Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had been a long month for Team 7. Their first C-Rank, with the ensuing invoking of the legendary ‘Genin C-Rank curse’ mixed with the confirmation of the just as old ‘Team 7 Luck’ still being well-and-truly a thing, had left them in a shit situation.

Kakashi wasn’t even sure if his own first C-Rank had screwed up that bad, and that had been during war-time. (Though he may have suppressed that particular incident, it had been pretty embarrassing for the genius and everyone else involved.)

Kakashi could only be thankful to his past, chakra-drained self for remembering to teach the genin to tree walk. It made the trip back to the village faster with all present being capable of the time-honoured Konoha-nin travel technique of tree-hopping.

A yelp and a louder rustle of leaves and twigs sounded behind him for the third time in ten minutes.

Kakashi sighed and pulled back his speed. Just because they were capable of it didn’t make his cute little genin masters of the technique, or make them able to keep up, in chakra or endurance, with the pace he was used to moving at while outside the village.

“You alright, Sakura-chan?” Naruto asked at a volume that irritated Kakashi’s ears, despite the boy having kept pace with the girl as she started to tire.

“I’m fine, idiot.” She replied as Kakashi stopped and turned to look at the two, now a ways back and nearly hidden by the leaves. The Uchiha stopped just ahead of Kakashi as she continued. “Leave me alone, you’re annoying me.”

Kakashi winced, and not just at the volume this time. He knew the boy was just trying to look out for a teammate, the only one of the genin to try and follow through on Kakashi’s words from their first day together as much as he could.

The Hatake took stock of the genin’s condition, then how far his instinctual map put them from Konoha. If they were to continue at the pace he had been setting for them, they could get back to the village in the next few hours. But in the condition that Sakura was in, he would need to be carrying her most of the rest of the trip, and Sasuke, despite his attempt to cover it up was just as exhausted. Even the hyperactive ball of blonde energy had been oddly quiet and reserved for the past hour, despite being the only one of the genin not showing much trouble keeping up.

Kakashi mentally reminded himself that this was not an anbu mission, all enemies from the mission behind them had been neutralised and couldn’t be following them, they were deep enough in Fire Country not to be easy targets, and there was no pressing reason to get back to the village as fast as physically possible. At least, no reason that didn’t involve him being able to get away from the genin for more than an hour of peace and quiet.

In fact, it was close enough to noon that they could probably stop, eat and let the genin rest without him getting whined, or glared, at for going easy on them. A plan that came with the added benefit of getting back to the village before dark at the pace he was setting without having to deal with the shrieking directly into his ears from whoever he was forced into carrying.

He made a point to visibly look up at the sky, as if checking the sun’s position, before starting off again with a swift glace at Sakura’s regained balance.

“Keep an eye out for somewhere to stop for lunch.”

Three very different acknowledgements to the order followed him, alongside the same sounds of inexperienced tree-hopping he had become intimately familiar to him since leaving Wave. These remained the only sounds for a blessed five minutes as his tired genin focused on their new task, on top of staying in the trees.

“Sensei,” The Uchiha-stiff grunt from his right brought his attention from scouting ahead of them to the dark-haired boy.

When Kakashi stopped and turned at the annoyingly familiar tone, he noticed the boy’s red-tinted eyes were focused further off to the right of the route he had been leading them. He sighed and lifted a hand to signal a stop to the two still following a bit behind. He also added unnecessary chakra use to his list of things that his genin were prone to do.

(A list that included such things as try to kill each other; alert anyone, within two miles of their position, of their position; and botch any kind of stealth mission, or exercise, they were assigned as a team.)

Following the dark-haired boy’s gaze, he noticed a brighter patch of sunlight through the trees. A clearing, probably. Nice catch, he doesn’t say as the others catch up and stop in the trees slightly behind them.

“That way.” Kakashi tipped his head in the same direction Sasuke was still looking, for the benefit of the new arrivals, and leaped toward it. He kept his pace slow enough that all of them were right with him until he signalled a stop, close enough to survey what was indeed a clearing from the cover of the trees.

It was quite large and, oddly for Fire Country clearings, had a mostly stone floor. Kakashi would have been suspicious that it was the result of some sort of earth jutsu that for some reason hadn’t been cleared away, but even if it had been it was obvious that it had been created a very long time ago, as it was covered in moss, stones and boulders. The edges, of what might have once been a stone platform when it was created, warn away to smooth curves by the elements. It was also littered by large cracks in places, like the roots of the mighty Fire Country trees had decided to push up on the stone in a battle for room as they grew around and under it.

There were even shallow ditches that ran through the top of the stone, as if water had carved out mini rivers in places of least resistance over the course of many, many years. Though many of these curving drains had seemed to have been covered over in the years since they were carved, with stones, boulders and the occasional fallen branch or tree. And even more seemed to randomly stop for a time, as if the elements had warn the sides of shallow water carvings down until they vanished.

(He ignored the part of his brain that insisted that there were half-familiar patterns in the lines the carvings formed. His brain was good at patterns and all too often found them where there were none. Even if, just as often, these recognised patterns were what had saved the lives of his anbu squads and himself.)

In the centre of the clearing, there stood a large boulder. Big enough for the whole team to sit around a small fire without sitting on top of each other. This boulder was surrounded in most directions by other boulders, smaller but still big enough for someone his size to take cover behind if he needed to, more than enough for the genin to do the same.

He quickly added the clearing to his mental map of this part of fire country and leaped forward until he reached the central boulder, observing the lines of sight available. Then signalled to the three genin and paused as they landed stably enough on the boulder around him.

“Wait here,” He told them as he quickly scanned the surrounding clearing. “I’ll see if I can find something quick.”

“But…” Naruto started to whine.

“Stay.” Kakashi ordered, not in any mood for having any debates about what the genin could, and couldn’t, do and leaped into the surrounding trees before anything else could be said. He could feel the scowls on his back like a physical force. It had been a long month.

He had managed to locate a well-stocked bramble of berries, and had collected quite a bounty, before the now familiar shouting reached his ears. At least the mission had given him a wide range of experience in the different tones of shouting his genin were capable of, so he no longer felt the sudden need to jump into defence at every squabble.

Kakashi sighed and took maybe a little more time than was absolutely necessary to pick up, de-kunai and seal the three rabbits he had caught when they had spooked at the unexpected sound. Then causally picking up the scroll he had been using for the berries and stuffing them back in his many pockets before heading back to where he had left his team.

He cursed the Hokage again for throwing this particular dumpster fire of a team at him, as he shunshined in to the clearing and grabbed the boys by the scruffs as they began to jump at each other. He looked down at where they now hung from his grip before he looked up and raised a mostly hidden eyebrow at Sakura.

“The idiot wouldn’t leave Sasuke-kun alone.” The girl rushed out breathlessly from her stance on the vertical side of the boulder, watching the boys struggles slow as they realised their current circumstance. Good cubs, they were learning.

Kakashi took in the blonde’s angry expression and the red tint in the darker boy’s eyes. He sighed yet again, and dropped both boys over the side of the boulder. What had possessed him to think he could get a clear answer from the fangirl?

“Ouch.” Naruto’s pulled forced him to look down at the boys.

Sasuke had landed well on a flat section of ground. But Naruto hadn’t been so lucky. He seemed to have landed on an uneven section and fallen backwards before he could get his balance. He sat there looking at his hand and the line of blood there, cut on one of the sharper rocks that littered the clearing floor.

“Naruto,” Kakashi started, not even realising the he had started to walk down the boulder toward his sensei’s son and that Sakura had walked around from her place to stand beside him.

“It’s nothing,” the boy waved it off before attempting to use his injured hand to push himself up.

But before he could get past the process putting force on his hand to lift his body, the ground beneath it started to glow blue.

The entire team looked down at the odd light in confusion (for too long, even if it could only be counted as a few seconds, Kakashi would think later) as it began to spread out from the first point of contact. At least, they did until the light reached Sasuke, his eyes still spinning red, and he gasped and fell to one knee, kicking Kakashi into motion even as the glow started to spread faster.

“Sasuke!” Both of the other genin called for the third. Naruto tried to pull himself up, but his hand wouldn’t budge.

On instinct, Kakashi grabbed the scruff of the cub beside him, grabbing a bunch of pink hair in the process and readied a shunshin down to the boys. Not fast enough. The glow reached them just as he was about to activate the jutsu and there was a tug at his chakra, disrupting the technique. The tug on his reserves remained insistent. At the same time, the girl in his grip gasped and when limp.

“Sakura!” Naruto called out, now fighting to push himself up.

She lost her chakra-grip on the vertical face of the boulder and forced Kakashi to jump down to the ground to stop her from swinging out by the scruff, or just straight out falling to the ground. He landed beside Sasuke who attempted to glare at him from the edges of consciousness, sharingan fading to black in his eyes.

Kakashi noted vaguely that the glow began to resolve into lines and patterns that seemed even more oddly familiar, but he couldn’t quite place. They seemed to be following the lines that he had noted earlier to have been carved into the rock of the ground, though they now ran though and over the obstructions of the pattern.

He didn’t have long to focus on this observation though as the tug on his chakra began to grow stronger and he realised how low on chakra he now was.

“Sensei! Sakura! Sasuke!” Naruto was now calling for them all as he kept pulling at this hand as vicious red tinged his aura. Kakashi could smell the panic in the air from where he now knelt between two of his cubs, even as his senses began to dull.

No, not now, he told himself as he felt the familiar stirrings of chakra-exhaustion-induced unconsciousness. Danger. Cubs. Two unconscious, one panicking. Unknown effect. Dangerous. Cubs… Not now.

A growl in the back of his throat as he tried to shake it off. Tried to find a way to sooth the panicking cub.

Sensei’s cub. His pack.

His cub.

Can’t fail him too.

But his voice wouldn’t work. All he could do was listen to the panic continue as his senses started to shut down.

Could only feel angry, vicious chakra flare strong amid the screams for him and light to flash before there was only darkness.

Chapter Text

Screams of his name and the memory of harsh chakra swirled through Kakashi unconscious mind, even as his primal brain insisted that he get to the screaming cub.

Cub. Cubs. Need me. Need my protection. Pack.

The instincts insistence grew, until they forced him past the familiar darkness, fuzziness and ache of chakra exhaustion.

The feel of soft earth and grass beneath him came back the same moment as the scent of both, mixed with the scents of cherry blossoms, smoke and further away instant ramen.

Cubs, here. His instincts pointed out as he tried to push his most reliable sense out to check surroundings for threats. Alone, check cubs.

He cracked his usual eye and made a secondary threat scan, only to come up with the same conclusion of the first.

The cubs were lying still around him. Their positioning as he remembered from before the darkness. He shivered at the remembered screams, the scent of confusion and fear permeating the air around them all as they lost chakra, then lost consciousness.

Too still, he thought looking at them. Panic began to claw at his throat, forcing him to reach out with a shaking arm to check for vital signs of the closest. Panic ebbed at the pink-haired girl’s faint, steady pulse, but he still forced his aching body up to check the other two.

The dark-haired boy’s pulse was similar to the girls but when he crouched to check the blonde’s it was stronger, faster. He allowed the panic to fall away from his throat and his fingers to comb through blond hair as an apology for not being able to calm the boy’s. Panic that still echoed in his mind, as he checked the sun’s place in the sky and compared it to before.

It had been at least a couple of hours. They had been lucky so far, his instincts and experience screamed at him, unconscious without any kind of guard. Vulnerable. They needed to get somewhere safe. Get the cubs help, just because they were alive didn’t mean they were alright. He had to try.

The thing was, even if he hadn’t been running on nothing but instinct and stubbornness, he wouldn’t have been able to argue with what they were telling him. He had been an active shinobi long enough, and an active anbu captain too long, to not know intimately how dangerous it was to be vulnerable anywhere that wasn’t fully guarded. Even if it was well within your own territory.

Need pack. Den. Home.

So, he allowed habit and instinct keenly developed by his time in anbu to rise to the surface and take over his protesting body. (At least the cubs were small and shouldn’t weigh too much. They didn’t even seem to have any kind of open wounds, not like the other times he had had no choice but to carry the entire rest of his team. They had all had the habit of competing to see who could bleed the most on the trip back to Konoha.) He sealed their packs as he rummaged for ninja wire, hands not fully cooperating with getting in his pockets, and proceeded to tie the girl and dark-haired boy onto his back, and lifted the blond under one arm, judging him to be the least deeply unconscious and most likely to wake first. Then allowed the instinctual pull of the location home guide him into the trees.

The sun was setting and he was drawing closer to the place his mind was screaming was Den, when the blonde started to fidget, as if he was literally fighting his way to consciousness. Kakashi made the choice to just tighten his grip on the boy and keep going. The other two hadn’t moved, that he could detect, still deeply out. The only reasons he didn’t fall further into panic were deeply ingrained training and experience. He reassured himself that he could feel the faint damp warmth of twin breaths on either side of his neck.

Soon, his instincts said and he changed his pace in response, anticipating the momentum he would need to jump the high wooden walls that surrounded the village, not wanting to waste more time rounding it far enough to get to the gate.

It was only when he was on the descent of that jump that his brain caught up with his instinct, body and what he was actually seeing.

There was no wall. There weren’t any of the familiar buildings of the village before him either.

He moved as silently as he was capable of in his current state, putting his back to the closest tree and crouched, lowering the blonde to the ground.

“Kai”

The mutter was accompanied by a well-practiced disruption to the very small chakra stores his body was currently holding on to with an iron grip.

No change. He slid one hand to his kunai pouch and the other up to the hitai-ate over Obito’s eye, a risk given his current chakra levels and the state of the cubs, but one he had to take to be sure. His instincts had never taken him to the wrong place before, not when it involved home.

He revealed the eye long enough to prove that he was not stuck in some master-level genjustu, but had to push the hitai-ate down quickly when he felt the edges of his vision start to fade out and his exhaustion double. But that brief moment was long enough to also notice something in the distance, through where every instinct in his body was screaming there should be a village.

He picked up the blonde cub with the hand not holding a kunai in a ready grip and started off toward it.

“Sensei,” the blonde muttered sleepily, finally finding consciousness, just as Kakashi reached the point he could see what he was heading for clearly and stopped, looking up in confused awe.

“Sensei,” the boy said again, now struggling to be put down and pulling Kakashi back to the situation at hand with the cubs.

He shushed the boy as soothingly as he could and let the boy down to the ground again as gently as he could.

Weariness was now invading every part of his body and mind. He knew that even if he could work out why his instincts didn’t take him to the village and could work out where they were, he wouldn’t be able to take them anywhere without rest.

And then there was the spectacle before them through the last few lines of trees.

It was a sheer cliff of orange rock. Not just any orange rock, the orange was shot through with red and yellow, and sparkled in the setting sun as if it was on fire. The rock was native to Fire Country, he’d seen it often enough in his travels and knew that much. But he had travelled through most of Fire Country in his time on active duty to the village, and the only thing close to a full cliff of the rock he had seen was Hokage Mountain.

He knew from his time in anbu that Hokage Mountain had had a naturally occurring cave system that had then been expanded for headquarters. His still confused mind suggested that given that it was the same type of rock it was possible that this cliff might be the same. Or at least have a cave they could turn into a defensible den for the night.

(He preferred to use natural caves rather than jutsu ones if he had to enter them. A preference he preferred not to look it too deeply.)

“Sensei?” The boy asked, seeming to be more awake, as he took in Kakashi’s stance, the other cubs on his back and their surroundings as he struggled to push himself up. The look on the boy’s face reminded Kakashi of panicked screams and vicious chakra, which along with his vision taking that moment to swim, pushed him to a decision.

“Can you keep watch?” He asked, voice coming out a growl.

The boy just flicked his eyes to his unconscious teammates and nodded. Then allowed himself to be maneuvered back into a mess of tree roots that could be used as cover for the three of them and helped Kakashi cut the cubs from his back and settle them down gently close to the tree. He then subduedly complied with the weapon check Kakashi made the boy go through before he turned to leave.

“You’ll be back, right?” came a quiet question just as he was about to jump away, the tone carrying his worried fear as clearly as his scent to the Hatake.

“Just scouting for a den,” he soothed the boy, not realising his voice still held the growl, or that he was still using the language of his long-buried instincts to another for the first time in years. “Stay in there until I come back for you.”

Kakashi jumped up and headed for the cliff. He felt bad about leaving the scared cub behind, but he needed to get them somewhere safe before he lost his battle with exhaustion and carrying them while potentially wandering all over a cliff face with his instincts as they were was likely to push him too far.

The first cave he found, if he could call it that, was shallow and consisted only of that small space, there was no chance of another way out if the entrance was blocked, but he did luck out with the second.

Its entrance was small, he had to duck and pull in his elbows to enter, but after that the roof got high enough for him to stand at his full high and the walls pushed out to allow movement, but not far enough to allow more than one enemy to attack at once. There was also a sharp right turn not too far down that stone corridor, cutting off light and causing him to unseal his rarely used torch as exhaustion messed with his usual night-vision. This passage opened up into a larger cave, one he judged large enough for the four of them to set up their bed-rolls with room between and a central fire. And best of all, had two other passages leading off of it, both of which he could scent undisturbed dust, dirt, rock and faintly fresh air moving through not coming from the first passage.

He marked this as usable, with a few additions, and went back to collected the cubs.

Naruto was still shaking in front of his unconscious teammates when Kakashi returned to where he had left them. Needs to work on aim when startled, the silver-haired man noted absently in the back of his head as his body moved on autopilot to dodge the kunai the boy sent in his direction.

The boy stuttered an apology as he realised who the man was, then insisted that he could carry one of his teammates when Kakashi indicated that they were moving. Not willing to waste energy arguing he passed Naruto the pink-haired girl as he grabbed the Uchiha and lead them back to the den he had chosen. The boy following without fuss, pushing his instincts to scream that something was wrong, but he didn’t have the energy left to deal with that at that moment.

Inside the cave, he set the Uchiha down and unsealed the cubs packs, ordering the blonde to set up their bed-rolls before moving to the centre and pulling out the scroll he used to seal camping supplies. He had a fire starting as the boy finished settling his teammates gently into their rolls.

“You have anything for your pranks in there?” Kakashi indicated the boy’s pack as he unsealed a couple of ration bars. At the boy’s nod, he told him to set-up something that would be loud enough to catch their attention if tripped at a couple different points in each of the passages. “Naruto,” he called as the cub started to rummage in his pack for what he needed, throwing a bar to the boy before continuing, “let me know if you think you need more supplies, I’ll let you know if I have what you need.”

He fought back another wave of exhaustion as he watched the cub walk off into the first passage, allowing his hearing to stretch to ensure he didn’t need anything, as he pulled out his bedroll and bit down into the first ration bar.

Himself set to collapse as soon as the last cub was finished his duty, he went to give the still unconscious ones a more thorough check over. Both were still deeply unconscious, but he did manage to confirm that it was only due to chakra-exhaustion, and their levels weren’t currently immediately dangerous, but they would most likely be out for a while, the entire night at best, and risking any chakra use for a few days would be too risky at their age and chakra levels. It seemed they would be would not be going anywhere for a while, and only him and Naruto would be able to be any use in a fight.

His anxiety about the situation, something he was very good at suppressing, spiked. He knew he was also heading for a slump, and given this was the second time in less than a month, it would probably take longer than it had last time to get his chakra back up. Not something he was very happy about, given the fact he had no idea where they currently were and with three cubs to look after on top of it all.

He sighed and slumped on his bed-roll as Naruto wandered back into the cave from the last passage he had “pranked”, and slid down beside Kakashi, bleeding the scent of fear and worry, like he always did heat and rolling chakra.

“Can you keep watch?” He asked the subdued cub again, knowing he wasn’t going to be able to fight back the darkness for much longer. At the boy’s short nod, Kakashi slid to lie down and gave his last orders. “Keep the fire up, be careful with the wood and wake me when we start running out, if I’m not already up. Wake me if either of them wakes up, or the passages go off.”

He waited for another subdued acknowledgement before allowing the darkness to come for him again. The last thing he remembered was the feel of the cub crawling to sit beside him on his bed-roll, not exactly standard watch position, but who was he to deny a scared cub the comfort he needed.

Chapter Text

Naruto threw another stick on the fire, then pulled his legs up and hugged them to his chest with one arm. He knew he probably wasn’t doing this watch thing properly, but he couldn’t remember the stupid list of things Iruka-sensei had told them to do for it, nor did he really care at the moment. Every time he tried to remember anything, the only thing to come to him were flashes of what happened earlier. The others falling to the ground, no-one telling him what was going on, trying to pull his hand off the ground, to help, but could only watch it happen.

He wouldn’t tell anyone how scared he had been when they had just dropped in that weird light. He had been stuck to the ground, like that time he had accidentally stuck his hand to the floor with the superglue he’d spilled, only worse because this time he couldn’t even pull it off with a few layers of skin like he did then, to help. The flash of light and the darkness had been a relief to him by then.

The way Sakura-chan and the Bastard still hadn’t woken up had him worried. He didn’t know what was wrong with them and wherever Kakashi-sensei had brought them didn’t have any doctors, but he knew it all wasn’t good.

Then there was the way Sensei had been acting.

It had been different. Not just the seriousness, he’d done that back in Wave, but he was weird in a way that he hadn’t before. Growly, but nice and talking weird. Naruto didn’t remember anything about ninja calling caves dens. But usually when adults acted so different from how he had ever seen them, Naruto got worried. Too many times it had meant not good things for him. Maybe he was just tired and trying to get them to safety, like he hadn’t had to last time he collapsed like that. Naruto hoped it was just that chakra-exhaustion thing like it had been last time, ‘cause it had only taken a week for Sensei to get fully better, and he had been able to do things after the first day anyway.

But Naruto didn’t feel scared, not when Kakashi-sensei was there, even if he wasn’t awake. Naruto had been when he had been left in charge of the others alone though, but it had gone away when Kakashi-sensei came back for them. But it was also weird, like he was fully trusting Naruto to be able to do what he was asked to do, like he actually fully thought he was capable of doing it alone. Iruka-sensei always seemed think he could do things eventually but not fully trust him to be able to do it alone now.

Although, now that he’d had time to think about it, it made sense that Sensei had had to as the only other team-member awake, but at the time Naruto had felt light and happy under everything else Kakashi-sensei trusted him with so much.

It had been a bit weird to set pranks for no-one in the dirty passages, even more so after being directly told he could and should. But he guessed if anyone walked into them, he’d have at least have time to make sure Sensei was awake to help him if they were dangerous.

Naruto was hungry. The ration bar Sensei had given him as he sent him to set up the pranks hadn’t been much and they hadn’t managed to eat anything before that weird light thing. But he didn’t want to wake Sensei unless he had to and he didn’t have anything left to eat in his pack, and neither did the others. He had asked them back on the rock, as they waited for Sensei to find something, if they had anything they could share between them while they waited. Sakura had just said that he needed to learn how to wait for things and the Bastard had started on about how a proper shinobi should be able to wait to eat, which had gone the usual way things seemed to go with them.

It didn’t really matter, Naruto was used to being hungry.

The rumbling of his tummy and the crackling of the fire were his only distractions from listening for the sounds of movement in the passages.

Kakashi woke, in the tradition of elite shinobi of deep sleep to completely alert for danger without a single clue give to watchers, to a particularly loud rumble next to his ear. It took him a moment to recall the events before his nap and assess his condition and sense for danger. From the levels of chakra he had regained he estimated that he had been out for at least three hours. Not sensing anything he needed to react quickly to in the camp he opened his eyes.

He did all this silently, taking in the hunched orange figure beside him just as a second loud rumble issued from the direction of the cub’s stomach. A reminder that he hadn’t been fed properly since the short breakfast the team had shared early that morning, which set his own stomach to protest the lack of energy stores needed for his own continued recovery.

(That cub needs fed more, faster metabolism, his instinct cried from where it was currently being pushed to in the back of his head. Bad pack-leader.)

Kakashi blinked, gave their camp an assessing sweep and pulled himself into a sitting position.

“Any movement?” He asked the boy when he turned at the disruption of stillness that had hovered over the camp.

“Sensei?” The cub asked, confused before Kakashi tipped his head at the other cubs lying on the other side of the fire. The boy looked over, opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again with a little crease to his eyebrows, before saying slowly. “Oh. No change.”

Cute, Kakashi caught himself thinking when he realised what had happened. He’s trying to follow reporting procedures.

He couldn’t help himself from reaching out and ruffling the boy’s hair as his stomach rumbled loudly again. Taking the hint, Kakashi pushed himself up and reached for his supply scrolls again to feed them both.

As he worked on the simple camp meal, the boy remained hunched on Kakashi’s bedroll. Blue eyes scanned from him and the other cubs to the entrances, then turning greedily to the food, before he seemed to shake himself and repeat the cycle.

Good cub, Kakashi thought as his still tired mind caught up with what the boy was doing. Still remembering to keep watch.

They stayed silent until the meal was complete, and Kakashi handed over the boy’s large serving as he sat down next to him. The boy picking at it slowly despite how hungry his stomach was still loudly letting them know he was. Kakashi wasn’t sure it was for the best that he wasn’t going to make himself sick by eating fast, or worried that he seemed to either know what happened if he ate too fast, or was too worried to eat properly.

“What happened?” was the first soft inquiry from the boy as he switched his gaze toward the still unconscious pack-members. Kakashi was almost surprised, even in his still half fuzzed condition, that it had taken so long for him to start questioning the circumstances.

“I’m not sure.” He heard the growl in his voice as he spoke as the truth fell off his tongue. The outer reminder that his instincts were still too close to the surface and influencing his reactions mixed with his confusion of them apparently having been wrong in getting them back to the village. He pushed it all back for the moment, still tired and muddled from chakra-exhaustion.

“What’s wrong with them? Why won’t they wake up?” The boy asked, turning to look up at Kakashi with worried eyes.

Kakashi looked down into blue pools, tired mind bypassing all the blocks he had put up and flashing a memory of all the ways this cub was similar to his parents. He forced himself to shake away the guilt and turn away before answering.

“Chakra-exhaustion.”

“Like after your first fight in Wave? But they didn’t fight,” Kakashi could hear the confusion in the voice finally starting to recover its customary curiosity

“I’m used to it, they’re not. It’ll take them longer to recover enough to wake up.”

“Oh.”

Silence returned as they finished their meals and cleaned up. Kakashi took the moment to check the other cubs before walking to each of the cave entrances and focusing his senses, but all he could sense was the presence of him and the cubs.

He debated with himself about leaving to check the area outside the cave, but the sudden wave of exhaustion washing over him and the fact that he hadn’t seen were the cub had set his often-ingenious traps kept him were he was. (The instinct screaming to remain within kunai throwing distance of the cubs had nothing to do with his decision.)

“You tired?” He asked, not quite able to keep the exhaustion out of the growl his voice remained.

“No,” the boy answered from where he was tending the fire again.

“Can you keep watch again?” Kakashi asked again, using all his concentration on not collapsing onto his bedroll.

“Wake you if we start running out of wood, if either of them wake up or the passages go off?” The cub repeated back his earlier orders, checking he still had them right.

“Hmm,” Kakashi rumbled in agreement and acknowledgement as he settled himself back onto his bedroll, pushed the confused part of his brain that was still trying to puzzle together what happened to them to the far back to work and allowed the dark of unconsciousness to come to him at the sound of a small body resettling next to him.

Chapter Text

The first thing Sasuke became aware of was the impenetrable dark, then came awareness of the heaviness of his limbs.

He couldn’t move.

No, no, no, no.

Flashes of red on tatami, wood and familiar clothes. The tang of metal on his tongue, in his nose. “Because I wanted to test myself,” in that scarily familiar voice. Fear, confused anger, pain.

No!

“Sensei!” Another very different familiar voice shouted, followed by a quick shuffle of cloth and a deep growl. “Bastard!”

A long-fingered hand on his forehead and a soft rumble from above him.

“Easy cub,” this voice was almost familiar, but too deep, too much of a growl for him to place in the dark still enveloping him. The touch and the voice were calming, protecting him from the fear and pain. “Wake,” the growl gave the soft order as Sasuke stopped trying to move and took a deep breath. Something about the voice made him feel he should listen. So, he forced his eyes to blink open.

A blur of silver and navy blue above him slowly resolved into a familiar face, but something about it forced Sasuke to stare. There was something different there in that single visible grey eye.

“‘Kashi-sensei?” He didn’t even realise he had spoken until his ears registered the hoarse whisper. He winced at the weakness of the sound and how the unarticulated first syllable turned the attempt to identify the man into a childish nickname. The man tilted his head slightly to the side at the sound before there was a loud interruption.

