his mind--as far as he knows none of the ninja doctors had run him through psychological evaluation) were laughing at him and trying to make him more and more miserable.

‘Stop it,’ Sakura hisses. If Naruto wasn’t currently curled around the baby that was laying on a tabletop like a loaf of bread, she’d probably hit him. ‘She isn’t a potato! You’re insulting her!’

Sasuke suspects she was just jealous that the duty of playing with the baby went to the dumbass and not to her. She was sewing back together tiny baby clothes, seeing as she was the only one of them to actually know how to sew.

Guess the extra Girls-Only classes their Academy supplied taught them important life skills. Sasuke will probably stab himself in the eye if he tried to thread a needle.

‘You’re right,’ Naruto sagely agrees, offering the child another finger and squealing when she latched onto it too. ‘She’s a widdwe turnip lady.’

God, why, Sasuke raises his eyes to the ceiling. He never liked children. Especially not super tiny ones. He just didn’t know what to do around them, and they had no control over their bodies and required too much care. It was an awkward experience for both the toddler and Sasuke to be in the same room.

Sasuke had his hands full with Naruto as it is, thank you very much.

He was very content with washing the floors in a three-story building they had taken a Babysitting Mission in. All things considered, being a ninja wasn’t too bad--Lanky-sensei just kept sending them to be local blue-collar workers, and that secured Sasuke and his idiot team’s position as safe from crazy enemy ninjas.

They already had a crazy ninja for a sensei. Sasuke was still working out the rehabilitation plans. It wasn’t an easy process.

Sakura groaned, turning her head away from Sasuke and his arrangement of mops, mumbling something that he wouldn’t be able to grasp.

‘No!’ shrieks Idiot’s forehead as he turns around to look deeply offended at Sakura. ‘Bastard wouldn’t know what to do with a baby to save his life, Sakura-chan!’

How the fuck does Naruto know what to do with a baby, Sasuke scowls at him just out of obligation.

Dumbass gently extracts one hand from the kid's grasp and pulls his eyelid down, sticking his tongue out at Sasuke.

Sasuke rolls his eyes. He is not trying to lay a claim on a drooling infant. Naruto can get every baby in the village for all he cared.

The child gurgles something out, snapping Naruto’s attention back to her.

Sasuke focuses on mopping for some time, going around the couch, trying to shoo Naruto away when he has to mop around the place he was fussing over baby at.

‘--we potato feetsies. Tiny, widdwe potato handsies,’ Naruto’s forehead was saying and Sasuke audibly gagged at that.

At least now he knows how to completely immobilize the dumbass if he ever needs to, Sasuke wonders mildly, looking where the child has sunk her toothless gums onto Idiot’s finger. 

Naruto doesn’t react to Sasuke looming nearby, so Sasuke shoves a mop over Naruto’s bare feet.

Idiot makes a sound like an angry bird choking on a worm and flails a bit, quickly distracted by the infant catching his other hand with her tiny hands and stuffing another one of his fingers in her mouth.

She does look like a potato, Sasuke thinks grimly. He won’t tell that to Naruto, though. Dumbass was smug about his task as it is.

Lankly-sensei was late. Again .

He told them to meet him at the training grounds at 7 am sharp . Sasuke still held some hope, naive idiot that he was, that Lanky will make it there in time.

They stood at the training ground for about three hours, visibly fuming (Naruto and Sakura) and angrily scowling (Sasuke).

When Lanky McNinja-sensei had shown up, he went through the same spiel he always did--say some stupid obviously just invented excuse, pretend not to hear Sakura and Naruto’s shrieking and flailing, and whip out his stupid orange book, giving them some half-assed task to do ( punch the air 300 times, run around the training ground on your knees 100 times, do a cartwheel until you throw up) . 

The tasks were exhausting . The training in general was exhausting . Sasuke had expected that training under a Jonin sensei meant a lot of more in-depth-theory-blending-with-practice, but Lanky looked like he had no idea how to teach anybody any of his badass killing moves, so he just did what dubbed people do: if Guy guy would enjoy this exercise, the genin team will have to do it as well.

Sasuke tried to take it as training to protect himself from Guy guy eventually. It was fucking frustrating, sure, but he genuinely tried to look at it from the bright side, especially with the prospect of being able to defend himself from the green monstrosity.

He wondered if he’d have to go to the Guy guy to figure out the training exercises Lanky would do.

Sasuke shuddered. Fuck no.

Today, Lanky looked worse than usual if it was even humanly possible .

He had a deep circle under his eye and his usually electrified hairdo was kinda flat on his head, looking greasy and less like a weird grey cloud. Sasuke could see the guy twitch when he glanced at them from his book like he was suddenly presented in front of his biggest nightmare in broad daylight.

Sasuke really needed to figure out where the therapy specialists were located in this stupid village.

Lanky was still scary and untrustworthy, wearing too many fucking layers and acting as a local sleepy idiot (and like Guy guy) despite kicking their asses into the next year a month earlier , but he was in charge of their team. If his problems affected Naruto and Sakura’s midget ninja performance, and he didn’t do anything to deal with his personal shit, it was Sasuke’s problem to fix whatever was wrong. He didn’t need the kids to die on him unless he kills them himself.

An afternoon later, laying and heaving on the dusty ground next to moaning Naruto and Sakura, Sasuke had finally come up with the plan to fix Guy Guy Number Two. He just needed help from his midget teammates for it to work out.

“Maa, so nice of my cute little genin to treat their old sensei to some dinner,” Lanky-sensei had mused, his hand in an ironclad grasp in Sasuke’s fingers.

It was a fucking nightmare to get his stupid plan together, having next to none of the vocabulary to have his teammates help him out.

He had appeared at Sakura’s side a few days earlier, clutching the empty pot she still consistently left at his house. Sasuke ‘hn’ed at her, making the girl look up questioningly from the lunch box she was devouring between the excruciating training Lanky was giving them.

“Hn,” he said, then furrowed his brows in concentration, grinding his teeth together. “Naruto, Kakashi-sensei.”

He pointed at her lunch box, making the girl blink owlishly between it and him.

“ Toouwh- san ,” Sasuke had managed to grit out, pointing at her again. 

Then he pointed at her lunch box.

Fuck, his pronunciation was absolute shit . Do all the fucking ninjas speak the same language?! Can he enroll in some classes to at least get a better grasp on the phonetics of the fucking words?

Ugh, Sasuke thinks as Sakura just keeps blinking at him, awed and confused.

‘You want to invite Kakashi-sensei and Naruto to my parents’ place for dinner?’ her forehead says and Sasuke barely restrains himself from pumping his fist in the air.

You are the BEST, he thinks, resisting hugging her, or something. 

He had spent so much time memorizing the words and figuring out the correct way to say them, and she just got it from his first attempt, without him choking out more probably very incorrectly sounding dish names.

“Hn,” Sasuke nods. 

Sakura beams back, maybe a little too enthusiastically for his liking. He didn’t spend much time convincing her not to have a crush on him since they became genin. Lanky-sensei and his suicidal behaviour were on Sasuke’s mind for the past however many weeks they had spent under his command.

‘OKAY!’ oh no, the big font is back, ‘I’LL TELL MOM AND DAD YOU WANT TO COME OVER.’

The first step completed spectacularly , Sasuke had mentally patted himself on the shoulder.

Sasuke tightened his hand on Lanky’s bony wrist--how the fuck did he fight at all being this fucking skinny?!--and dragged him forward. They had passed the barbecue place a minute ago, Lanky’s eye focusing on it for way too long. They had just gone past Ichiraku, and Sasuke was almost feeling the confusion of Ninja Face when they didn’t stop there either.

He dragged him forward, Naruto and Sakura hot on his heels, trailing through the civilian district before stopping at a door that on any other day would have made Sasuke run away like a scared cat.

The things he does for his stupid midget team, Sasuke sighs.

He knocks on the door before Lanky can open his stupid mouth.

The door swings open faster than it should have, and Sakura’s dad is right there, face stuck in a permanent wide but gentle smile. Sasuke almost stumbles away and hisses at him. That smile meant danger . That smile meant hugs .

‘Kura-chan!’ the man beams and drags his daughter into a hug as she squeaks but wraps her hands around him regardless. ‘We were waiting for you!’

Sasuke feels Lanky stiffen. 

He can’t contain a mean toothy grin on his face, his reputation saved only by strategically hiding behind Lanky’s bigger form.

Naruto exclaims something out and rushes headfirst into the laughing man, getting enveloped in his arms. Were Idiot just a tiny beat weaker, his lungs wouldn’t survive the embrace he was currently held in.

‘--ashi-sensei,’ Sakura’s mother appears from behind her husband, towel still wiping her wet hands. She smiles, but her smile is calculating like she knows why Sasuke had dragged Lanky over here. ‘It’s such a pleasure to meet a man that teaches my daughter. You are just in time for the red bean soup. I will go get it off the stove.’

Lanky keeps still, speechless, and Sasuke already has a reflex to angle his neck up just to see people’s faces from where he is standing.

The guy looks dumbfounded, his lone eye wide open and lips mouthing something underneath his mask.

Then, finally, Sakura's dad shifts his gaze from a hug-drunk Naruto to Lanky-sensei.

‘You must be Kakashi! Kura-chan had told me so much about you,’ his wonderfully big and clear as his daughter’s forehead says. 

Then, he extends his hand forward, looking at Lanky all earnest and intrigued.

“Maa,” Lanky says and he sounds abashed. “She is a great student. I’m very glad she is on my team.”

Stupid ninja moron falls for Sasuke’s trap. Lanky-sensei steps in and takes the hand to shake it.

Sakura’s dad immediately hauls Lanky by his hand and lifts him off the ground in a deadly hug.

Lanky’s startled yelp, amplified by his double-pitched voice, seems to jump a couple of octaves as he gets pressed to other man's broad chest, feet dangling in the air and arms pinned at his sides. Sakura’s dad lets out a laugh and spins both of them around.

Lanky mewls like a newly-born kitten, visible skin going red. Sakura’s dad looks extremely pleased, squeezing McNinja stronger in a quick burst of affection.

Lanky makes a sound like he is turning into a kettle, and Sasuke just strides past the two men before Sakura’s dad can get distracted and will yank him into the hug too.

Assassination Mission: Target Lanky-sensei completed.

Omake:

“He hugged me ,” Kakashi trembles, bleary eye staring somewhere off in the distance. “He just kept hugging me. ”

“There-there,” Genma pats Hatake’s shoulder without any real sympathy. “You said you agreed for monthly dinners at Haruno’s house, right?”

Kakashi gurgles a pitiful sound and lands his head flat on the table where they were sitting.

Genma stands up to get another round of drinks.

This is going to be a long night.

Chapter Text

Sasuke paraded the streets, stiffly holding the cat against his chest as Naruto and Sakura were trailing ten feet behind him, wary of getting too close to not end the almost -peace ugly cat had generously offered Konoha.

Team Seven was sent out on a cat retrieval mission six more times in the last a week and a half. It seemed like the ugly bastard of an animal decided to make it its life goal to get captured by genins as many times as it could.

It wasn’t even running away anymore, really. The cat was just making it hard to find it, but when they did, it would just wait patiently for Sasuke to pick it up and bring it back to its owner.

It has been a matter of trial and error, really, figuring out who had to handle the cat. When Sakura and Naruto tried to approach the cat the first two times they were given the mission this week, the balding bastard tried to viciously slice their guts open, letting out a horrible husky cry that would’ve been considered meowing if it wasn’t for an unnaturally deep voice.

Sasuke seemed to be the chosen one, or whatever. The cat always calmed down when he was the one to cautiously move forward to pluck it from the ground.

It was almost cute if the cat didn’t look like a boogeyman small ninja kids were warned of by their ninja parents.

When they had delivered the cat to a yet again bawling woman (Sasuke was going through the feeling of deja-vu each time he saw her reaction), Lanky-sensei had promised to treat them to lunch for being such efficient little child soldiers, which just meant that he’d bring them to Ichiraku, and they all would have to pay for themselves and cover their sensei’s expenses.

What a shitty deal, Sasuke scowled. It was good for team bonding though, he supposes.

Lanky was kinda funny, Sasuke begrudgingly admits, and even bearable if he didn’t sound like Guy guy. Ninja Face wittily dodged all Naruto’s questions about what was under his mask and was hilariously awkward if Sasuke was to look at him, probably fearing getting dragged for hug therapy at the Haruno household again. There was also the fact that Sasuke couldn’t for the life of him figure out how the Jonin ate. Each time Lanky just inhaled the bowl of ramen in a split second that Sasuke had spent blinking, all while trying to sneak a glance under Lanky-sensei’s mask. At this point, Sasuke was convinced there was nothing under the mask at all, and Lanky just willed the food out of existence to make it appear he was eating.

It was Sasuke’s unspoken turn to cover for Lanky-sensei today, all three genin just silently agreeing to do a rotation of paying for the skinny moron. He didn’t mind--he had a stupid amount of money to the point where he considered just sliding the payments for the missions into Naruto’s ugly frog wallet ( ‘It’s a TOAD,’ Naruto had wailed once when Sakura had asked what was it with him and the ongoing frog theme).

When Sasuke made it back to his still-dead neighbourhood, something felt wrong. There was someone in his house, moving around and upturning his carefully laid out papers of in-the-works Magic Japanese dictionary.

He gripped a kunai in his hand (and when did that become a reflex? Stupid dangerous ninja world), assessing the situation. By the sound of it, it was only one person wreaking havoc in his kitchen. The person also seemed not to know Sasuke was there, too, so maybe--not a ninja? Could it be that loud little twerp that shadowed Naruto around and made it his life goal to unintentionally choke himself on his own scarf were he to ever accidentally step on it?

Could it be the Shape ?

Fuck, Sasuke wasn’t ready. Despite all the stupid training exercises Lanky-sensei kept pushing them through, Sasuke wasn’t ready to go against someone that killed most of his neighbourhood. Sasuke was a stupid ninja child and even if he now could run faster than ever before and do push-ups on his fingers, it wouldn’t help him one bit.

He carefully peeked into his kitchen, ready to either fight or flight.

The ugly old cat was sitting atop his kitchen table, horrid half-blind eyes staring intently at Sasuke.

Sasuke furrowed his brows and made a shooing sound, still looking around the room to see if anybody else was there to kill him as he was distracted with a feline monstrosity.

No one was there. 

It was the cat that was responsible for the mild destruction of his house.

Sasuke had lowered his kunai and crept closer to the cat. It had jumped off the table and went to Sasuke, head raised like it was a queen or something, and then with an ugly meow rubbed itself all over Sasuke’s bandaged legs.

He stared at it, dumbfounded. 

The cat stared back as if daring him with what are you gonna do about it, midget kid? I lived longer than the oldest and strongest ninja your incompetent village had ever seen.

Sasuke let out an exasperated sigh.

He will have to bring the cat back to the Missions Desk. Later. He was too tired from having his ass kicked at the training earlier today.

Sasuke cast a precocious glance at a cat again and moved away to crash onto his futon into a graciously dreamless sleep.

The cat just didn’t leave.

Sasuke kept bringing it back to the Missions Desk, but Fugly kept appearing in his house whatever he did.

At least the house was a bit more lively now, with a God’s forgotten abomination stalking the halls and ominously meowing at odd hours.

It kinda acted like a guarding dog, too, almost killing shrieking Naruto when he dropped by to fetch Sasuke for Lanky-sensei’s training session. Sasuke almost lost his shit when he saw Fugly crash into Naruto’s chest with an intent to claw its way through Idiot’s ribcage, and had to quickly intervene because it did try to gouge out Naruto's organs.

The cat and Naruto had reluctantly made peace when both realized the other just wouldn’t leave. Fugly even allowed Naruto to pet it, once, in a brief bout of graciousness.

Guess Sasuke had a cat now, he thought grimly to himself while staring at--god, why did it need to be so ugly?-- the feline that kept rubbing itself on Sasuke’s side as he was sitting down on the floor, trying to decipher how to write a mission report without dissociating first.

The cat, possibly sensing Sasuke’s thoughts, just let out another guttural meow.

It could be worse, Sasuke supposes.

Sasuke needs to do some fucking damage control.

What the fuck Old Guy was even thinking, letting Team Seven take a C-rank mission that had them leave the village?!

Leaving the village meant increasing the chances of meeting crazy murderers and the crazy murderer of his neighbourhood , and Sasuke was still not strong enough to even land a hit on Lanky-sensei. This was fucking insane , who the fuck listens to complaints of a dumbass orange idiot and just lets him get a potentially suicidal mission?!

Sasuke might be overreacting, he knew that, but the drunk asshole that came at them and then proceeded to berate Idiot’s ugly little face did not inspire any hope in Sasuke. 

Thank fuck Lanky-sensei suddenly decided to be competent and assured that he won’t take his cute little genin on a life-endangering mission (yeah, right), and then Old Guy had said it was just an escorting mission, which should mean, technically, that it must go without accidents.

(Deciphering what Old Guy was saying was a pain in the ass--why the fuck he needed to wear a fucking hat indoors? Was he afraid of sudden room-bound tropical thunderstorms?)

There was still shit Sasuke needed to get done so crazy creepy ninja master wouldn’t get him and them killed by blacking out from malnourishment, or some shit. Sasuke wasn’t sure what was the reason for Lanky’s half-catatonic state and an ability to still kick ass, but if they were to get out of the village to get subjected to whatever was out there, Sasuke needed Lanky doing his absolute best .

Ability-, mentally- and physically-wise.

He felt the tension leave Lanky’s frame when Sasuke’s insistent dragging didn't go past Ichiraku. Poor bastard was probably still traumatized by Sakura’s dad but--weren’t they all.

Naruto probably wasn't. But Naruto was a masochist.

As they closed in at the ramen stand, Sasuke had instantly zeroed on the flak jacket-clad back of Pretty Face that was currently being ambushed by Naruto’s insistent cries about probably begging for more food.

Idiot eats like a fucking beast. How he had survived on instant ramen before, Sasuke doesn’t know.

It was a fucking nightmare, figuring out on which days Pretty Face was treating Naruto to ramen. Since Sasuke couldn't talk much, all of his efforts went into stalking the Idiot for a solid week at some point, and no he wasn’t doing that just to casually bump into Pretty Face stop asking .

“Hn,” Sasuke announces their arrival as he moves away the cloth that was separating the street from the eating area. 

Pretty Face turns around, beaming oh so brightly at him, his forehead forming a familiar 'Hello, Sasuke-kun'.

No, bad Sasuke, he scowls at himself, feeling his traitorous legs go wobbly and weak. He was on a mission. It was for the greater good of his team.

Sasuke feels Lanky-sensei try and wrangle his arm out of his hold, and viciously presses his fingernails into tender skin around Lanky’s wrist.

'Oh, Hatake-san,' Pretty Face’s forehead says. 'I've heard you are going to be doing your first C-rank with Team Seven.'

Then, Pretty Face points at Lanky with his chopsticks and shakes them with a grim expression, looking like a disheveled murderous chicken.

'You better take care of them,' wait, is Lanky trembling? Weird, ‘ the kids better make it back safe.’

Hooo, that was rich . Sasuke wishes he could record this moment to store it in his mind indefinitely.

He forcibly shoves Lanky on a barstool next to Pretty Face, then dashes to grab Naruto by the nape of his jacket and drags the Idiot out of the ramen stand as the dumbass keeps shrieking and flailing.

Sasuke slaps a hand across the Idiot's mouth, then presses a finger to his own lips. He points in the direction of Ichiraku and squints at Naruto, daring him to screech out anything else.

Naruto quiets down in an instant and squints from behind the tree where they’ve been hiding. Naruto almost drapes himself over Sasuke’s back, Idiot’s elbow landing on Sasuke’s head and they both struggle for a little bit, trying to fight over the space in their hiding spot. 

They both freeze and glance up when they hear Pretty Face’s voice coming from across the street.

Lanky looks so tense it's like he was reliving the memory of Sakura’s dad's hands around him. Pretty Face had a Disappointed Mother face that most of the Academy students came to know and fear. 

Pretty Face looked like he was chiding Lanky on something for a little bit; then, he moved a ramen bowl over to basically shove it in Lanky-sensei’s hands, pointing at it, still menacingly babbling something away, too far away for Sasuke to see what the men were talking about.

Lanky said something and that sounded like he had choked on his words--Sasuke wasn't sure. 

McNinja’s back had solemnly bent over the bartop, his arm going through the motion of pulling down the mask to probably instantly absorb ramen with a void hole he had instead of the lower half of his face; Pretty Face’s angry voice was still loud and bright, ringing across the street.

As much as Sasuke wanted to know how the void hole had looked, he couldn’t compromise his mission--no, scratch that, he couldn’t let Naruto compromise the mission, who went berserk each time even the slightest opportunity would open to glance into Lanky’s creepy void of a face.

In a quick move, he had yanked at Naruto’s forehead protector, seeing a glimpse of 'hey bastard give it ba–' and sprinted away, hearing Idiot’s angry screaming behind him.

Step two of Lanky Taming went relatively well.

Team Seven’s lives were now fully relying on Pretty Face’s aggressive teaching skills.

Of course, all of Sasuke’s attempts at damage control were futile.

Why did he even try, he thinks absentmindedly even as his body is so tense with panic he fears his bones might just break from the pressure that was applied to them.

Lanky McNinja just got ripped apart and killed barely 15 minutes into their mission. Disgusting meaty slabs were flying in all directions, dowsing the road in crimson red , and a body that used to be a living human turned into a mutilated pile of flesh that would have to be recognized by dental records only .

Cowhide One and Cowhide Two that appeared seemingly out of nowhere just killed off Sasuke’s stupid skinny sensei. 

He felt himself shaking, body rigid and frozen on the spot.

Oh god .

In a flash of movement, one of the Cowhides dashed to the side, moving so fast Sasuke had barely caught him with the corner of his eye. The other one appeared somewhere behind him, stupid hoarse voice distorted by a metal almost-gas mask, and both of them charged in Naruto’s direction, the Idiot just as frozen as Sasuke was.

No no no no, Sasuke’s brain kept pulsating against his skull as he bolted forward, shaking fingers pulling a kunai out of his weapons pouch, and it all happened so fast --

Cowhide Murderers raising their arms–-

Naruto’s terrified face staring at them, his body still unmoving and small –-

Giant chain raising into the air (the chain that had just mangled Lanky’s body beyond recognition )--

Sakura’s cry from somewhere on the side–-

Blood blood redredredred painting the street just like the neighbourhood, just like the shrine, dead dead dead bodies scattered around like puppets–-

Sasuke acted on instinct alone. He hurled the kunai forward, trying to hit the chain away, trying to buy Naruto some time because the Idiot just kept standing there , and it flew forward, landing on the chain raised in the air and pinning it to a tree trunk.

Were Sasuke not completely fucking terrified right now he would’ve pumped his fist in the air, victorious, stupid magic body instincts saving the day and giving his stupid midget team an extra minute to live.

His knife-throwing didn’t help. Obviously.

Cowhides detached the chain from their clunky arm guards-- Naruto was safe, move the fuck away dumbass, run back to the village, call for fucking adult ninja backup --and zoomed away from the orange Idiot, circling the wide street, one of them zeroing on Hat Drunkard, his clawed hand raised to tear the man's trachea out ( Sakura what are you doing there, fuck this old piss-smelling asshole, don’t protect him, runrunrun ).

Sasuke leaped forward, body trembling but somehow steady, and he put himself in-between the claws and Sakura. Stupid, reckless fucking midget ninjas. He should’ve just killed that fucking Old Man that allowed them to take this fucking mission. C-ranks don’t have killers, his ass. C-ranks are just escort missions and protection from bandits.

Cowhides didn’t look like bandits. Cowhides looked like assassins that were going to ruthlessly kill two dumbass ninja children.

Cowhides killed Lanky before Sasuke could even blink .

The claws were so close to his face and Sasuke could see, in panic, how other Cowhide was raising a deadly hand over Naruto, ready to disfigure Idiot’s tiny body.

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it was over.

Lanky ( what) appeared out of nowhere in a dash of light, eye unnaturally serious, one hand wrapped around Cowhide One’s neck, locking it in a deadly grip, Cowhide Two already hanging limply under Lanky’s other arm.

Sasuke struggled not to fall to the ground and puke his stomach the fuck out.

“Yo,” fresh-from-the-dead Lanky-sensei said and Sasuke is going to fucking strangle the bastard.

(He was so glad to hear that disgusting double-pitched voice he was about to cry, but Sasuke will never mention it to anybody even if he knew how to speak.)

Sasuke’s eyes nervously moved to where McNinja’s body was supposed to be, road painted crimson from drying blood. 

Nothing was there. A bunch of logs laid where meaty slabs were scattered moments before, and Sasuke had learned about Substitution from Sakura’s tired explanations to Naruto one evening after the class, so he probably shouldn’t have been so surprised, Lanky being a Jonin-Super-Ninja and all.

He wasn’t surprised regardless. He was fucking pissed off.

“Naruto,” Lanky said nonchalantly, voice still cold and calculating and so unlike him, “sorry I didn’t help you right away.”

Lanky regards Naruto head-to-toe, looking solemn and deadly.

“I got you hurt,” he says like he’d rather go and actually die in deadly Cowhide chains. “I didn’t think you’d be incapable of moving.”

Okay, fuck you. Naruto was an Idiot, but Naruto was a fucking kid , his ninja midget reflexes still shit and fresh from the Academy. They were all fucking twelve. Was Lanky born a ninja killer, stabbing people and breaking necks from the tender age of five?!

Lanky moved, hauling limp bodies of Cowhide One and Cowhide Two with him.

“Anyway, good job Sasuke, Sakura,” he regards them with the same blank expression like he was incapable of moving his face muscles, “and by the way, Tazuna-san.”

Hat Drunkard twitched and said something in a trembling voice that Sasuke couldn’t catch because of the stupid hat that was covering his forehead.

Sasuke was so done with dubbed- and forehead-people’s bullshit.

Fugly was the best. Fugly didn’t expect him to understand its meows. 

“I have something to talk to you about,” finishes Lanky-sensei and regards Hat Drunkard with a look that, were it directed at Sasuke, would make him want to kill himself before Lanky puts his hands on him, trying to avoid the torture that suddenly-competent McNinja would definitely subject him to.

“Oh and Naruto,” Lanky glanced behind his shoulder, his weird dubbed voice cold as steel, “these guys have poison on their claws. You need to take it out quickly.”

Naruto squawks something out that Sasuke is still too far away to see.

“You have to open the wound and drain out the poisoned blood,” then, like he didn’t just share with the team that Naruto was still in fucking danger , Lanky moved away, going to a tree on the side of the road, throwing back a cold, “don’t move so much.”

Suddenly-competent Lanky dumped the unconscious bodies at the tree and started methodically tying them with their own chain to its trunk.

‘-- –et back to the village!’ Sakura’s sweaty forehead said. ‘Naruto needs medical attention, we can’t continue on with the mission!’

Then, because Sasuke is surrounded by crazy people, Naruto stabbed himself.

Ffffffffuuuuuuuuuck, Sasuke was not prepared for this amount of EXTRA crazy ninja shit today. It was supposed to be an easy enough mission for ninja people’s standards. 