“He alright?” The voice caused Sasuke to wince at way the volume and pitch triggered the realisation of a thumping headache through the fog. The man above him blinked rapidly and flicked his eye to Sasuke’s right which pulled his attention in the same direction.

The flash of orange there did nothing for his newly realised headache and he quickly turned back to catch the older man shaking himself slightly and his eye darted around for a bit before focusing on Sasuke again.

“Food,” another short, soft order, the familiar voice of his sensei now more recognisable under the growl. Sasuke’s fogged thoughts became even more confused at the word, trying to work out what he could have possibly meant, until there was a quick movement from his right. So, this order wasn’t for him.

“Like earlier?” The Idiot asked, slightly easier on Sasuke’s ears now, further away and mixed in with sounds of camp gear being shuffled around.

The man above him just nodded as his eye seemed to take in everything about Sasuke, causing him to catch his breath under the intensity. The hand that had remained on his forehead moved, pushing his hair back. Sasuke had to force himself to keep from pushing up into the fingers as they trailed through his hair.

He didn’t need comfort, not anymore. He was an avenger.

(He didn’t think how long it had been since he had felt so safe, since he had someone to watch over him when he felt off. Who it had been that had made him feel that way. How much he had liked it.)

Kakashi made another quick, thorough assessment of his own condition as he gently helped the still severely weakened cub up by his nape and offered him a sip of water. He hadn’t taken the time for it when he had jumped into a defensive stance as he woke at Naruto’s panicked shout and scent. A scent that had been joined by another more potent one of panic and fear, forcing him to think only of focusing his resources on protecting the vulnerable cubs.

Chakra levels high enough to cause enough of a problem to most attackers to enable the cubs to get away. Physically, not immediately about to collapse, exhaustion manageable. It only felt like he had been doing continual physical activity without sleep for three days, rather than the week it had felt like when he had last woke.

The incident in Wave may have kicked into his head that he had let his conditioning slack, but even with how far it had fallen, he was confident he could take on at least three A-rank threats as he was without strain, so long as he wasn’t reckless.

He slowly settled the boy in his hands back down to his bedroll and ran through the quick diagnostic jutsu he hadn’t had the reserves for before. Such severe chakra exhaustion so young was a serious concern, as healers had liked to remind him, and his sensei, as a cub.

At the jutsu only picking up low chakra levels and associated physical exhaustion, he allowed his hand to rest on Sasuke’s forehead a second longer before turning to the last cub remaining unconscious. When he repeated the jutsu, and repeated the results with only slightly worse levels, he turned to assess the third cub as he moved carefully near the fire.

Both Kakashi’s instincts and experience told him it was around mid-morning. Despite his training, and a section of his instincts, wanted him to scout the area to try and place where they were and locate escape routes, a larger part of his instincts, with a small logical part of his brain, reminded him that Naruto had been awake all night. The blond boy might appear to have been spared the chakra exhaustion that had afflicted the rest of them, but he had also been unconscious back in that clearing and his panicked shouts through the draining light still echoed in Kakashi’s mind.

Observing now with clear head, Kakashi could see the slight shake of the blond’s hands as he worked. Not enough to affect the meal, but enough to signify that he was getting past his own limits. Looking back, the way the usually hyperactive boy had been silent and focused in the tasks he had been set since the clearing was also concerning.

Sasuke may be awake for now, but he still needed a lot of rest. He wasn’t in any condition to defend himself, let alone his unconscious packmates, so couldn’t be left on watch. Even if Sakura were to wake soon, she wouldn’t be in any better condition than Sasuke. Which leaves Naruto the only one other than Kakashi capable of taking the duty, and he’d had it all night. Kakashi won’t be going anywhere until after Naruto rested.

Kakashi was drawn from his plans as the blond boy pulled out Sasuke’s camp bowl from his pack and filled it alongside the two they had used during the night. When he brought it all over, handed them out and settled beside the older man, Kakashi turned to help the darker boy up enough to eat. Only when they were all well into their bowls did he turn to the blond.

“Finish that and get some sleep,” Kakashi told him, pleased that his voice was slowly losing the growl.

“But…” the blond started, looking, and smelling, a little panicked as he looked around the camp.

“I’ll need you to take watch from me later,” he countered whatever the boy was about to say. “You need to be awake enough to react appropriately.”

“I can…” Sasuke started, having revived more with the food.

“Someone with severe chakra-exhaustion is not an appropriate choice of watch if there are other choices.” Kakashi harshly spoke over the boy’s attempt at arrogant defiance, ignoring the way his mind helpfully reminded him of the many times he had taken watch in that condition over other, less affected squadmates.

(Genma had once joked to Tenzo that he almost seemed to get better at watch when he was suffering from severe chakra-exhaustion, or injury. That those were the states that forced him to rely on instincts he spent the rest of his time supressing to the point of non-existence was not something he liked to think on.)

The Uchiha attempted to glare, but seemed to realise quickly the truth in his sensei’s words as he continued to struggle to lift his shaking arms enough to continue eating.

Naruto looked between the two of them quickly before slumping, realising that Kakashi was right. His gaze then flicked to settle on their last teammate.

“Is Sakura-chan going to be up soon, too?” He asked softly.

“Who knows?” Kakashi answered softly, gaining two startled looks directed at him, forcing him to clarify gently. “Everyone recovers differently, and her reserves are smaller than yours. Chakra recovers quicker while we are unconscious and using as little as our body can take. Sasuke woke as soon as he had recovered enough chakra to do so. But this means it will take longer for him to recover a full store and has to deal with physical weakness while awake, unless he continues to sleep and rest.”

Sasuke scowled at his prognoses, while Naruto frowned as if thinking the explanation over.

“So, Sakura-chan could stay asleep and recover quicker,” He said slowly, looking at Kakashi for clarification as Sasuke’s scowl grew deeper.

“Umm,” Kakashi hummed in agreement with a slight nod. “Or she could do a bit of both, either way it’ll take at least a few days before either of them will be fit for any chores.”

“Oh,” the boy replied before turning back to stare thoughtfully at his meal.

The rest of the meal was eaten in blessed silence. An oddity now that both boys were conscious, but Kakashi wasn’t going to argue with it, aware he was only given the reprieve due to them both being too exhausted to fight with each other in any capacity. From the looks of it, they would all be stuck in close proximity for a while longer yet and his sensitive hearing would thank them for any break from the strain the three cubs continually put on it he could get.

Naruto moved to clear up a little when he emptied his bowl.

“Sleep,” Kakashi said pointedly as he waved the boy off, turning to resettle Sasuke as the blond bit his lip but nodded and switched direction toward his own bedding.

The darker boy grunted as he once again lay in his own bedroll, glaring up at Kakashi who just turned to do the chores he had waved Naruto away from, cleaning the used bowls and setting the leftovers aside to reheat later.

Sometime between these actions and finishing the other minor camp chores he worked through, the feeling of two sets of eyes following his every move faded away, replaced by the soft breathing of sleep.

He sat back with a quiet sigh and settled himself into the well-remembered state of camp watch, spreading his senses out as far as he is able to catch anything unusual. Only after relieving himself of camp concerns did he finally allow his mind to consciously turn to their situation and how they got there. Trying to fit all the pieces together.

The oddly familiar patterned lines of light in the rock. The fact that he was sure he had run in the direction of Konoha from where they had stopped, but they weren’t there. The drain of chakra. Waking up in the grass surrounded by unconscious cubs. Naruto stuck to the rock by his injured hand as the light began.

Kakashi’s stomach sank. The only thing he was sure of was that he wasn’t going to like the answers he would get when he completed this puzzle.

Chapter Text

Kakashi couldn’t stop his hand from running softly through golden hair before letting it fall onto Naruto’s shoulder and shaking the sleeping boy. Then again harder, when this didn’t get any reaction other than a soft groan.

“Wha..?” Naruto mumbled softly.

“Come on, Cub, up.” Kakashi ordered gently as he moved back to the fire. He had left the boy’s bowl there, near the pot of camp stew he had made to distract himself from the nagging feeling that he wasn’t seeing the obvious answer to the puzzle of their circumstance. Once Naruto finally sat up groggily rubbing at his eyes, Kakashi handed the bowl over.

“Sensei?” Naruto questioned as he stared at it confused, before looking up again. The silver-haired man remained silent for a moment as he stood and walked over to check on the other two cubs. They had remained unconscious over the quiet hours the boy had been resting.

“We need more firewood,” Kakashi told him with a vague hand flick at the pitifully small pile where he had emptied the last of the firewood he had stashed in his scrolls. “I need to do a perimeter sweep. Should do both before dark.”

A soft “oh” was the only verbal response the man got as he reassured himself that there had been no change for the worse in the healing sleep that had such a hold over the genin. This didn’t keep him from being hit with the scent of nervousness and worry that emanated from the boy as he ate. Kakashi had to fight with the instincts that were again screaming at him to stay and protect the scared cub, but he couldn’t continue as they had. They needed firewood and he needed to know how to get the cubs out safely if they were attacked. He needed light in order to make sure he didn’t miss anything, he would be distracted enough by leaving the cubs by themselves and the mysteries of the situation.

He needed to ensure that it was safe enough for them to stay holed up there long enough for his cubs to recover.

(The oddly familiar patterned lines of light in the rock. The drain of chakra. Waking up in the grass surrounded by unconscious cubs.)

He needed to know where they were and figure out where to go from here.

(The fact that he was sure he had run in the direction of Konoha from where they had stopped, but they hadn’t arrived. Naruto stuck to the rock by his injured hand as the light began.)

He needed to figure out why his brain had been screaming at him that he was missing some piece of the puzzle for the past few hours.

He shook himself out of his train of thought, stood and turned to address the golden cub who was looking up at him with wide eyes.

“I’ll be as fast as I can,” he tried to tell him gently before giving out a list of orders. “If either of them wake up make sure they drink and eat something, but don’t let them move. If there’s sound in the passages, try and get them both out another way as quietly as possible and find someplace defensible if you have to. I’ll make sure to signal when I come back.”

The boy solemnly nodded at each of these instructions before he frowned, thinking something over seriously.

“What signal?” He asked, tilting his head in confusion.

Good cub, Kakashi thought vaguely at the boy for thinking ahead, even as he thought back over all the signals he was most used to using with his past teams. Most were too subtle for a genin to be expected pick up, especially at their current level of training.

Kakashi grimaced at the idea that that thought brought him to and the one simple, obvious signal system that could work. His own training one, created for him by his father then passed onto his sensei and ending up being used in his time as a genin. He took a deep breath, checked over his equipment and turned toward one of the passages he had yet to use. Examining the passage in torch-light as he spoke.

“Howls. Short for it’s safe, long for get ready to move.”

“Short for safe. Long for move,” Naruto muttered behind him, like he was trying to engrave it in his mind, his scent still sending waves of his worry to the older man. “Okay, got it.”

“Good cub,” Kakashi muttered unconsciously, as his concentration was focused on the passage. “Stay alert,” he ordered over his shoulder as he stepped carefully into the passage.

Kakashi breathed a short sigh of relief as he finally took a step out of the passage onto the sharp incline of non-trapped red-orange rock warmed by the mid-afternoon sun he found there.

He was sure it was only his experience with witnessing, and hearing of, some of Naruto’s more vindictive and ingenious pranks that kept him from falling into any of the traps that had been set along the route the day before. On two separate occasions, it was only the instinctive reaction to double check his first choice of how to avoid one trap he had easily located that kept him from tripping the more covert one set for that exact reason. An instinct that most of Naruto’s regular anbu watchers, and anyone who had been exposed to an Uzumaki’s idea of trap training, developed quickly enough in a bid for self-preservation.

The traps were not the only reason Kakashi had had to force himself to move through the passage carefully. There had also been multiple passages and caverns off of the main route and he had had to fight his instincts again to run checks off into them. The only reasons he had been able to continue his direction out was the need for firewood, the way they had all given the scent of disuse and dust and the way Naruto had trapped the passage between where the cubs were staying and the first of the branches had been so thorough and vindictively sneaky that it would catch anyone who moved through them quickly.

He could explore and check the rest of the tunnels of the den after he had secured the perimeter.

He glanced around at his position and realised had come out slightly further up and along the cliff from their first entrance. So, he marked its place on his mental map and ran down to the bottom of the cliff to leap quickly into the comfort of the trees. He spread his senses as far as they could reach around him and started his sweep along the tree-line.

When he had run the bottom of the cliff for long enough only finding the scents of forest, rock and various animals, he started making quick stops to pick up firewood, various berries and set snares for prey.

The well-remembered routine left his brain to once again to turn to the puzzle of their circumstances. He brushed the odd feeling of familiarity his instincts were still screaming at him, telling him he was already back in his territory, while his every other sense was telling him he didn’t know this place.

The half-familiar lines in the stone ground lighting up when Naruto touched them with his injured hand. The drain of chakra. Waking up on the grass.

Waking up on the grass.

Kakashi stilled in the middle of sealing another bundle of firewood and mentally ran through the hazy images of those last few moments before he lost consciousness.

Slowly, he finished what he was doing and slipped the scroll back in his vest before reaching for the one kunai he had carried with him since he made jounin. He had attempted to leave it behind more than once, with the memories of the man who had given it to him, but it always ended up back in his supplies again. He had to force himself to look away from the distinctive three-pronged blade to focus on the seal on the handle. The familiar swirls of hiraishin stared back at him and he took a moment to mentally flip the lines of light from the previous day to compare the two.

“Oh, shit,” he hissed when too many of the central lines matched up. He closed his eyes and slipped it away. “No.”

One part of the puzzle solved, he thought derisively. That explained his sudden lack of direction and the chakra exhaustion.

He was right in his earlier assessment, he didn’t like where these answers were going.

This conclusion might have explained why they didn’t make it to Konoha, but he had been witness to too many of Sensei and Kushina’s “debates” about time-space seals not to recognise the risks of setting one off. Especially given the fact that the seal matrix must have been damaged given the way the stone it had been carved in had been overgrown and covered in boulders.

They could be anywhere.

He shook off that thought for the moment, he had already known that he hadn’t known where they were, and continued on with his current task. He was almost at the end of the cliff so turned to run up it, deciding to sweep the top of the cliff. Marking all the places in the rock that could lead into various tunnels and caves, absently wondering if they connected back to the den.

The quick glance of the surroundings from the top of the cliff gave him another odd sense of familiarity, but he once again shook it off with the knowledge that he had only seen the amount of fire rock in one place before. (Well, technically two places, but given this wasn’t a massive canyon with a big ass river splitting it in two he is discounting one of them.) Instead, he turned and ran to the edge of the trees that grew a couple of hundred metres back from the edge, continuing the same routine as he had set below.

After making it back to where the passage he had exited from was without coming across any recent indication of other humans, he ran back to the cliff edge to rest and look out over the area below.

The orange rock was sun-warmed beneath him as he settled into a comfortable crouch, the red and gold veins sparkling in the lowering sun. He looked out over the forest below, trees not quite as large, or growing as densely, as he was used to while in Fire Country, particularly nearer to Konoha, but still covering most of the scenery below. He did notice some large areas cleared of trees further off in the distance. There were also the occasional sparks of light that on inspection seemed to be light reflecting off water, rivers snaking through the trees and springs hidden under the canopy.

The odd sense of familiarity rose in him again, the longer he looked.

He shook his head and blinked. He looked again.

This time his mind layered a shadow of familiar buildings and walls over the scenery below.

He blinked again, removing the memory from his sight as he stared down.

He thought back again to some of the louder debates about time-space seals and what could possibly happen if they weren’t properly drawn, or even if they were messed with. How lucky the Nidaime had been that he hadn’t just disappeared one day while he was creating the hiraishin, like some other people who had reportedly being working on similar seals had. That it was a time and space seal.

“Oh, shit!” Kakashi groaned as he looked down the unfamiliar, familiar cliff. “No, no, no.” He mumbled as he looked out, following the turns of the river through the trees, matching them up with the familiar turns the water took through Konoha.

Silently panicking, Kakashi moved on autopilot, biting his thumb and running through the familiar hand signs. Not thinking of the fact that he had told himself that he wouldn’t try this course of action until he was further recovered. In seconds, chakra smoke burst into existence before him and a startled yip and alert growls filled the air from within it.

Everything stilled in shock as the smoke slowly dissipated.

Chapter Text

Kakashi stared, attempting to process the sight before him and compare what he was seeing to what he had expected. This discovery in addition to the others his brain had so recently made, left his thoughts running much slower than would be expected for someone lauded a genius, even as it logged the information before him.

Three wolves, two predominantly grey and a russet brown, stared right back at him, just as confused and aggressively alert in their surprise as Kakashi.

“What...?” The larger of the greys’ hackles were raised as his deep bass growled the cut off question. Feral golden eyes remained fixed on Kakashi from above his head as he remained crouched. The other grey took the moment to slide up to the other’s side, scenting the air.

The proximity of the two allowed Kakashi easy logging comparisons of their size and shade. The one who had spoken was big, in all the ways that matter. Tall enough that if they had both been standing straight, it was possible that his muzzle would hit the centre of Kakashi’s chest. Bulky too, in a way that screamed that it was all muscle. The other was a more average size, maybe hitting him at the hip. Fur, a few shades lighter than the other, currently ruffled over sleeker muscle in agitation.

The third wolf’s head swung around, taking everything in as they hunched defensively further away from the other two, closer to the edge of the cliff, making it harder for Kakashi to his size. Grey eyes stopped on the others briefly, before turning narrow-eyed focus on Kakashi.

“You summoned us?” The russet asked, cautious confusion suffusing every word. The low voice seemed to catch the greys’ attention too, pulling their attention away from studying Kakashi.

“It’s not like there’s anyone else here,” snapped the smaller grey, voice an alto compared to the bass and baritone of the other two.

Kakashi just continued to blink at them in confusion.

“I think I did,” Kakashi answered faintly, before any of them could say anything else.

“I’ve never been summoned before,” the russet blinked slowly, ignoring the others as he relaxed his posture, still looking at Kakashi with curiosity. “You’re a Hatake?”

Kakashi just nodded dumbly, while the other two seem to snort at them both.

“Couldn’t you tell?” The smaller grey stared at the brown. “That chakra isn’t exactly subtle.”

Kakashi winced. She was right, Hatake chakra wasn’t hard to pick out when not supressed. It was so unique that he hadn’t come across anything like it since his father, and Kakashi had taken to habitually supressing his own signature.

In his shock, he must have let his chakra signature slip out, and he hadn’t even realised it. Something that hadn’t happened in years.

His father had spent a lot of time when he was younger explaining how clans differed from each other, specifically theirs, but he had spent years trying to suppress the memories. Every clan was different in various ways from civilians, they wouldn’t be clans otherwise. Though Konoha spent most of its focus on how they differed in their taught and specialised skills, it really mattered in their very biology.

The most obvious examples of clan biology were the Uchiha and the Hyuuga and their eyes. But for shinobi, biology also includes the chakra system, for example the fire that is so prominent in the Uchiha’s chakra it affects other parts of their bodies, such as making their mouth and throat more fire resistant. It was also known that, for those with scent tracking ability, a major tell of an Uchiha is fire underlying their personal scent.

For Hatakes, there were the enhanced senses of smell and hearing, but more prominently there was the unique white chakra. If that wasn’t enough it was also dominated by the element of lighting giving them their signature underlying scent of ozone.

“Our summoner is dead,” the larger grey growled. Not taking his gaze from Kakashi, who couldn’t suppress another wince.

The Grey Wolf contract was a unique in many ways. It allowed for variation in the subspecies summoned to fit a summoner, through their clans. It was also one of the few that was specific in the shinobi clans it would accept. A specificity with a purpose, as they were particular in the way that they will work with a summoner. The contract is signed and worked with from the early training of the summoner, with their summons bonding with them from a cub and remain working with each other so long as they both live, only being separated by the death the other. Only very rarely will a summon work with another after a summoner’s death, even then it will be with a close relative, or pack-mate, of their first in extreme circumstances.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, turning to look back over the edge of the cliff to avoid the eyes on him. “There was an accident and I was trying to call my pack.”

“What kind of accident?” The lighter voice of the smaller grey asked, sounding cautious again.

“Seal, space-time,” was all he could think to tell them, but gained shocked growls in three different tones.

Right, Kakashi thought vaguely. Seals are unusual enough after villages started sharing skills between shinobi.

“You smell like other humans, and domestics,” she prompted him in a tone that Kakashi had a hard time placing.

“I contracted with the Familiaris clan,” he murmured, addressing the domestics comment first and indicating himself with one hand before addressing the first. “The cubs.”

The cubs.

The cubs were waiting for him to get back.

He was in the past. In a time before Konoha. With the cubs.

His last comment seemed to shock his brain into working for all of ten seconds before stalling again.

He was the only one left to protect the cubs.

He was stuck with them.

A fur-covered paw lightly brushed the fingers of his right hand where they were exposed by his glove, startling him out of his panic. His head snapped around, visible eye still open as wide as possible, to stare at the russet who had moved to stand beside him.

“Cubs?” He prompted lowly, ducking his head to allow grey eyes to meet.

“Are they alright?” The other male asked, aggression lessening of the first time in the encounter as concern entered his tone.

“Three,” he nodded, maintaining eye contact with the russet who cocked a head and taking a deep breath before answering the other. “Just chakra exhaustion.”

“I’m Hayate,” The russet said after a moment of continued eye contact with Kakashi. “I don’t mind helping you out, you seem like you need it.”

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at that statement, but couldn’t bring himself to protest the assumption.

“Kakashi,” he offered instead. “Thank you.”

“I’m Kaori,” the smaller grey stepped forward to speak, before swinging her muzzle back at the larger. “That’s my brother, Daisuke. Our summoner loved cubs. If you have some, we’ll help too.”

“We turned up instead of your pack, we can work out what the problem was later.” Daisuke shrugged a little as he growled solemnly.

Sakura weakly struggled up through the darkness around her. It was suffocating and she couldn’t quite remember how she got there, but she knew she needed to check on something, someone.

The weird light coming from where Naruto crouched. Sasuke-kun falling to one knee in the light. A sharp tug at her dress and hair, and a less physical tug within her as the light reached her and darkness.

Sasuke-kun!

Sakura struggled to open her eyes, trying to figure out where the hoarse moan ringing in her ears was coming from.

“Sakura-chan!” A soft, worried voice called, joined by a hand shaking her shoulder. “Sakura-chan, are you awake?”

She tried to answer. Annoyed that it wasn’t a voice she wanted to hear, but the only sound to follow the question was a groan.

Oh, it’s me, she thought as she pushed her eyes open against what felt like academy training weights holding them closed.

“Sakura-chan?” She could hear the worry in that voice as she finally managed to win the fight with her eyelids. She almost regretted fighting so hard though when the first thing to come into focus after she did was a worried mesh of yellow and orange.

“Nar…” she started, but the rest of the name fell away into breathy silence in her dry throat.

“Right, water,” Naruto looked around quickly before standing and hurrying away toward the crackling light behind him. “Sensei said to make sure you drink and eat something. Don’t move.”

She could barely keep her eyes open, but held her tongue on the sarcastic question that wanted to make its way out. Instead, she used her reserves to try and take in what she could of their surroundings. Uneven rock was picked out above her in flickering light and shadows, while the scents of dirt and damp were almost overwhelmed by the those of wood smoke and some kind of stew.

“Here,” Naruto said as he came back to lean over her again, slipping his hand under her neck and pulling her up slightly. “I think this is how Sensei did it,” he muttered as he lifted a water bottle to her lips to allow her to drink. It took all the discipline she had to take the small sips she remembered her academy senseis in all their survival classes had all told them were vital when they hadn’t drunk in a long time, or didn’t know how long since their last drink.

“Sasuke-kun?” she asked after she turned away, feeling like she had drunk enough for now.

“Your other side,” he replied, as he let her back down to her pillow, which in turn allowed her to turn in the direction he indicated to check as he continued. “He woke up this morning, I think it was, while Sensei was here. Must have fallen asleep again after Sensei sent me to sleep.”

“What happened? He okay?” She asked, taking in the pale face showing between the messy black hair and the blanket of his bed roll.

“Sensei said it was chakra exhaustion, like he had after the first fight with Zabuza,” Naruto answered as he clanked around doing whatever he was doing near the fire. “He said you both just need sleep, food and rest.”

Reassured that Sasuke-kun wasn’t in serious danger right now, she turned to watch her blond teammate. Realising as she did, that he was being unusually subdued. He was stirring a pot near the fire and using his other hand to pull a bowl toward him, before he ladled a portion of whatever was in the pot into it.

“What happened? Where are we? How long have we been here?” she asked, curious now about what happened after she passed out. Then, realising someone was missing despite Naruto mentioning him more than once. “Where is Kakashi-sensei?”

“He said he was checking the perimeter and gathering wood,” He answered her last question first, as he moved back toward her with the bowl. He helped her up, grabbing extra material to set behind her to help keep her upright. He handed her the bowl before speaking again. “The light thing happened, then all of you fell, then there was this red light and the next thing I remember is waking up with Sensei carrying us all through the trees. Then he found this big cliff thing and this cave and had me prank the tunnel so there would be sound. I think it might be sometime around mid-afternoon, so we’ve been here a day.”

Sakura really tried to keep up with and process the rambling explanation as she ate, but it was difficult.

“I didn’t think we were so far from the Village,” Sakura mumbled to herself after finishing the bowl silently. “Why didn’t he take us back there, if he was carrying us anyway?”

“I dunno,” Naruto whispered back, looking like he was thinking back on something. “But Sensei was acting…”

He cut off at a grumbling groan from Sakura’s right, followed by a shifting of fabric.

“Bastard!” Naruto continued suddenly, at a volume Sakura was more used to him using. “You awake yet, lazy ass.”

“Sasuke-kun!” Sakura called excitedly, spinning as fast as she could to look at the boy. Not the best idea in her current state, she realised as the world spun around her in response. Then, realising what Naruto had just said, turned back more slowly to berate him for his disrespect. “Don’t call him that, Idiot!”

“Shut up,” groaned the Uchiha, before either of them could say anything else, cracked his eyes open and turned slowly to his left to look at them.

“Don’t move!” Naruto yelled quickly when Sasuke-kun shuffled around to try and get an arm beneath himself in order to lever himself up. “Give me a sec to finish with Sakura-chan and I’ll help. But Sensei said I wasn’t allowed to let you move.”

“Hn,” Sasuke just grunted in response but stilled as Naruto took Sakura’s bowl and helped her lay down again before wandering back to the fire and filled another. When he had collected everything he moved around to Sasuke’s right, helped him to sit up and offered him the same water bottle that he had offered her earlier.

Sakura managed to fight down her blush at the idea of an indirect kiss with Sasuke-kun in time for Naruto to take it back and hand him the bowl.

“Where is he?” Sasuke asked between bites, taking in the camp while Naruto and Sakura watched him closely. There was only one ‘he’ they could be talking about, so Sakura settled in for much of a repeat of information for Sasuke-kun’s benefit as he gathered any information that he may have missed.

“Perimeter and firewood,” Naruto answered succinctly.

“Was he still….?” Sasuke stopped his question vaguely, but Naruto seemed to understand what he meant.

“Yes.”

Sakura watched the conversation in fascination. It was so odd that they seemed to be so serious and neither one trying to pick a fight. She realised that the situation they were in was not good, but this alone told her that she was missing something. Possibly something big.

“How long?”

“I think it’s sometime after mid-afternoon,” Naruto offered as Sasuke took another bite and nodded.

“Did he say anything else?” Sakura asked quietly after they both fell silent, deciding she may as well follow Sasuke-kun’s lead and gather as much information as possible. Both boy’s heads snapped in her direction, as if they had forgotten she was awake too. She swallowed back the insecurity that squeezed her throat at that thought of being forgotten so easily, before looking directly at Naruto and clarifying. “You said that Sensei told you to make sure we were fed and didn’t move. Did he say anything else?”

“Uh, not really,” Naruto answered, tilting his head in thought. “Just that and that if the pranks go off in the tunnels to take you two and run. He’d signal if it was him.”

“Signal?” Sasuke perked at that, pressing his empty bowl into Naruto’s stomach so he would take it. “What signal?”

If Sakura was honest, she was also interested in the answer. They had covered signal systems in the academy and she had found them really interesting. There were general Konoha ones for temporary teams but long-term teams tended to build their own for their own strengths. It had made her excited about the idea of coming up with one for a team. but they had yet to sit down and work one out yet.

“Uh, howls,” Naruto told them. “Long for safe, short for move.”

“Howls?” Sasuke looked at Naruto, nose wrinkling in obvious confusion. “I guess it’s simple enough but I’ve never heard of that one before.”

“It’s not one of the general signals,” Sakura murmured absently, thinking it over before a thought hit her. “Maybe it’s part of a clan system.”

“Clan system?” Sasuke snapped his attention back to her, glaring as he asked. “Why would you say that?”

“Hatake is on the list of official Konoha clans,” Sakura looked between them both confused as they looked at her in disbelief. “You didn’t know?”

They both shook their heads in answer still looking at her with the same confused expression.

“The only time they mentioned any clans in the academy were in the weird basic history classes,” Sasuke murmured. “I don’t remember any Hatakes on the tests.”

“There was this game that Ino’s dad taught us when we were really little,” Sakura tried to explain while looking at Sasuke in confusion. “Well, he taught Ino, then they both taught me. But we’d play it with Shikamaru and Choji when I was there for their forced playdate things too. We had all this information on each of the clans on the official list, like name and what made them a clan rather than a family and the current clan heads, unless they were down to a family or less. Then we had to match it all together with the clan and things like that. I thought it was a clan thing.”

Sakura shrugged uncomfortably at them as they continued to stare at her with matching expressions.

“We didn’t play anything like that,” Sasuke said slowly, still staring at her. “But we did learn that clan ways weren’t taught outside the clan.”

“But if there aren’t many members left, they sometimes take students to pass on techniques that can be used by others,” Naruto protested, causing both of the others to look at him strangely. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest at their reaction and shrugged awkwardly before continuing. “Iruka-sensei mentioned it when he was talking about explosive tags and stuff. He told me, when he was showing me some of his prank seals, that he had been taught by someone who had been taught by someone who was the one of the last of a clan who specialised in that stuff. Like a legacy or something.”

Sakura looked up at the ceiling, ignoring both Sasuke’s reaction to that revelation and the tension that had taken over the cave since the subject of clans had been raised. She thought it over with the information from the game she had played so often as a child. It was hard to remember everything, she hadn’t played in years.

“We never had to learn the Hatake clan leader,” she told the ceiling quietly, aware that the sudden stillness to that side indicated that they had heard her. “That meant usually meant they had died out, or were in the process of dying out and down to, like, one family.”

“That still doesn’t mean it’s a clan system,” Sasuke insisted. “It could have just been a team system.”

“Maybe,” Sakura conceded, turning back to look at the two of them just as Sasuke started to sway where he sat and Naruto quickly helped him to lay down again. “But it would still have been built with Sensei in mind.”

This only got her confused looks again.

“The Hatake were a Wild clan,” she explained.

“A what clan?” Naruto asked.

“Something about a particular affinity to the wild, or a creature, I think,” Sakura answered, pushing through her own exhaustion and trying to think back. “Ino’s dad just explained it by telling us to look at the Inuzuka and the Aburame, they’re Wild clans too.”

“Like, Kiba with Akamaru and Shino with his bugs,” Naruto said.

“Yeah, like that,” Sakura said, hoping she was actually right about that interpretation. “I think I remember that the Hatake and the Inuzuka had a few similarities, like they were distant cousins or intermarried a lot, or something. They were mainly associated with wolves, but Sensei had those dogs back in Wave so maybe they had those too. It’s been a long time since I played, so I might have gotten something wrong.”

“Hn,” Sasuke grunted. Sakura stared at him between the lengthening darkness of each of her blinks as she tried to understand what he meant but all she got was that his eyes were closed.

“We can ask Sensei later,” Naruto said, clapping his hands before standing and wandering back to the fire. “He should be back soon.”

“I can…” Sasuke started to shuffle around as if trying to sit again.

“No,” Naruto immediately cut him off loudly. “Sensei said you need rest to recover.”

Sakura sighed and allowed her eyes to flutter closed at the sound of a growl beside her. She let the words fall from her focus, a familiar skill she had developed in the academy when she was too preoccupied to get involved in the antics of her class.

So much for them not fighting, she thought sleepily as she started to float vaguely in the darkness to the lullaby of familiar sound.

She didn’t know how long she floated there, but it was long enough for her lullaby to fall silent. Then, a loud crash startled her back to the cave.

Chapter Text

When the Bastard had finally stopped arguing and closed his eyes, Naruto had been relieved. But he thinks he might prefer the stubborn insistence to the silence that had returned when he did. There had been too much silence since they had gotten here and it reminded him that he was mostly alone again, in charge of everyone’s safety, and this time he wouldn’t have Sensei to call on if something happened.

So, he started to mess around with the last of the stew to distract himself. Which had just left him hungry and wondering if he could have some more.

Then a massive crash came from the passage that Sensei had left through.

He shot to his feet before he fully registered the sound. Heart in his throat, he focused his hearing down the passage, waiting for the signal that it was just Sensei tripping over one of his pranks and needed help getting out of it.

When seconds passed and he only caught a faint growl, he couldn’t wait any longer. Sensei’s instructions had been clear.

After everything that had happened since they left the village, Naruto didn’t really want to know why Sensei had been so insistent that they run.

“Com’on,” Naruto grunted, jumping to Sakura-chan’s side as she struggled, barely wake, to push herself up. He pulled her over his shoulder quickly, glad he and Sensei had only removed the two’s shoes as they had settled them. Then he lifted his gaze check on the Bastard.

He had managed to get himself up to a crouch, feet still wrapped within the material of his bedroll and his left hand planted in front of him to stabilise help his swaying weight. His eyes were focused on the passage and his free hand was reaching for his kunai holster.

“Com’on,” Naruto urged again, reaching for the Bastard’s shoulder to ensure he had his attention.

“You go,” Sasuke scoffed, not moving his focus while he attempted to shrug Naruto off without losing his fragile balance. “I’m staying.”

Naruto growled in frustration, closing his grip tighter in the sleeve he had managed to get a hold of.

“Sensei said to leave and you can’t even stand right,” He hissed, the urgent need to move rushing through his veins. So, he tugged harshly on the cloth in his grip to ensure he had the Bastard’s attention and to prove his point when the other boy struggled to remain upright. “Com’on.”

He kept his hold as he stood and stepped toward the only passage that remained unused by anyone but him. As he got them all moving, he ignored both the bare foot that lodged itself in his stomach and the insistent tugging at his grip on the stumbling Uchiha.

“What was that?” Sakura-chan hissed. Her wiggling around on Naruto’s shoulder, finally succeeding in getting her hard knee in his ribs. This forced him to tighten his hold on her with his other hand to ensure he didn’t drop her as he gasped for breath. “What’s going on?”

“Prank went off, no signal,” he grunted as he struggled to keep them all moving. Before he finally got fed up with it all and snapped. “Stop it!”

“Oh,” Sakura-chan gasped as they finally made it across the cave and into the passage. Naruto thanked his luck that she had finally woken enough to understand the situation when she finally grabbed Naruto’s waist from behind and stilled.

“Careful,” Naruto muttered to the Bastard as he continued to pull him behind them. “Step where I step.”

It wasn’t until they were around the first bend in the passage and out of sight of the cave and beginning to lose the firelight, that the Bastard stopped struggling to get free. It took a few more steps before necessity caused Naruto to trust it was safe to let him go. He halted long enough to reach into his jacket to pull out the torch he had stashed in it earlier, turn it on and pass it up to the hand he had been using to secure Sakura-chan to his shoulder.

“Com’on,” he repeated as he set off into the newly lit tunnel. His now free hand allowed to slide into his kunai pouch and pull out a weapon.

“I don’t see why I couldn’t have stayed,” the Bastard grumbled from behind him.

Naruto ignored him, looking forward and mentally recalling the way his exploring and pranking the tunnels had led him to find to the exit. This one led to a hole in the ground at the top of the cliff. He had stuck his head out enough earlier to know it wasn’t far from the edge of a group of trees they could use as cover.

He may have been the dead-last of their academy class, and not understood a lot of the written work they had done, but if there was one thing he knew, it how to plan and memorise multiple escape routes quickly. A skill closely followed in his arsenal by knowing how to avoid pranks, especially ones he had set. He’d had enough practice groggily stumbling around the ones he had set in his apartment after one too many break-ins.

“Watch the back,” he told them instead of continuing the argument, remembering enough of the team formation roles from class to get that it was something that should be done.

“Hn,” the grunt was his only reply from either as he led them through the maze he had made of the route without any more hassle.

They were all silent as they made their way up the slope of the passage toward the exit, except for the sound of Sasuke’s bare feet slapping rock and occasional stumble.

Naruto stopped under the exit and quickly stowed his torch away, juggling everything around as he did while he waited for the Bastard to catch up. Then taking a firm hold of Sakura-chan lept up and out. Landing in a crouch, he shifted enough to set his kunai down and reach to assist Sasuke when Sakura-chan tensed suddenly on his shoulder.

He slowly turned to look over his other shoulder and stilled.

Kakashi assessed the three carefully, both relieved by the offered help and more than mildly suspicious of the ease in which it was offered. A lifetime as a shinobi didn’t do good things for you ability to trust.

On one hand, if everything he guessed was really true, he was going to need whatever help he could get to ensure the team’s survival in a world that was very different than they were all used to. If there really was no Konoha, there were no villages at all. Which meant everything relied on clans, traditions and allies, and despite all the lip service paid to respecting clan individuality thrown around in the village, they were Village Shinobi.

As such, he only knew how to interact with other clans, without causing major offense, with the mutual understanding of the Village between them. His father had attempted to ensure he was properly educated on his own clan history, but Kakashi had only ever been around, at most, five members of his own clan. The last of them had died two years before his father had.

He didn’t think the genin could be much help in this either. Sakura’s family were civilians for at least two generations and Naruto’s clan had been kept from him. Even if it had they had been long gone with their Village before he was born. The only one that could possibly have had any knowledge in dealing with clans would have been Sasuke, but Kakashi had had enough interaction with the Uchiha to make a good guess about how they would react to a Sharingan in someone outside their clan register, or permission. As it was, they currently had three, so they couldn’t risk it.

He also wasn’t even sure he would be able to work out how far back they were, what with his fast-tracked route through the academy and what he knew of the censored nature of their history course.

On the other hand, Kakashi was a little surprised that, given the situation, these three would not ask for more information first, or even acted more suspicious about it all.

Then he remembered everything he had heard, and read, of his clan history and their history with their summons. He remembered the reactions he had witnessed of various Inuzuka (who hadn’t been as historically vicious or specific as the Hatake) to a child in danger. The way they hadn’t ever questioned his presence when he had wandered into their compound with his pack on his worst days.

Right, he thought wryly, taking a deep breath. Maybe not so surprising.

“Thank you,” he repeated, nodding at Daisuke and pushing himself out of his crouch. Rolling his shoulders, he allowed his senses to stretch out beyond the small circle it had contracted to in his shock.

“So,” Kaori shrugged his gratitude off and continued. “Where are they?”

Kakashi’s mind still bulked at revealing any information about the still vulnerable cubs to someone he didn’t know and had no loyalty to Konoha, even as everything he knew about the circumstance he’d found himself in told him it was alright to do so. Mentally, or instinctually understanding something didn’t quickly overrule a lifetime of paranoia.

He forced himself to take another deep breath and remind himself that Konoha didn’t exist here, but the two major clan loyalties the Wolves held were Konohan.

He was a Hatake, and even if he wasn’t known to the clan here, they wouldn’t betray him, and his, so long as he did not threaten theirs. Packs occasionally roamed away from the clan after all, but all stayed true to that rule. Kakashi was recognisable enough as one of them, so they would accept it as the wolves were doing now.

“In a cave,” he finally told them, pointing to the rock beneath him. “One’s a trapper, he got the passages in and out well covered when we stopped. I left him in charge. The other two were pretty exhausted. One woke briefly this morning, the other hadn’t by the time I left.”

He held his breath as he watched them take that in, nodding in understanding.

“Why are you up here?” Hayate asked.

“We were running out of firewood and I wasn’t in any condition for a perimeter check when we stopped,” he answered truthfully. When he continued, he pointed in the directions as he mentioned them. “Came out of a passage in the cliff. Ran the bottom edge along the tree line, when I hit the end, I climbed and did the same up here. Stopped for a rest, realised where I was and tried to call my pack.”

“Realised where you were?” Daisuke rumbled curiously, stepping forward slightly.

“It’s different from how I remember it.” Kakashi answered slowly after a moment trying to think of how to phrase it. He turned to ensure he met golden eyes with his before he emphasised. “Very different.”

Kakashi isn’t sure what the wolf saw in his eye when he spoke but golden eyes widened slightly.

“Okay,” was whispered in response, dropping the subject for the time being.

“What’s the plan?” Hayate asked as he sat at Kakashi’s feet, looking up at him and ignoring the other’s scepticism.

“Really?” Kaori scoffed at him.

“Well, the perimeter still needs to be finished and someone needs to check the cubs. I meant, how are we going to split this?” Hayate replied conversationally. “He summoned us and knows the most about the situation, so he calls the shots. That is how this works right?”

“It might help if you could clarify your specialties,” Kakashi interrupted, stomach sinking at the familiar downward spiral he could see that conversation taking. “I could guess but I’m more used to assessing dogs.”

“I was our summoner’s main heavy combat summon,” Daisuke spoke up first, after a moment of silence and shared glances, while his sister huffed a laugh. Not a surprise to Kakashi given his size, strength over speed. “I can track if I have to, but Kaori is a classified Tracker, so she’s better at it. She’s faster in pursuit too, but less versatile in full combat.”

Kaori preened at her brother’s praise, then snapped her muzzle at him for the last comment while Hayate yipped a laugh.

“Well, if Hayate has any kind of speed, Daisuke-nii can join the cubs and we can all finish the perimeter,” Kaori suggested slyly into the silence. “He’s so slow. And anyway, he’s still healing from last time.”

“Just stiff, brat,” Daisuke growled back, causing Hayate to continue laughing harder.

Right, siblings, Kakashi sighed, while not thinking about what that little extra tidbit of information implied about the two.

A good suggestion to examine, even if it was only given to annoy a sibling.

Kakashi couldn’t resist the urge to lightly swing out a foot to nudge Hayate when he continued chuckling. When the wolf looked up at him in response Kakashi just eye-smiled, hoping he’d get to the point and move the conversation on.

“I’m classified as a Pursuit Messenger,” he replied sheepishly when he calmed down enough to speak. “But I’m also fully trained as a speed combat summon and can track passably.”

Kakashi nodded and using the same training he had with his anbu squads, he put the team together in his head. For an accidental random group of summons, they were well rounded. As a team, each of their strengths picked up another’s weaknesses, and even more interestingly they’d fit well with the way he worked in the field.

“Kaori’s right,” he grimaced as he spoke. He’d worked with enough siblings to know how they could get when someone else sided with one. He stepped closer to the edge of the cliff and continued diplomatically before it could go south. “In their condition they won't be able to move fast, so a combat specialist to watch their backs is the best choice.”

“Fine,” Daisuke muttered grudgingly as the three of wolves followed him to the edge and looked over. “What do I need to know?”

“The passage I came out is there,” Kakashi pointed down at the exit. From their position it looked like nothing more than a crack in the rock. “My scent should be pretty easy to follow and take you easily to the camp-den. Be careful though, our trapper got it pretty good through there and has a history of catching highly experienced shinobi.”

Daisuke nodded as he followed Kakashi’s finger with his eyes.

“And if we get trouble, what can I expect?”

“Naruto, the trapper, was the only one awake when I left,” Kakashi explained, grimacing. “I left him in charge with instructions to run if they heard anything without a signal from me. Blond, orange jumpsuit, ridiculous reserves, decent stealth when he’s not distracted, but he’s easily distracted. Unpredictable.”

The three all seemed intrigued as he listed off his assessment, but he didn’t let them ask as he continued, still not entirely comfortable with having to give them a full combat assessment.

“The other two have extreme chakra exhaustion, so I don’t know what kind of help you’ll get from them. Sasuke, the dark-haired boy, could pull some shuriken or kunai if he’s awake, or he could throw out a fire jutsu and knock himself back out. I honestly don’t know what Sakura could do, pink hair, low reserves, high control, was still out when I left.”

“Signal?” Daisuke was now focussed on the cliff below, readying himself to move.

“Howls. Short for safe, long f…”

Kakashi was cut off by a faint crash sounding from beneath them, which automatically sent all four of them into defensive stances as they scanned the area below.

“What was that?” Hayate growled, not taking his eyes from the cliff below.

“Sound trap,” Kakashi hissed, assessing the distance the sound must have travelled. “The passage I came out of. Dammit!”

“The cubs?” Kaori growled.

“Change of plan,” Kakashi replied, quickly assessing the situation. “There were two other passages that led from the cave, I don’t know where one comes out, but the other is short and comes out a little that way. You two,” he indicated Kaori and Hayate before continuing, hoping he had assessed them correctly and they were following everything that he was telling them, “find them. You should have their scents from me, but if they don’t come out in a reasonable time, our scents should be a day old but follow them from there.” He stopped to get nods from the two before turning to Daisuke.

“You’re with me,” he told him before taking off in the direction of the tunnel.

Kakashi only slowed slightly as he reached the crack of the passage. Being careful to miss the traps he had logged on his way out and, hoping he had recognised them all, he reached to pull out his torch again.

“Be careful to follow my steps,” he called back softly, getting a deep yip in response as he flicked the torch on.

Oddly enough, it was as he ran as fast as he dared through that tunnel, worry and adrenaline running hot through his veins and a massive predator at his heels, that he felt the most settled he had felt since leaving Wave.

Daisuke was no Bull, but this he knew. Running with a canine who had promised him his help, comrades in possible danger and combat almost guaranteed to be imminent. This was a situation he knew, a state of being he had spent most of the last twenty years in.

Then suddenly, he caught it, and faltered. A scent, oddly familiar, but very much not. Ozone and rain-drenched earth, mixed with copper and rusty iron. Beside it a scent of mixed storm air and crushed leaves.

Kakashi slowed, looking forward at the sharp turn in the passage with trepidation. But the slower pace allowed him to better register the sound of soft growls and yips he had been hearing unconsciously, mixed now with the sound of scrambling claws on rock and the shifting of fabric, that he could now differentiate from their movements.

“Hmm,” Daisuke mumbled from behind him before using his muzzle to gently push Kakashi to the side to let him pass.

Kakashi quickly reached out to grab him by the scruff before he had taken more than two steps. Silently he nodded down to where the massive wolf, in his distraction, had been about to step right into one of the more obvious traps.

Maybe, if Kakashi had been a little less on edge, he might have found a little more of his usual amusement in watching a canine grimace. But as it was, he just raised his lone visible eyebrow in askance.

“Hello,” a tight voice called out before he could get answer. It was accompanied by a growl and a soft mutter Kakashi didn’t quite catch as it continued. “I know you’re there, your scent got a lot stronger and fresher. Show yourself.”

Daisuke swung his head back to meet Kakashi’s eye with his suddenly very wide gold ones. After a second, he slowly tilted his head, so Kakashi, guessing he had recognised something about the speaker but wanted to double check, nodded back.

The wolf stepped forward much more carefully than the last time, checking his surroundings with each step while Kakashi followed slightly behind until the grey reached the corner and stopped hunching down carefully. Slowly slinking forward, he poked his head out to look around it and suddenly barked a laugh.

Chapter Text

Daisuke remained obviously amused when he pushed himself back to his full height, carefully double checked for traps and stepped casually around the corner.

Kakashi followed him cautiously. Curious about what he had seen to react that way, especially when annoyed and confused yipping greeted his appearance.

“Daisuke?” Asked the same voice that had called out before, confusion layered with something else in his tone. “Is that you?”

Kakashi reached the corner and stilled before losing the cover it provided.

“Runt,” Daisuke replied with a snort. Then turned to meet Kakashi’s eyes, tilting his head to indicate the passage before him.

Kakashi decided to trust that the wolf’s amusement and lack of aggression meant there wasn’t an imminent threat. Even as he acknowledged that it was obvious that the speaker at least knew the wolf. He slowly slid around the corner, senses alert and kunai held ready for quick use.

At the sight that greeted him, he couldn’t hold back his own snort. The amusement was joined by a swell of pride at the blond cub’s work.

Just in front of one of the offshoot passages, lay a pale, silver-haired figure, clad in ripped and dirty grey and red, and beside him a black wolf of a similar size to Hayate. Both strangers had obviously stepped straight into one of Naruto’s snare traps. Kakashi recognised the familiar rope knots that had caught many a chunin and jounin, both unwary and paranoid alike, over the years.

He remembered the first time he had returned from a long anbu infiltration that had ended abruptly to the village, to find the young Uzumaki had learned to use that particular trick. He had been exhausted, hopping the rooftop highway back to anbu HQ, when he’d almost tripped over a chunin he been particularly trying to avoid. He had over-heard the man in a conversation that had included some comments that Kakashi was self-aware enough could trigger his usually quite dormant temper. Said chunin had been lying across one of the lesser used rooftops, wrapped in rope knots that the Hatake hadn’t personally seen used since his Sensei and Kushina had died.

Looking down at what had once been their shared favourite trap seal, and one of a combination used in many of the Uzumaki woman’s pranks, had caused Kakashi to zone out for a time. Only to be brought back to the moment after the chunin had slowly gained enough of his courage back to insist the still masked anbu set him free. Which Kakashi had reluctantly done when he couldn’t find any reasonable excuse to leave him there.

The shifting of fabric on rock and dirt startled Kakashi back from his memories. The shinobi had rolled as far as he was able in his bonds to one side, revealing a familiar cross-hatched design on one ripped sleeve and staring intently at Daisuke.

Kakashi’s breath caught at the sight of the reminder of what he was dealing with.

“After Nanami-nee, I thought…” The bound Hatake’s voice was faint as he focused hard on Daisuke. The big wolf flinched at the mention of the name and looked quickly to, then away from, Kakashi, who until then had remained with his back to the passage wall.

Noting the wolf’s uncomfortableness with the topic of conversation, Kakashi started to step closer to the two bound figures and flicking his torch to assess their conditions and bonds.

“Kakashi,” Daisuke muttered tightly to get his attention. “Hatake Riku, our summoner’s younger cousin, and his main summon Ayumu.”

So, they do know each other, Kakashi noted absently as he turned to give Daisuke a raised his eyebrow and cocked head expression of askance.

“We trained them,” was the only verbal answer he got, though Daisuke’s head hung between his shoulders and solemn his eyes flicked between them all.

And that explained the earlier amusement. Kakashi could remember how much more tempting it was to laugh at all the anbu he had come across wrapped in those ropes, but most particularly those who he had been in charge of training.

The wolf’s words brought both captive’s focus over to Kakashi. The black started growling at him in suspicion, even as Kakashi turned back to his assessment and noticed the large dark patch on the Hatake’s loose kimono shirt that was much darker than the usual red of the clan colours. After a moment of continued study, he finally gave in to the insistent feeling of being assessed and looked up to meet the other Hatake’s eyes with his single one.

He was a just boy, Kakashi acknowledged as he finally allowed himself to assess his features. Young still for a Hatake running even a simple mission alone, from what he remembered of his father’s stories. Kakashi estimated him to be barely more than twenty, given the way his cheeks still held a failing grip on baby fat. Slightly glazed, light grey eyes ran Kakashi up and down as he continued scan his pale features up to where they met the distinctive silver hair. Most of the thick locks were cut a couple of inches from his scalp, except for a section curved around his right ear, which was longer but braided tightly to his scalp and held in red enamelled clasps.

A spike in the growl from Ayumu, pulled his attention in the direction of the black wolf. He met a pair of light green eyes glaring at him over the boy’s side, as the owner struggled against the ropes holding his legs to his body.

“Hatake Kakashi,” he held wolf’s eyes and deliberately stepped closer. Looking over the wolf for obvious injuries and upon finding none, turned back to Riku, who’s eyes had widened slightly.

“You’re the scent we were following,” the boy muttered as Kakashi stepped further forward to check more closely for any more possible wounds. He noted a few more over what he could see from both their positions, but none that emanated so much of the scent of rusted iron and copper as the one soaking his shirt. Riku’s eyes flicked to both wolves before he continued. “We thought we smelled another Hatake in the passages, that they could help.”

“Cubs,” Daisuke stated as Kakashi silently crouched, to get a better look at the boy’s wound.

The boy suddenly stilled, and eyes widened further at the revelation. While the black’s growl, which had been a constant rumble since they had noticed Kakashi’s presence, immediately cut off.

“I...I’m sorry, I didn’t realise...” Riku stumbled over his words as he relocated his voice and closed his eyes. “I swear, we didn’t think…”

“Your wound,” Kakashi cut him off before he could settle into a long ramble. “How bad?”

Before either of his captives could settle enough to answer, Daisuke wandered closer to assess the boy’s chest over Kakashi’s shoulder.

“He’s not wearing the colours,” Ayumu spoke for the first time, low tone suspicious and looking at Daisuke for answers.

“There was an accident,” Daisuke answered seriously, standing solidly behind Kakashi.

The jounin swallowed. Surprised, and touched, at the show of support from the summon he had barely known an hour, to another who clearly trusted the big wolf. Especially given what he had put together about the summon’s circumstances and his initial hostile reaction to Kakashi, not to mention how little Kakashi had explained about what had happened.

“It would have made things difficult,” he stated vaguely. A truth on multiple levels instead of allowing himself to think too hard on what that might mean, or how exactly what he was saying was true. “They weren’t well respected.”

His brain then chose to politely remind him that he was technically wearing the Uzumaki clan symbol and he would have to do something about his sleeves and vest, to which he grimaced.

“It’s not great,” Riku ignored the current topic and answered Kakashi’s earlier question instead. “Lost a bit of blood and we’re both exhausted.”

Kakashi looked over them both again, noting the usual markers that corroborated the boy’s words. He turned to check Daisuke’s reaction, and getting a small nod from him, reached out to carefully start cutting through Riku’s bonds as Ayumu started to speak.

“We saw an opening in the cliff and figured it would be safe enough to stop, rest and properly look at that,” the wolf directed his explanation at Daisuke but nodded in the direction of Riku as he spoke. Kakashi carefully worked not to aggravate any wounds he came across while he freed the boy. “When we caught his scent, we thought we might be able to get some help.”

“The scent was getting stronger, then suddenly there was a crash and we were like this,” Riku finished, gingerly rubbing at parts he could now reach for circulation as Kakashi cut the last section of rope to free him.

Kakashi reached out to gently clasp his shoulder before turning to work on Ayumu’s ropes.

“Don’t be too embarrassed,” he told him gruffly as he worked. “Naruto’s caught more experienced and paranoid shinobi than you in these in broad daylight.”

This got a loud snort from Daisuke, while the other two looked at him with confusion.

“The cub?” the big wolf said sceptically. “I know you said he handled these and was good. But really?”

Kakashi gave him a flat look.

“I once saw a shinobi who had worked in the field for more than forty years, alongside one of the best trained protection squads I’ve ever seen, walk into a room Naruto had been caught coming out of covered in evidence of what he had been doing. They all left the room less than three minutes later swearing and covered in multicoloured paint and feathers.”

That statement gained him three sets of disbelieving eyes on him as he cut through the last of the ropes and sat back on his heels.

“They were all well aware of what he was capable of, both from reputation and experience,” Kakashi continued when they all continued to stare.

A moment’s silence was observed as they processed this before a round of surprised barked laughter left them all. This was followed quickly by a small whine of pain as Riku brought a hand up to his chest, putting pressure on where Kakashi assumed the wound sat.

“Can you walk?” He asked as he stood, looking down the passage in the direction of the camp, anxious to be moving.

“I guess,” Riku answered as he pushed himself up unsteadily, hand still over his chest.

“We’ll get you to camp, should be safer there to look that over,” Kakashi told them. The need to see the cubs, to ensure they were safe, that he had pushed back while dealing with his discovery rising back to the surface. If these two could get through his interrupted perimeter check, who else could have slipped through?

Even as his adrenaline started running again, he couldn’t shake the need to comment wryly. “Try not to trip over anything else.”

Daisuke gave a short snort as Kakashi turned and started leading the way back to the camp, slower than they had taken from the entrance to the point they had found the two.

The older man was acutely aware the entire walk that strangers were at his back, their eyes bearing into the target the Uzumaki symbol made on the back of his flak jacket. Even while his instincts and sense of smell were telling him he was surrounded by kin and safety. It was an odd dichotomy.

Just in case something had happened, or they hadn’t followed the orders he had left with Naruto before he left, he gave a short howl to signal that it was safe as they started down the last stretch of passage before the last turn before the cave they had set up camp in.

Kakashi knew even as they cautiously took the turn that the cubs had listened their familiar scents still strong enough that they had left very recently but dispersed enough to be gone.

The flicker of light from the dying fire greeted them, so Kakashi flicked off his torch and stowed it again.