He wanted to go back to his dead neighbourhood. He wouldn’t even resist the cuddling from his disgusting cat.

Naruto had a look of mean determination on his face, kunai still sticking out of his hand, blood dripping down his wrist.

‘--ission continues,’ his forehead had said.

No the fuck it’s not, Sasuke wanted to bite out. 

“Naruto,” came Lanky’s voice from behind Sasuke, “it’s all well that you rid yourself of poison, but you’ll bleed out and die if you don’t close the wound fast.”

For the first time in what felt like hours, the road was silent. Everybody’s eyes were on Idiot’s dumb stunned face.

Then, the dumbass started flailing around, his suddenly-determined look gone from his face, one arm clutching an injured hand and waving it around more than a deadly injured person should be able to.

He should’ve learned how to do glowy-hand-shit ninja doctors can do, Sasuke thinks grimly. Everyone Sasuke comes in contact with seems like the most stupid single-minded moron that the ninja world could ever produce.

They should’ve never gone on this fucking mission. Sasuke would gladly sell his soul to ninja gods just to go and weed some gardens some more.

C-rank is an easy escorting mission, his ass.

He's gonna lock all three fuckers in one of the empty houses in his neighbourhood when they're back. And sic Sakura's dad, Pretty Face and Fugly on them to keep them from running away.

Fucking ninjas.

Chapter Text

They sat in a boat that resembled an insanely wide canoe--he wasn’t an expert on boats, okay? Jeez --after finishing dealing with Cowhide-dum and Cowhide-dee. 

Sasuke was still not quite sure if it was smart to leave two masked assassins just tied there, coming in and out of consciousness to answer Lanky-sensei’s deadpan demands, but he also wasn't sure how proper ninja missions work. Missions Team Seven did before paled in comparison to the shitshow they’ve been thrust into now. Living in magic ninja village was weird and dangerous, too many unknowns and too few answers, but here, out in the open in the supposed Neutral Grounds, Pretty Face’s ‘you’re all shinobi now’ that he cast at them after graduation, warm but serious, was getting a whole nother meaning in Sasuke’s mind.

He shouldn’t have fucking graduated. No matter what Pretty Face had said during their first meeting--Sasuke being an unwilling valedictorian--he should’ve failed the fucking year and made it his goal to stay rooted in the village for as long as possible. 

He couldn’t do that, though. Not with Naruto and Sakura being stupid and incautious despite having an advantage of being more than aware of magic ninja shit than Sasuke would ever be.

The boat passes a giant bridge and Sasuke wonders how the fuck they didn’t see it before, but also--the mist. It’s so thick he can feel it on his tongue. It’s ridiculous. It seems like even the weather is trying to defy nature to stay aligned with stupid magic ninja laws.

Naruto was shaking with an unreleased excitement since the moment they had stepped on the boat. Idiot’s previous frantic flailings were forgotten in an instant after Lanky-sensei had wrapped a bandage around Idiot’s palm, patted him on the shoulder and fucked off to interrogate the Cowhide Brothers.

How the fuck Naruto’s injury didn’t require more careful inspection, Sasuke didn’t know. McNinja was so serious about Naruto being poisoned or bleeding out, and then after looking at his hand for two seconds he just basically slapped a bandaid on the hole in the dumbass’ skin and told him he was good to go. 

Somehow, that had helped plenty enough.

Maybe ninja midgets are just a different breed, Sasuke had thought in annoyance and hidden worry, wrangling the kunai that he had hurled at Cowhide Maniacs earlier out of the tree. 

Lanky led a one-sided conversation with Cowhide Two (or maybe Cowhide One? Sasuke didn’t really assign who was who, seeing as both of them were murderous maniacs and looked the fucking same ), asking questions in the same gravely voice, usual leisurely stance all but gone from his body. If Sasuke didn’t know Lanky-sensei for however long they’ve been his apprentices since graduating, he wouldn’t believe that this stone-cold Ninja Captain (or whatever his rank was in the police-slash-military system their village seemed to have) could possibly stagger away in horror from a warm figure of a man, trying and failing at dodging a hug.

Maybe they should start bringing Sakura’s dad on the missions. His presence alone would probably make all enemy magic people run away to lick their ninja-childhood trauma wounds.

From what Sasuke had gathered, Hat Drunkard had duped them. He had duped whoever was the fucking president of their village, too, making a request for a mission that was two ranks above what he had paid.

They were not even supposed to be here. Sasuke was a bit relieved to hear that, because that just meant he was the biggest unluckiest bastard in the world, getting murderous country-rock boy-band rejects instead of a nice and calm trip around the neighbouring country.

But still, they were here. The popular vote had decided that they had to continue the mission, with only Sasuke mildly protesting by grunting at everybody to return back the fuck to the village and make more Captain Ninjas go on the wild journey of fighting Cattlemen Assassins.

As they glided past the bridge, Lanky-sensei was conducting a mild interrogation while Naruto was being forcibly silenced by angry Sakura, the girl stuffing Naruto’s own headband into his mouth. Sasuke was on high alert ever since they left Cowhide Crew back at the tree, trying to catch any unusual movements before they even tried to jump on his team, but--he was only a kid. He is barely aware of the special stupid quirks his own village has, what the fuck does he know about other country’s unique magic ninja shit?

Sasuke could only catch Lanky’s side of the conversation he had held with the Hat Drunkard but that was enough--Lanky had reconfirmed that they were unqualified for this mission, then went on a way too lengthy description of some Gato-business-magnate-guy, and after Old Drunkard's long and tedious maybe-description of his maybe-woes  had agreed they’d help the lying bastard of a man build his stupid fucking bridge.

(The entire time they were talking, Sasuke tried to duck his head as unsuspiciously as he could, barely catching some words like ‘chief— drug— contraband— waves— violence— control— government— fear— bridge’ under the wide onion-head hat of his. It was enough to gather the general gist of the monologue (why the fuck do they have time to monologue?), combined with Lanky’s stupid voice responding in an unusually calm manner.)

Which was--great. It was fantastic. Sasuke was in disbelief at what he was hearing.

They had almost died half a day ago and even considered turning back to the village, but now everybody had just decided to go with Hat Drunkard’s sob story despite getting more and more confirmation that this was probably a Super-Dangerous!-Do-Not-Interact –class mission.

The fuck was this dumb samurai code all magic ninjas were following, Sasuke thought bitterly, still gripping a ninja star in his pocket. If they kept following this rhetoric, they’d all die before even setting a foot on this stupid bridge.

Lanky-sensei had repeated a couple of times over their weeks as his apprentices that those who abandon their friends are scum or whatever. Didn’t that mean friends being in danger was a signal to get the fuck out of the dangerous situations to make sure no one gets killed? 

None of the ninja midgets and ninja not-so-midgets minded being this close to death. Maybe it was a genetics thing that Sasuke was missing.

He grumbled under his breath and tightened his fingers around a ninja star.

Jesus fucking Christ, Sasuke would’ve moaned if he wasn’t afraid of Magic Ninja People locking him in the Magic Ninja Nuthouse.

They had reached a nice little shanty town that only lacked some ninja-themed pirates or something, stumbling around with a bottle of rum. 

Apparently, they still had quite a bit to go, since Hat Drunkard’s house was on the other side of the archipelago. Lanky-sensei had said it would take about an hour to reach there, which was good enough by ninja land standards.

Why no one had invented a fucking car yet, Sasuke is yet to figure out. If he had any knowledge on how cars are built, he’d invest his time into becoming a new Toyota magnate.

Everything went downhill after Naruto had tried to kill a white rabbit by trying to pierce it with an insanely precise (for Idiot) fling of a kunai. 

As the dumbass was trying to re-kill the animal in a chokehold rivaling Sakura’s dad, Lanky’s loud warning came from above their heads, making everybody duck.

Not again, Sasuke thought exasperatedly, eyes darting around, trying to spy Cowhide Comeback from between the trees, clutching at Sakura’s dress after pulling her down with him maybe a tad too hard. Hat Drunkard was holding his hat down like keeping it on his head was his biggest concern, and Naruto let go of a rabbit in a shock, stumbling and missing a giant sword that was flung at them barely by a hair.

Lanky-sensei was the first one to get to his feet, turned away from midget genin team, body slouched and hands stuffed in his pockets. By now Sasuke had learned it was a very deceptive stance, way too relaxed for McNinja’s reflexes, Lanky’s tall frame in baggy Adult Ninja uniform slack but capable of moving so fast he made Sasuke and the other kids believe he was killed earlier today.

Sasuke looks up, wary, trying to rearrange his limbs into a fighting stance and position himself in front of his stupid teammates and the Hat Drunkard.

The sword had lodged itself into a tree across them, the blade going deep into the trunk which was--concerning, because how fucking strong the person was supposed to be to fling it like this many feet away, almost chopping the tree down like a berserk lumberjack?

A man leaps on top of the sword, his back angled to them--which was fucking stupid, by the way, why the fuck would you make a show out of facing people you were trying to kill?--and his head turned slightly to regard the group underneath with an angry eye.

Magic Mike-lookalike was wearing an inspiringly inadequate amount of clothes. Sasuke would probably snort at that if he wasn’t aware by now that the more unhinged a ninja looked, the stronger the fucker was. The fact that Ninja Stripper was donned in pants and a ridiculously useless belt around his torso only meant that all of them were royally fucked.

Ninja Mike was also keeping up with the Cowhide theme.

Maybe all magic enemy ninjas were obliged to dress as runaway cowboys, Sasuke thought. Sort of like a uniform. Or a dress code.

It was certainly different from the Adult Ninja uniform everyone in Konoha had to wear.

Naruto had charged forward then, and Sasuke tried to yank the Idiot backward, because what the fuck was he thinking? Did he just attempt to take down Cowboy Extraordinaire by himself? Did he even see how deep the blade was lodged in that fucking tree?

Sasuke had rushed after him, trying to tackle the Idiot down. It’s like self-preservation instincts just didn’t exist in Naruto’s world, or magic ninja gods tried to do everything to kill the dumbass off.

Sasuke won’t let them. He gets to kill Naruto first .

Lanky-sensei had extended an arm, preventing both Sasuke and Naruto from getting any further than him, both boys bumping into each other at Lanky’s side with a strangled oof .

“Get back,” Lanky’s low double-voice had said, so serious that Sasuke was getting a feeling of the uncanny valley. “This guy is on an entirely different level than you.”

Yeah no shit, Sasuke bared his teeth in a snarl. Like they didn’t catch that from the stupidly big sword, and stupidly big muscles, and stupidly dumb outfit.

“Well, well, well,” Lanky had stated in a cheerful voice, taking a couple of steps towards the Cowboy Burlesque Enthusiast. “If it isn't the missing-nin of the Hidden Mist, Momochi Zabuza.”

Fantastic. Just what Sasuke had wanted. An extra dangerous enemy ninja that wanted to chop their heads off and use them as an ornament for his evil murderous cow farm.

Lanky-sensei had gripped his headband like he wanted to yank it off, but stilled instead, looking intently at the baby-ninja killer.

Ninja Stripper said something and Sasuke almost slapped himself on his head. Not only was the wood-and-head-chopper guy half-turned away, but his face was also covered in bandages , forehead protector slanted on his head, the only empty spot where the captions could’ve possibly appeared turned away from them all.

Sasuke stared at Kakashi instead, trying to figure out what was that with the sudden headband obsession. Did he have a hidden weapon there? Did he store an extra kunai pouch on his forehead? Is that why the captions didn’t work and Magic Ninja Gods decided to curse him with Guy guy dubbing?

“Get in a Manji formation,” Lanky-sensei said, hand still clasped on his forehead protector.

Then, McNinja slowly moved the forehead protector up to re-centre it on his head, and Sasuke stared at a closed eye, crossed vertically by a scar. 

Lanky opened his eye and Sasuke choked on the air.

It was that eye . The eye from his nightmares, haunting him at night and making him toss and turn and try to breathe through the choking grasp of an invisible hand on his neck. Scarlet-red of the freaky eye moved to look at Sasuke’s frozen form and he felt himself start to hyperventilate, breaths coming out ragged and fast, fully expecting to be pulled into the familiar nightmare, staring at the woman getting stabbed on repeat like a damaged tape of a VHS.

Nothing happened. The eye just kept staring at him from Lanky-sensei’s eye socket, comma-like swirls spinning around the pupil.

“Protect Tazuna,” Sasuke was instantly snapped out of his panic because if anything could bring him back to the shitty reality, it was the awful sound of dubbed people’s voices, “and don’t involve yourselves in the fight.”

Fucking gladly, Sasuke wanted to answer, body moving almost on its own, arranging himself in front of Hat Drunkard like a perfect example of that picture in the textbook he had learned fighting stances from.

He still felt himself tremble, eyes focused firmly on Lanky-sensei’s back instead of the obvious danger of Ninja Stripper in front of them. What the fuck did the eye mean? Was it just a normal feature to have for any unhinged Adult Ninja? Did Guy guy also have a creepy red eye, just like that fever dream Sasuke had after the Genjutsu Incident? 

‘---aringan, Sharingan, ‘ttebayo! ’ formed on Naruto's forehead as he stared intently at Ninja Stripper. ‘What is it?!’

‘Sharingan,’ Sakura’s forehead said as she scrunched it in concentration. ‘It’s a kekkei genkai. The power that the light of the eye generates, and the pupil emanates. The user of a Sharingan is said to possess the vision to see through all Genjutsu, Taijutsu, and Ninjutsu, and is able to deflect them.’

Okay, Well of Info, Sasuke thought. Why the fuck was now a perfect time for everybody to organize a Q&A about Lanky-sensei’s dumb creepy red eye?

He glanced at Sakura in obvious exhaustion and she had immediately flustered.

‘WHAT,’ hello big font, long time no see, ‘IT WAS TAUGHT IN THE ACADEMY!’

Ninja Stripper laughed as he turned to face them.

Then, the weirdest thing since hearing the dubbed voices for the first time started happening. 

‘WELL SAID,’ projected Stripper’s pectoral. ‘THAT’S NOT ALL, THOUGH.’

Sasuke blinked a couple of times, thinking that he might’ve gone mad.

‘WHAT’S MORE FRIGHTENING IS THAT SUCH AN EYE CAN ASSESS AN OPPONENT’S TECHNIQUES AND COPY THEM, ’ continued Cowboy Extraordinaire’s right boob. ‘WHEN I WAS IN ANBU OF THE HIDDEN MIST—’

The text had disappeared from Stripper Ninja’s chest and reappeared somewhere right under his ribcage, letters curving around his body, half of the text hidden away and probably stretched to Stripper’s back.

‘--INGO BOOK I WOULD CARR–,’ his waist continued,  ‘--E MAN WHO HAS COPIE–’

Then the text had jumped again, switching to Stripper Ninja’s shoulder.

‘---AKASHI THE COPY NI—,’ Stripper’s shoulder had finished, the last word disappearing somewhere under his armpit.

What the fuck is going on, Sasuke’s head spun around at a stunned silence around him. He was greeted by awed faces of Naruto, Sakura, and Hat Drunkard, all staring at Lanky-sensei like he suddenly grew a second head or something.

This was starting to piss Sasuke off. Stupid monologuing Stripper Ninja was obviously sharing important information and Sasuke was getting none of it because of stupid captions that kept switching places all over Sword Cowboy’s body.

‘--- ET’S END THE TALKIN—,’ it was Stripper’s collarbone, this time, text going upwards to his neck. Sasuke had to turn his head sideways just to follow along with it. ‘--KILL THE OLD MAN H—’

Go off, buddy, Sasuke wants to say. He is not attached to the geezer at all. Crazy Captions Buckaroo could slice the Hat man open right here for all he cared. If that meant Ninja Stripper wouldn’t attack the rest of them, Sasuke would even give the Cowboy a thumbs-up to signify his approval.

Unfortunately, Sasuke and his teammates were currently standing right in front of an apparent assassination target, effectively being in the way of the giant sword. This was such a shit fucking situation. 

Sasuke gripped his kunai in front of him. Naruto and Sakura would obviously not let go of protecting the Hat Drunkard, so Sasuke had to stick by and fight Crazy Cowboy regardless of what his opinion was on this mission and the entirety of fucking Missions Desk back in the village.

‘--- UT KAKASHI,’ didn’t the Stripper say he was done talking? Ugh, ‘FIRST I HAVE TO DEAL WITH YOU.’

Sword Cowman had put a leg on a tree trunk, yanked the sword from it, and in a spectacular leap landed on the water like some kinda horny-people’s portrayal of a messiah, water bubbling around him, raising up, slowly creeping to cover his body as he struck a pose, one arm raised high, the other forming a sign in front of the bandaged chin, one hip canted sideways.

All of these theatrics, and for what, Sasuke scowled as the mist had raised around them and covered the entire area, hiding away not just the Ninja Stripper and his teammates that were standing a hand's-reach away, but also Sasuke’s entire body, his extended arm with a kunai disappearing in the fog.

Then, a body had appeared right behind him in the tiny space that was left between Sasuke and Hat Drunkard.

He felt a breath ghost down his neck, Ninja Stripper saying something in a jumble of words as Sasuke felt the blade press to his neck and the world around him turned upside-down.

Sasuke gets thrown away, spinning in the air, and only by sheer miracle does he manage to land on his feet, staggering a bit, trembling and squinting at the spot he was just standing at earlier. The fog had generously cleared up a bit, not as thick and unnatural on his tongue anymore but still feeling wrong.

Lanky-sensei had apparently teleported right behind them to intercept Creepy Stripper’s attack, stabbing him in the gut. 

Lanky looks away from the enemy ( STOP GETTING DISTRACTED FROM FINISHING THAT GUY OFF, Sasuke wants to scream in pure terror) and smiles at Sasuke with his creepily spinning eye.

“Don’t worry, Sasuke,” McNinja says cheerfully, but there is something dangerous underneath it, “I won’t let my comrades get hurt.”

Lanky twists the kunai in Stripper Ninja’s gut.

The world stills around them for a bit, and then Sword Cowman starts to laugh, a tiny trail of captions running perpendicular to a kunai still wretched deep inside his body.

There’s— water? --dripping down where the blood should’ve been, and Stripper’s body just falls to the ground, turning mid-way into a splash of liquid.

Sasuke was done with this magic nonsense--the teleportation, the liquifying of the bodies, the sudden resurrections. Fuck all of it.  He is going to learn how to shoot lightning out of his hands to fry Cowhide motherfuckers were he to ever meet them again.

If he survives, that is.

Magic Stripper appears behind Lanky-sensei and makes a clean cut with his sword right through McNinja’s midsection. This time Lanky is courteous enough not to scar his midget genins even further and doesn’t bother with the blood-slash-meaty slab light show, instantly turning his body into the water.

Neat.

Stripper staggers, looking shocked, and Lanky-sensei appears behind him again , for some reason stalling and not participating in an act of active stabbing to end this fucking murder circus already.

Ninja Cowman says something and Sasuke can’t see what it is, font going around murderer’s bicep right above the hideous cowhide arm-warmers. He feels like he is missing out on a bunch of more stupid monologuing, but then another Stripper appears behind Lanky and with a sharp kick sends him flying over into the water.

This fucking game of Fake Body Tag is getting on Sasuke’s nerves.

Naruto screams something out but Sasuke is still focused on Ninja Stripper--if Lanky is out of the game at least for now , nothing is stopping Sword Cowboy from instantly killing them off.

Sword Cowboy suddenly sprints forward, a flash of ‘---OW IS THE TI—’ over the side of his ribcage, and jumps into the water after their stupid creepy-eyed sensei.

Sasuke runs after them, because--because fuck that Hat Drunkard, okay, he doesn’t give a shit about his safety, but he cares that their dumbass sensei survives. He also needs to know what Sword Stripper is saying because for a weird murder man he likes to monologue way too much.

Maybe it’s the Dangerous Ninja thing. Guy guy has weird fashion choices; Lanky-sensei, among other weird shit he does, hides his face like it’s the Holy Grail, and Sword Stripper--uh. Well, he kind of does both things Guy guy and Lanky-sensei do, just in a way more unhinged manner.

McNinja-sensei swims up, looking dazedly around, and is immediately ambushed by collarbone’s ‘-- FOOL—’ of Sword Stripper, who immediately starts forming signs over Lanky’s head. In an instant, a giant wave pulls up, enveloping Lanky-sensei and forming a gravity-defying watery sphere around him, Stripper standing right next to it, one hand extended inside the sphere with its palm open up.

Sasuke is not even surprised at this point. Physics of this world stopped making sense to him a long while ago.

Stripper chuckles like a weird maniac. McNinja looks terrified and--Sasuke doesn’t like that look. Lanky is either sleepy or determined-- scared doesn’t suit him one bit, especially with that madly swirling eye of his.

‘YOU’RE CAUGHT,’ says Sword Stripper's left tit as Sasuke squints at it. ‘IT’S A SPECIAL PRISON THAT MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO ESCAPE!’

There goes the monologuing again. Did he really need to explain everything he was doing every single time?

‘IT MAKES THINGS HARDER HAVING YOU ABLE TO FIGHT,’ now the text shifts to the right bicep.

Mad Sword Guy looks away from Lanky-sensei’s tense form in the water ball, and stares down at Sasuke, eyes mad and wide.

He says something again, and Sasuke doesn’t see the captions--maybe they’re on his back?--but he recognizes Lanky-sensei’s name somewhere in that sentence.

‘---T, I WILL FINISH THOSE GUYS OFF,’ it’s over right pectoral now. 

Sword Stripper goes to make a sign, and-- God, will Sasuke ever get his break? --a clone forms from the water, laughing as he comes into existence, and wasn’t that a disturbing thing to witness which, in Sasuke’s opinion, was a bit excessive as well.

‘--ACTING BIG, WEARING A HEADBAND LIKE A NI–,’ Stripper’s midsection says, ‘BUT A REAL NINJA IS ONE WHO HAS HOVERED BETWEEN LIFE AN–’

Here goes another one of long useless speeches. If Sasuke wasn’t grateful for Stripper Ninja’s stalling since it prolonged Sasuke’s and his team’s lives, he’d throw a kunai at the bastard right about now.

‘IN OTHER WORDS, ONLY THO–,’ it’s over his navel now, ‘---O BE CALLED NINJA.’

Murder Cowboy lifts his fuck-off massive sword and points it at Sasuke and the kids behind him.

‘--IKE YOU CAN'T BE REAL NI–,’ the captions are now disappearing somewhere in Strippers ridiculous pants--really, if you’re going for an Exotic Dancer look, commit all the way and don’t wear fucking pantaloons like that--when Sasuke realizes that the caption’s abrupt end is not because they are covered by something on Sword Guy’s body.

He just abruptly stopped talking.

Sasuke readjusts his grip on the kunai and looks questioningly first at the Stripper, then sneaks a glance behind him at Sakura and Naruto, who look just as confused at the sudden ceasing of the evil monologue.

Murder Stripper is looking very intently at Sasuke like he is a little bit confused and very much disturbed. If Sasuke didn’t learn to read faces fairly well for the lack of language skills, he would’ve missed a flash of horror dashing across Cowboy’s face. 

Sword Stripper’s hand wavers a bit. He opens his mouth and ‘KID, WHAT TH–’ appears at his navel again. Sword Stripper promptly shuts his mouth as Sasuke scowls, because--what the fuck is going on?

Ninja Cowman gurgles something out of his throat.

Then, the fog starts lifting again, quickly covering the area in the same heavy watery shroud, and Sasuke jumps back, trying to stay as close to his team as he can if he won’t be able to see shit in the next ten seconds.

The last thing he sees before the mist envelops everything around them is Sword Stripper's pinched and distressed face.

Chapter Text

Wombat softly lands in the middle of a street, the Main Family house of the Uchiha Compound clear in their view. They had waited until the dark had fallen, cautious despite knowing the rotations of other, unaffiliated ANBU squads patrolling the area.

It was extremely annoying to drop off Cat from Wombat's tail; they both had to serve a rotation together today again, and it took about an hour to convince Cat-taichou not to tag along with Wombat to do a quick check-around, taichou, you don't need to worry, I can handle this alone, I'm just paranoid, silly-goofy Wombat being anxious like that.

The district was empty--even emptier than usual, with the Uchiha kid gone from Konoha for a mission and Wombat’s squadmates busy patrolling the Village Walls. 

Uchiha’s mission should take about a week to complete, if not more--it’s a trip outside the village, outside the country, and if Wombat knows anything about the current state of affairs in the Land of Waves, little Sasuke’s team would get stalled at least multiple times unless their Jonin-sensei isn't a complete moron.

Wombat knows Hatake isn’t a moron. They are way too closely acquainted for Wombat not to be mindful of Hatake’s abilities--or rather, Wombat knows too much about the Hound-taichou, with Hatake still not being aware of him being watched--stalked--over.

So much for Hatake Clan instincts.

Wombat had been ordered often enough to go and lurk in Hatake’s shadow since he left the ANBU, and they never had to use more than a simple Chakra- and Scent-suppressing technique. The fool had never registered Wombat around, and even if he did, Wombat had enough of different henge layers together with regular disguise to keep their identity private under their mask--just like their orders stated back then, just like their orders stated for this infiltration mission.

It wasn’t much of an infiltration if there were no people around, and frankly, anyone could wander into the empty compound unless they were to be stopped by the Uchiha kid. Even when he was around, the brat just stayed inside his house for days at a time, only ever getting out to the private Main Family training ground right behind the building. The jinchuuriki would come over often enough to do--nothing, really; Wombat was part of the squad assigned to watch over the two when they had started meeting on a regular basis, and it was one of the most boring assignments Wombat had ever had--thankfully, it gave them enough time to pass the intel up and out, using their summons in the quiet afternoons of solo-shifts to send out general intel on both the Uchiha and the Demon Container.

Wombat knew the Uchiha kid had been crippled--that’s what Danzo-sama had said, voice cold and sneering, stressing ‘crippled’ like it was a punishable offence. If Wombat was dumber, they wouldn’t understand what Danzo-sama had meant--the child seemed just fine, acting just like he used to, staying mainly secluded and away from the rest of the village, locked up in his own compound and spending most of the hours training. The child never spoke unless spoken to, and even then opened his mouth just to announce the general annoyance or answer to questions with short, curd sentences. He did well academically and answered the questions during the class of his own volition, as well as threw lots of biting comments in the direction of the bijuu container were they to spar during their mandated Academy training.

Wombat knew that. Wombat had been watching the Uchiha Kid for 3 long years.

Whatever was going on with the child now was different. 

To an untrained eye, the kid had stayed the same--aloof, silent, brooding, unwilling to leave the compound and too focused on his own training to pay attention to anything else. The aftermath of a butchered Yamanaka Jutsu had left him with barely even a scratch--that with Yamanaka clan head making frequent appearances at the kid's hospital bed to check him for any mental- or chakra-disturbances, but it was an open secret that the Uchiha child was not exactly the same after he had recovered from the Jutsu's effects.