“Set yourself up,” Kakashi told them as he wandered into the cave, flicking his free hand around the cave as he slowly circled it. The cubs had left in a hurry, everything but them was still where they were when he had left. Including, he noted beside the two of the cub’s bedrolls, their sandals.

When he reached the entrance to the one passage he had yet to check and ran across the mingled scents of the cubs, mixed with worry, annoyance and frustration, he fought the urge to run after them. To bring them back to the safety of the den.

But he was also oddly happy that they had followed his orders. Even if it was a false alarm, it was still a good test that they were actually capable of it, something he often doubted. And them doing so now would be even more important in the coming days.

As much as his instincts screamed at him to go after the cubs, he had other things he needed to sort out first. The kind of things, that if sorted out in a way deemed acceptable, could gift their small pack with the protection of connections.

So, he needed to trust that Kaori and Hayate would be able to find them. He took a deep breath and turned back to the cave.

Daisuke was wandering the camp, looking everything over and checking for scents.

Kakashi was glad to note that Riku and Ayumu had set up a bedroll near the wall of the cave on the opposite side of the camp from where the cubs’ bedrolls still lay. They were sitting on it, allowing Riku to lean on the wall for support and looking longingly at the pot that still sat near the fire from where the scent of the rough stew still permeated the camp.

“Do you have a bowl?” Kakashi asked, wandering closer to the fire to throw the last of the original pile of wood onto the fire. The boy startled before quickly unsealing a small bowl from the same scroll he had pulled the bedroll from as Kakashi put the pot a little closer to the fire and unsealed some of the wood he had picked up on his run, before sauntering closer the younger Hatake.

“Shirt,” he said as he grabbed the bowl and turned away again.

“What?” Riku asked in confusion.

“Take your shirt off so we can deal with that wound,” Kakashi clarified casually, much more so than he felt, filling the bowl with the last of the stew.

When there was no sound of movement behind him, he turned to glare at the boy.

“I want to get it dealt with before you bleed out so I can go collect the cubs,” he said dismissively.

The boy hastened to do as he asked, hissing and wincing with the movements. Kakashi made a detour to his own bedroll to pick up an extra scroll of medical supplies and a water bottle on the way to the boy’s side.

“You sure?” Daisuke grumbled from where he had stopped, close to the cubs’ exit passage, looking down it intently.

“They know not to freeze under pressure,” Kakashi murmured, thinking back on how much they had learnt since leaving the village. He waited, quite patiently in his opinion, for Riku to pull off a chakra-mesh undershirt in order to hand him his bowl. “You said your sister is a decent tracker and Hayate seemed confident enough in his combat ability. We just have to trust that they find them first.”

“Sister?” Ayumu asked, looking between Kakashi and Daisuke. As Riku started to inhale the food, watching the conversation intently. “Kaori?”

“Hmm,” Kakashi affirmed as he took in his now clear view of the large slash across Riku’s chest. From just under his right armpit to just below the last of his left ribs. Deep enough to be bleeding profusely, not deep enough to damage much more than the skin.

“She’s more than a decent tracker,” Ayumu snorted lightly before he turned to look at his summoner and flinched. “A minor cut?” he growled.

Kakashi locked eyes with the other Hatake as he sank down beside him.

“I may had exaggerated a bit,” he halted his shovelling of food in his mouth and smiled sheepishly.

Kakashi couldn’t hold in a snort at them, wondering if this was what it had been like for his teammates when he had similar conversations with his own pack.

“Hold still a sec,” he muttered, reaching forward and tipped some of the water from the bottle over the wound to wash away some of the blood and check his initial assessment about the severity was correct.

Riku flinched and almost dropped what was left of his bowl of stew. Then tensed and allowed to water to flow.

After Kakashi was satisfied he had a proper understanding of what it was he was working with, he pulled a few supplies from the scroll and quickly flicked through the signs for a basic field-medic healing jutsu. He didn’t have the patience or the time to stitch the wound by hand at that moment, so he dealt with being watched curiously as the hand covered in green chakra ran slowly over the younger’s chest.

“Anything else that bad?” He asked swiftly as he finished as much as he could with his skill, proficiency and current reserves in those circumstances. Enough to ensure it would stop bleeding so much, was clean and was on the way to healing. But not enough to fully heal it.

When Riku shook his head in answer, Kakashi reached for a bandage to wrap it properly.

“Can you handle the rest?” He asked as he worked.

“Yeah,” was the mumbled answer he got as he finished. “They’re just minor cuts.”

This caused Ayumu to snap his muzzle at him and turn to Kakashi.

“I don’t smell as much blood on him now,” he confirmed. “We can handle them.”

“You two good to stay here?” Kakashi stood and moved around to the cubs’ beds, bending quickly to collect shoes as he passed them. “All the passages are as trapped as that one, so you should have enough warning of anyone coming.”

“Go find your cubs,” Riku said with a smile, “We’re good, and I kinda want to meet the cub that set those things.”

Kakashi nodded and set a gentle hand on Daisuke’s back as he reached his position at the mouth of the tunnel. The big grey having not moved entire time Kakashi had been working on Riku.

“Come on,” he muttered to the wolf, pulling his torch back out and stepping carefully into the tunnel to follow the familiar scents.

Chapter Text

Sasuke casually leant against the passage wall when the Idiot jumped through the hole in the rock above them. He used the moment to shake away the dizziness that had started to descend faster on him while they travelled, frustrated that the Idiot had been right about what he could handle back at camp.

When he noticed a tanned hand lower into the passage, he started to step forward. He didn’t want to have to take it, but he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to jump through on his own.

Suddenly the hand was pulled back and there was a scrambling sound from above.

Sasuke peered up through the opening, tightening his grip on the kunai he had yet to put away and readying what strength he had to jump up to join his weaker teammates.

“Kakashi’s cubs?” A curious alto questioned from above.

Sasuke quickly judged the position of his teammates and the newcomer from the earlier sounds. He jumped to land in an unsteady crouch on the Idiot’s left, carefully placing himself where he could cover both the arm still holding their incapacitated teammate and the teammate herself.

He faced the newcomer and found himself face-to-face with not one, but two, of the largest wolves he had ever seen.

(Not that he had personally seen many actual wolves. The closest he had come to one were the Inuzuka’s ninken, though he did have some vague recollections of the dogs back in Wave. The ones that Sakura had mentioned earlier were apparently Kakashi-sensei’s.)

“Found the third,” the red-brown one said, cheerful baritone rumbling through the silence of the open space around them while he inspected the three genin. The slightly smaller grey at his side seemed to roll its eyes and shoot him a look before speaking again.

“Kakashi sent us,” she said, proving herself to have been the first speaker.

“You’re not the summons from Wave,” Sakura spoke, voice wavering, from where she still hung from the Idiot’s shoulder.

Sasuke couldn’t help but feel a rush of relief that she was remaining level-headed enough to assess the situation like she had back in the cave and not saying anything unnecessary. He was struggling just attempting to maintain his balance and focus enough to be useful without the added annoyance of her usual behaviour.

“He said you had an accident,” the one Sasuke was pretty sure was male, rumbled and stepped forward, nose in the air. “He tried to call them and got us instead.”

“But they were dogs,” Sasuke could basically hear the way the Idiot was wrinkling his nose in confusion. “And you’re not.”

“Same species, different subspecies.”

“Well, mostly,” The two wolves both answered at the same time. The grey matter-of-fact while the red-brown almost sarcastically shrugged, something which gained him an odd look from his companion.

“We should get out of the open,” the male spoke to them again instead of answering the look. “Probably before that one collapses.”

He indicated Sasuke as he spoke, causing the boy to bristle at the insinuation that he wasn’t strong enough to remain as he was.

“Right,” the female said as she looked around them. “To the trees.”

Sasuke shared a quick look with his teammates at the order, still not entirely sure what to make of the two unknown wolves. Sakura just stared back, blinking slowly, but Naruto gave him a small nod.

“Defensible,” he muttered, cerulean eyes darting over the open ground he could cover without moving his head. “Branches. Back to trunk.”

Sasuke nodded, ignoring his shaking legs. He turned and bolted to the tree-line behind them, sensing the blond move in tandem with him. The feeling of syncrosity they had shared in Wave a strange comfort in his vulnerable state.

He sensed the wolves realising what they were doing and following quickly just as the three of them reached the tree-line and started to ready himself for using a large portion his current energy reserves for the bound upwards.

Without speaking, he and Naruto both sprang up onto the thick branches of the third tree from the edge. Climbing another few up to get to a sturdy vee of branches to brace Sakura if she were to pass out again, Naruto settled her with her back to the trunk then climbed down to settle just below her. Sasuke collapsed on a branch on the opposite side of the tree, resettling the kunai in his hand again. He’d take the chance to start conserving his energy again as they waited.

The two unknown wolves stopped at the base of the tree and looked up at them.

“Well, I guess that works,” the male said before he settled in within the roots at right angles to Naruto and Sasuke’s positions.

“Really?” The grey asked as she did the same on the other side of the tree.

The other didn’t answer the rather sarcastic question, instead letting silence fall as they all settled in to wait for Kakashi-sensei.

He’d come for them when he could and then he’d verify the wolves’ story.

Kakashi slowed as he noticed another light up ahead. One that proved to be coming from an opening in the rock roof of the tunnel, large enough to be used as an exit.

He and Daisuke had been making slow, steady progress through the twisting and rising tunnels around more of Naruto’s traps for a while following an unchanging scent trail. But the potent scent of wary concern had seeped into the air stronger up ahead. A fragrance that was worrying in itself, but it was also touched with the scent of heavy ash and quick sparks of lightning.

If something had their Uchiha directing worry towards the others, rather than his usual arrogant frustration, it paid to be cautious.

“Up?” Daisuke asked, almost sub-vocally, bringing the jounin’s attention back to his companion. He had come up beside Kakashi and was peering up at the opening in the rock.

Kakashi flicked the big wolf a quick one-eyed glance and slowly nodded, scanning for a clear launching point. Finding one, he quickly re-stowed his torch once again, rechecking his gear as he did. He then held out three fingers and began counting them down.

As he curled the last finger, he sprang forward, onto the clear patch of rock and sprang up to crouch on one side of the hole. Less than a heartbeat later, Daisuke landed, ready to strike, beside him, facing and covering Kakashi’s exposed back.

Daisuke snorted as soon as his brain caught up with what his senses were processing and Kakashi relaxed with him.

“Close,” he said, scanning the open area before them.

“Very,” Daisuke answered, quietly. “Three deep.”

Kakashi nodded and turned on his heel, giving a short howl as he bounded in the direction of the cubs.

“Short,” his ears picked up the low grunted word as they moved, quickly followed by a louder voice yelling.

“Shit!”

“Wasn’t short safe?” The cheerfully confused question from the base of the tree was almost lost in the scrambling from further up in the branches.

“It was,” Kakashi could almost hear Kaori rolling her eyes as he took to the branches and landed beside Sasuke just before the genin could take a leap to the next tree. Kakashi fought the urge to follow in her footsteps as he looked slightly upwards to Naruto, who had slung Sakura haphazardly over his shoulder.

“We might need to work on that,” he said lazily as he checked them all over for any further harm. “Short for safe, long for move.”

The dark glare Sasuke sent at Naruto when he processed this, was as obvious to Kakashi, despite his focus being elsewhere, as the accompanying growled scoff.

“Idiot!” the shrill yell, which caused Kakashi and the wolves below to all flinch, was quickly followed by Sakura’s closed fist wack into the blond’s lower back, making him yelp.

“Oh,” the blond murmured as he realised his mistake. “Oops.”

The jounin sighed at the reactions, it looked like they were back to normal interactions again.

“My fault,” he commented casually to stop them from taking it any further. Then when he wasn’t sure it worked, he eye-smiled and pointed downwards. “Down we go.”

He jumped back to the roots before they could stop him. Landing beside Kaori who had come around to Daisuke’s side once again, he met Hayate’s eyes.

“Suspicious, aren’t they?” the russet looked up as the cubs slowly got moving in order to follow him.

“They have their reasons,” Kakashi grimaced, as he thought about some of what those could be. He held out the Uchiha’s sandals to him as he landed to the left of his teammates, figuring that his kunoichi wouldn’t need hers if she was going to stay where she was.

“Sensei?” Naruto asked curiously, blue eyes flicking over the three canines before shifting out to dart around the surrounding area.

“They said you sent them,” Sakura continued quickly instead. “But they aren’t dogs.”

“Mostly,” Hayate muttered with a smothered laugh.

“I sent them,” Kakashi assured them, sending Hayate a look. The comment interested him, making him curious to find out what he meant, but not enough to derail the conversation away from getting them back to cover quickly.

“But…”

“What now?” Sasuke grunted cutting off whatever Sakura was going to say next, eyes also scanning the area as he finished checking his sandals were fitted properly.

“We should get back to camp,” Kakashi answered, glad both boys were willing to continue to act as shinobi should while in the field.

“What about the trap thing?” Kaori asked.

“Riku and Ayumu,” Daisuke answered his sister with gruff amusement.

The cubs quickly looked between the siblings at that that, confused.

“What?” Hayate had done the same and asked before the any of them found their voices.

“Hatake and summon,” Kakashi clarified quickly, still trying to get them moving as fast as they could. “It should be fine, he understood. But we should go.”

Get back to camp, quickly explain if they force it, then deal with the perimeter. That was his most immediate plan.

“So, we can go back?” Naruto asked, still quiet for him. He flicked his eyes around the group again before returning to his alert watching.

“Yes, we have a visitor, but he shouldn’t be too much of a danger for the moment,” Kakashi tried to reassure them, even as he made his own visual sweeps of their surroundings. He then looked to the blond and indicated where they had exited. “Lead us back.”

“Try not to trip over anything,” Daisuke huffed, side-checking Kaori and lumbering forward to take the lead beside Naruto after the boy nodded and began to move. They almost got to the edge of the tree-line before the massive wolf called back over his shoulder. “Make sure the ash boy doesn’t fall on his face.”

“Ash boy?” There was an odd choking laugh from beside Kakashi where Hayate had fallen in beside him, while the jounin used most of his self-control attempting not to face-palm. He was almost glad that the two of their party that had been the subject of the comment were too busy directing twin growls at the big grey as he bounded forward with Naruto and his not so willing passenger, who was giving the wolf her own offended glare.

“Don’t even think about it,” Kakashi muttered to the russet, watching the blond, the pinkette and the big grey jump down the hole. Sasuke and Kaori dashed from the tree-line to follow.

“But it fits,” Hayate nudged his fingers gently with his snout as he continued to muffle his laugh. “And it’s not like we’ve been properly introduced.”

Kakashi reluctantly conceded the point and didn’t say anything else as he quickly scanned the area again. They watched the Uchiha and the second grey drop into the hole before they too dashed from the tree-line to follow.

When the dropped down into the darker tunnel, they were greeted by the rest of them standing only far enough away to ensure a clear landing for those behind them. Naruto had pulled out his torch as he waited and held it in the hand securing Sakura to his shoulder. Sakura, for her part, had grabbed handfuls of the waist of the blond’s jacket to help keep herself secure.

Sasuke and Kaori, despite the former’s swaying balance, seemed about ready to launch themselves at Daisuke who was sitting, slightly amused but otherwise unconcerned, at Naruto’s side.

The big wolf’s reaction to what might otherwise have been a rather intimidating sight could have come from one, or more, of many reasons. The fact that one of those attempting to threaten him was barely remaining upright, and on his own feet through, visible force of will. The other was, as previously stated, his younger sister, which left it was safe to assume that he was overly used to her anger being directed at him. He had also obviously realised that there were currently at least three traps between him and his two would be assailants, something they seemed to have either not realised, or forgotten could be a possibility.

Though it could also have been due to the fact that the massive grey would have had to lean down in order to comfortably rest his head on Naruto’s currently unoccupied shoulder.

Kakashi sighed and once again pulled out his own torch.

“Maa, maa,” he tried to defuse the situation calmly, though he realised as it left his mouth that it sounded a lot like when he was deliberately messing with his fellow jounin. Not surprisingly, it only worked to get them to settle a little, so instead he met Naruto’s eyes and half nodded forward. “If we could get moving.”

“Watch your feet,” Daisuke warned again, a little less teasing in his voice as he stepped after the blond.

When Kaori and Sasuke just scoffed and started after them, Kakashi had to quickly dash forward to grab them both by the scruffs of their necks.

“Maybe you should listen to your brother sometimes,” Kakashi drawled, eye smiling as he looked directly at the wolf rather than his Uchiha who was blinking at him slowly. He nodded down at the ground, then when he was sure they had both figured out their problem, stretched out his arms to drop them both on the other side of the particularly complex bit of trap-work they had been about to step right onto. A very similar trap to the ones he had cut Riku and Ayumu out of less than an hour ago.

There was a rough yip of amusement in front of them at the byplay while Kakashi easily bypassed the trap. He looked back slightly to find Hayate cautiously sniffing them.

“Interesting,” he commented as he too bypassed the area and followed.

Kakashi waited until they had all formed a tighter traveling group before speaking again.

“Naruto’s work,” he said, flicking a few fingers at some of the other traps around them, then up the line to the front, preceding with what Hayate had obliquely requested to ensure he couldn’t use that excuse again. “In case you hadn’t figured it out, Uzumaki Naruto is the blond up there. On him is Haruno Sakura and ash boy,” he sent a short glare at Daisuke and Hayate to try and get his point across before continuing, “is Uchiha Sasuke.”

“Uchiha?!” The siblings exclaimed together, Daisuke looking back to better examine the dark boy.

“Well, I guess that explains the ash,” Kaori muttered after a long assessment, before she sent a searching look back at Kakashi.

“Uzumaki?” Hayate seemed to have been caught on a separate point than the others, tilting his head slightly, before he concluded softly. “That sounds familiar, but I can’t think where.”

Kakashi ignored the interruptions for now, realising he hadn’t been particularly clear in any of his explanations so far and not wanting to get into it. Instead, he continued with the introductions, for the cub’s benefit now.

“The big grey is Daisuke, the smaller is Kaori and this guy is Hayate,” he pointed lazily at each as he said their names, even though the only genin watching him was Sakura, while the other two continued to navigate the tunnel.

“Hi,” Naruto chirped at a little more of his normal volume now, head tilted slightly toward Daisuke.

The big wolf startled and gave the blond a long look at the acknowledgement, which had Sakura shuffling in her place, before giving him a slow nod and looking forward again.

They all fell into silence as they slowly made their way back to the camp. Which allowed Kakashi to use the time to assess the cubs now they were all awake.

Naruto was still acting unusually reserved for the most part, but he didn’t seem to be suffering from any injuries or exhaustion. It actually seemed that he was sensing the seriousness of the situation and reacting accordingly. Despite his small mix-up of the signals, which Kakashi should have realised was a possibility for a genin with only a quick explanation, he’d done pretty well as the second camp guard.

Sakura was obviously tired, not having even been able to walk for herself and not even causing a fuss about how she was being carried. Even though she seemed to be trying to make sense of the situation, she hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the kind of questions that were appropriate for situations in the field.

Sasuke stumbled almost silently after his two teammates, using most of his concentration again to stay upright. He seemed to have grasped most of the skills of being stuck in the field, except the ability to assess his own condition, and know, and acknowledge, when he can, and should, find ways to conserve energy.

How do I tell them? Kakashi wondered, almost tripping over his own feet as he realised that he was going to have to at some point soon. How do I explain it to anyone? It’s crazy, who will believe it? Especially back here. How are the cubs going to take finding out I don’t know if we can even go back?

The last thought made him stop for half a second, before he shook himself and kept walking. There was nothing he could do to change it now. He could only focus on keeping them all safe and try to get as many protection connections as possible.

Given the fact that the wolves had each recognised the boys’ clan names, he would also have to settle on a more believable story to give to anyone else to explain how they became his.

But those are things for later, he thought as he called a stop as they made the last turn onto the stretch of passage before the camp. Things that could be put off for the time being, while they dealt with immediate concerns of their current circumstances.

Kakashi stepped around the group, subtly rearranging their order to have Naruto take the rear and he could lead the way into the cave and make sure all was as it should be.

The wolves may have taken the relative oddness of their little pack without much fuss, but they had already promised him help with them. But Riku was a Hatake of a time that was pre-village and could have any reaction to non-Hatakes, especially without the explicit statement that they were his. Their clan may have had great disdain for the child-hunting practices of many of the other clans, but that didn’t mean they would stay their hands when an opposing clan sent children into the field to kill, or harm, one of theirs.

He slowly checked them all over to make sure they were ready and started the last stretch back their camp cave.

Chapter Text

Sakura quickly noted the light coming into the passage from somewhere ahead as it started to overwhelm the torchlight. Immediately assuming they were almost back to where they had set up camp and so within the safety of whatever Sensei had done to the tunnels that made all the boys and wolves so careful about where they were putting their feet, she relaxed.

So, she almost jumped up right off Naruto’s shoulder when she heard three sharp yips echo through the tunnel from somewhere ahead of them.

She couldn’t see anyone else’s reaction from where she was, looking back at the tunnel they had walked through twice now. Though she was able to feel the way Naruto’s muscles tensed beneath her before a deeper set of short yips sounded in answer from closer ahead. Sakura guessed from the big grey that had stayed ahead of them when Sensei had switched places in the line with her and Naruto after the last turn and the short stop they had made, while the red had stayed beside them at the back of the line.

It was only as those muscles beneath her relaxed that Sakura remembered how Sensei and the greys had mentioned a visitor during what little explanation they had gotten outside. The greys had even used names like they knew whoever it was and they wouldn’t be mixed up with anyone else.

Their group didn’t even seem to slow when another pattern of yips answered, instead it was just answered in a higher octave reply.

A signal system of some kind? Sakura wondered. Intrigued, she tried to wiggle around in an attempt to get a better view of what was happening up front.

“You found them?” A tired unfamiliar voice spoke ahead, just as she managed to push up enough to see Kakashi-sensei had stepped out into the fuller light of the cave. The big grey was using his bulk to block a large part of the entrance behind the Hatake, causing Sasuke-kun to stumble into him when he didn’t stop fast enough and grumble at the inconvenience.

“Hmm, Kaori and Hayate found them first,” Kakashi-sensei hummed, before he tilted his head slightly and stepped further forward, before he answered lightly. A second of silence as he obviously ran his one-eyed gaze over whoever it was. “You good?”

“Better than I was before,” the voice laughed quietly.

It was a nice voice, Sakura thought, exhausted, but friendly.

Not that she’d let that get her to lower her guard, not when there seemed to something Sensei was avoiding talking about, the fact that he had summoned wolves by accident and the way the wolves had reacted to her teammates names like they meant something different to what she was used to having them mean.

Inoichi-san had seemed friendly most of the time she had known him, but she knew he had been Head of T & I for years. All the work she had put into the information gathering project she had set herself in order to work out what that meant told her you had to be pretty ruthless to fill the role. At least everything she could find by getting her hands on the few books she could as a civilian academy student and what she could wheedle out of the shinobi kids in class.

“Do I get to meet them?”

Sakura noted the odd exchange that followed the question. Kakashi-sensei looking back at the big grey (Daisuke, she reminded herself, summons appreciated being referred to by name, they are sentient and so their own beings). In reply, he tilted his head and nodded slowly.

“Unless something big happened in the last few months,” he rumbled, slowly shifting sideways to clear the passage and allow them out into it. The smaller grey slipped right past him as he did, nose in the air and head moving quickly to take in the area. “If it had, he probably would have picked it up by now.”

Sasuke-kun stumbled sideways slightly with the wolf when he moved, a hand grasped tight around thick, grey fur and Naruto started up level with them when Kakashi-sensei nodded.

“Help them back to bed,” he told Naruto before he turned back around and stepped even further into the cave.

“Com’on,” Sakura heard Naruto murmur as he reached out the hand not keeping her steady to grasp Sasuke-kun’s sleeve and start back to where their bed-rolls still lay in the mess of fabric they had left them in. Sakura had watched him push himself after them both on the way out and back in. He’d been getting more unstable as they went and she was worried that he was worse off than they had all thought.

Maybe he hadn’t recovered as much they had all thought from that fight back in Wave, she thought focusing all the attention she could gather, in her own rather exhausted condition, on the dark-haired boy. They had all thought he was dead on that damn bridge! What if whatever had happened in that clearing had made it worse?

Daisuke stepped slowly forward with them on Sasuke-kun’s other side when his knuckles went white where he gripped that patch of fur and didn’t let go. Keeping pace with them and giving the Uchiha another pillar to remain upright without having to rely on the blond idiot like she was.

Sakura’s attention was fixed entirely on making sure that he wasn’t going to fall on their way across the cave to their bed-rolls that everything else around them was drowned out. Sasuke tripped onto his, slightly less gracefully than he usually was, which she could forgive him for, it had been a long, exhausting trip. Then Naruto dropped her onto hers and she pulled her fist backwards, ready to punch him for the indignity, when she noticed the strange man and wolf on the other side of camp.

That was about the moment she remembered that they weren’t alone.

She suddenly stilled and stared.

He was old, but her parents would still call him young. Like that cousin that got married just before she graduated, her mum and auntie had complained he was too young to be marrying, even though he had graduated from being an apprentice a couple of years before. Or maybe he was more like some of the chunin she saw around the village all the time.

Grr, her mind growled in frustration as it once again failed to mesh her ninja training and what her family said. She shook it off and returned to assessing the stranger. What did age mean outside the village anyway? That Haku guy couldn’t have been much older than them and he was really strong on his own.

The stranger’s grey eyes were wide and staring straight at them from the opposite wall. Hair a familiar shade of grey, only more controlled in its styling than their sensei’s, one side braided and clasped close to his head while the rest spiked a little less gravity-defyingly at a few inches long. He was shirtless, only bandages and a few scars covered his chest. His legs crossed comfortably, in torn red and grey fabric, on his bed-roll and using the wall as a support. A black wolf stretched out on its stomach and laying with its head on its paws beside him.

He blinked rapidly, then lifted his eyes to meet the big grey’s standing at Naruto’s back and snorted.

“Nanami-nee would have had my head for not seeing that coming,” he smiled wryly as he flicked his gaze at Sasuke-kun, over both the grey wolves and fixing it carefully on Kakashi-sensei. “These are yours?”

“Yes,” Sakura shivered at the growl in his voice. Looking over at him she realised that he had stopped near the fire, placing himself directly between them and the stranger.

“Okay,” the stranger said in a friendly tone, bowing his head slightly at the answer. He then continued in the same tone, not quite looking at them as he introduced himself and the fourth wolf. “I’m Hatake Riku, this is Ayumu.”

Sakura was both fascinated and slightly confused. Something wasn’t quite right here. She hadn’t heard of any other Hatake’s in the village, but on the other hand, she also hadn’t really heard of Kakashi-sensei until they had met. But he had been acting a bit weird about the introduction and shouldn’t this other Hatake already be aware of the makeup of one of his few remaining clanmates’ genin teams, or at least not be surprised about it. Especially when that team included Sasuke-kun, everyone in the village knew about Sasuke, he was really cool and special like that. Of course, they all also knew what Naruto looked like, at the very least, so they could yell at him when he did something bad again.

“Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke,” Kaori, the female wolf, nodded back at them from where she had come up beside Kakashi-sensei checking over the two opposite. “Still getting yourself in trouble, runt?”

Sakura startled again at the harsh bark of laughter from behind her at that, reminding her of just how close the massive predator there was. While the younger Hatake looked slightly shamefaced and the black beside him lifted his head and growled annoyed.

“We aren’t that much younger.”

This just gets a round of amused yips from the three wolves that had come into the cave with them, including the red, who had been wandering around sniffing at everything while the rest had been talking.

“Food?” He asked curiously instead of continuing the conversation, sniffing eagerly at the pot near the fire and looking up at Kakashi-sensei.

“Sensei?” Naruto asked cautiously from beside her, looking at Kakashi-sensei as he spoke. “I can...?”

The older man, who had seemed to relax a bit during the conversation turned around to flick is uncovered eye over the three of them and nodded slowly while the other Hatake perked up as well with the implied direction of their thoughts. He continued to watch eagerly as Naruto got up, wandered toward the fire and got to work with the equipment still lying about there.

Riku continued watching the blond closely until he suddenly jumped and turned back to look at Kakashi-sensei who had turned back to him and had tensed again.

“So,” Riku started, clearing his throat and ducking his head again. “Which one of them do I have to thank for my continuing run of humiliation in front of Daisuke?”

“The blond,” Daisuke rumbled confusing Sakura once again as he came around to settle down, stretched out on his belly, in the space between Sakura and Sasuke-kun, and the fire.

“Really?” The younger Hatake swung his gaze back to Naruto at the fire with a grin as Kakashi-sensei crouched down between them and started helping him with whatever he was doing. “That was pretty impressive.”

“You were running in the dark like an idiot,” Ayumu scoffed from beside him and lifted his head to give his summoner a look. “We’re lucky Daisuke and Kakashi showed up when they did to get us out.” A black muzzle stretched up to nudge at the bandages wrapped around his summoner’s chest and was gently brushed away by a pale hand.

“You were running right alongside him, weren’t you?” Kaori asked amused and was very obviously ignored.

“He fell for it?” Naruto asked. His head had popped up quickly with an excited smile at the subject, looking back and forward between them all before he landed on Kakashi-sensei.

“Yes,” was all Kakashi said in answer as he lifted up the pot and set it closer to the fire and stood up again.

“Got us good,” the other Hatake reaffirmed good naturedly. Kakashi-sensei assessed him for a long moment before turning his back on him and starting back toward Sakura and Sasuke-kun. “We weren’t going anywhere without help.”

Sakura relaxed inexplicably as the blond’s familiar loud laugh that rang through the cave, before she turned to Kakashi-sensei as he knelt and brought a glowing green hand to Sasuke-kun’s forehead.

“What happened, Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura decided to take the opportunity to ask, flicking a look around to the other Hatake, who was giving her an odd look right back. She tried to ignore how her instincts reacted to that look. They continued to tell her she was missing something big in all this and hurried to clarify specifically what she wanted to know. “We were in that clearing and then that light happened, then we woke up here.”

“I think we would all like some clear answers,” Hayate spoke up, from where he sat, piercing grey eyes settling on Kakashi-sensei’s back as he removed his hand from Sasuke-kun’s forehead but remained silent.

“It’s a long, complicated explanation,” he murmured as he shuffled around, ignoring all the eyes set on him and flicked his hands through a line of signs. When he was done, he set a hand against Sakura’s forehead, once again glowing green and sending a wash of slightly sparking coolness through her body. “We were interrupted before we could finish the perimeter and I’d rather get that done before we lose the light.”

He’s hiding something, Sakura’s angry inner voice stated while he the green-tinted light dimmed, and he pulled his hand back. She fought the urge to outwardly scowl at that thought. She didn’t like that he seemed to keep putting off answers to her questions.

“Where are we?” She asked instead of hounding him for him to get through the long and complicated explanation when the wolves and the other Hatake all seemed to find what he said as being reasonable.

“Somewhere we’ll be well-warned if someone comes after us,” he answered lightly, looking back to the passage that they had heard the crash from before their earlier flight.

She suppressed the growl of frustration that built in her at that non-answer but sulkily fell silent when he stood and prowled closer to the fire.

Kakashi was aware that he had managed to greatly annoy his sole kunoichi. But she had failed to turn the strength of her frustrated temper on anyone but Naruto since they left the village so he guessed that he was safe for now. He couldn’t bring himself to try and explain what was going on just yet. Not while he had yet to find the angle to give them.

“I guess that makes sense,” Hayate muttered, turning back to the cooking food. “We will expect it after.”

“Hmm,” Kakashi hummed as he stopped to look down at the pot. “Should be done soon, Naruto.”

The boy easily reached out to pick up all the bowls still near him and set them ready.

“You having more?” He asked the other Hatake as he turned to his own bed-roll to unseal some more bowls for the wolves.

“If I can?” He replied, looking curiously between them all.

“We should have enough for now,” Kakashi said, giving thanks to his habit of carrying sealed camp food enough to last a month out of village. If they ran too low before they figured something out, they could always rely on his random stash of ration bars in various equipment scrolls.

He detoured to pick up the younger man’s bowl on the way back to Naruto as the boy ladled food into the bowls he had. Then he waited until all the bowls were filled, the two of them had handed them out and settled down on their own bed-rolls to eat before he spoke again.

“What can you tell me about why you’re out here alone? And what can you tell me about what we’ll find out there?”

“Courier mission north, were on our way back when we were intercepted,” The other Hatake reported around shovelling food into his mouth again. “Didn’t recognise the crests but they managed to catch up to us before we caught wind of an Uchiha patrol.”

There was a quickly indrawn breath from the cubs’ position, causing Kakashi to send them a sharp look followed by a slight shake of his head in an attempt keep them silent and not interrupting. Sasuke was too busy watching the other Hatake closely to pay attention to the implied order but the other two must have caught it as they both reached out to grab the dark-haired boy before he could interrupt. One small dainty hand taking hold of a navy sleeve, and a tanned hand over his lower face, in an attempt to cover his mouth and missing the mark. The act earned them both death-glares from slightly red-tinted eyes, but the Uchiha didn’t say anything allowing Kakashi to breath a quiet sigh and turn back to the other Hatake.

“We ran our tails into them,” Riku continued shrugging slightly, the only acknowledgement he made to the byplay being a slight frown to his brow. “Managed to get away while they were distracted. Pretty sure we lost the patrol before we saw the caves in the cliff.”

“Uchiha territory?” Kakashi directed that question to anyone present from the current time as he tried to remember what little he had bothered to learn about Warring Clan territories.

This succeeded in gaining him some very interesting looks from everyone present. The gold star for best facial expression goes to Sasuke for the way he managed to convey confusion, demand, frustration and anger all at once.

“Last map I saw puts it as theirs until the river, then it’s the Senju’s,” Ayumu said slowly, head up and tilted slightly as he spoke, light green eyes bearing into Kakashi’s uncovered one.

“How recent was that map?” Kaori asked, rolling her eyes.

“A month, maybe two,” Ayumu replied with a small shrug.

“It should still be in date,” Riku pointed out grimly, setting his now empty bowl back down. “They usually keep their big territory battles to the cleared section of the border. This one usually only sees smaller patrol fights and hunts.”

The last word was spoken with a heavy helping of distain. At the reminder of the brutality of the times all but the cubs, who lacked the context to understand, flinched.

Kakashi nodded grimly and stood to take his own empty bowl back to the fire and then quickly checked his gear.

“I’ll stay with them,” Daisuke flicked his head back at the cubs, as Hayate and Kaori both stood with Kakashi, before he nudged his own empty bowl away from him with his muzzle.

“Back to plan A, huh?” Hayate quipped as he set his own bowl next to Kakashi’s.

“Slightly changed,” Kaori nodded quickly over at Riku and Ayumu as she dropped her own bowl and turned to collect her brother’s.

“He needs to rest,” Ayumu said with a slight nudge at Riku’s knee. “But I don’t mind lending a paw to Daisuke, he’s usually less of an ass.”

“Go,” Riku tilted his head to the closest exit, a slight smile on his lips as he set a hand to his summon’s head. “Your cubs won’t see any harm from us, clan pack is clan.”

Kakashi winced a little when he heard that half-familiar saying. He wished he could put his belief in it like that, but he remembered the last few times he had heard something like that and the final outcome.

Just because Wild Clans held to it didn’t mean that the other side would.

He tried to hide his reaction, knowing he hadn’t quite managed when he felt five sets of eyes locking on him at once. He shook his head and gave his biggest eye-smile to try and put them off, which just turned the gazes speculative.

“I guess we get this over with and we can get those answers,” Kakashi heard Hayate mutter as he turned toward the original entrance the team had used the previous day and stepped toward it.

“Try not to trip on anything,” Kakashi heard Daisuke call after them as he turned on his torch once again and they stepped into the passage.

Chapter Text

“I can do it!” The Uchiha growled as the blond trapper tried to help him to lie down beside the pink-haired girl.

“Jus’ trying to make sure you don’t fall on the rock,” the blond (Naruto, they had called him Naruto) hissed back, obviously frustrated at the continued argument.

Riku met Daisuke’s eyes and tried his best to keep himself from laughing.

It had taken some time after his strange clanmate had left for the blond to bully his packmates into lying down at all. They had been surprisingly stubborn in their insistence that they can stay up despite how obvious their exhaustion was.

Not that they seemed to be trying to hide it all that much, Riku realised as he flicked his gaze over the three again.

He kept his silence though, judging from their previous reaction to him reminding them he was there would make them fight harder. It had been amusing to have to listen to how hard Naruto had to fight to get them to listen despite being completely right on the reasons they should rest, though.

It was familiar and also strangely comforting to be sharing this simple amusement with Daisuke again.

Riku swallowed the weight that caught in his throat again, as it had each time he remembered the reason he hadn’t had that comradery for months.

He still trusted the big wolf. How could he not after all their history? It had been his unexpected presence, as much as the fact the older man who had cut him loose of the trap and lead him to the den was so obviously a Hatake, that had let Riku relax and focus on healing after they left him and Ayumu there to gather the cubs.

While Riku contemplated the events that got them there, the blond finally got both his exhausted packmates settled. He then wandered over the fire where he started fidgeting his way through the clean-up of their meal.

Riku looked away from the boy when a shuffling movement started up beside him signalling Ayumu shifting and resettling himself. The Hatake settled a hand among black fur when a familiar heavy head settled back on his lap.

Now his wounds had been tended and he had been fed and rested a little, he could turn his thoughts to what little he knew about the little pack he has run into.

He tried to keep his eyes on the blond at the fire or the tunnel entrances, rather than the more vulnerable cubs opposite. The soft warning growl that had come from Kakashi when he had focused too much on the cubs had been a polite reminder of his manners. But given the erratic behaviour Riku had picked up from the other Hatake in the time they had been together, there was a chance that he was very close to the edge. Riku didn’t want to risk the other coming back and finding him staring again, who knew how he’d react?

The other man was older, that was about the only thing Riku had been able to tell about the other Hatake’s age given the way he wore that blue mask and the way the hitai-ate slanted to cover so much of his face. But the man’s stance, the way he wore his experience and power like a cloak, the cubs. If he was of an age with Riku or younger, he’d eat his mother’s next attempt to cook something other than field camp meals.

Then there were the overall odd clothing choices. The hitai-ates with the odd insignia seemed to be one of the few things all members of the little pack had in common. Only the blond seemed to share the odd orange circles that the other Hatake had been wearing, but he had also matched them with eye-searing orange, compared to Kakashi’s more field practical colours. The girl, quite aside from the unbound pink hair, was wearing bright red which was just as impractical for this environment and the Uchiha boy seemed to be wearing standard Uchiha blues, showing the massive clan fan on the back, which could definitely be an issue.

When Kakashi had attempted to give his very vague explanation, he had said that the Hatake colours and insignia would have been unsafe where they had been. But it left too many questions for Riku to contemplate in that moment without some more answers.

He did hope there was a good reason for why the other man had the cubs. Possession of an Uchiha alone was going to be a difficult explanation to anyone who had ever dealt with them.

Which Riku could conclude it could be that fact alone that might have something to do with the way the other man was avoiding saying anything. But he remembered the boy’s odd reaction to being in his birth clan’s territory and there was the also fact that that clan had as much of a track record of “losing” cubs outside of hunts and battle as the Hatake’s did. Which is to say, with both clans, that the child was proven dead or there was hell to pay for anyone who got in the way, even if it was for different reasons.

Then there was the fact that at least two of the cubs had referred to Kakashi as “Sensei”, which was a term rarely used among pack. Given the way the other Hatake had openly claimed them and they certainly hadn’t countered it, pack they were.

There was also that odd moment of doubt when Riku had spoken about Clan and Pack to contemplate.

Riku allowed his eyes to meet the familiar golden ones as he flicked his eyes to Daisuke when another thought came to him.

The big wolf had a reputation, even among the wider clan. Riku had heard enough of the whispers about how it was a shock that such a talented combat wolf had contracted to a clanmate who more openly specialised in tracking. How often did their own people forgot what being considered for line of succession meant?

How many of those distant cousins had eaten their words when they had heard of Nanami-nee’s last stand?

Riku flinched away from that thought at turned his tired gaze back to the two cubs lying across the cave from him.

The pink-haired girl seems to have passed out, but the Uchiha just seemed to be scowling at the blond again.

Riku let his mind wander back to the situation.

Daisuke was a wolf summon, which implied a lot about Kakashi just by the fact that was able to be summon the massive wolf.

What connection did he have with Nanami-nee? What did that connection say about him and me?

A quick, firm nudge to his stomach brought his attention back to the dark head in his lap.

“Rest,” Ayumu muttered the order, gaze direct before he flicked it out over the cave. “We’ve got watch.”

Riku huffed, but took the order allowing his eyes to close. He was tired and still hurting a little, after all. There were enough eyes and noses on watch, not to mention the crazy traps between them and any way in to them.

He was getting nowhere with these thoughts anyway.

They’d wake him if something came up.

He allowed himself to doze.

Kaori slowed slightly in her position in front of, slightly to his left and below, Kakashi’s run in the trees. He stiffened slightly when he noticed out of the corner of his eye.

It had been a mostly uneventful run along the top of the cliff. This had allowed them to take that perimeter at the speed he was used to for the task, only stopping long enough to set a few more snares and finish filling his firewood scrolls. The only scents they had come across had been their own, when they had run past the exit the cubs had used earlier, allowing Kakashi to log that position more accurately in his mental map of the area.

After he had decided that they had run an equal distance to his perimeter in the other direction, he had called a stop and had them follow him down the cliff to finish the last leg. He had quickly jumped into the branches once again while Kaori took point on the ground and Hayate brought up the rear.

Light sparked off the fire rock of the cliff and through the leaves as the sun started its faster descent toward the horizon. Kakashi was becoming more worried about finishing the perimeter before they lost that valuable light.

They had recently crossed the scent trail left by Riku and Ayumu on their way into the cliff. They only stopped long enough to ensure it wasn’t leading anyone after them and trying to disrupt the tracks as best they could on a time limit.

Now, Kaori’s nose lifted as she focused on something in front of them. Kakashi allowed a quiet, questioning growl to rumble from his throat as he also dropped back his pace.

“Ash,” she whispered, loud enough for Hayate to also hear from where he had slowed behind them, but not enough to carry much further. She slowed further, coming to a stop and shooting a look up at him.

Kakashi crouched on the branch above her and took a cautious sniff of the air.

He caught the scent of ash at the same moment his ears picked up the sound of rustling cloth and dead leaves and sticks against shoes and soil.

“Cover,” he hissed down at the wolves, looking about him for the best place to take his own. “Don’t engage unless we have no choice.”

Kakashi leapt up further into the branches above him and allowed his anbu training to take over, suppressing and melding his chakra signature with the wild chakra in the area around him. He spared enough of his focus to ensure both wolves had followed his directions. Noticing them slink into the undergrowth and becoming just another couple of wild predators in the uncultivated trees of Fire Country, before he turned his full attention on their interruption.

More rustling cloth and scenery. A series of soft crunches as a small group landed among the mulch on the ground and slowly split up to look around them.

“Damn!” A young voice’s frustrated growl was joined by a thud, like a sandalled foot making contact with wood. “Why are we even out here? This is a wild goose chase!”

“Hikaku said he saw a Hatake run in this direction away from the foreigners,” a gruff voice growled. “It’s our duty to track it down and put it down for trespassing.”

Kakashi didn’t allow himself to react. Any reaction could disrupt his cover, and he still didn’t know enough about the skills of this time to risk that he had recovered enough to take them all.

“Maybe,” the first voice spoke again. “But he also said it was alone so it was probably just a messenger, they don’t stop for long. Besides it’s stupid that we’re trying to track a tracker. And it’s not like it’s a Senju.”

“But they are allied,” a lighter voice broke in, over more scuffling.

“Probably made for the border as fast as possible,” a fourth voice agreed.

“We still had to check,” the third voice pointed out as they all seemed to come together again. “What do you think Tajima-sama would do if he found out we didn’t try to deal with it?”

“Still a waste of time,” the first voice whined. This was quickly followed by a thup and a yelp, when one of his older teammates seemed to have gotten sick of the attitude.

Kakashi held himself still while straining his hearing on the sounds of the patrol group moving away. Then remained there until the scent of their passing had dispersed enough that he could trust they would be out of detecting range.

He silently jumped down to the lowest branch as the two wolves slunk out of their own cover and looked up at him.

“They weren’t following any tracks,” Hayate muttered, looking in the direction of the sounds of their retreat then in the direction they had covered Riku’s tracks. “If they had we would have run into them back there.”

“Probably just a regular patrol group who had been warned to be on the lookout,” Kaori answered, shaking out her fur to lose any stray leaves and twigs that may have settled themselves in her coat. “More worried about making sure the Senju haven’t slipped through than a lone wild messenger.”

“There’re not actually looking their hardest I take it?” Kakashi muttered. He’d worked with Uchiha enough before the Massacre to know just how observant they could be, if they wanted to be, and that group hadn’t been that far from them. His main problem was that he didn’t know if that ability was one that was born from working with so many different shinobi types in the village, or the group they had come across had been particularly apathetic to their short search.

He kept his attention on Kaori. She was his best source of knowledge about the skills he could expect from the clan back here.

“Pride has them at least trying to look,” Kaori snorted. “But we travel through often enough that if they’re smart they know out here, this far from their compound and the civilians, they have very little chance of finding one of us.”

“So, we’re safe to keep going?” Hayate asked, checking the sky for the sun’s position.

“We should be,” Kaori nodded tilting her head and sniffing the air, then she looked up at Kakashi for confirmation to move.

The Hatake nodded and waited for her to start forward again before following.

They kept their pace more cautious than before the disruption, but they didn’t come across any more potential incidents by the time they reached where he had started his perimeter.

Still not sure what he was going to tell everyone when they got back to the cave. He carefully judged how much light they had and stalled for more time by insisting they check some of the closest snares.

Both wolves gave him suspicious looks at the insistence but followed him up the cliff once more.

By the time they had checked the third snare, dealt with the catch and reset it, the shadows had grown too long for Kakashi to continue stalling. Picking up the sealing scroll he had used and then set down beside him while he worked, he winced. He still wasn’t ready for this.

He fervently hoped that at least one of the genin had completely passed out so he could stall longer by waiting for them to wake and continue to think over his options. Though given his current run of luck he had a feeling he wouldn’t have that long.

“Com’on,” he muttered as he stood and started back to the closest known entrance.

“‘Bout time,” Hayate sighed and muttered with a pointed look at the sky.

Kaori gave him a side on look as they ran but didn’t comment.

The three of them remained silent as they concentrated on avoiding the traps in the passage.

Soft, deep yips greeted them when they made the final turn toward the cave. The same pattern as the one that Ayumu had greeted them with when they had returned with the cubs. Kaori answered her brother and continued the exchange as the small group continued through the passage.

Kakashi stepped silently into the cave, stowing his torch again and took in the scene.

Greeted by the intense regard of feral golden, vivid green and very tired blue eyes, he also noted a quick flutter of grey and black eyes checking the sight then closing again from opposite sides of the cave. His pink-haired genin remained curled up in her bedroll, unaware of their return in her exhaustion.

Kakashi nodded to the two waiting wolves and the blond boy as he made his way to settle on his own bedroll. The grey and russet wolves followed him in the cave and found their own places to settle comfortably around the fire.

“Well?” Hayate asked, eyes intently on the older Hatake as he settled his head on his paws.

“I only want to get through this once,” Kakashi answered with a grimace as the blond genin gravitated over to sit beside him, handing over the water bottle he had brought with him. “Wait ‘til everyone is awake to understand?”

The russet shared a look with the other wolves in the cave and then turned back to the jounin.

“Okay,” he settled, continuing to watch Kakashi closely as he took a sip.

“Anything?” Daisuke asked gruffly as his sister leaned more heavily onto his side.

Naruto’s head started nodding and his body started to slump toward Kakashi while they waited, and the wolves discussed the events of their separation.

“Just a basic Uchiha patrol,” Kaori answered lightly before turning to Ayumu. “Apparently one member of the patrol you ran your pursuers into clocked you and warned them to be on the lookout.”

Kakashi tuned out the rest of the conversion as he mulled over what angle to take.

Not long enough, Kakashi thought as the other Hatake and his Uchiha started blinking their eyes open more often at the conversation around them.

When Sakura started to groan and stir, he realised that he had run out of time to stall.

He rested a rested a hand on the dozing blond’s shoulder and gently shook it and pointed over at his teammates, handing back the water bottle when he blinked back to awareness. The boy appeared to get the implied order, staggering to his feet and took it over to offer to the dark haired boy while Kakashi dug out a few ration bars and took a bite out of one, threw another to the slightly more awake younger Hatake before taking one each over to the genin.

He helped them all to be sitting comfortably and securely, handed out the ration bars and retreated to his bedroll once again. He realised that distance would be a weak defence, but it was the only one he had from what was to come.

He allowed everyone to take a few bites of their bars, wince at the taste and swallow. Then, feeling the eyes of everyone in the cave baring into him looked directly at the genin and started to speak.

“So, you asked about what happened and where we are. I told you it was complicated,” he tried stall a little longer and also to prepare himself and them, at least a little. “I’m not sure how much detail you remember of the clearing before the light, but as it turns out there was something carved into the stone.”

“So?” Sasuke asked gruffly, glaring at him.

“It was a very old, very big transport seal,” he answered, trying to explain it as close as he could to how he imagined Minato-sensei would have. He was sure he has already messed it up though.

Nothing for it now, he mentally shrugged and continued.

“Carved by a group of very talented seal masters. But it had been abandoned for a very long time.”

“Huh,” Kakashi heard Riku’s shocked murmur but ignored him in favour of watching the genin and their reactions as he continued.

“It took a lot of chakra to set it off, hence the light and the chakra exhaustion,” he met Naruto’s eyes quickly before turning back to the other two. “Transport seals are also known as time-space seals, and this one had decayed in the time since it was last used.”

Soft gasps came from the various positions of the wolves around the cave as they seemed to realise exactly what kind of accident he might have actually meant.

“As for where we are,” Kakashi continued, still keeping his full attention on his genin as they continued look at him still confused. “Technically, we are back in the Village.”

“What?” The confused question came from multiple mouths as he stopped to take a deep breath and readied himself for what was to come.

“We’re just a little…uh...early.”

Chapter Text

“Early?” Sakura was the first of his audience to find her voice after he stumbled through his attempted explanation. She glared at him and shook her head in confusion. “What do you mean early?”

The rest of the occupants of their little camp continued to look at him with a mix of confusion, disbelief and sympathy. The cubs even shared a particularly dubious look when the irony of that particular word in relation to Kakashi seemed to get hit all the present members of Team 7 at the same time.

Okay, not my best choice of words for the explanation. Kakashi admitted to himself as he looked away from them to an empty section of the cave attempting to avoid seeing the other Hatake’s reaction to his revelation.

“Time-space,” came a quiet mutter from Sasuke.

“A decaded seal, or whatever, is like a smudged one, right?” The curious tone in Naruto’s voice slightly worried Kakashi. Of all the things he could latch onto in what the older man said, why he would ask that?

“I guess?” Kakashi answered, not bothering to try to correct the pronunciation, starting now would just lead to madness. He turned to look at the boy trying to follow the thought process, noticing that the other cubs were also staring in the same direction curiously.

“You shouldn’t use those,” Naruto quickly pointed out matter-of-factly. “That’s how you lose eyebrows.”

Kakashi blinked at that odd choice of fact to share. He shook out of his shock at the turn of conversation when Sakura whacked the blond on the back of the head in response. Sasuke looked like he wanted to do the same, but also didn’t want to acknowledge hearing the words.

A harsh startled chuckle pulled them all back to the moment and reminded them that they weren’t alone.

Kakashi grimaced as his gaze shot to Daisuke who had made the sound and took in the way all the present-timers were looking at them.

“Well,” Hayate started, still looking at them with cautious confusion. “Maybe you can try that explanation again, but different. The only thing I understood was the bad seal making you early part.”

“You understood what that meant?” Sakura squeaked.

“All summonings work on blood and time-space seals,” Hayate responded, head tilting slightly to one side. “Training has to cover the possible consequences for getting it wrong.”

“Maybe a little explanation for the humans present?” Riku’s voice was strained as his gaze moved rapidly over the camp. “Might clear some things up.”

“Like he said, transport seals include components of time and space,” Ayumu told his summoner slowly, looking directly at Kakashi as his voice slowly dropped closer to a growl. “Both need to be functional in order for the seal to work as it should, and if it doesn’t there are theoretical consequences.”

“Theoretical because those that use them tend to either become little pieces all over the place, or just disappear never to be heard about again,” Kaori interrupted, staring at the members of Team 7.

“That,” Hayate said into the short silence that followed her revelation.

“Didn’t understand anything about the village thing though,” Ayumu continued, growl growing more prominent with every word.

“Theoretical? Time...Early…” Riku looked up to meet Kakashi’s eye with his widening ones, as he muttered. Kakashi really wished he could look away. “Disappear...Time travel?”

There was a commotion from where the cubs were settled, but he couldn’t bring himself to pay any attention to what they were going on about at that point in time, eye still locked on the two identical shocked grey ones across from him.

“Apparently?” He ventured, uncertainly.

Sasuke looked between the two men as all the little things he had thought were odd came together in his mind at that last exchange. The excessively evasive way their sensei had been avoiding explaining the situation, not to mention the weirder than normal way he had been acting around everyone. The dropped mentions of the Uchiha, Uchiha territory, and the Senju. The other Hatake and the wolves who Sasuke was sure he had never seen or heard about in the village.

Time travel. He didn’t know if he could really believe it. But Kakashi-sensei had rarely lied to them about the situation in anything but training exercises. He seemed to prefer withholding information until he was sure he was right about his assumptions while outside the village. There was also all the previously thought of evidence in favour of this conclusion to consider.

Even so, he didn’t know how he should feel about it if it were true.

On one hand, it seemed like he wasn’t only one of the last two Uchiha left. He wasn’t the only hope of his clan anymore. He wasn’t alone, screamed the silent lonely part of his brain that just wanted to have it all go back to the way it was before that night.

On the other, the village wasn’t there. No village meant no familiar training grounds, or echoingly empty clan district. The only bits of knowledge he had of the time before it was the dark warnings of bedtime stories about how if he wasn’t good he would be sent out to fight the Senju, and the history scrolls he had unearthed when he had been searching for training manuals, after.

The scrolls, he had mainly ignored in favour of the training he needed to become strong enough. Except when he wanted to feel a little like he was still connected to the other traditions of his clan other.

He could have other Uchiha here.

But none of the ones he had known or had known him. Would they even be able to understand anything about what he had known, would he be able to understand them, the old clan stories had been a little weird for him when he was younger. They certainly wouldn’t have the same experiences of growing up and living in the Village as he shared with his team.

Sasuke gulped and looked around the camp, thinking about what he knew about his team’s history and what they were wearing.

“Shit,” he muttered quietly, his brain supplying a whole load more curses he had picked up watching the training grounds in hope of learning more skills. He remembered some of the things those histories had claimed were done to suspected bloodline thieves. His sight tinted slightly red and he let them linger on Kakashi’s covered eye when the older man’s hearing picked up the unusual outburst and turned to him.

“But that’s impossible!” Sakura burst out. “If time travel were more than just a stupid bedtime story thing, we would have covered it in the academy.”

“It was from a seal, remember,” the Idiot replied before Sasuke could verbally cut the girl down himself. “We didn’t cover more than basic uses of pre-made small-scale explosive seals. The only reason Iruka-sensei taught me to make one was because I stole the whole academy stash for one of my pranks and used them all up, and my punishment was to make more for the class that was meant to practice them next.”

“But…”

“We didn’t cover the stuff about clans you went on about earlier either,” Sasuke stopped her, still looking directly at their sensei.

“Academy?” The other Hatake broke in on the silence that followed as the pink haired girl seemed to think over what they had actually said. “Has this got something to do with this village thing you were talking about.”

“Hmm,” Kakashi blinked slowly and turned back toward the other Hatake. The red tinge in Sasuke’s eyes seemed to fade naturally now that he was mostly sure the man was aware of some of the dangers they could be in. “Who is the current Clan Head?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” The other Hatake growled when his question was ignored.

“It might give us some idea of how far back we are,” Kakashi replied in his usual lazily annoying tone. “Could help explain things better.”

“Tsukiko,” he answered slowly. Kakashi’s visible eye seemed to frown.

“What about the Uchiha?” Sasuke asked, feeling like it might clear things up more for him.

“Tajima.”

“The clan heir?” Sasuke recognised the name but wanted to be sure.

“Madara,” the big grey wolf grunted from where he hadn’t moved during the entire conversation. (Daisuke, Sasuke was pretty sure that one was Daisuke.)

There was a flurry of quick movement as Kakashi, Sakura and Sasuke turned to stare at the wolf.