Wombat was present there when it had happened, assigned to trail the bijuu container (or the Uchiha child--depends on to whom they were reporting at the end of the day) when they got a panicked alert from a passing Owl, her hands flying in a dozen signs a second as she was asking for assistance from Wombat and Cat-taichou to help to restrain a nin that was potentially affiliated with a Daidai Village. 

The nin had stolen a scroll from the private Yamanaka archives, as it turned out. He tried to develop a new Jutsu that could permanently detach a mind from the body, leaving an empty vessel to live the rest of its life as a blank, useless meat slab of its former self, but--Wombat knew better than that shoddy superficial version that was reported to most Jonin-level shinobi. 

Wombat's intel on Daidai Village clans was high-profile enough to know of the curse mark bestowed on the Yaimura clan, its people shunned for the old remnants of an unwilling attempt to seal the land-plaguing demon using bijuu-restraining seals. It condemned the descendants of the Main Line to bear the curse mark that deteriorated their memories, eventually unbinding their souls from their bodies, leaving Yaimuras to live short lives of barely-reaching a 25-year-old mark, clan population declining at a fast rate for many decades.

Having Yamanaka's mind-bending abilities, having the power to invade, destroy, detach the mind from the body would've been a great asset to aid the Yaimura. 

Maybe the nin had thought detaching a mind from the body will let them detach the sealed demon from the mind of an individual, curing the clan of their inevitable demise.

Maybe the nin had thought detaching the mind from the body of a cursed individual will allow them to cleanse, following the old dwindling religion of the Daidai Village--once the mind is free of the body, the body will decide which healthy mind to choose.

Maybe the nin had thought that destroying the cursed population of the Yaimura clan would leave the rest unscathed, unaffected, preventing the curse from spreading any further.

None of that was particularly relevant to Wombat. They didn't care for Daidai--as long as that village didn't present any trouble to Wombat's cause, there was no reason to go and wreak havoc against weakened, cursed, dying out clan.

The Uchiha child was the only one to be affected by the Jutsu when it was released--the bastard puking all over Wombat when they went to pick him up.

As far as Wombat knows, the cause of Uchiha being a singular target is entirely unknown. T&I had speculated about the Sharingan and the possible distant past relation of this specific Uchiha to the Yaimura clan, but Wombat was not allowed to ponder on that topic for too long.

They had other goals to keep in mind. 

Wombat had called for their summons, ordering them to investigate the house before they tried to enter it. You could never be too cautious despite the Uchiha child not being even close to Wombat's expertise, but--who knew what old seals had been waiting for them there, what traps had Hatake laid out were he to ever visit his student's house, what genjutsus were to await Wombat past the doorframe, put around by other overseeing ANBU squads or a deceased Clan Head.

They had waited for the agreed five-minute mark for the summons to do their job, and strolled inside, not bothering to close the door behind them for now.

The halls were empty. Wombat could sense their summons, crawling on top of some other form--restraining it? Killing it? Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been more than a domesticated pet--before beelining to the closest door, sharply taking in their surroundings.

Wombat's orders were clear--don't get themselves caught, don't take anything that the child could report missing to Hatake, and gather any possible information on the Uchiha kid to update the file in their registry.

Easy enough mission, especially with Hound-taichou gone; same for the rest of Wombat's squad that was assigned to trail the Uchiha, busy running errands outside the village while their target was under Hound's supervision.

Wombat moves between the rooms, halls eerily quiet, air stuffingly still. They could see which rooms the Uchiha child had rarely if ever went to--they were covered in heavy layers of dust, looking like nothing has been cleaned for many years.

Probably since the Massacre, Wombat muses, doing their best to side-step the places where they could have possibly left any footprints.

The only cleared-up path is the hallway leading to the kitchen, the turn leading to the bathroom, and the child's bedroom up the stairs.

Means: all the other rooms wouldn't have any new intel on the kid if Uchiha keeps trying to ignore cleaning them so much.

Wombat goes to lurk into some of them anyway--multiple bedrooms, a library, an office, and the house's dojo that looks the most abandoned out of all other rooms. 

The most interesting chamber is the weaponry--intricate blades, katanas and tantos, all displayed like the remnants of the lost civilization. There are multiple swords hanging in the position of honour on the wall, and a few sets of red traditional armour, well-worn and scratched, looking like it have been safely stored and well-cared for since the Warring Times before fucking Senju could steal the bodies that wore that armour for experimentation,

Wombat would go to look at the blades some more--they can see some daggers they would've loved to put their hands on--but the dust layer is thick there, and Wombat wouldn't want to spend more time than needed on a simple recon mission, nor do they want to sabotage themselves like that. 

They move to the kitchen first, noting the general state of disarray there. It's not dirty per se; it is just clear that it's a well-used space with more than one person frequenting it often enough. There are clean dishes drying near the sink, and somebody's red ribbon hanging tied to a kitchen table leg; there are some Academy-level books laying open, pages on rules of writing mission reports highlighted by somebody's hand, a neat string of kanji adding notes and explanations in-between the text. There is one abandoned wooden frog sitting on top of the table and Wombat recognizes it as the work of Cat-taichou--one of the many figurines he keeps leaving at the Container's windowsill.

The target has frequent visitors, with the Bijuu Container and the civilian-born girl being the most recurring ones, they make a note in their head.

Wombat moves out of the kitchen, shooting a mild glance at a bathroom (nothing to note; target seems to take care of its hygiene on a regular basis) and then they move up the stairs, minding which steps are creaking and cataloguing them in their mind.

The bedroom is surprisingly messy for the Uchiha child. The blanket is dropped over the futon, and the pillow is laying on the floor near it; it looks as if the kid was tossing and turning during the night, unable to fall asleep (target suffers from potential nightmares; troubles at getting an adequate amount of sleep). There are more Academy books scattered around as well as some extra reading on Taijutsu techniques, which is not particularly surprising--the Uchiha child was named the Rookie of the Year and it was only natural that he had studied hard for that position.

There are very few toys--mainly training shinobi equipment, wooden kunai and shuriken laying near the wall (target participates in active training outside of mandated team sessions). A singular teddy bear is laying face-up in the corner of the room, pebble-like eyes staring unseeingly at the ceiling. 

Then there are papers. 

Wombat bends over a scattered arrangement of writings, scanning it with their eyes. 

There are some crude child-like drawings, stick figures posing in fighting stances and poor attempts at drawing out--hands? Hands forming seals with arrows pointing at whichever finger to move where.

There are some diagrams drawn nearby with no notable writing underneath, and Wombat pulls out a scroll to carefully put it over the paper, parchment slowly copying the contents of the paper onto itself.

They move some other papers around--some of them filled with more drawings; most of them quickly scratched out by a child's hand, poor attempts at drawing out hand seals and fighting stances angrily crossed out of frustration.

Some papers catch Wombat's eye more than the others--there is a paper that looks like a numbered list, fluid but wobbly scribbles written from the left point, where the number was put, to the right point, all in multiple unending lines. Wombat notices how, despite scribbles not looking the same, some of them are clearly following a pattern--a swirl reminding of Konoha symbol without the sharply bent tail at the end; a reversed singular 'tsu' character; a taller stroke with a perpendicular strip that reminded Wombat of a bastardized 'shi' character.

It looked coherent enough not to be just the Uchiha brat testing if the pen is writing well enough.

It looked like--a code or something, and developed enough for the child to be able to write out at least a dozen of pages with it.

Wombat swiftly moves the scroll, ink stopping to soak into the parchment from the drawings, and places it over the arrangement of code-filled papers. 

They weren't really sure what to make of these--they had rotated the paper around so that the writing would make more sense, going top-to-bottom. The rotation of numbers didn't help in that case, though, digits upturned to the right like the scribbles actually had to be written from left to right and--it's a weird notion, readjusting the to read in different directions like that.

Wombat watched over the Uchiha child for long enough to know of his intelligence levels, and despite the kid being smarter than some of his peers, he was still a child. Was that, on the paper, a code of some sort that Uchiha had developed himself to hide--what? 

What information a freshly-shipped genin could be possibly hiding?

Wombat pushed the copied papers away and moved the other batch forward to pass the contents onto their scroll.

Uchiha was smart, but he wasn't Uchiha Itachi-levels prodigeous.

Regardless, if the Uchiha brat was smart enough to develop a code that Wombat, with many years of experience of spying, gathering intel and deriving their own codes, couldn't immediately find a single lead to where to start desciphering it-

The Uchiha might become an even bigger target on Danzo-sama's radar.

He might be of a bigger value for Danzo-sama.

Wombat couldn't allow it.

They moved the scroll back into their pouch, deciding to seal it away before returning to the base. Danzo-sama wouldn't get his hands on this child if Wombat had any saying in this; prodigeous Uchihas never survive long enough under Danzo-sama's command.

Wombat moves out of the bedroom, descends down the stairs and closes the door.

They move out of the immediate vicinity of the Main Family house and only then recall back their summons, fearing for the rapid animal to attract unwanted attention even in the dead of the night in an empty compound.

Wombat rushed out, jumping over the roofs, swiftly moving above the streets, their form hidden in the dark. Their hand itched to go and open their pouch and open the scroll, trying to crack the code the Uchiha child had so scrupulously written out.

No, Danzo-sama won't get his hands on the Uchiha as long as Wombat is alive. If the fact came out that the child is hiding something and coming up with intricate codes that will take days, if not months to decode, it will be impossible to keep Danzo-sama away from The Last Uchiha any longer.

Wombat was already struggling to redirect Danzo-sama's attention from the brat.

After all, Orochimaru-sama has greater, bigger plans on Sasuke. He gets to claim the child before anyone else.

Wombat will make sure of that.

Chapter Text

“You three!” Sasuke hears Lanky shout from beyond the mist, “Take Tazuna and go! You have no chance fighting against this guy!”

How very inspiring, he thinks, gritting his teeth.

The option to fuck off was off the table the moment Lanky got captured. 

Even if they were to run, Crazy Captions Buckaroo would catch up, wasting barely any effort on capturing them--a piece of cake, a walk in the park for a man who throws around swords like oversized frisbees. If they were to fight, even if the three of them did a spectacular job at it, sooner or later Ninja Stripper would kill them anyway--Sasuke had no doubts about how weak they were compared to him, how horribly incompetent their efforts would be against a crazy maniac like that.

Their best bet was freeing Lanky-sensei from the bubble. 

Judging by the grim looks his teammates had, they came to the same conclusion as well.

Ninja Cowman--or his clone?--reappears at their side, lunging forward, the blade tucked in as he hits Naruto with the sword's hilt squarely in the chest, making the Idiot stumble and lose his footing, his forehead protector flying away in an arc.

Stripper says something, sneering, his back turned to Sasuke, and he takes the chance to jump and try to land a hit on Sword Stripper’s back. Sasuke is fucking dumb, because of course Stripper Ninja would see him, and Sasuke’s flailing with a kunai is probably an equivalent to a mosquito bite on the broad expanse of Cowboy’s back.

He barely dodges the elbow that was directed to his stomach-- barely because the hit still lands, but doesn’t send him flying across the clearing.

Sword Stripper turns around, looking directly at Sasuke, and makes a show out of stepping on Naruto’s loose headband, twisting his foot so the metal under it creaks under pressure.

‘YOU ARE JUST DUMB LITTLE KIDS,’ his collarbone says. 

Thank you for your astute observation, Sasuke would’ve said if he had more than 3 words in his Magic Japanese arsenal.

He grunts instead, eyes darting frantically over Magic Stripper’s body, trying to find any weak spot. For a guy that is stupidly underdressed his skin seems to be made out of fucking industrial-grade steel.

Or water, since that is what he tends to turn himself into whenever anyone manages to barely scratch him.

‘WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, KID?’ Stripper’s midsection says, ‘YOU DON’T STAND A CHANCE AGAINST ME.’

Yes, Sasuke is aware of that either. He just needs to figure out the way to dispel the clone and get to the Sword Cowboy’s actual body, maiming or distracting him for long enough so that he releases the Water Sphere Lanky-sensei was currently trapped in.

He jumps then, no actual plan in mind except for a litany of screaming inside his head--frantic oh shit oh god oh fuck --, trying to duck low and hit Ninja Stripper from below or stab him in his knee just to slow the mad cretin down a little.

Sasuke gets caught, of course, because he is stupid like that. Sword Guy’s stupid massive muscled chest is in Sasuke’s view, and then he gets yanked upside-down, his ankle clutched in Cowman’s hand as he dangles there, useless , dropping his kunai to the ground. He doesn’t know what to aim for first--to untangle Ninja Stripper’s fingers from the hold on his leg or go and try to punch him in the midsection--but his arms are too short to reach the Stripper, enemy ninja holding him on an outstretched arm like he weighs absolutely nothing . 

‘---O∩ פ--S ɹƎ-- -∀ΛƎN,┴ ˥---NƎp ∀N⅄---IN--' H∀ΛƎ ⅄O--¿’ Sword Stripper’s ribcage says, text trailing upwards to his chest. 

Ah. Of course, the captions wouldn’t be so accommodating to rotate when Sasuke needs them to.

He tries his best to wrangle his head around, struggling in Ninja Cowboy’s hold.

‘⅄O--Ǝ S┴I˥- --∀⅄INפ ∀┴ q--Nפ NINſ∀¿’ the captions switch lower, just under Stripper’s navel, and--thanks, Sasuke scowls, at least he doesn’t need to break his neck by trying to glance upwards to try and decipher what the fuck Cowman is going on and on about.

‘MHƎ- I --∀S ⅄O-ɹ ∀פƎ' I—,’ it's the side of his ribcage now and--wow this is really fucking frustrating, Sasuke’s head is fucking pounding now from both the rush of blood and adrenalin.

He yelps, getting dropped so suddenly, landing on his head so hard it makes his ears ring. 

Sasuke tries to roll away, hands pressed tightly to his chest, eyes searching for any possible openings to escape the Sword Stripper, but gets hurled back by his legs again, Ninja Cowboy’s foot landing firmly on his chest as the Failed Belly Dancer stares at him, enraged, eyes wide and crazy.

He looks a bit deranged--no, scratch that, he looks very deranged, breathing heavily, and Cowboy bends down, putting more pressure on Sasuke’s chest as he chokes, feeling his ribcage compress.

‘WILL YOU FUCKING STOP,’ Ninja Stripper demands, text appearing on his shoulder. ‘I’M TRYING TO KILL YOU. THIS IS NOT THE TIME, NOR THE PLACE, AND THE TIME FOR WHATEVER YOU’RE IMAGINING IN YOUR TINY STUPID HEAD WILL NEVER COME AS LONG AS I AM ALIVE.’

What, Sasuke balances out at him, confused, opening his mouth to hiss out something that in another world would’ve resembled a sharply bitten off ‘fffffffuck you’.

Naruto-- attaboy --chooses this moment to rush at the Stripper, piggy-backing him from behind, his vicious tiny body clinging to the broader back like a leech--and Sasuke knows from experience how hard it is to get rid of Naruto when he drapes himself all over somebody’s back.

The Idiot doesn’t even have a kunai, but he clings to Ninja Stripper’s back like his life depends on it (and it probably does--as soon as Naruto detaches, he will be subjected to getting cut in half by a giant fucking sword) and Cowboy Man makes a show that Sasuke would’ve loved not to participate in out of trying to shake the dumbass off.

Crazy Sword Guy stumbles back, removing the foot off of Sasuke’s body, and Sasuke takes this split second to appreciate being able to inhale with his full chest again before grabbing the kunai and rushing to hurl it in the Other Body of Ninja Stripper that kept holding the impossible water sphere up in the air.

Other-Stripper deflects it like the knife is but an annoying fly.

Shit . 

Sasuke barely has time to move his head when Naruto’s body gets catapulted into him, and they both roll in dirt, momentum carrying them back to where Sakura was still protectively standing over Hat Drunkard.

‘STOP THESE CHILDISH GAMES,’ hello right pectoral, ‘I HAVE NO TIME TO KEEP PLAYING WITH YOU!’

Naruto groans where he was laying near him, arm bent under an angle that should’ve been painful . He is clutching his forehead protector--when the fuck did he manage to get it back?--as he watches Cowboy Extraordinaire with a truly hateful look in his eyes.

‘WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE, THIS HAND WAS ALREADY STAINED RED WITH BLOOD!’ Ninja Stripper informs them like that’s news.

Duh, Sasuke rolls his eyes. He can see that. He could see that even if he was blind . No wonder Cowhide Number Three was that insane.

‘WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE,’ long time no see, left pectoral--also, they were back to the monologuing phase of the battle, which was nice, because Sasuke’s body ached in the places he didn’t know could ache, ‘THE STUDENTS IN THE ACADEMY KILLED EACH OTHER. CLASSMATES WHO HAD SHARED RICE FROM THE SAME POT FORMED PAIRS TO KI—’

The text was gone from the chest and reappeared around Crazy Stripper’s waist like the dumbest belt Sasuke had ever seen.

‘---E FIGHT DIDN'T END UNTIL ONE OF THEM DIED. PARTN–,’ left bicep now, ‘--THERS DREAMS—’

These monologues were giving Sasuke an aneurysm.

“What are you guys doing?!” Sasuke hears the familiarly atrocious sound of Lanky-sensei’s voice. “I told you to run! Our mission is to protect Tazuna, have you forgotten about that?!”

Yeah, well, there was a crazy villain with a Shakespearean-level of oratory skill blocking their way out. The villain also looked like he does a thousand pushups a day all while eating little midget ninja children. Sasuke thinks that’s a good enough reason not to focus on the mission right now. Hat Bastard can go and build a fucking bridge all on his own for all Sasuke cares.

‘--VEN THE EXAMS HAD TO UNDERGO A REFORM TEN YEAR AG–,' it’s just above the pants waistline now, captions curving around the waist and half of them disappearing from the right or left side of the Stripper’s body.

Idiot next to him scrambles to his feet, hands still clutching his forehead protector.

‘What reform?’ his empty-of-anything (what a wonderful development) forehead demands, the dumbass looking downright ready to rip Cowboy’s throat with his teeth--probably the bad influence from Fugly.

Also, why , Sasuke almost groans. They don’t need more encouragement from anybody to keep the murderer's rant going, but--maybe Idiot was onto something. The longer the Back-In-My-Days tirade continues, the less Cowman Stripper focuses on killing them.

‘--NG BOY WHO DIDN’T HAV– — TO BECOME A NINJ—,’ Sasuke is going to grow old and withered if he stays in this forest for another decade while waiting for Monologue Man to get to the fucking point, ‘--IHILATED OVER A HUNDRED EXAMINEES.’

Lanky-sensei across the field looks pained . 

Ninja Stripper starts to laugh again, a deep voice spreading across the expanse of the forest clearing. 

‘THAT SURE WAS FUN,’ this one is diagonal from tit to the navel, wow, the captions never did this before--

Stripper stutters, looking positively green as he likely ponders whether to stick his sword into their bodies, or just be done with it and despawn by stabbing himself in the chest.

What the fuck got jammed up his asshole, Sasuke thinks grimly as the Stripper is fuming , eyes avoiding the plot of land where Sasuke and his team were standing.

Sword Cowman turns around to look at Lanky-sensei, his voice stern and demanding and panicked as he is shaking an open palm in front of him, captions located probably somewhere on his chest that Sasuke can’t see .

“Maa, Zabuza, didn’t know you were afraid of a little bit of a cute child’s puppy love,” Lanky says in response to whatever slew of angry Stripper noises Sword Cowboy had produced.

Now Sasuke had officially lost what the fuck the past 10 minutes of monologuing were going on about. 

Just then, Naruto appears from the side (when the fuck did he move?), index and middle fingers on each hand extended, left hand perpendicular to the right.

At least 15 other Narutos appear as they all jump on top of a distracted Stripper, trying to make him stumble just from the sheer volume of kiddy midget flailing.

Cowboy flinches like he is afraid of catching cooties--he isn’t gonna, okay? If Naruto could infect anybody with his boy cooties Sasuke’d be having an infestation problem by now--and he struggles in the Naruto-pile for a little while before probably remembering he owns a fucking sword . He swings it around, making a clean cut through more than a half of them, mangled not-Naruto bodies disappearing with a pew.

Naruto-Number-Eight-Out-Of-However-Many shouts something out, too far away for Sasuke to recognize what he is talking about and--fuck, that was a real disadvantage, wasn’t it, he had to completely rely on Lanky in all of the battles to fill up the what' s and the where' s of Sasuke’s failure to understand what was going on.

Then, Naruto Number Eight throws something at Sasuke and he catches it almost instinctively, hand firmly clasped around a--blade? No, many blades, a massive ninja star unfurling itself as he grips the ring in the centre.

Okay, sure. Maybe that will work. Maybe throwing bigger things at the Cowboy Stripper will make him lose control of the sphere for long enough for Lanky-sensei to get the fuck out and get on with the program.

Sasuke spins the ninja star and propels it forward, massive blades spinning and blending to become one massive sharp frisbee directed to the Original Stripper’s direction.

It first goes for Fake Stripper, who dodges it with almost no effort, and then goes in an arc towards the Original Stripper, so close to him, so close to just shaving Cowman’s head off of his shoulders—

He catches it.

He catches it like it was nothing .

Sasuke watches as another ninja star appears on Lanky’s side and flies towards the Sword Guy too, but he jumps over it like it’s just another day in the office.

It probably is, for him.

Then, the second ninja star pew' s in a cloud of smoke, and a meanly grinning Naruto is right there , Sasuke’s lost kunai in his hand as he throws it at Sword Cowboy and it--it almost hits , flying a hair’s width away from the Stripper’s face, and they were so close—

All of this was enough to distract Cowman for long enough for his concentration to break , and the watery sphere is wobbling now, but Sword Stripper has the massive ninja star in his hand, and he snarls, eyes murderous as he spins it, and Naruto over there is going to get chopped into a million of tiny pieces—

A loud thunk prevents the spinning of the ninja star, and wet Lanky-sensei is right there , hand balled in a fist and placed under the blades--it should have cut his hand in half , but it probably didn’t affect him out of sheer stubbornness.

“Naruto, Sasuke,” he says, voice unwavering and lethal . “Outstanding strategy. Both of you have grown quite well.”

Naruto, half-way in the water, pumps his fist because he is fucking dumb and doesn’t have any intentions to survive past teenagehood, and starts running his mouth about something Sasuke is too far away to see but he is certain the Idiot is just explaining how he came up with this strategy.

Sasuke didn’t agree to any strategy. In fact, he didn’t even know they had a strategy. He had caught a blade and thought his best option was to hurl the massive thing somewhere in Zabuza’s direction, failing miserably at hitting Sword Guy One, having Sword Guy Two catch it, and succeeding at doing any damage by sheer luck, with Naruto having backup plans of backup plans.

Idiot really should use his brain more often if he is going to keep coming up with mad shit like this. Even Sasuke feels smart about aiding in this entire clone-of-a-clone-of-a-clone debacle that Naruto probably picked up from the earlier game of Fake Body Tag Adult Ninjas did.

Naruto must be dancing inside his head. 

“And,” Lanky continues, hand twisting to grip at the blade and squeezing it, his pain receptors waving a tired goodbye at him, “this ends now.”

They fight viciously , hands flying so fast Sasuke can barely catch which signs they are forming, and it is an insane conglomeration of physics-defying jutsus, water bending to the will of two men like they are gods.

Sasuke is fucking afraid to face anybody with a power level as high as Ninja Stripper’s and Lanky-sensei’s. He will not stand a single fucking chance if he were to fight someone like that one-on-one.

One tide raises to crush into the other, and it feels like they are using the exact same techniques all throughout the fight, trying to will the water around them to destroy the opponent by either drowning them or punching their essence out of their bodies with the rush of a deadly waterfall that looks like it becomes solid when it lands on another person’s body.

Magic Stripper’s water is as unhinged as he is--it is chaotic, over-encompassing, trying to drown out not only Lanky-sensei but also the entire world around him. He uses the water like it’s his second--third, fourth–limb, air going haywire where the controlled water passes.

Lanky is more--controlled, methodical with his water. He seems to be too aware of his surroundings, taking in any change in the environment with an almost clinical approach. He manages to block away some waves that would’ve killed midget ninjas in a tsunami-level of destruction, conjuring water walls and blocking off attacks with insane ease. 

In the end, control wins over chaos , and Sword Cowboy comes crashing into the tree with the power that should’ve shattered bones--but he is raising to his feet again, and it feels like this will never end , both men wielding the nature like it’s their personal toy until the cows come home.

Lanky jumps on a tree where the Stripper is staggering to his feet, face blank the same way as it was blank when he was fighting Cowhide Brothers--it looks like he’d murder without hesitation, like he’d destroy entire nations without so much as a twitch of an angry-red eye.

Lanky-sensei swings down, legs angled to come in contact with Sword Guy’s chest and--

Cowman lets out a choke, blood gurgling in his throat, and he falls down like a fucking ragdoll, two sharp needles sticking out of his neck.

Sasuke didn’t even realize where they were coming from, and Lanky looks as lost as he is, face forming a frown that looks so stark from the previous detached-from-the-world expression.

A figure jumps down the tree--how did no one notice there was someone else here?--, its long green jacket dry despite the flood that was raging mere minutes ago, ripping off trees with their roots.

The figure is--small, probably no taller than Sasuke is--wearing a white porcelain mask with thin, curvey eye-holes and a red wavy design in place of the mouth. Brown hair is dangling in two long strands in front of the face,-- mask --the rest gathered in a white bun holder. 

The person--kid--says something that Sasuke will never be able to read out with the lack of visible skin on the kid’s body as Lanky-sensei bends to check the pulse and furrows his brows.

“By the look of that mask, you are a Kiri tracking nin,” none of those words make sense to Sasuke but he stares intently at Lanky, the man being the only clue to figuring out what was going on.

Tracking Nin bows their head and says something else in the same cold, almost detached voice, and goes on to pick up the dead body of Sword Stripper. 

They both disappear in a whirl of leaves, leaving the soaked clearing together with Team Seven and Hat Drunkard to catch their breath, their feet still buried in the wet dirt.

Sasuke will need the longest fucking nap after this. He will kill the Old Guy from the Missions Desk by stuffing his stupid wide hat into his mouth until he chokes on it, and then he will fall into a coma.

No amount of Fugly’s horrible meowing will wake him up before all the memories of water and dead bodies, needles piercing their necks will be gone from his mind to become a distant echo of the mission he’d rather they have never taken.

“I’ve heard you passed your team,” Sandaime had said, pipe sticking out of the corner of his mouth. 

It’s not like Kakashi had any choice, really. He would’ve passed them even if they were the most incompetent kids he’d ever seen. Sandaime had made it clear enough that he needs Kakashi to watch over the jinchuuriki as soon as he is out of the Academy, Sharingan being a good way to suppress the Kyuubi and prevent it from escaping. 

It was the same with The Last Uchiha. The kid needed someone to help him manage his kekkei genkai that he had evidently already awakened if the genjutsu exercise Gai had put them through this year was of any indicator.

Whoever was their third teammate didn’t matter. Kakashi’s mission was to restrain Minato-sensei’s son if needed (the kid still so painful to look at) and train The Last Uchiha to make him a valuable and loyal asset to the village. That was it .