“Madara…” The Idiot sounded out as he tipped his head to the side slowly. “That sounds familiar.”

Sakura was good enough to reach over and whack the Idiot over the head before Sasuke had to do more than turn to glare at him.

“Uchiha Madara,” she screeched at him. “One of the village founders.”

“The first missing-nin,” Sasuke murmured, remembering all the wildly different stories he had heard and read about the man.

“Oh,” the Idiot mumbled.

“Between a hundred and a hundred and fifty years in the past,” Kakashi-sensei interrupted them, looking toward the other Hatake and the wolves. Sasuke wasn’t going to admit it, but the return of the fake happy tone in his sensei’s voice was slightly comforting.

“Right,” the black wolf answered slowly, only to get a pale hand settled on his head.

“Can you explain about this village thing?” The other Hatake asked, meeting Kakashi’s eye before tilting his chin at were the three genin still remained seated. “You said they were yours.”

“Shinobi Village,” Kakashi answered, looking back over the camp, taking in the fact that everyone was giving him their full attention now. “Only official one in Fire Country to give out fair dealings on missions and evenly distributed skills into various team types. All clans and shinobi families, with the Academy giving standard instruction on skills and help train new blood from civilian families. The three of them are first year out of the academy, lowest field rank assigned to me.”

“But they are yours, right?” The black wolf growled out, looking at the three of them. Sasuke wasn’t entirely sure why he was picking up the way these newcomers had such a focus on belonging to Kakashi-sensei.

“Sakura is civilian from at least two generations back. Naruto and Sasuke are orphans,” the older man replied in an even tone.

“True or unacknowledged?” The female wolf interrupted, looking back at them.

Kakashi took a moment before he answered that question, making Sasuke feel like he was missing something big in the question.

“A mix of both, for both,” he answered slowly, tilting his head. “Sasuke has living blood but was disqualified via violence and Naruto’s case…” Sasuke winced at the reference to that man, then felt confused at the way the jounin seemed to stop himself from saying something.

“What about Naruto?” Sakura insisted, leaning forward when Kakashi remained silent for too long for her. “He just doesn’t have any parents to raise him properly.”

Sasuke gritted his teeth at the reminder the girl’s stupidity from the first day they were put together as a team. The lunch-break weirdness of that day. But that moment wasn’t the time to do, or say, something that may stop them getting answers.

“Naruto’s case is complicated,” Kakashi finished quietly, obviously also ignoring the pink haired girl’s outburst. Sasuke thought maybe he heard something a little off in those words but couldn’t quiet read them.

“True or unacknowledged?” The other Hatake asked, eyes drilling the older man, appearing to have also noticed something there.

“Blood gone, pack ordered away,” he answered quietly, turning to look directly into those eyes with his.

The other Hatake and all the wolves seemed to jerk back simultaneously at that admission.

“What?” The russet wolf asked. “How can that happen?”

“Kakashi-sensei...What does that mean?” Sasuke heard an odd softness in the Idiot’s slow question.

“We’re Village shinobi, we do what we have to for the Village,” he grumbled. “Orders are orders. Doesn’t matter now.”

“Well, if you are claiming them from that,” the big grey wolf spoke slowly as he stood and walked up to the jounin. “There shouldn’t be any issues about them being yours from wild clan law.”

“Pack of Clan is Pack,” the other Hatake muttered, looking at the older man, face set in a worried scowl. “I’m not sure how much help I can be in dealing with anything, I’m only just fully cleared for tracking and messenger missions.”

“Umm,” Kakashi hummed in answer with his head tilted. He shrugged it off as he reached out to set a pale gloved hand on the massive grey’s head while the other two that seemed to have attached themselves to the sensei also gathered around the man.

Sasuke considered the other Hatake closely, noting the tight grip he had in the black fur of his own wolf and the way in which those grey eyes flicked over all of Team 7.

“But if you want, I can get you to the Main Pack and they might be able to help.”

Chapter Text

Kakashi-sensei stilled, looking at the other guy. Then he blinked slowly.

Naruto looked between them in confusion. Then he shot a glance at his teammates, trying to work out what that conversation had been about.

He was still confused about what Sensei had meant when he said that Naruto’s blood was dead and pack ordered away.

Does Kakashi-sensei know something about my family? The question kept repeating itself in the boy’s head.

No one had ever answered his questions about that before. Even when he thought they might know something, they just said that it was a long story, if they didn’t just ignore his questions or change the subject.

“Will they…?” Kakashi-sensei started then stopped, turning to quickly look at the three genin.

“Not sure,” Riku answered, frowning a little and looking far away. “But Baa-san will probably help if you explain it to her. You’re a Hatake after all.”

“Baa-san?” Kakashi-sensei jerked his gaze back to Riku before he spoke.

“Tsukiko-baa,” Daisuke grumbled, while Riku made that face people sometimes did when they shouldn’t have said something.

Naruto turned at the sound of a familiar grunt beside him. The Bastard was staring across the cave at the other Hatake. The look on the other boy’s face mixed with the way Kakashi-sensei had looked back at the other man so quick made Naruto feel like he was missing something it exchange. A quick glance at Sakura-chan confirmed that he was, though it didn’t help him figure it out.

“Oh?” Kakashi-sensei muttered. He reached up to lay a hand between the Hayate’s ears as the wolf nudged his muzzle against the silver-haired man’s side.

“Mm,” Riku hummed in response, looking away.

“We can’t go anywhere until we’ve recovered enough,” Kakashi-sensei continued, looking around the cave again.

“Really?” Riku asked. Naruto was kind of surprised he didn’t fall over at the way he sat straight so fast.

“Chakra exhaustion,” Kakashi-sensei lifted his free hand and waved it vaguely in answer and settled a bit more into his bedroll. “You need to get back?”

“Not really,” Riku answered as he too settled back. “No return package. How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Who knows?” Kakashi answered, scanning the three genin again. “Depends on how much rest they can get.”

“I can wait,” was his answer, also shooting them a quick look, meeting Naruto’s eyes with a nice smile before turning back to their sensei with a slight grimace. “Might be safer to go together.”

“True,” the black wolf beside the other man muttered. “Might have to send one of the others to let the Pack know you’ll be delayed though.”

“Wouldn’t want your mother deciding to try and rip Fire Country apart to find you again,” Kaori huffed a laugh.

“I’m not a cub anymore!” Riku’s pale cheeks turned the same shade as Sakura-chan’s dress at that. Which seemed to be the last straw on the attempts to suppress laughter for all the wolves still surrounding the sensei.

“Maa, maa,” Kakashi-sensei moved the hand that had remained on Hayate’s head to grip Kaori’s ruff. “No need for that. I’m sure it wasn’t just his mother that made that decision the first time.”

This just seemed to make the wolves around him laugh harder and gain Kakashi-sensei a dark glare from the other man. The jounin just shrugged carelessly and seemed to push each of the wolves away gently as he started to lay down.

“Get some rest. It’ll help everyone recover.”

“But Sensei…” Sakura-chan spoke up again, shaking off the way she had kept quiet since the Bastard and him had stopped her earlier. Her voice was high and annoyed as she started to try to push herself up. Naruto reached out to hold her down, even as she wobbled.

“Rest,” was the only answer she got with a sharp glance. “It’s been a long day.”

There was grumbling from her and the Bastard, but they seemed to realise that nothing else was going to be explained and laid themselves down, without help this time. While Naruto watched and noted that Riku had done the same, he settled himself to take watch again.

“You can rest, too,” Daisuke rumbled at the blond as he wandered back to his previous position, between the genin and the fire, but turned to watch one of the entrances to the cave this time.

“But…” Naruto started before being cut off.

“We haven’t exactly done much,” Hayate said over him, taking a position watching another of the entrances. “We’re mostly rested, you’re not.”

“We’re fine to take this one, cub,” Kaori muttered as she found a place to watch the last and settled in.

“You’ll know if anything happens,” Daisuke continued. “We’re not exactly going to be quiet. Between us and those traps out there, you’ll be up in time for whatever it is.”

“Naruto, rest.” Kakashi-sensei growled from his own bedroll, sounding a little annoyed at the continued talking.

“Okay,” Naruto finally gave in, meeting the big grey’s eyes. He felt the ball of tightness in his chest shrink a little at the look there, and he lay down.

It didn’t take him long to fall asleep.

Riku looked around the den as he stepped back into the cave behind Kaori and Ayumu. Tension slowly leaving the places it had bunched in his shoulders since he had left to run the perimeter and send out his messenger back to his pack.

It had been an interesting 24 hours, but now, after some time and space to think it all over himself, he felt like he was on firmer ground. He had some idea of what he might be facing with the little pack he had found himself with. The comfort of some form of pack was certainly nice after the stress of his first solo mission and the aftermath, even if he didn’t really have any idea what to do with the situation.

The pink-haired cub remained as deeply asleep as she had been when he had volunteered to check outside. He thinks she might have at least rolled over in the hours he had been out, but she doesn’t seem to have done much else.

The Uchiha boy was up though, scowling at the contents of a backpack he had spread out beside him, focusing on the weapons pedantically lined up in easy reach. While Riku watched he randomly picked a kunai up and tested the edge before setting it back and reaching for a shuriken.

The blond had moved to a clear space between the other cubs and Kakashi, having spread out the contents of another pack. Seal paper, string and ropes messily stacked and unordered in front of him amid messy stacks of weapons and what appeared to be a very ripped pile of orange cloth. Daisuke was laid out behind him watching the proceedings. They both looked up at Riku’s entrance and he was given a nod from the wolf and a bright smile from the boy, before they turned their attention back to the mess.

Kakashi met Riku’s eye in turn and nodded. He seemed to still be going through the scrolls and supplies he had started pulling out of various pockets and his own backpack after breakfast that morning.

Riku had woken that morning, well-rested and feeling a lot better than he had since the start of his mission, to find the older man awake and staring at the still sleeping cubs. Hayate had migrated over to lay resting his weight on the older man sometime in the night, while Daisuke seemed to have moved just a little closer to the cubs.

Riku’s awakening seemed to shake Kakashi out of whatever thoughts he was having as he soon quietly set to fixing breakfast.

When the scent of the meal had permeated the den, only the blond had woken to eat with them. Riku had soon realised that the boy really liked to talk. He could go on at random about nothing. For example, during breakfast he kept a running narration of everything he was doing as he did it.

Kakashi on the other hand had kept mostly silent. But he hadn’t made any comment about the interaction between him and the blond, which Riku took as permission to continue so long as he made no move to threaten. Then after they had finished eating, he started pulling things from his pack, setting them neatly for an inventory check while Riku and Naruto had cleaned up and set the leftover food aside for later.

When that was done, Riku had started to feel on edge by the looks the blond kept sending the older man, uncomfortable about the way there had obviously been some unsaid stuff that he had missed in the conversation around the attempted explanation the day before. So, he had spoken up to offer to run the perimeter to get out for a bit to think about what had been revealed the previous day.

The older man had just thrown a couple of those disgusting, hard food bars at him and asked if he could check the snares and pick up some more firewood while he was out there. Kaori had offered to show him the perimeter they had run together and to help find the rest, joining him and Ayumu out there while Daisuke and Hayate remained in the den with the others.

Riku had taken the perimeter slower than he may have otherwise, getting used to the area and thinking out everything he had found out the day before. It had been good, letting him think about whether he had made the right decision in offering the clan’s help. He’d also taken his time taking care of all the other tasks he had been set while he was out there to give himself more time.

Airi had been happy to see Kaori when she had been summoned. Even if the message she had been asked to take back to Baa-san had confused her.

Riku had ultimately decided that Baa-san should be the person to get the full story as he knew it. She could pass on whatever parts of his report she thought should be shared to his parents, and the anyone else she might decide to choose.

He had taken the time to ready the catch from the snares before coming back, so he held them out to show Kakashi from where he was holding them from the ninja wire he had used to tie them together.

“Find somewhere to hang them for now,” the other man said as he picked up one of the scrolls in front of him and placed it in one of the many pockets in his vest and turning back to the items spread out in front of him. He then started moving some more of the items onto another spread-out scroll.

“Nothing to report out there,” Riku looked around as he spoke, spying a useful jutting rock in the wall and wandering over to tie the brace onto it.

“Hmm,” the other man hummed in acknowledgement. “Good.”

Riku made his way back to his bedroll with a stretch.

“Do you want me to start on dinner, Sensei?” Naruto asked quietly as Riku folded himself to the ground with a sigh.

Kakashi nodded and the boy left his mess as it was to start for the fire.

“Been meaning to point out,” Riku muttered, reminded by the title the cub had used to get the man’s attention. “You know they’re going to question the Sensei thing, right?”

“That is what he is,” the Uchiha scowled at him, moving his attention away from the weapons he was now starting to sharpen.

“Maybe in this village of yours it made sense,” Riku tried, looking back to Kakashi. “But here it’s not something that is used often within a clan, particularly for us. Especially if you’re not visibly clan, something about being mistaken for stolen if we don’t make it obvious they’re family.”

“We aren’t clan!” The Uchiha growled, grip on the kunai he was working on flipping to make it easy to attack.

Riku blinked at the reaction and looked at the older man for an answer.

“You’re a blood orphan that Kakashi has claimed as pack,” Daisuke spoke up, watching the dark-haired boy from where he remained reclined near the contents of Naruto’s pack. “That counts as a legal adoption into his Pack. Pack is Clan.”

“I’m...” the boy started, getting to his feet.

“The Uchiha’s you came from were gone,” Kakashi cut him off harshly, stopping the boy before he could say or do anything else. “You know as well as I do what they’d do to us if they realise they can’t account for you here. Stop wasting energy.”

Surprisingly the boy listened, still scowling at everyone involved.

“From what I remember of the old stories,” Kakashi continued less harshly after he was sure he had been heeded, turning to address Riku. “Genin teams, at least, evolved to function as very simple wild clan packs after enough of the Fire Country ones set themselves up there.”

“You’re still going to have to change the honourific to something more pack-friendly,” Riku informed him, trying to analyse the man’s age again. “Tou-san or ji-san would work.”

Kakashi stilled and narrowed his visible eye at him.

“I’m only fourteen years older than them,” he said steadily. “I was a little busy with other things at that age.”

“Oh,” Riku tried to hide his smirk at the reaction, realising he had found a button he could push. “I couldn’t tell, what with everything on your face. How old does that make you, ji-san?”

“Twenty-six,” Kakashi deadpanned, seeming to pick up on what Riku was doing. “I think you are a little old to be calling me that, aren’t you?”

“Well, I do need to find something to stop me from trying to work out how we may be related,” Riku shivered at the thought. “And can I tell you how scary I realised that thought is.”

“Depends, is Tsukiko-sama your mother’s or your father’s mother?” Kakashi asked after a short pause tilting his head to the side.

“Kaa-san’s.”

“You’re fine,” Kakashi answered. “I come through the line of one of her sons.”

“That’s a relief,” Riku answered with a sigh, before a thought struck him and he continued with a shit-eating grin. “Kakashi-nii.”

The glare was back.

Chapter Text

Kakashi kept his eye narrowed while looking the younger Hatake straight in his at the new addition to his name.

It hurt to hear it, an honourific that had only ever had directed at him as a mission cover, or in reference to one situation and never by the person implied in it. Especially with the one person who should have been able to use it freely never had and was watching the exchange from the fireside. Another tear in the scarred over wound that had been reopened too many times in the past 24 hours to be comfortable.

Sage, the conversation the blond had tried to have with him after Riku had left them alone with only the wolves and unconscious cubs to witness had been awkward.

“Sensei, you know who my parents were?” Kakashi could see the cautious hope in the boy’s eyes as he asked. But how could he answer him. Even as his brain told him the odds of them being able to get back to the village, twelve years of a reinforced order, twenty years knowing the rules of shinobi, and a lifetime of training and trauma caught a complete answer in his throat.

“Yes,” was all he managed to choke out. “Any of the higher ranked nin could have figured it out.”

“People knew them? Why wouldn’t anyone tell me about them?” The confusion and hurt in the boy’s eyes cut at Kakashi, forcing him to turn away in order to find a way to get his own story straight. To figure out what he could get away saying.

“I read the report on your graduation,” Kakashi started slowly, giving a sharp look around the camp. “It said you were told about the laws in place around that.”

“Everyone knows anyway,” Naruto grumbled, wrapping his arms around his stomach and curling into himself.

“Enough people knew of that part, it was simple for someone to start the rumour without it being easily traced back to the source,” Kakashi tried to explain. “It was all visible enough at the time that anyone watching could see the results of the sealing and place ground zero. The Council ruled that it was a waste of manpower to try and supress those rumours, that it wasn’t a danger to the village as a whole to have your status known by those that were present so long as it wasn’t handed down to your generation.

“The War gained your parents some powerful enemies in other villages and they died doing their best to protect you. The people who knew them well wanted to ensure those enemies didn’t target you in their place. They made a point of hunting down anyone they found breaking that part of the law, even without orders to do so.”

“The War? Enemies?” Naruto perked up at this information.

“I can’t…” Kakashi stumbled, hitting a block of what he thought he could get away with saying. He’d never wished the boy was capable of looking underneath the underneath as much as he did in that moment. Kakashi couldn’t bring himself to tell him everything but it wouldn’t be as much of an issue if the boy could work it out himself.

“But…”

“Please, Naruto,” Kakashi could hear himself begging the boy to listen. He then started to babble when saw the boy open his mouth as if about to press again. “The War had only recently been completely agreed to be over. I was fourteen, the last of my team had their names carved after that night. I can’t...”

He had to bite his tongue to stop the flow of words before he could say anything else he might regret.

The silence had been very awkward after that. So much so that Kakashi had been glad when Sasuke had woken up and the usual bickering had started up, even if it was more subdued than usual on both sides.

“Kakashi-nii?” The question had him shaking off the memories and reminding him of the present.

He grit his teeth at the reminder of why his brain decided to go down that mental rabbit-hole and closed his eye for a few seconds.

“I suppose you are going to stick with that now?” He sighed and opened his eyes again.

“Err, yes,” Riku answered, concern now layered behind the shit-eating grin still sitting on his face.

“Fine, if it’ll stop you from attempting to call me an old man,” he grudgingly accepted the title, even though he certainly felt like an old man in that moment.

Sage, he was tired. His muscles and bones ached, but not as much as his chakra pathways did as they slowly recovered the chakra they were used to circulating after near complete depletion for the second time in a month. His body was used to recovering from that state, but he didn’t generally give it the time and rest to do so quickly, unless he had been set on forced bedrest.

He was slower too. Not just his physical speed but his mental one as well. He hadn’t even thought that the name the cubs used for him might bring trouble, he’d been focused on more visible issues.

Kakashi turned to the awake cubs, grimacing when he noted Sasuke glaring at them all.

That might be a problem, he thought reminded of the boy’s issues, many of which centred on family.

“I’ll leave the choice up to you three,” he said instead of ordering them to use a particular term and including the still sleeping Sakura in his count. “Find a consensus, just don’t choose otou-san or jii-san and I’ll probably remember to answer to it.”

He thinks he could handle uncle or brother, but father or grandfather may get him to fall back on old habits of retaliation, for very different reasons.

He turned back to the inventory he still had set out in front of him when they both acknowledged his words, gaze flicking to the clothes he had set in two piles beside him. One a neat pile of mostly clean uniform, the other a mess of ripped and bloody navy cloth.

“I was a little more focused on the other issues,” Kakashi muttered, feeling the other Hatake’s eyes on him. He nodded at Naruto’s bright orange clothes and the mess he had left of his own travelling supplies, then over to the other cubs with their very large Uchiha crest and red clothes.

“What?” The blond spoke up, turning back around to look at him as he moved the pot away from the fire. The other Hatake also looked at him confused while Sasuke ignored them all, running the shuriken in his hand over the whetstone aggressively.

“Your clothing choices may have been fine in our time, with only the villages as a shinobi bases and bandits to deal with,” Kakashi started slowly, hoping to message would get through that thick skull clearly, nodding at the clothing again. “But here there are more wide-ranging patrols on high alert for intruders. We are all wearing too visible colours or clan things from clans that won’t ever recognise us. It’s too dangerous to attempt to go anywhere looking like this.”

Kakashi hoped he wouldn’t have to remind them of the mess that had been the journey back from Wave, or even how lucky they had been to have survived the mission at all. He didn’t want to have to deal with the arguing that they had been “awesome”. As far as he was concerned, they had shown him that they didn’t yet have the skills to deal with a battle-hardened patrol that would certainly not underestimate them due to their age.

A soft moan and the sound of shifting cloth on cloth broke the contemplative silence that followed his words, bringing his attention to the pink haired girl as she stirred, waking slowly. Kakashi lazily pushed himself to his feet, running through the hand-signs for the diagnostic jutsu absently on the way to her side. She had slept the day away which proved to be beneficial for her when he analysed the results the jutsu gave him. She still needed time and energy to recover though.

When she proved she was able to sit up on her own and sipped at the water bottle handed to her, Kakashi turned to the blond and indicated the pot with a slight tilt of his head.

“That done?”

“Ye..yeah,” Naruto answered and scrambled to grab bowls to fill.

Kakashi helped the boy to hand out the meal, ensuring Sakura had a large serving and giving her a long stare when she saw how much was there and opened her mouth to say something. She seemed to understand what he was on about when she only gulped a little and started spooning small amounts into her mouth.

“Will these be a problem?” Kakashi tapped a finger on the hitai-ate over Obito’s eye when they had all settled down and started eating.

“Hm?” Riku’s head whipped up from his bowl at the question. He looked hard at the engraved metal plate, then looked around at the cubs who were all still wearing their own. He can’t have missed the fact that they had not taken them off in the entire time they had been there. His gaze stopped for a moment longer on Naruto, taking in the way the boy’s hand had jumped up to grip his own hitai-ate like he could lose it at any moment, something Kakashi could understand given the reports he had read on how the boy had earned it.

Riku swallowed the mouthful he had been chewing and taking the moment to think.

“I think as long as it isn’t from some other clan, it should be fine for you to continue wearing them,” he answered slowly. “The more independent packs sometimes create their own symbol to help other members of the clan identify them.”

“I think you can get away with coming off as an independent pack,” Kaori muttered, looking up from her own bowl that she was licking clean. “You’re odd enough to pass.”

Kakashi gave a silent sigh of relief at the answer, covered by Naruto’s much louder one. He had not been looking forward to the idea of possibly having to copy out the complex seals that had been engraved on the back of the Konoha plate to limit the chakra drain in that eye.

“It was deliberately created for the village so it wasn’t based on any one clan,” Sakura seemed that was the time to give information in answer for the present timers.

“So, all we need to deal with is the clothes themselves,” Kakashi continued, getting absent nods from those giving him their attention. He looked at his pile of ruined clothes. “We can get a set of pants for Naruto and a replacement top for Sakura out of that, when they’re cleaned up.”

Kakashi looked up at the smothered sounds on indignation that followed that pronouncement, eyes focusing on the orange jacket the boy was wearing.

“Leave the jacket off and the new coloured pants should be fine,” Kakashi continued, ignoring mumbling about orange. He then turned to lock eyes with Sasuke. “The over-shirt has to go before you leave the cave.”

The growl he received for that pronouncement was almost impressive.

“No…” The boy tried to start angrily.

“Sakura, your reports said you had the classes best scores in field sewing. Can you do basic embroidery?” Kakashi continued to ignore the boys and turn to the girl.

“Yes?” She squeaked, shooting a quick look at the still outraged Uchiha. “Kaa-san said it was a basic skill all girls should be good at.”

“You have thread?”

“Yes.”

“Get Sasuke’s under-shirt and start on a small Uchiha fan that can be easily hidden,” Kakashi instructed the girl, hoping that will satisfy the boy. Then he pointed at both boys. “You two can help me fix up these pants and top, while I work out what I’m doing these Uzu...Uzushio spirals.”

Kakashi hoped his small trip over the name of the spirals wasn’t too much of an issue, even as he turned himself to the task of eating without showing his face, effectively shutting down any continued conversation.

Sakura quickly pulled on the sleeveless short wrap dress the team had managed to create out Kakashi-sensei’s old, thoroughly cleaned uniform shirt, sure her face was redder than her old qipao.

No, it’s Kakashi-nii now. Remember Kakashi-nii. She mentally berated herself again. We had days to practice, why can’t I get it right?

(And hadn’t that been an argument to get an agreement on honourifics the three of them would use. Sakura had been surprised at Sasuke-kun’s insistence on not using either of the options. At least, until Sakura had pointed out that it was just another infiltration cover like had been taught in the academy and with Riku-san already using brother it would be easier for them to remember that rather than the other choice.)

The last half an hour had been awkward, another reminder that things were different than they had been.

The wolves had found the clear spring when they’d been running the perimeter of their camp. Close to one of the passages from the caves, with good cover and adequate watch positions. The Hatakes had decided to take watch with Kaori and Ayumu, sending Daisuke and Hayate out to do a wider sweep, while they forced the three genin to bathe, at the same time.

She couldn’t fault the reasons they had been all but thrown into the spring though. Having them all go in at once reduced the amount of time they were all exposed and they all really needed a bath. They had started to become pretty rank and disgusting as they had been holed up in the cave for what she had been told was almost five days, of which she had slept through most of the first few.

With only the Hatakes and wolves cleared to leave the camp area and able to find time to bathe the whole cave had started to smell pretty bad to her, and she didn’t have the enhanced sense of smell she was sure the Hatakes shared with the Inuzukas.

That morning Kakashi-nii had finally cleared her to leave her bedroll for more than a short walk to use the latrine they had set up in a nearby cave and they had finished the last touches on the reworked clothes.

Still, she was the only human girl in the group and her mother had made a point to ensure she knew that bathing with boys was something good girls shouldn’t do. It didn’t help that the two she had just been trying not to see the naked bits of included her major crush and a boy she had seen use a naked girl henge in class.

Fat. Forehead. Ugly.

The taunts circled her memory as she tried to ignore them and reached for her weapon pouches to settle them comfortably.

“I still don’t see why I couldn’t keep my clothes,” the now familiar whine pulled her from those memories and had her turning to the blond again.

“Because no matter what you seem to think, orange is not going to help you blend in here,” Riku-san sighed as he repeated the same sentiment that both Hatakes had taken to repeating every time the boy decided to question the decision again.

Sakura admitted that he looked very different in his navy pants and nin-mesh undershirt, even as he pouted and readjusted his re-tied hitai-ate. Even though Sakura was aware that the orange spiral that he had been so happy to wear all the time was embroidered on the waist hem of both where it could be easily covered. She had been the one who had done the needlework after all, Naruto and Sasuke-kun seemed to be pretty skilled in mending and sewing new garments but both are ridiculously bad at decorative stitching.

“I may rethink the colour when we’re more settled here,” Kakashi-sen-nii said lazily as he stepped closer to the group again. Sakura was still getting used to his new look too. He had sewn a cross-hatched design Riku-san had offered to cover the usual spiral on the back of the uniform flack-jacket that Sakura was so used to she didn’t register anymore, but apparently was recognisable in this time. He had removed his long sleeve shirt which had also featured the spirals and replaced it with a form fitting sleeveless shirt with his usual inbuilt face mask under his jacket.

The exposed long, muscled, pale arms with the oddly stylised Konoha insignia tattoo had kept Sasuke-kun’s direct attention for a while after Kakashi-nii had made that change. Though Sakura had no clue as to why.

“Airi,” Kaori suddenly pushed herself up from her seated position at the edge of the clearing, nose coming up, scenting the air.

Sakura was confused for a moment at that outburst, while Riku-san and Ayumu who had been curled comfortably on the other side of the clearing perked up.

Less than a minute later, a small, sleek white and light grey wolf bounded out of the undergrowth and skidded to a stop in front of Riku-san.

“Hi Boss,” the wolf panted in a light voice, then looked curiously around at them all staring at her. “Hi.”

“Hi Airi,” Riku-san greeted back, leaning down to rub her ears. “Message get delivered okay?”

“Yep,” she answered happily. “Baa-san also said to tell you: you always seemed to find interesting trouble and she’ll handle your parents. Also, she has some ideas, but wants to meet them herself first, bring them with you.”

Riku-san’s cheeks darkened a little at the mention of his parents but seemed to understand the message, looking up at Kakashi-nii and meeting his eye. The jounin nodded slightly and then turned around and slunk over to the tree he had been sitting in while the genin bathed.

“Thanks for the hard work,” Riku-san thanked the pale wolf with a head scratch that she seemed to enjoy. Before the younger Hatake could say anything else there was a soft thump beside them. Sakura couldn’t see what it was from her angle, but she did hear Kakashi-nii’s soft voice from up in the branches.

“Rabbit.”