Kakashi had to admit he was scared of taking a team of freshly-genin under his command. They were so-- small and weak and would rely on his protection and advice, and Kakashi couldn’t be sure to provide it to them.

It had been a surprise that the kids already worked together this well. They stood no chance against him, sure, and they had rushed into action solo without thinking through the strategy, leaving the rest of their team behind, but he could see the intent behind their failing attempts at getting the bells. 

When they had all collectively decided to return to the Academy, as prompted by Sakura, he was surprised. There was no hesitation in any of them, tiny faces grim with determination, agreeing to stay behind for another year just to keep their team formation--no, just to keep their friend in their group. Were Kakashi to be in the same situation at their age, he wouldn’t have spared a single glance at whoever was tied to the stake. 

Such deep bonds in a team that early on were rare and were only ever seen in Ino-Shika-Cho formations. He couldn’t not pass them just for how bravely Naruto and Sakura had stood against him, protecting tied up Sasuke, ready to fight even if they knew they had no leg to stand on against him.

“I did, Hokage-sama,” he had bowed his head slightly, hands out of his pockets. 

“What do you think of young Sasuke?”

Kakashi’s eye had widened for a split second then, and he looked at Sandaime in suspicion. He had expected to hear that question about Naruto, and Kakashi had some opinions on him--too brash, too desperate, too loud, too Kushina with no skill and experience that she had. Naruto will make a good shinobi one day, but not under Kakashi’s lead--he is still too caught up in the memories about the dead to give the kid the proper training he rightfully deserved. He will try his best, but Kakashi knows he isn’t enough.

“Sasuke is,” he had shut his mouth, biting the inside of his cheek, deciding on what to say, “interesting.”

Sandaime had nodded like that was the answer he had expected.

“Yamanaka Inoichi had reported no aftereffects of the butchered jutsu that hit young Sasuke,” the Hokage had said, looking out of the window, fingers intertwined on his lap. “That is, he couldn’t find anything that could’ve been wrong with Sasuke.”

They both had stayed silent for a bit.

“As you know, it was a poor attempt at recreating Mind Destruction Jutsu of the Yamanaka clan,” Sandaime continued, “channeled through the wrong chakra pathways. It’s a blessing no one else was affected by it.”

Kakashi knows of it, of course. 

T&I had been a mess for almost three months back then, trying to get answers from the nin that had stolen scrolls of the Yamanaka’s jutsus. It looked like he tried to replicate their techniques and had developed a new jutsu that was supposed to permanently bind one’s consciousness out of their body, effectively leaving them a vegetable with brief bouts of coherency that wouldn’t be registered anyway as the body and mind would be completely disconnected. It would be like sitting in a hole, coming in and out of consciousness, screaming your lungs out at the people that were just outside of it to help you but finding that no one can hear or understand you.

If the jutsu's development was successful, it would have a devastating effect.

Thankfully, it didn’t work the only time it was used--on a group of kids of all things.

The only one affected was Uchiha Sasuke. 

Kakashi knows (because despite being shinobi, Jonin tend to gossip an awful lot) that Inoichi found no disturbances in the boy’s mind, but the consequences of the jutsu were seen to anybody who had functioning ears and eyes--the kid was basically rendered mute, and the only time he had spoken more than two words at a time it was complete gibberish, slack mouth forming syllables that didn’t exist.

Asuma, who had brought Sasuke to the hospital right after he was hit, had reported that the kid was disoriented and scared, trying to move around despite having chakra exhaustion--he had burnt himself out right after the incident, Sharingan active and madly spinning in the boy’s eye sockets. 

Other than chakra exhaustion and selective mutism, Sasuke seemed just fine. 

Danzo-sama had been furious, spending that one council meeting seething and spitting madly at everyone around him, asking how could the village not notice the new Forbidden Jutsu being developed, its powers rendering one of the valuable future assets of Konoha useless and crippled. 

Kakashi--he didn’t like the old fucker at all. 

Despite not speaking a sentence in a year since being hospitalized, Sasuke seemed--better, somehow. The ANBU that had been appointed to watch over him in case anything else happened had reported that the kid was making friends and cooking and hanging out just like any other child would do.

The only concern had been that he had made friends with the local jinchuuriki, but almost a dozen of ANBU that had to watch over the two for the first month of the boys' hanging out around each other were convinced that the kids were just being kids. 

Kakashi was glad sensei’s son had something good going for him.

Kakashi couldn’t provide anything for Naruto’s well-being. He won't take anything nice that was happening to the kid for granted.

“Kakashi,” the Hokage had said, looking solemn and serious, “Was there anything out of place that you had noticed in young Sasuke’s behaviour?”

No, Kakashi wants to say.

He knew the kid for a day max. He was never appointed to watch over him before. There was no way Kakashi could know enough to judge when the kid was acting out of place.

But.

During the bell test, when Sakura--so clever, Kakashi was so proud of her--had dodged his Sasuke-henged-clone, he had heard the Uchiha kid screech out a jumble of sounds, a weird sibilant screech of frustration coming from where Sasuke was tied and writhing on the ground of the forest floor. It didn’t sound like any known to Kakashi words, the shrieked-out cry too hard and guttural for it to be an existing word.

It might’ve just been an angry cry of frustration, but it sounded too coherent to be just that.

Kakashi had pondered over it for a day already. He could’ve been overreacting--and he probably was, seeing as this was the only occurrence of Sasuke producing more than a humming or tongue-clicking sound around him.

He will not report it. Not before Sasuke vocalizes like that again, or he finds the reason for those sounds.

"No, Hokage-sama," he had bowed again then, keeping his face carefully neutral.

Now, almost two months into being a Jonin sensei, he has enough on his hands with the Uchiha kid as it is. Kakashi is an entire encyclopaedia of destructive behaviour starting from his early youth, but he never tried to openly ogle an enemy in the battle. Gai’s Teaching Guide 101 did not provide anything on puberty and hormones, but--Kakashi is pretty sure Sasuke discovering he is attracted to missing nins is not going to be mentioned even in a dedicated Birds-and-Bees section of the bookstore.

How did sensei ever deal with this, he thinks mildly, the tension from the fight finally leaving his body, his form promptly switching to having trembling pulls on his muscles--a telltale and disgustingly familiar sign of chakra exhaustion.

Kakashi sees his genins’ faces turn pale and concerned before his legs give out and he hits the ground face-first, limbs weak and unresponsive, blacking out in the wet dirt of the Land of Waves.

Chapter Text

Hauling Lanky-sensei’s limp body through wet mud was a feat-and-a-half.

Hat Drunkard didn’t help. Obviously.  

Sasuke and the rest of Team Seven had to lug an unconscious McNinja the rest of the way to their destination, more than half of Lanky's body just dragging along on the ground, three out of four limbs barely lifted up by tiny midget hands.

By the time they made it to Hat Drunkard’s house, Lanky-sensei was caked with dirt. His face was unrecognisable under twenty different layers of a mud-mask--he should thank them later, it is basically a ninja spa day for him--and they had lost his weapons pouch that used to be attached to his thigh somewhere along the way.

On a good note: Hat Drunkard’s daughter was nice. 

The nicest person they were to meet during their journey, painfully reminding of Pretty Face in the way she angrily fussed around them after they came in, leaking motherly I Will Ground You For Being Stupid all over the place. Her forehead, nice and empty space with reasonable font size, deserved a solid eight-out-of-ten on Sasuke’s Caption Placement Tier.

Her hot bean miso soup was a bona fide masterpiece as well. Sasuke would rate it very close to Sakura’s tomato soup--not that anything would ever top it anyway.

Were he to ever run away from his magic ninja village, he’d just move to a cabin near Bean Miso Mom’s house and act as her personal midget-ninja bodyguard. Protection fees: lunches and dinners.

Her tiny shrimp of a son was the polar opposite of nice . The kid is downright fucking creepy , brooding on the sides of the room and standing still in the shadows like a little prop child. Combined with the moronically tall bucket hat he has yet to remove from his head--it seems like the obsession with stupid hats runs in the family that only the Bean Miso Mom had managed to dodge--Sasuke might have mistaken him for a very strange floor lamp.

Brooding Shrimp hates Naruto like he is personally responsible for the falls of entire civilizations. Shrimp seems to hate them all, actually, but Idiot had somehow won the popular vote (in which only Shrimp had participated) to be the sole focus of all the baby bitching Broody Shrimp did.

Maybe it was the fact that Naruto was disrupting the well-established feeling of misery Brooding Shrimp had going, or maybe it was the fact that the Idiot couldn’t shut his mouth even if his life depended on it.

Over the two days that Team Seven was bunking at Hat Family (minus Bean Mom) household, Sakura and Sasuke had to drag two morons away from each other an astounding 16 times.

Sasuke had counted.

Not like there was much else to do.

Hat Drunkard--who had since removed his onion hat and was subjected to all the caption-reading Sasuke was now able to do without getting a sore neck--refused to go to the bridge if Lanky-sensei was still out cold. Considering the Cowhide Gang was after him and Team Seven already had to fight three assassins over the span of one goddamn day, Sasuke guesses that was reasonable.

Downside: that has also stalled the mission and prevented them from going back to the village as fast as possible to get any other Adult Ninja to take over this bridge-protection-bullshit for them.

When Lanky finally woke up, the morning of their third day here, he looked like he wanted to drown himself in alcohol.

Sasuke finds out about Lanky's Third Resurrection after he was caught in the middle of the territorial pissing match between the Idiot and a Broody Shrimp--both of them wanted to sit on the porch and naturally, this town--porch--ain’t big enough for the two of them. Sasuke had to redirect Naruto’s frustrated flailing at being called names onto himself (and whatever Shrimp had said will remain a mystery, forehead hidden under the hat) by extending a leg and making Naruto trip, and then participating in a hissy cat-fight while Bucket Hat Broody stood there with an expression of I was right, all ninjas are stupid.

Broody was seriously testing Sasuke’s patience, here. One more day of doing nothing and he will be joining the slap-fights the two dumbasses have been having.

He ducks his head into the room where Lanky had been laying down since they had brought--dragged--him there, completely gone for the world, just to hear Sakura’s accusing voice, the girl obviously scolding their moronic poor excuse of an adult of a sensei.

Lanky looked horrible. They didn’t undress him since they came here, really, just wiped off most of the dirt from wherever they could reach. For the two months since Team Seven’s formation, Lanky’s reluctance to remove any clothes from his body and covering up in extra layers whenever he could became very obvious to all three of them, so when Bean Mom tried to wriggle skinny body out of its Adult Ninja uniform, Naruto instantly started protesting against it, spewing Big Boy words like ‘respect sensei’s privacy’ and ‘don't touch him without his explicit consent'.

Which was ridiculous, by the way, coming from Naruto of all people, the same dumbass who never knows not to cross the limits of Sasuke’s personal space.

Guess Lanky-sensei had the privilege of being a cool-and-hip ninja-Jonin and Sasuke was yet to reach the same level of respect.

“Hey-yo,” comes Lanky’s Guy guy voice, and he waggles his fingers in an attempt of a wave from where he was huddled under a giant blanket on the futon.

The blanket had been dwarfing Lanky’s frame to the point where it looked like Lanky was incapacitated in a bed of a giant  and not swaddled in the house of the nice little soup lady and an idiot midget of a shrimp.

“Hn,” Sasuke nods in acknowledgement and rearranges his legs to sit on top of them because apparently, that’s a normal way to sit for Ninja people. The only one to sit like a normal person on the floor--and it's Sasuke’s definition of normal --had been Naruto, and--

That doesn't say much.

“Sakura-chan and I were just talking about the fight,” Lanky-sensei says.

Sasuke glances questioningly at Sakura and she is unnaturally grim, face scrunched as she was lost deep in her thoughts.

“You all did really well,” Lanky continues, weirdly earnest, “you all have grown so much.”

Okay, can they maybe not have a heart-to-heart discussion right now? Sasuke was still tired after dragging Naruto away from Broody Shrimp as the kid was about a split second away from a rage-induced stroke caused by Naruto's existence on a porch.

“To go against an opponent so much stronger than you, risking your lives for the team and yet being on high alert of your limitations and chakra reserves,” is monologuing an infectious disease? “Not every grown shinobi can do that.”

Because they are all suicidal, Sasuke wants to roll his eyes. He would love to stay alive for as long as possible, thank you very much. If he can manage to drag Sakura and Naruto--and Lanky by association--out of an early grave, he’d do what he can to keep them, you know, breathing.

Not for the sake of the samurai code thing they had going on. Or the mission.

Especially not for the No-Hat Drunkard.

“But,” Lanky looks at him and Sakura, lone eye grim as he peeks at them from under a humongous blanket, “there is one thing that we still have to consider when we will proceed with this mission.”

Sakura is worrying her bottom lip between her teeth and Sasuke feels like she was already informed of sudden complications.

Was it that they’d have to ambush the hideout of fucking Cowhide Ninjas or something? Is there yet another Stripper waiting for them around the corner? Is Lanky now crippled for life?

“Zabuza is still alive,” Lanky says then, moving his eyes to stare at the ceiling, “and that tracking nin is his associate.”

Did Lanky-sensei astral project himself out of his body while he was as good as dead in Bean Mom’s spare bedroom? How the fuck does he know that?

“Hn?” Sasuke furrows his brows questioningly.

‘--ing nin always destroy the bodies on the spot,' he turns his head just in time to look at Sakura who was now staring right at him, head turned so he can see her face, which is--nice, it’s good they have started to catch up on the fact he needs to see people’s faces not to feel like the dumbest person in the room. ‘Or decapitate the body and take the head as proof of the assassination. And those senbons–’

“Not enough to kill a man of Zabuza’s stature,” finishes Lanky-sensei for her, his sleepy eye turned at them again. “It is just acupuncture needles. This wasn’t a murder; this was an attempt to distract us and save Zabuza.”

Great. Still makes zero sense how two stupidly giant needles jammed in somebody’s neck are not enough to kill them, but Lanky must know his ways around ninja-slaughtering.

“We will train,” he then lamely supplies. 

‘–inute!’ Sakura’s flushed forehead displays a text in a franticly running sequence of words. ‘Even with training we are not gonna be strong enough! Our opponent is a shinobi whom even you, with the Sharingan, had a tough fight with!’

Sasuke nods sagely along with her, because--what the fuck, is this guy trying to kill them? They had barely survived two days ago, how in the fuck are they gonna go and fight against both Sword Guy and Needle Kid?

Judging by Sakura’s twitching fingers on her lap, she thinks of exactly the same thing.

Also what good does it do to just remember what Magic Judo move someone had thrown at you at some point? It's not like it's actually gonna help in a real fight. If you were to keep throwing perfect copies of the opponent's punches at them, they'll just know better how to counter them. The fact that everyone just keeps swooning when Lanky's dumb eye is mentioned must be some kinda gross hero-worship, or whatever.

“Sakura-chan,” Lanky sounds serious and--proud? “Who was the one to save me when Zabuza imprisoned me?”

Sasuke rolls his eyes. It was less saving and more sheer fucking luck. Ninja Stripper could’ve killed them at any given moment if he had just stopped fucking talking. Why he didn’t kill them Sasuke wasn’t sure, but thanks to Cowman , he supposes.

“It was all of you,” Lanky-sensei says earnestly. “Sasuke and Naruto distracting Zabuza. You, staying true to our mission to protect Tazuna-san. I’m going to make sure we are all prepared if he were to attack us again.”

Lanky doesn’t sound so sure himself, but this Ted talk was, evidently, good enough for Sakura, who ducks her head and blushes furiously.

‘I’LL GO GET NARUTO,’ her forehead says abashedly, ‘TO TELL HIM YOU ARE AWAKE NOW.’

She stands up and dashes out of the room.

Sasuke makes a move to get up from the aching position he has on his knees, but Lanky’s hand stops him--or makes an attempt to stop him, weak fingers scratching at Sasuke’s knee instead.

“Sasuke, wait,” Lanky looks pained and Sasuke seriously considers calling Bean Mom to ask her to look over McNinja, because maybe he is about to get comatose again, “I wanted to--I need to apologize for not telling you about my Sharingan earlier.”

Sasuke shoots him a confused look. Why the fuck would McNinja apologize to him? Sure, the eye was creepy enough and Sasuke was glad Lanky-sensei was hiding it just like the possible-mouth-void under his mask, but it’s not like Sasuke had lost his composure during the battle for too long after seeing it. He is not dumb. He will cry about the creepy eye when he climbs onto the futon in his house where he is not compromising the safety of his midget friends.

“It’s,” Lanky swallows and stares at him so desperately that Sasuke kinda wants to go and tug the headband down over McNinja’s other eye just to block away the Sad Puppy look--maybe Naruto and Lanky were related, or something, having nailed down the same kicked-dog face. “I’m honouring it for the sake of the Uchiha clan the best I can.”

Okay? Sasuke squirms on his bent legs. Sob story incoming? How is Sasuke relevant to any of this?

“I know I am nowhere close to being a perfect teacher for your kekkei genkai, and I never had access to the Uchiha libraries to learn more about it,” Sasuke frowns at that because what? “but I want to help you with whatever I can.”

It just gets more and more confusing the more Lanky keeps talking. How is Sasuke’s surname relevant to this? Is Lanky hallucinating? Alright, off you go, good job on taking care of your creepy-ugly eye?

“I am not an expert on any doujutsu but I had my Sharingan for quite a while now,” Lanky admits and raises a shaking hand to rub over the covered eye. “But you are an Uchiha, and you deserve to know how to use your Sharingan without exhausting yourself and repeating my failings by having no one to teach you. I know I am not even remotely close to what your family would’ve taught you but--you are an Uchiha, and Sharingan is your birthright.”

Wait a fucking second, Sasuke blinks, stop the motherfucking train.

Is the creepy magic red eye a birth defect that is unique to Sasuke’s dead family?

Does it mean the creepy-eyed Shape from his dreams is Sasuke’s random cousin or something?!

Is the blood that caked the walls of his neighbourhood the result of someone using that fucking eye to kill theirs and Sasuke’s entire family and whoever the fuck else lived there ?

Sasuke is feeling a heat flash over his back like he is back in one of his nightmares, air cool, but body on fire , the stench of copper heavy in the air; he is in Bean Mom’s spare bedroom but simultaneously in his own house, sky dark and lights off and oh god there is so much red and so many corpses and red eyes swirling and pulling him in and he thinks he is screaming his throat raw and the pain will never end and why did he have to do this why--

Wait, Sasuke blinks out, his body still trembling, arms gripping his knees way too hard and leaving finger-shaped bruises.

Lanky also has a creepy eye.

Lanky said creepy eye is Sasuke’s family’s magic atavism.

Lanky-sensei… is his relative?

Sasuke casts a suspicious glance at McNinja. They don’t really look alike, but distant cousins don’t have to. The only similarity is that they are both so pale that becoming a Masked Cultist is off the table--unless both of them want to burn their shoulders the fuck off. 

Maybe Sasuke will start greying in a year? And then he’d be sporting the same horrible bird nest of a hair?

He shudders. Fuck no. Hopefully, it is a unique to Lanky trait that won’t get passed to him. Maybe it is just the consequences of being a Ninja, or whatever.

Sasuke looks closely all over Lanky again. Maybe he hides his face because he is kinda similar to Sasuke, or whatever. Maybe he is being targeted by the Shape to kill him off like the rest of Sasuke’s family, so McNinja gotta do what he can to hide his and Sasuke's relation.

Lanky-sensei doesn’t even have the same surname as Sasuke, but--he could’ve changed it. Or maybe only his mother is related to Sasuke. He actually doesn’t know how surnames here work at all, come to think of it.

The more Sasuke stares, the more he tries to pick out any similarities he and McNinja might have. It’s not much, but they got the same eye colour, and maybe one day Sasuke will grow up as tall as Lanky-sensei? 

That was a nice thought. He had to beat Naruto at the height race if he doesn't want the dumbass to lay on top of him like a ragdoll anymore.

Lanky-sensei better share those genes, stat.

Not Lanky-sensei. Lanky-whatever-the-suffix-for cousin was?

Plus, there’s the entire bit about Sasuke supposedly also getting a creepy Sheran-thing eye. He is sure he would’ve noticed if his eyes would start spinning in swirly patterns. He owns multiple mirrors in his house, he isn't Naruto.

Is there a possibility Sasuke will also develop one eye and will have to hide it behind a headband or something? Or maybe he will have to grow out his hair to have his fringe hide it away? Because that eye shit is creepy. No wonder Lanky hides the eye away. Sasuke gets him.

During her sudden burst as an Unending Well of Knowledge, Sakura said that Sharingan was enhancing the fighting abilities too, so if Sasuke wants to defend himself--and his stupid Lanky-cousin--from the possible attack of their Murder Cousin, he has to be prepared. Maybe having an ugly eye is not too bad, especially if it’s just one. It will take time getting eye-to-hand coordination back to its two-eyed level, but an eye patch might actually even look a little badass.

“I’m sorry if I might’ve overstepped,” Lanky-cousin’s voice comes up, pulling Sasuke out of his thoughts. “I just–”

“Hn,” Sasuke nods firmly and then proceeds to nod a couple more times, hand going to pat on Lanky's shoulder in a 'there-there' motion just to reconfirm that he accepts the training, welcomes McNinja into the family and will invite him over for Bank Holidays further on.

If Lanky is related to him, that’s yet another reason to keep him alive. Pretty Face’s over-the-ramen-talks about appropriate child-rearing tactics might not be enough to teach McNinja the needed skills to survive, and Sasuke will take anything that can resemble a family because--this shit fucking sucks, okay, he is twelve and lives in a giant house with no adult supervision which is great but feels--unnatural, like he is missing something.

Lanky is a self-sacrificial adult moron with no useful adulting skills, so Sasuke is not blaming him for taking too long to come around to tell him about their mutated family history.

Maybe he can start occasionally inviting Lanky for dinners instead of paying for him at Ichiraku, which got old as soon as it had started. Or Sasuke can drag him on like, Creepy Eye family outing to throw some knives at some trees or whatever magic ninjas like doing in their free time.

Lanky-cousin-sensei looks--relieved. He relaxes in his bed and then his eye widens again as he turns his head to look at Sasuke.

“Another thing,” what? He looks even more uncomfortable than before, “during the fight with Zabuza. You, uh. I mean.”

Sasuke looks at him in question. Maybe he should really go and call for Bean Mom who probably has more experience dealing with sick people than Sasuke does. 

Lanky sucks in a breath and starts babbling some shit along the lines of ‘It’s–I mean–when kids grow up–sometimes you have–it’s completely normal by the way don’t worry–but you need to–it’s not a good match–I mean–everyone goes through this but–there are many other good people you can look up to—’.

Before Sasuke can vocalize a confused “hn”, a loud crash resonates somewhere downstairs with Bean Mom’s cry sounding deafening in an otherwise completely still house.

Sasuke is on his feet before he can even think.

Lanky looks surprised and tense, and Sasuke doesn’t have fucking time to deal with whatever babbling his distant cousin was trying to spew out.

He glances around the room, looking for something as a substitute for a weapon, snatches a lamp from the dresser, and rushes down in a panic.

Chapter Text

Sasuke almost slides into a wall with how fast he had rounded a corner to get to the source of the yelling as fast as he can. 

Bean Mom is standing in the kitchen, hands pressed over her mouth, pieces of a broken plate laying on the ground. She is staring at the exit door with big watery eyes, looking so distraught it's as if she had witnessed a murder.

Naruto is standing at the doorframe, face neutral and free of any emotions, a hand pressed to his bruised and bleeding cheek, mouth forming silent words but not saying anything coherent for the captions to catch on it.

Broody Shrimp is nowhere to be seen.

"Oi!" Sasuke beelines towards the Idiot, a hand that is not currently clutching the lamp going to move in a wild circle around him as if asking what the fuck.

The Idiot's cheek is bleeding, an angry bruise standing out on the dumbass' skin, and Sasuke really needs everyone to chill the fuck out when he is not present in the room to de-escalate whatever the fuck is going on. He can't leave anybody on their own without someone getting injured or injuring someone else, and at this point Sasuke is really running himself thin on ways to distract everyone from setting the goddamn house on fire.

"Hn?" he asks, demanding, one hand trying to pry Naruto's fingers from pressing angrily into the bruise--is the Idiot trying to make himself hurt more or what?--as he finally puts the Self-Defense Lamp on a table nearby.

Multitasking.

Sakura appears in the doorway, looking flushed and concerned, noticing Sasuke's confused eyes on her as she gestures at the door.

'Inari hit Naruto and ran away,' her forehead says, 'because Naruto called him unworthy of his dad.'

Sasuke wants to bash his head into a wall, repeatedly, and then ask Lanky to kill and resurrect him just to keep getting concussed again and again.

Naruto's hand is finally pried away from his cheek and it's still bleeding, but it looks--better than it did a few moments ago? Weird. Maybe the Idiot's fingers were obscuring the view and made it look worse than it was.

Sasuke can see out of the corner of his eye as Sakura goes to the Bean Mom, bending to pick up the broken plate pieces. The woman breaks off out of her horrified trance--her hands, too, are uselessly trying to grab on the sharp shards. 

Suddenly, Bean Mom hisses, distractedly shaking her hand and bringing a finger to her lips.

Sakura is fussing over her now, her tinny voice directing the protesting--but now thankfully distracted--woman to give her the hand and allow Sakura to apply a bandage that she wriggles out of her weapons pouch.

Sasuke redirects his attention to Naruto, whose empty thousand-yard stare and a red-and-angry cheek make him look like what Sasuke sees in the mirror when he wakes up from another nightmare filled with red and spinning eyes--his family's stupid red and spinning eyes, apparently, because Magic Ninja World is moronic like that despite Sasuke's assigned title making it sound like some kinda bootleg kiddy theme park. 

Sasuke clicks his tongue and lets go of the Idiot's hand, irately rolling his eyes as he makes a move to Sakura to beg her to spare some bandaids or whatever else she might have in that known-dimension-defying bottomless pouch of hers.

As soon as he takes a step away from Naruto, the Idiot bolts, crashing through the door with all the delicacy of a raging bull in a china shop, and--shit. 

Sasuke panics a bit. Then he panics some more, because Naruto is a midget, but he is a ninja midget, and Sulky Shrimp is not going to stand a chance against an enraged Idiot. If Naruto decided to punch the lone brain cell out of Broody's head--and that with Naruto having half of the brain cell himself--the Shrimp is not going to survive another fucking day and will go straight to where his dad had gone, apparently.

Sasuke is tired of trying to keep all the idiots around him fed, watered, rested and not dead. He doesn't even have time to keep up with watering, feeding and doing other rational person stuff himself. Every single person he meets just keeps attempting to become the most fucking disastrous and annoying ninja-world child, all of them simultaneously fighting from being potentially usurped from that position, just like they are trying to keep themselves at the top of the Catastrophe-Personified scoring board.

Maybe it isn't too late to just--go and hit his head on the wall like he had planned earlier. Sasuke eyes the corner wall suspiciously. If he would angle his temple just right and hit himself just hard enough, he might go into a vegetative state with memory retention of a potato, and then he wouldn't have to remember to care for his stupid fucking friends.

He sighs. 

And follows after Naruto.