“Thank you!” The answering happy cry was followed by an excited pounce on what was apparently a skinned rabbit while chuckles from the other Hatake and the present wolves joined it.

Well, at least he wasn’t only watching us bathe. Sakura wrinkled her nose at the thought, not sure if she was relieved or still embarrassed about the idea.

“What’s the plan, Kakashi-nii?” Naruto asked as the man jumped lightly down, holding a brace of skinned rabbits. Sakura was kind of jealous about how easily he had taken to the switch in honourifics, even going so far as to do the same with the other Hatake.

“Give it one more night and we can break camp in the morning,” Kakashi-nii answered after a moment where he gave everyone present an assessing stare.

“Hn,” Sasuke-kun grunted at the suggestion, in what Sakura thought might be agreement.

Kakashi then stared straight at Riku-san.

“I’d like to see if your grandmother can lend us some solid ground as soon as possible.”

“Okay,” Riku-san nodded good naturedly. “You can go when you’ve finished that, Airi. Thanks again.”

“You sure you don’t need me?” The pale wolf asked, barely lifting her muzzle from her meal.

“I think one messenger around is enough,” Kaori answered. “There are enough tails to watch as it is.”

“Maa, maa. That’s enough,” Kakashi-nii broke in. “We should head in, eat and rest. Tomorrow will be a long one.”

Mixed grumbles met his suggested order, which over the past few days Sakura had come to realise wasn’t any kind of suggestion at all but an order that he expected them to obey.

Still, Sakura sighed as she joined the boys in heading over to where they had hung their bedrolls over branches of nearby trees in an attempt to air them a little while they bathed.

It seemed they would be putting off the washing of their previous sweaty, stinky outfits until another time.

Chapter Text

Kakashi had taken time the night before to work out the distribution of tasks for that morning. He’d known that it would have to be an early start and it would be easier to get any of the arguments out of the way while they were all still mostly awake.

He had had to fight the urge to leave as many of the traps where they were in order to protect the home-den they had created in that cave for their recovery, just in case they return. But in the end had set Naruto and himself to clear enough of the traps that they wouldn’t be caught short on supplies. Kakashi at least had felt fairly settled for the last few days of their time there, which was more than he could say about the fact that they were about to leave the area that still felt like his territory.

Kakashi inspected the cave that had been the centre of their camp, making sure Riku and the other two genin had managed to complete their task of clearing it out. Seeing nothing else they needed to pack up, he ran a quick check over his supply storage and turned to assess the gathered group.

The four wolves either sat, or stood, interspersed between the shinobi looking back at Kakashi eagerly. The three genin had shouldered their own packs and had settled into postures that he had come to be familiar with each of them, Sasuke scowling with his arms crossed, Sakura fiddling with her hair and staring at Sasuke and Naruto looking ready to bounce off the walls.

Kakashi turned to see the last member of the group. He was met with the mirror image of his own grey in two smiling eyes and had to ignore the odd warm, sick feeling that had been growing in his chest the last few days they had been together.

Kakashi didn’t know how he would have handled everything they’d had to in this new time without Riku and the wolves. He was grateful that he hadn’t had to find out, even if his brain kept tripping itself up and wanting to think of Riku as another kid despite his age, or maybe it was because of it and relative lack of experience. It had been a long time since Kakashi had had to work with anyone other than his genin who had less than high chunin experience and its associated quirks.

He just didn’t know how the boy had managed to keep so much of his childishness despite what the jounin knew of the harshness of the time they were currently in.

Well, whatever else he thought, it had been useful to have the wolves and other Hatake’s help, and Kakashi had used their skills as ruthlessly as the seasoned anbu commander in him could think to. Having them to help him explore and map the tunnels around them, patrol outside and watch the genin while Kakashi did those things himself, to name a few tasks he had asked of them. All of it had been a great help in re-orientating himself to the area that he had known as his territory all his life, even with the changes that had apparently come to the area with time and village habitation.

But now they had all fully recovered, it was time to move. Even though his instincts still screamed that they should remain, that this was his territory and so safer than out there.

Riku raised an eyebrow of one of the eyes Kakashi was still looking into, obviously finding the pause that he had used to think odd.

“Everyone done?” Kakashi asked, looking away and trying to make his spacing out not so weird.

“Ready, Kaka-nii,” Naruto answered brightly, getting a glare from Sakura while Sasuke grunted and started off into one of the passages.

“Well,” Riku muttered as he watched the boy’s back disappear. “I guess we’re off then.”

Kakashi sighed and nodded to Hayate to catch up with the boy.

“Don’t let him run off,” he muttered at the russet, gesturing for everyone else to start filing after them.

Familiarity and the new relative lack of traps had them exiting the darkness quickly, letting them reconvene under the cover of the trees that were just starting to be lit by early sunrise.

The last to join them after clearing the groups tracks, Kakashi blinked slowly at the sight that greeted him. Naruto was rolling on the ground laughing and pointing at Sasuke. The Uchiha had a tight grip on the waist of his shorts while also glaring down at Hayate who was tugging on the loose leg. Sakura was blushing off to the side while Riku and the other wolves watched on.

“Ha, ha... Hayate… almost stole...ha...the...bastard’s...ha...pants,” Naruto tried to explain through his laughter after Kakashi lightly kicked the blond to get his attention.

Kakashi could only sigh before he turned to Riku who wasn’t even trying to hide his smile, even as he held in his laughter.

“You did say not to let him run off,” Riku muttered.

“Thank you, Hayate,” Kakashi muttered and rolled his eyes giving the other Hatake a look. “You have point,” he deadpanned before kicking the blond again to nudge him back to his feet. “Sasuke second, then Sakura, Naruto and I’ll take tail.”

Riku gave a quick nod and jumped, shinobi quiet, into the branches above them with Ayumu on his heels. Kakashi was given a range of expressions from the genin at the autocratic decision, but they still followed in the specified order without argument, which was all he knew he could ask.

Kakashi turned his gaze to the three wolves that remained around him.

“I’ll take ground, Kaori forward scout and Hayate rear,” Daisuke growled, flicking his muzzle at each of the other two as he made the decisions. They each gave their own canine nods, which Kakashi answered before following the humans into the branches.

“Ready?” He asked after a quick swipe of his gaze over the gathered group. When none of them objected, he nodded to Riku and they started off toward what Kakashi had been informed was Senju territory.

They had spent a lot of time in the cave, between patrols while waiting for Riku’s messenger to return and the cubs to recover, planning the route back to Hatake territory, while Riku ran through the current state of the world as he knew it. Trying to find the least dangerous way to move the cubs had been a lesson in clan alliances and politics that Kakashi was still trying to get straight.

The late Lady Senju had been one of Riku’s aunts, a daughter of the Hatake clan head, and as such, for the most part Hatakes had a non-aggression agreement with them. Despite the clan as a whole refusing to be a part of the Senju’s war, they could pass through Senju land without much issue. The obvious craveat being it was as long as they weren’t identified to be a threat to them, their war or their missions.

Kakashi felt that this might have sounded like something he may have heard vaguely somewhere before, but no matter how much he thought on it, he couldn’t figure out why. The only thing that came to mind was it might have something to do with being a show of the Hatake clan’s continued independence.

When they had made their way through the Senju, the plan was to then take a route through Hyuuga land. This would be done by using a strip of their territory were a Hive of Aburame had set up, followed by a Hatake pack which should lead them straight over the border into traditional Hatake clan territory.

Before they left, Riku had cheerfully estimated they would reach the Hatake border not long after noon. But Kakashi could see with every hard and misplaced landing the genin made, and the way the other Hatake flicked looks back over his shoulder to check their pace that he was mentally revising his estimate.

Kakashi was almost sorry that his mask covered the shit-eating grin he was sure he was wearing; he had warned the younger man it wouldn’t be that easy. He was also glad that he hadn’t lost his own touch at estimating group ability.

They would probably make the border sometime around sundown, taking into account the lunch break and any other quick rest breaks they would need to stop for when the cubs tired again. But he was glad they were at least fully rested at the start of the journey this time.

Kakashi made sure to monitor Sakura’s condition even as he kept his senses prepared for picking up any hint of danger. He knew from the trip from Wave that she would be the easiest tell of when they needed to rest.

Almost two hours after taking to the trees, after the girl almost missed a landing for the second time in ten minutes, Kakashi called the first stop. Instructing the cubs to sit and drink, he dropped to the ground next to Daisuke, followed by Riku and Ayumu. Before they could say anything, Kaori joined them and spoke first.

“Glad we didn’t seem to have run into anyone. They were making enough noise for civilians to find them.”

“It’s actually better than it was,” Kakashi muttered back, gaining disbelieving looks all around, causing him to shrug. “Believe it, or not.”

“What the Sage did this Academy you were all going on about actually teach them?” Riku muttered, darting a quick glance up.

“I’ve been asking the same thing since they got dropped on me,” Kakashi could only mutter with a light shrug, before continuing mostly to himself. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t come out this unprepared for the field and I spent less than a year in the classroom.”

Incredulous gazes bore into him at that admission.

“Genius prodigy,” he pointed to himself drily. “Though I was also trained by what was left of the clan from the time I could walk ‘til I was alone. That was something they didn’t really get, so that might have had something to do with it.”

Riku’s eyes widened at that addition, even as the two grey wolves both moved so they were leaning on either side of Kakashi.

His accidental summons had taken to making physical contact with him regularly over their time together, particularly when he was asked to explain things about his past and the Village. Kakashi wasn’t sure if he should be happy for the familiarity of the canine bodies, or paranoid about the way they seemed to have decided to side with him so quickly.

“If we stop regularly for short breaks, we should be able to keep this pace up,” he decided to get the topic back on track.

“We’ll probably have to make camp at the Hatake border,” Riku picked up the topic after a moment of silence and a long, shared look with the wolves. Another behaviour that had become familiar over the last few days. “It should be safe enough, but there isn’t any settled den I know of in the area.”

“As long as it’s not a battleground we can deal for one night,” Kakashi shrugged and shot a glance upwards. “That should be long enough, let’s go.”

Riku followed Kakashi as he jumped back to the cubs, who were starting to look restless, and waited as the wolves returned to position before they all headed off again.

Naruto watched as Sakura-chan almost slipped as she landed again. That was the third branch in a row. He added a little more kick to his next jump, so he would be closer to help if she actually did slip, deciding to bring most of his attention in to watch his pink-haired team-mate.

Kaka-nii had been pretty good at stopping when Sakura-chan was starting to get bad all day, but hadn’t called a stop for more than two hours now, despite her frequent close misses. Naruto thought that maybe he was starting to get worried about how close the sun was getting to the ground and Riku-nii had said that they were nearly there during the last stop when the two of them had jumped down to talk with the wolves while they rested.

Maybe it all meant they were going to stop for the night soon, but they wanted to get somewhere first.

Unlike the camp they had left that morning, where they had all had the energy to fight each other, it had been a pretty quiet day, even when they stopped regularly to rest.

It had given Naruto too much time to think over everything as he moved, his thoughts always got clearer when he was moving, it was easier not to get distracted. But it also meant he could get through all the weird things since the weird light in the rocks.

He was starting to worry that that time travel thing Kaka-nii had been talking about with Riku-nii and the wolves may not just be another weird test of Kaka-nii’s. With each jump of their journey he became aware that something was very different than any other time he messed around in the trees around the Village, and even from the way they had been as they travelled to Wave.

It was all weird, almost as weird as that grumbling in the back of his head that he thought may be something else panicking over weirdness. He shook his head roughly and focused back on Sakura-chan as she just made the landing on the next branch, he wouldn’t think of what that reminded him of.

A howl pierced the sounds of their travels, causing Naruto to almost skip his own landing before he bounded forwards to grab the back of Sakura-chan’s dress-thing before she fell. He shot a look forward to see Riku-nii’s head had jerked up and he suddenly pushed himself faster. Naruto dropped his gaze to the ground beneath him to watch as Daisuke stopped and gave his own deeper howl in response.

“Riku,” Kaka-nii growled from where he had closed the distance behind the blond who had grabbed out a kunai in his free hand on reflex.

“Welcoming party, nii-san,” the said Hatake, shot a grin over his shoulder at the demand, even as Ayumu echoed the large grey’s howl. “You might be meeting Baa-san tonight after all.”

The Bastard grunted, then cautiously followed the Hatake from where he too had pulled to a stop at the first howl. When she saw this, Sakura-chan shook off Naruto’s grip and followed. Naruto looked up at Kaka-nii, and when he got a short nod, did the same.

They didn’t have to continue for long before Riku-nii jumped to the ground and they all perched themselves in the trees behind him to watch.

He had landed in front of an old lady with the same silver hair as both nii-sans, only longer with all of it braided back from her face. She was also wearing the same type of clothes as Riku-nii and stood there surrounded by three wolves about the same size as Daisuke.

The wrinkles on her face reminded Naruto of Hokage-jii, especially when he noticed the way she looked at Kaori and Daisuke who had stopped side-by-side beneath the trees they stood in.

It was the same one Hokage-jii gave him sometimes when he didn’t think Naruto was paying attention.

“Baa-san,” Riku-nii greeted happily.

“Brat, you were taking too long,” the old lady huffed. “Your Kaa-san has been making a nuisance of herself.”

Riku-nii ducked his head while the old lady looked up at them.

“Well, may as well get down here so I can get a look at you and your runts.” She spoke bluntly to Kaka-nii. Naruto might actually like her, if she didn’t keep calling him a runt. “Could hear you all tripping through the trees ages ago.”

Naruto felt a soft hand in his hair before Kaka-nii jumped down beside the grey wolves as Hayate also joined them. Naruto gulped and shot his team-mates a look before gathering himself and following, feeling both of them jump at the same time to land behind the wolves.

“So, you lot are a bunch of time traveling troublemakers?” The lady said, assessing them all.

“It would seem so, Tsukiko-sama,” Kaka-nii answered lightly with a small head tilt of acknowledgment.

She continued to look at Kaka-nii for a long moment before assessing them all again and giving a sharp nod.

“Well, it’s getting late. Might as well set up camp for the night.” She turned away and started back in the direction they had been heading before they ran into her. Her wolves spreading out around them.

Riku-nii looked back at them and gave a sheepish shrug, then followed. It looked like they had no choice but to do the same.

Chapter Text

Kakashi waved the cubs to follow the other Hatakes. He fell back to cover their tails as he scanned the area. Fully trusting the woman still gave him a sick feeling but she was a possible source of help and they didn’t have a lot of options. Besides if Riku was to be believed, she was the Hatake Clan head and that kind of backing in this time could get them free pass through other Wild Clan territory, so long as they don’t bring their hosts any trouble they might not want.

By some miracle, the genin managed to remain mostly silent until Tsukiko-sama led them through the brambles into a hidden clear patch of ground. An area that still held the remnants of what could be expected of a regular campsite. The ground cleared in areas of anything that might be uncomfortable to sleep with, sticking in various parts of the sleeper’s anatomy. A basic attempt to cover up a well-used fire pit and a small stack of dry sticks set out of the way but easily found and accessible. The little things that Kakashi was familiar with noticing in long-used, designated patrol camps.

“Those cubs are exhausted,” the woman gruffly indicated the cubs with a tilt of her head, before flicking out a hand which sent her own wolf companions jumping back out of the cover. “We’ll head back to the main pack in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Kakashi muttered, inclining his own head. It wasn’t like he could argue, he’d been the one watching them struggle for the past few hours. It seemed a good enough spot to stop for the night and the Hatakes familiarity with the site was enough to settle Kakashi into thinking it was maintained, at least partially, by the clan. Which of course meant there were more protections on it than anywhere else they might stop if they keep pushing.

Kakashi looked down at where the cubs who had stopped moving further into the clearing after he had entered. He took in the three sets of darting eyes, closed both own and made his final decision.

“Set up camp.”

He opened his uncovered eye in time to catch Naruto’s quick glance and give a small nod before the boy started forward, swinging his pack off one shoulder. The other two took a little longer before they followed their teammate through the motions the academy and the brief trip to Wave had trained into them.

The entire endeavour was, of course, not without frequent glares from Sasuke while the boy worked.

Kakashi ignored them, keeping his attention on the woman, who kept her own eyes locked on his visible one. At least until Kakashi was forced to pull his gaze away from her to start pulling out the supplies he’d carried.

She snorted and turned to Riku grumbling about the younger man’s skills at getting a proper camp ready.

The conversation was kept to instructions and light gossip that the younger Hatake had missed while away until the sun had fully set. Daisuke had nudged the cubs onto their bedrolls and the scent of the meal was starting to rise from where it was cooking on the small campfire. Kaori and Hayate settled in to lie half leaning on either of Kakashi’s sides, and half in his lap, when he had settled on his own bedroll. The other two Hatakes had taken seats on their own on the opposite side of the fire.

It was hard to ignore the swapping of assessing glances spiralling the entire camp.

“So, my daughter’s runt says they’re yours,” Tsukiko-sama started with a significant look at the cubs. “And you are all from some time where Clan has lost its importance.”

“Baa-san!” Riku yelped, gaining himself a glare for interrupting while Kakashi blinked at the blunt opening to the topic. Riku only looked down and grumbled. “That’s not what I said.”

Kakashi took his time, weighing up his options on how to explain as much as he could to people who had only ever known another way of life. People who had never seen or even conceived of the idea of the Village systems, while he had never known anything else. One gloved hand wove unconsciously into course fur as he thought.

Be truthful, but in a way that they can still understand it. Simple was best after all and less likely to trip them up.

“According to Village law genin are considered adults in their own right, but as their jounin sensei I am technically a guardian… of sorts.” Kakashi started slowly, before any of the cubs could jump in and say anything that might contradict what they need everyone to understand here. “But in the current circumstances, I’m pretty sure everything I know about Clan law also states they would be considered mine here.”

“Hmm,” the woman looked them all over thoroughly. “And this Village? Genin? Jounin? Explain.”

“Konoha, the Village of Fire Country Shinobi,” Kakashi started, lifting the hand not running through grey fur up to his hitai-ate, fingering the familiar mark engraved there as he searched for inspiration. “All the clans that joined helped stabilise mission rates and ensured that the skills needed were included in those sent to take it. Mixing clan members into teams to get the right balance, that kind of thing. Also allowed new civilian blood to be trained in skills and safe space for innovation in techniques. Genin and Jounin are skill ranks. Genin, new to the field, then chunin, then jounin.”

Kakashi tried to keep it simple, knowing he left out a lot but hoped he’d given enough of the idea that she could work with it.

Tsukiko-sama just hummed and continued to watch them.

Kakashi’s newly born instincts for one of the genin about to do something inadvisable chirped at him and he turned to glare in their direction. Given that Naruto had opened his mouth and was about to break the silence that fell over them, it was probably a good thing. That was a hard-enough explanation to come up with, who knows what the unpredictable knucklehead would say that could force him to say more.

The blond boy quickly snapped his mouth shut at Kakashi’s attention and thankfully decided to rethink what he was about to say.

They all remained in silent contemplation, until the meal had finished cooking and was handed out.

Sasuke scowled down at his empty bowl. The addition of the food the old woman, both the older men had referred to her as the Hakate Clan Head, had brought with her to the now overfamiliar taste of the camp meals they had been having the past few days was a very nice change. But having to spend the entire meal attempting not to shift under the looks she kept giving him was distracting and slightly disturbing.

(She’d been doing it to all of them really, but he refused to allow himself to acknowledge that he cared about that.)

She’d been watching them closely the entire time since their Sensei had given that stupid attempt at an explanation and it was really getting on his nerves.

(Proper use of cover names was a basic shinobi skill and he refused to fall behind the Idiot, but that didn’t mean he had to use them in his own thoughts. He was smart enough to keep cover without the student cheat of keeping to them in your mind. Especially when he kept feeling like he would choke every time he was forced to refer to the man by that term.)

Sasuke looked around the camp and noted he wasn’t the only one who had finished eating. The old woman’s gaze on him again was the last straw of that stupid day. He looked up and flashed chakra into his eyes, feeling the way his Sharingan spun into them. Hopefully that would get her to look away like so many of the villagers would when one of his Clan had done the same, before.

She just huffed a laugh and kept on looking right back.

“Put those away, Runt.” A smirk pulled at the edge of her mouth. “I’ve dealt with enough of your full-grown kin, those baby eyes of yours aren’t going to do anything but exhaust you more.”

Sasuke blinked the red tinge away as his scowl deepened.

“Looks like Riku wasn’t mistaken when he said you had an Uchiha boy,” she said, casually turning to address Kakashi-sensei, who looked back levelly. “He also mentioned a Uzumaki boy and a civilian girl. But the only tell of that is the chakra.”

A moments silence overtook the group at that, everyone stilling their movements and staring at each other.

“Naruto has his father’s colouring,” Kakashi gave a slight nod.

Sasuke felt the way both his teammates jerked violently beside him. He bit down his own slightly smug reaction, they had hidden his own much smaller response to the information. It was the second time the older man had revealed that he might have known something about the Idiot’s parents. Sasuke was intrigued despite himself, he hadn’t heard much mention of the blond’s parents in all the years he had been even slightly aware of the boy. The way everyone was reacting made it seem that there was a reason for that.

He was really starting to feel he had missed something big somewhere.

“He’s mostly Uzumaki under it.”

“So, he has his mother’s clan name?” The old woman seemed to focus on the Idiot as he looked at Kakashi-sensei in shock.

“Father was civ-born,” the jounin looked away from them all quickly and Hayate seemed to wiggle a little further back into the man’s lap.

“Hmm,” the old woman tapped her fingers on her thigh as she thought. “I think we can work with that.”

“Kaka-nii…” Sasuke jumped a little at the odd sounding note in the Idiot’s voice as he tried to get the man’s attention. Sasuke looked between them, even as the blond cut himself off as the jounin shook his head slightly, still looking away.

“How old are you?” The old woman snapped out.

“Twenty-six,” Kakashi-sensei jumped slightly and blinked at the woman slowly before he responded. “They’re twelve.”

“I thought you might be around that, to get those two,” the woman mused with a flick of her hand at the two grey wolves. She looked them all over again and muttered as if to herself. “That should work.”

“You have something?” Kakashi-sensei looked at her.

“About thirty years ago, my youngest son ran off with an Inuzuka girl. Headed off toward Uzu,” the woman started, frown on her face as she spoke.

“Haru-oji-san?” Riku sat up and looked at his grandmother.

Hayate sat up from his place beside Kakashi-sensei at the conversation.

“Yes,” the Hatake woman answered her grandson with a solemn nod, before continuing. “They kept contact for a few years but dropped out of touch between then and twenty years ago. We had a couple of emergency summonings that pulled some of his summons who mentioned deaths, but we do know there was a child about Nanami’s age.”

“Enoki,” the russet wolf muttered, gaining everyone’s attention.

Sasuke would just very much like everything to make sense again.

Hatake-san looked deeply at the wolf, but then shrugged the outburst off to focus on the main issue.

“We didn’t get the child’s name so it shouldn’t be too hard to put your name in the record,” the old woman continued, then looking at the three genin. “As for them, you would have needed to be trained by someone, and even the most careful shinobi men can be careless in their relations.”

“Mission children?” Kakashi-sensei asked with a look at them.

Sasuke stiffened at the implication. He was the son of the last clan-head of the Uchiha and they want to call him a half-born outsider.

The useless spare, a deep voice swam through his thoughts and he immediately pushed it away.

Sasuke let a growl out as he glared back at his teacher.

“Will that be considered enough of a cover to call them mine by Wild Clan law?” Kakashi continued, ignoring Sasuke’s reaction.

“If we imply they were alone when you picked them up and had no way of contacting the clan,” the woman shrugged. “You just picked up cubs with chakra reserves that could be trained.”

“Not that hard if they weren’t known to the clan before,” Riku also jumped in. “Should be able to get the other wild clans to back you on that.”

Kakashi-sensei hummed and nodded as if agreeing to this idea. Sasuke continued to glare at the man, ignoring his teammates’ reaction to all of it.

How dare he make such a decision like that without asking them, me, whether it would be fine? Sasuke’s temper flared at it all.

You know it’s a reasonable cover, another thought broke through his anger, even as he tried to ignore it. If this isn’t some weird training trick, or exercise, and this time-travel thing is real, you know what would happen if you try and claim your history to the clan.

(Blood splattered the ground, the walls, clothes. Intricate dark patterns spiralled in crimson eyes.)

He shook the memory off and focused on the Jounin’s face, what little of it was visible anyway, but his eyes caught on the way his hitai-ate slanted over that eye. The scarred one that he had only shown in battle with Zabuza in Wave.

Sasuke swallowed all his objections, for all he knew they were perfectly reasonable. Instead he asked the question on the topic that had yet to be brought up.

“And the eye?”

Chapter Text

Kakashi’s hand reached up automatically to his hitai-ate at the blunt question. Of course, Sasuke would have thought of that, even though Kakashi had forgotten (and not wanted to think about).

The Uchiha would remember how big of an issue it could turn out to be.

They would need to work out how to figure it out on top of everything else. Excuse him if he had so much to keep on mind to survive this ridiculous situation that there were some things slipping through.

“What eye?” Tsukiko-sama asked, even as her own eyes followed the movement of his hand. Riku looked between Kakashi and the Uchiha in confusion.

Kakashi grimaced and lifted the hitai-ate to reveal Obito’s eye.

The two other Hatakes stared. The image they presented a nice difference from most of what he had stuck in the permanent storage of memories he had built up since he had been gifted the eye.

“Lost mine on the same mission my teammate was fatally injured,” Kakashi managed to choke out past the stone that had seemed to grow in his throat. “He survived long enough to offer his eye as a replacement.”

Kaori yipped softly, causing Kakashi to look down at the wolf only to realise his hand had gripped the grey fur in his hand when it clenched tighter than he meant it to. He gently released the hand and softly ran those same fingers through the patch of fur as an apology.

“Oh,” Tsukiko-sama said softly, peering at him. “That might be a little more difficult.”

“He just gave you a sharingan?” Sasuke asked incredulous. “And everyone just let you keep it?”

“Last request.” Kakashi wheezed out through the guilt and memories the boy’s outburst drew higher in his throat from where they usually sat. Kaori shuffled even closer, now almost entirely covering his lap.

“His family didn’t object when you got back?” Sasuke continued, glaring at the still uncovered sharingan.

“He didn’t have any direct family left, just distant cousins.” Kakashi heard himself say, seemingly from the end of a very long tunnel, memories swimming over his eyes. He felt the way both his hands clenched into grey fur. “Your mother shouted the elders down about it, considering everything else that they had done to him.”

“Kaka-nii.” Kakashi snapped out of his daze at the soft sound of Naruto calling him. The jounin looked around at everyone and realised that the silence after he last spoke must have continued too long to be comfortable. All eyes in the clearing were directed at him.

Kakashi quickly flicked the hitai-ate back over Obito’s eye and cleared his throat.

“Hmm.” Tsukiko-sama hummed, a gleam in her eye similar to the one he had seen and ignored too often when directed at him by the Sandiame.

Silence fell in the clearing when it seemed the older woman was thinking.

“Finding one Uchiha mission baby is rare enough, covering for two will be a little more complicated.” She said thoughtfully, gaze carefully analysing each member of team 7 in turn. “Give me the night to fit it together.”

Kakashi nodded and looked over at the genin. He took in the way they were all obviously fighting exhaustion, even as they all seemed to be trying to keep up with the conversation. Sakura was tilting slightly to the side, Sasuke was blinking a little too often and long and Naruto wasn’t bouncing in his place as much as Kakashi had come to expect from him.

“It’s been a long day,” Kakashi agreed, voice vague. “Maybe we all need the night to think things over. Sage knows all this is a bit much to deal with in one hit.”

Tsukiko-sama barked a laugh at that and nodded, which left Kakashi to start to wave the cubs into their bedrolls.

He dealt with their grumbling that they weren’t tired from the boys (and Sakura’s belated joining in when her brain caught up with what was going on) with familiarity. Which is to say he offhandedly called their bullshit with a shit-eating grin and pointed out they would do a lot better with meeting the Hatake clan while they were fresh and able to keep their stories straight.

Of course, Riku was now familiar with the way their team had of interacting with each other, but when Kakashi turned back to them after finally managing to get the genin to at least lie down he caught the amused look directed at him from Tsukiko-sama. It was one of those complicated expressions that seemed to be a show of multiple emotions at once, and it was what was shining there with the amusement that caused Kakashi to look away quickly.

His own feelings were complicated enough to deal with at the moment, and being forced to at least try and give his genin some consideration for theirs. He didn’t have the emotional range to try and interpret what was going on with someone else he had essentially just met. So long as it didn’t seem that anyone was going to make themselves a threat to Team 7, and he didn’t need his emotional intelligence to judge that, just his experience so he wasn’t going to try.

“Thank you for this, Tsukiko-sama,” Kakashi said, bowing his head when he settled back down on his own bedroll.

“None of that now.” The older woman waved her hand in as if to brush his thanks away. “You’re obviously one of mine, and those cubs of yours need the help. If you are going to fit in the role of my lost grandson, you might as well play the part properly.”

“I understand that this is all a little hard to believe…” Kakashi started again, after cautiously checking on the genin.

“In my experience, a shinobi with your level of skill would give a more believable story if you were trying to infiltrate my clan,” Tsukiko-sama stopped him before he could continue. Then nodded at Riku who was still sitting silently beside her. “Besides, this Runt of mine told me what you did for him. We look after our own.”

Kakashi looked to Riku who looked away with a faint blush on his pale cheeks, whether about the fact that his grandmother was still calling him a runt or for having to report the fact that he had needed help.

Kakashi looked back at the genin who had either taken the opportunity to fall into exhausted slumber or were faking the same very effectively. His eye lingered on the Uchiha longer when an old muttered comment he had heard so long ago he had almost forgot it floated into his mind.

“Tsukiko-sama…” He started as he turned back.

“Baa-san.” She gruffly corrected, stopping him in his tracks as he stared at her.

“Baa-san,” he started again after a pause. “Not sure how much it will help in the calculations you’re doing, but I remember some talk about the Uchiha clan having a strong attachment aspects.”

“You wouldn’t know it, with the way they deal with their cubs,” Riku blinked at Kakashi.

“Something about them being forbidden to follow the instinct,” Kakashi answered the bewildered look. “I’m not entirely sure. I kept away from most of them, after.”

Kakashi gestured to his covered eye in explanation of his last comment.

Tsukiko-sama just hummed and nodded.

“I can work with that.”

Tsukiko watched as the lost Hatake stood again to check on his cubs.

She hadn’t exactly been sure what to make of Riku’s message when it had first come through. The story was ridiculous. Time travel, a group of different clan and civilian children just handed over to be trained by someone of another clan, it was something even one of the youngest of her clan’s cubs wouldn’t come up with on the spot as a lie.

But he had given his help to Riku, even making use of some sort of advanced medical jutsu to heal what Tsukiko was guessing was a worse wound than the runt had reported to her. And that was despite the fact that he was the sole adult to care for his cubs (and they were his despite his falling back on “technicalities” as he tried to explain the relationship).

Then there was Daisuke and Kaori.

Tsukiko had never expected to see those beautiful grey coats again after Nanami…

Sage, I’ve grown sentimental in my old age.

Tsukiko shook her head to get it back on track as she watched the masked man absently crouch and stroke Daisuke’s coat as checked the on the blond Uzumaki.

It had intrigued her to say the least, prompting her to come out and meet them at the border, wanting to see what she could make of them in person.

Tsukiko hadn’t survived to watch her grown grandchildren take solo missions in chaos of Fire Country without being able to judge another shinobi’s skills.

And this masked Hatake moved like one of her own children, the ones that she had been sending into the field alone for more than twenty years in service to the clan and Pack. Well-trained, experienced and skilled enough to get the job done, no matter how many opponents he faced and managed to get back alive.

(His cubs were a different story of course, but the clan can help him remedy some of that. If they were his, they were theirs too now. He was a Hatake and so long as he held to the Clan Code they had no reason to treat him otherwise.)

But there was something else too. Riku had said there was something odd about the man in his letter, but she didn’t realise what that might mean until she had seen him interact herself.

He was the closet to going fully feral that she had seen in years, and yet he seemed to remain calm enough to deal with the cubs. A lone Hatake that somehow hadn’t fallen into the worst. And from what Tsukiko understood from the conversation they’d had, he had been that way for longer than she had thought possible (years even) without snapping.

The way he reacted to having to talk about that eye, and the teammate who left it to him, maybe she could work with that. She had also noticed that he seemed to have a particular habit of checking on the blond more automatically than the other two, there was knowledge there that seemed to be missing in the cubs.

“Get some rest,” Tsukiko ordered the two Hatakes when Kakashi settled down again in his spot. “The wolves will be enough to keep watch tonight.”

Chapter Text

Sakura woke to the sound of rumbling voices overlaying the other camp morning noises that had become increasingly familiar to her over the past few weeks. Slowly opening her eyes, she realised she was the last one to wake again. She felt her cheeks heat at the thought what they might all think of her for that.

The boys were sitting to her left, mostly packed up and eating breakfast. But for the most part they seemed to be paying attention to the adults make a sort of report of the events of the cave to Tsukiko-sama. Sakura wished she’d been woken early enough to hear the entirety of it. So, she could use it to help put even more detail in her picture of what happened.

It wasn’t like any report she had learnt to make in the academy (and rehearsed constantly to ensure she could give perfectly) with the wolves occasionally also adding in extra information at random. It sounded like when kids are telling the adults that pick them up at the end of the day what they’d done and they all jump in with what they were doing at the exact time the other was talking about.

“Sakura-chan,” Naruto’s loud cry brought everyone’s attention to her. She wished she could either knock him to the other side of Fire Country. Or bury herself in her bedroll and never get up without making her seem even more of a weak civilian than her current position made her out to be. “You’re awake.”

“Volume, Naruto.” Kakashi-sen-nii sighed, standing and coming over to her with the annoyingly familiar green glowing hand to lay on her forehead. As it touched her skin, she heard him mutter under his breath. “If she wasn’t before, she certainly is now.”

Sakura grimaced at him.

He just nodded at whatever result of the jutsu were, ignoring her. Then her moved back to the centre of the camp to grab her food.

“Eat and clean up,” he said as he handed her a ration bar and a bowl of the leftover stew they had to have kept warm for her. She frowned down at her breakfast. She knew better than to not eat it after the morning in the cave she had tried to refuse and almost had two men and four wolves force feed it to her. The incident had also led to her getting larger serves of breakfast than almost everyone but Naruto. “We still have a lot to get straight before we move on.”

Sakura gulped and steadily made her way through the meal and cleaned up her camp supplies while the Hatakes finished off their report on the journey to where they had met up with the older woman.

Sakura had settled down next to Sasuke-kun, hairbrush in hand when Tsukiko-sama nodded and turned to them. Her gaze settled on the brush as it slid through Sakura’s hair.

“You got a tie for that, cub?” The older woman asked gruffly.

“No,” Sakura squeaked out, pulling her brush a little too hard through a knot at being addressed directly.

“Hmm,” the older woman reached into one of her weapon pouches and pulled a short length of something, which she held out. “If you're going to keep it long, keep it back. Braid should do for today. I’ll get one of my more hair-minded clan-mates to teach you something else, if your packmates don’t have any skill at it.”

Sakura looked at the held out hand, blinking for a few seconds. Kaori huffed, grabbed it gently in her jaws and brought it over to drop in Sakura’s lap, before flopping to the ground beside her. Sakura looked down at the little strip of rough leather. She looked up at the older woman and gave a little nod before quickly getting to work on her hair.

Kakashi-nii coughed pointedly to get everyone’s attention. Then he looked at the older Hatake.

“Did you have enough time to think on our cover?”

Tsukiko-sama (who he would have to remember to call Baa-san as soon as their cover was settled) turned to look straight at Kakashi seriously. Taking a moment in the dead silence that fell over them at his words to think.

“If we’re claiming that you are my grandson, but have never been in contact with the clan,” she started, then flicked her gaze over the cubs again. “You have to have been trained by someone.”

Kakashi nodded. An obvious solution if his supposed ‘parents’ had been dead at least 20 years.

“Civilian-born shinobi may be a bit more unusual than where you are from, but we come across them from time to time.” The tone in the woman’s voice telling Kakashi that she was still a little dubious of what he had told her about the village. “From what little I can recall learning about them, the way their chosen and trained seems to be similar to your teams, and our packs. Only they tend to pick up trainees at complete random from villages they pass through, mostly orphans though.”

“Hmm,” Kakashi could follow where this line of thought was going. “You want to present me as being trained like that. Shouldn’t be too hard to spin.”

“If they were from the Uzu area and had never travelled into Fire Country, it would be easier to point out they may not have recognised the Clan indicators.” The Hatake nodded. “Or they didn’t want to risk any of their vulnerable against some of the rather infamous tactics around here.”

Kakashi shot a gaze toward the genin with a grimace at that idea.

“Of course, for this story to work best, we’ll have to switch which of your Uzumaki’s parents give him his name. A civilian-born kunoichi would be the best choice to pick you up.”

“Why?” Naruto cut in, causing Kakashi to look back at where the genin were sitting together. Oh Sage, he could feel the curiosity in all three of their gazes.

Kakashi could follow the reasoning behind that change in the story. It would help explain why the Uzumaki had no idea that Naruto existed, but he did not want to have that particular conversation of why it would do so with any of the three of them. Ever.

Kakashi looked back at the other Hatakes. Riku looked as uncomfortable at possibly having to witness that conversation as Kakashi did to be a part of it. Tsukiko-sama looked too amused and started to open her mouth.

“Because it makes more sense that way,” Kakashi quickly said before the woman could say a word.

When he met the older woman’s gaze, he could see the laughter in her eyes over it. He didn’t know what she saw in his, but it just seemed to amuse her more but thankfully when she spoke again, she just continued with the backstory she was giving them.

“The Uchiha do head that way on missions but tend to return quickly after it’s been completed and most of the clans there either don’t have anything to do with Fire Country or interact mainly with the Senju.”

Kakashi nodded along with the old woman’s words, relieved with the change of subject. But the recent reminder of the cubs listening, had him elaborating to ensure they were following along and wouldn’t interrupt for clarification.

“Less likely to hear they left a child with the end of the mission.”

“Your Uchiha…” She started, only to sigh and clarify, when Kakashi started to turn to the cubs again. “The one with the eye. He can be another orphan this civ-born picked up, who could have recognised another Uchiha in that one and made sure to have him trained too.”

She pointed back to Sasuke with that pronouncement.

“A bit of a reach, but hopefully plausible enough. Especially if the attachment thing you mentioned is true.” The woman sighed. “It’ll have to do, either way. It’s up to you lot to sell it, of course.”

“This woman will also have to have picked up other civ-born to train for it to be a little less suspicious.” Riku spoke up for the first time in the conversation.

Tsukiko-sama hummed in agreement.

“I still don’t understand what you meant by my parents being swapped.” Naruto whined loudly from behind.

“They meant, Idiot, that instead of your mother being the Uzumaki and your father being a civ-born, like Kakashi-sensei said last night. We’ll be saying that your mother was the civ-born that trained Kakashi-sensei and your father was an Uzumaki she met.” Sakura explained in a matter-of-fact tone.

Kakashi closed his eyes and took a deep breath, before turning back to deal with them. It was bad enough that this story will be so close to the truth of Naruto and him, even though the Hatake knew nothing about their histories.

“Kakashi-nii, Sakura.” He corrected her first, trying to ensure he was as settled as he could be before turning directly to Naruto. “She’s right, it makes more sense, for the sake of our cover, to have you given the clan name by your father.”

“Oh,” Naruto’s blue eyes were wide at his words. Then the boy blinked, looked away a little and muttered under his breath. “Not that it’ll matter all that much. I barely know that much.”

Kakashi sucked in a quick breath, unable to find anything to say, but unable to look away from where the gaze had met his.

“What name should we use for this woman?” Sasuke spoke up with a huff.

“Kushina.” Kakashi answered without even thinking about it. Suddenly the blue eyes swung back to meet his grey.

Kakashi realised what had come out of his mouth and choked and quickly turning back to face the Hatake clan head.

“It might be helpful to also have names for the other civ-born she trained.” Tsukiko continued as Kakashi got his breathing back under control. “Names of people that you might slip up and talk about. For your Uchiha too.”

Kakashi choked again, hand coming up to his covered eye.

“Obito.” The name seemed to have been ripped from his throat.

Rain falling. Chirping of a thousand birds, metallic scent, tears running down her face. “Kakashi” dead weight hitting the ground.

“Rin.”

A wet nose nuzzled against his right arm, exposed in his sleeveless uniform shirt. A scrape of fur and claws against his other arm. Both sensations bringing him back to the present, to the canine bodies pressed around him and the feeling of being watched from every direction.

He shook himself and looked down to meet the concerned gaze of Hayate. He lifted his right hand to settle between the russet’s ears. He also, for some reason, didn’t fight the urge to lean back into the bulk of Daisuke, who at some point must have shuffled forward to settle closer to him.

“Uchiha Obito and Rin.” He repeated quietly. “My teammates.”

“Iruka-sensei.” Naruto said loudly, after the silence dragged on. The forced brightness in his tone familiar enough from other situations to drag Kakashi all the way back to the present and away from his memories and the dead that lived there.

“Switch sensei to nii-san,” Kakashi told him, remembering the many times he had watched the two interact, both as one of the boy’s guards and in his own time. The way the other man had acted as a better brother than Kakashi ever had, was capable of being the brother Kakashi should have been.

Kakashi then turned his gaze to the other two genin and grimaced.

“Itachi,” he said quietly, and watched as Sasuke flinched back. Sakura shook her head and looked down and away when Kakashi looked at her in question.

He sighed and turned back to the other Hatakes.

“Tenzo, Genma, Raidou,” continued the list, then stopped. He grimaced again, for a very different reason than before, and listed one last name. “Gai.”

Chapter Text

Tsukiko nodded slowly, allowing her gaze to flick over the four again.

It had been an interesting show. Tsukiko wasn’t even sure any of them had quite realised how much they had revealed in a short amount of time. She had been watching it closely, but even if she hadn’t, she would have caught more information in it than anything they may have willingly given her.

Such a short list. Only one name each for the boys, one of which was a teacher and the other had caused the Uchiha to stink of fear and hate. And then the girl had given no name to add to it.

Tsukiko turned back to Kakashi. Given his reaction to just saying the names of his “teammates” she wouldn’t even need to drop too many hints to back up the story she had started to construct for them. Good to know she could still read runts well enough to find the right path to take to deal with them.

Then she processed how he had said the last name. Her lips twitched slightly.

“Gai?” She asked steadily, raising an eyebrow.

“Gai,” Kakashi said slowly, after a moment, visible eye closing and opening in a very deliberate blink. “Is an experience. One I haven’t been able to stop experiencing since before we both earned our registration numbers.”

“An experience?” Tsukiko barked a laugh.

“One that defies explanation.” The man answered. Tsukiko heard the fondness that he didn’t seem to try to hide in his words about this man, despite his sarcastic words.

Tsukiko sent a silent prayer of thanks to this “experience” that may have been one of the few reasons this young man in front of her wasn’t completely insane.

Or dead.

(The fact that he is so obviously affected by the losses but not so far gone that he was lost. This one Hatake that could help in training others not to fall to the madness, could save more of the clan from the aftermath and a pack member did.)

Tsukiko took a deep breath and turned her thoughts back to the story they were still putting together.

“Well, that should be enough,” Tsukiko continued. Enough lost packmates to keep anyone with sense from asking too much, digging too deep in their story. “We just have to make some implications that when you were left alone with the cubs you decided to try and make it back to the clan for help with them.”

“He certainly needs it.” Tsukiko heard Kaori scoff from where she was still flopped beside the girl.

“I can help,” the russet wolf piped up, only now looking up from where he had been watching Kakashi closely.

Tsukiko raised an eyebrow, that one was the only one of the three wolves that she didn’t recognise. She had kept her curiosity firmly settled on bigger questions than him through, they’d have time to deal with less time-sensitive questions later.

“Well, those two are well known,” the wolf continued. “But no-one has ever summoned me before…”

“Hmm, yes.” Tsukiko hummed in agreement when the wolf trailed off. She could follow that suggestion. “You do make it look like it wasn’t a complete panic summon, at least.”

Tsukiko got the feeling that if she could see more of Kakashi’s face he would be blushing at the implication.

“It won’t hurt that my da was an Inuzuka nin-dog and my ma was one of Haru’s summons either.” The russet stated matter-of-factly.

Tsukiko wasn’t the only one in the clearing to do a double take at that information, she was sure.

She blinked slowly as she assessed the russet again with that new information, as the wolf just seemed to casually turn back to watching Kakashi again.

“Well,” Riku broke in softly from behind her, before she could find the words to continue. “That certainly won’t hurt.”

Tsukiko just found herself sending the boy an exasperated look over her shoulder.

(She’d never let on how much she appreciated the distraction the Runt had provided. Haru hadn’t been the first of her children she had lost to their way of life and she’d had twenty years to come to terms with it. She didn’t think it would ever not hurt though.

But she had a clan to look after. One that now included a time travelling conundrum and his three odd cubs.)

“So, everyone clear on what their story?” Tsukiko asked, ready to start them all moving along. She’d been too far from the main pack long enough and she was starting to worry about what had been destroyed in her absence.

Kakashi looked back at the still obviously confused cubs. Tsukiko could see the face the man was pulling under the ridiculous mask.

“I guess we are as clear as we can be at this point.” He replied. Looking back at her, he continued, words almost casually pointed at the cubs behind him. “As long as we keep each other updated on any other information we give out, we can work with it.”

“Good.” She nodded and stood up. “We should get going. As much as I enjoy a good camp, I wish for my bed tonight.”

Naruto had been keeping an eye on Sakura-chan more closely the past few hours as they travelled through the trees again. They were moving at a slightly harder pace than they had the day before, so he figured that Sakura-chan might need more of a hand. It was also the only distraction that he can find right then from the thoughts about what had been revealed in the camp the night before and this morning.

He had real information on his parents. He got his name from his mum’s family, even if he’ll have to tell everyone from now on that it came from his dad.

That name Kaka-nii had given as the shinobi teacher they were using for their cover.

Kushina.

The way Kaka-nii had reacted to saying the name, did it have something to do with Naruto’s family or was that something to do with one of the people the man had lost.

Uchiha Obito and Rin. My teammates.

...I can’t… Please, Naruto… I was fourteen, the last of my team had their names carved after that night. I can’t…

Naruto almost tripped his landing on the next branch at the echoes of Kaka-nii’s voice. The strain of something Naruto didn’t quite understand in the man’s voice that Naruto could not bring himself to push for information through, despite his need to finally know.

Naruto shook his brain clear and forced himself to focus on the back of Sakura-chan’s head, and the braid of pink hair that flew behind it. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen it anything but loose behind the headband.

(Naruto is starting to really feel he’s going to actually get answers eventually anyway. He just needs to be patient and wait for Kaka-nii to be ready to give him more. Patient, like when he was waiting for one of those really mean people in the village to walk into one of his genius pranks. For this Naruto had been waiting twelve years for answers, a little longer while other things needed to be done won’t be too hard.)

A howl like the one that he had heard yesterday right before they came across the old lady. The sound startling Naruto just as he had barely managed to catch Sakura-chan by one fist in her dress after she had slipped off the branch she was landing on.

Naruto had to scramble to catch her again with his other hand when his grip loosened a little. Sakura-chan also scrambling it right herself properly after sound had practically made her jump off the branch she hadn’t quite regained her balance on.

“Looks like your Kaa-san got impatient,” Naruto heard the old lady shout back from where she had taken over the lead for the day, stopping on a branch ahead and looking back. He guessed the comment was directed at Riku-nii, because even distracted with Sakura-chan he could hear Riku-nii mutter about how she was always embarrassing him.

“All clear?” Kaka-nii asked from where he had stopped just behind Naruto and Sakura-chan after some back-and-forth howling from the wolves again.

“Yeah,” the old lady called. She sounded amused as she started up again. “That girl never did learn the value of patience.”

Sakura-chan frowned at Naruto and shook off his grip, before following the old lady, Riku-nii and the Bastard again. Naruto figured this meant they would be stopping soon, so shrugged it off and continued after her.

Turned out he was right.

They only travelled through the branches for maybe ten more minutes before they came to an end to the trees.

“Riku!” A new voice called from ahead of them.

“I’m fine, Kaa-san,” Riku-nii huffed as he jumped from the branches to the ground before a tall woman with the same grey hair as him, only straight and cut to her shoulders. She was also wearing similar clothes, except without sleeves, showing the pale skin of her arms between the arm sheaths revealed by that fact.

Naruto blinked. He’d spied on enough training grounds and copied enough of the exercises some of the village shinobi did there to respect how much work she would have had to do to get her arms and shoulders to look like that.

“I told you he was fine, Asa,” the old lady said, like she’d said it more times than she felt she should have to. “His mission was a success. He just ran into another pack on the way back and decided to travel back with them.”

“I’m not a cub anymore, Kaa-san,” Riku-nii said in that tone of voice Naruto had once heard Kiba say almost the exact same thing when his mum had come to drag him home from the park after sunset when they had skipped class together.

(Naruto would never admit to how the gruff woman had offhand “get your ass home too” to him rather than the usual telling off of their children for speaking to him had made him feel. He’d seen her around enough to know she would have said that to any other kid who’d been there with Kiba. He hadn’t been different (bad, monster) to her.)

The old woman seemed to ignore the way the other lady huffed at Riku-nii, instead she turned back to team 7 who had all stopped in the last line of trees and remained in the branches.

“You gonna get your runts down here, or are you just gonna stay there all day?”

Chapter Text

Kakashi took a moment to slip into the role the agreed-upon cover had handed him. He allowed himself one sharp look at the cubs, one he hoped would remind them to follow his lead, before he jumped down to join the group of Hatakes. He landed with enough space between them to give him warning if they made any violent movements.

“But Baa-san, it would have been rude to interrupt such a touching reunion between a mother and child.” Kakashi drawled, lazily slouching in his preferred who? Me? I’m harmless stance.

Kakashi gave the three Hatakes in front of him a deliberately exaggerated eye-smile at Riku’s groan, even as Kakashi pretended to ignore the way the cubs jumped down into a vague formation behind him.

Tsukiko scoffed at him even as the wolves came up to position themselves around Team Seven.

“It may be, but being polite can be a waste of time,” she turned to direct her next words pointedly to Asa. “Particularly when said parent could have waited just a bit longer for their reunion.”

Kakashi turned to her, tilting his head slightly and allowing his body-language to show just how shit-eating his grin had turned. Might as well let them know what they will be working with, he’d been this way long enough that it was a habit he knew he didn’t currently have the energy to try and break. Not if he was going to have to deal with all the trouble he was already dreading.

“Oh, Sage,” Riku groaned loudly as he seemed to realise where Kakashi was going to go with this.

“I never said Riku was the child.”

Riku’s groan vibrated through the silence that followed Kakashi’s statement.

“You couldn’t have waited a bit longer to lose your best behaviour.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. This is my best behaviour.”

Riku’s mother gave a sudden bark of laughter into the silence that followed Kakashi’s statement, her gaze jumping between the two of them at the exchange.

“You walked right into that one, Kaa-san. Boy’s definitely a Hatake,” she said, before turning to Kakashi. “Who are you lot, then?”

“He’s Kakashi, Haru’s son.” Tsukiko was the one to answer her after a short glare at Kakashi for that little stunt. She then took a breath and murmured solemnly to her daughter. “The cubs are all that’s left of his pack.”

The woman stilled and shot him a wary look.

“The girl is Sakura,” Kakashi started pointing to the genin without looking behind him and pretending to ignore the reaction to those words. “The blond is Naruto and the dark one is Sasuke.”

Kakashi let his hand fall back to his side as he felt the heavy brush of a warm body coming up to lean against his thigh. A small lean into that solid weight allowed him to rest a hand on a furry head as he worked to convince himself not to snarl at the assessing gaze the newer woman swept over the cubs.

He didn’t think he was going to be able to hold himself back from doing just that when Asa looked at her mother and started to open her mouth.

“Full explanations can be done back at the compound,” Tsukiko said, cutting off whatever the other woman was going to say. She pointedly looked around the group and up at the sky. “Where I would rather be sometime before nightfall.”

“Right,” Asa nodded as she looked over team seven again before looking back at her mother. “Of course.”

“After you,” Kakashi said mildly, waving them on ahead with a slight bow.

“Enough of that from you, brat.” Tsukiko said, looking directly at Kakashi before she nodded Asa and Riku to start on ahead. Riku jumped into motion immediately, though Asa hesitated slightly until Tsukiko gave a low growl to get her moving.

Tsukiko gave them a few moments head-start before turning to Kakashi.

“You lot ready for this?”

“We don’t have much choice, do we?” Kakashi replied after a moment to look over the cubs himself and think.

“You could have stayed away.” Tsukiko said quietly. “Stayed where you had holed up.”

Kakashi waved the wolves over to check the cubs were ready for the last leg of this journey. He used their movement to cover his own as he stepped closer to her to keep them from overhearing the conversation.

“How long do you really think we could have survived there?” He murmured, with a slight tilt of his head at the cubs. “Riku told you whose territory we were in, right?

“Yeah,” Tsukiko gave a slight sigh with the word.

“I may not have wanted to train genin when they were given to me,” Kakashi started quietly, forcing himself to meet the older woman’s eyes with his one visible one. “But as soon as I accepted they had passed my test, they became my duty to the next generation.”

The last words were said with the echo of the Sandaime’s lecture to the new Jonin Instructors after they passed their teams ringing in his mind alongside each word. Tsukiko hummed in acknowledgement of that statement.

“I have a reputation, you know,” Kakashi continued. “Two things most people who know about me know. I am very good at fulfilling my duty, and I am exceptionally good at surviving.”

Kakashi didn’t know if the most of the time despite myself was as audible to the older woman as it was to him in the air after his last words.

Sasuke scowled at the old woman running ahead of him. She was leading them after Riku and the other woman who had shown up, who had been sent before them after their last stop, to wherever these Hatakes were taking them.

He had noticed the way she and Kakashi had tried to keep him from hearing whatever conversation they had been having back before they started off again after that interruption in their travels. He didn’t like that they seemed to think they could keep him out of whatever they had been talking about. He was still annoyed that Kakashi had decided to treat him like he was still a useless child rather than the shinobi the jounin knew he was.

(Sasuke knew he had proved himself a capable Shinobi during their time together. Why did the man always seem to treat him like he was a useless idiot?)

It was bad enough that Sasuke was realising, reveal after reveal, that this really might not be some sort of training exercise Kakashi had put together to test them after the massive screw-up they had had back in Wave. He had been going back and forth in his mind of speculating that that was what this was, trying to find the trick that the jounin was sure to be waiting for them to realise, but hadn’t been able to figure it out yet.

(He was frustrated that he hadn’t been able to find the trick yet. He had been the top of their class, with only occasional competition in certain subjects, the whole time they were in the Academy. What was underneath the underneath that he was missing?

It was almost as frustrating as the fact that it seemed like the Dead-Last was beating him in this exercise, given the way Kakashi was approving of his actions and the responsibilities he was giving him.)

(He wouldn’t think of the implications of this not being some sort of training exercise. He wouldn’t go there when the only evidence of it is the word of Hatakes and their summons, Kakashi could have talked them into helping him with training his genin team after all.)

Sasuke’s focus on the old woman let him see the slight relaxing of her shoulders seconds before another howl reached them through the trees. The sound this time didn’t surprise him as much as the last two times they had come across the sound in their travel from the cave. He still heard a slight scramble from the branches behind him, almost hidden as the sound was under the return howl from in front of them. Sasuke had to roll his eyes at his teammates lack of ability to adapt to the signals these Hatakes seemed to commonly use.

They didn’t stop at this signal like they had the first two they had encountered on this trip either. Instead continuing forward toward where the original howl of this signal set for another ten or so minutes.

The sudden wooden and earth wall that appeared between the tree branches ahead of them was enough of an explanation as to why they hadn’t stopped.

“...you didn’t get lost, Riku?” An amused male voice reached Sasuke as they got closer to what he guessed was the entrance to the compound behind the wall.

“No,” Riku’s voice answered, in the same tone that Sasuke had become used to in the past few days when Kakashi had hit a specific cord in his teasing of the younger man.

The old woman jumped from the trees and landed soundlessly behind Riku and the other woman who had come to greet them. Sasuke stopped in the cover of the branches to watch.

“Leave him be, Susumu,” she said to the young man standing in front of them in front of a gate set in the wall. He was dressed similarly to Riku, only he seemed a bit older and had his longer grey hair tied in a tail hanging over one shoulder. Sasuke guessed that he may have been about the same age as Iruka-sensei, or other older chunins he had met in the village. “He was just being a proper pack member.”

“Oh?” The new Hatake’s brows seemed to rise as he ran his gaze over the group of three Hatakes and their wolves that were starting to mill around the cleared area around the gate.

Sasuke checked his teammates who had all come to a similar stop around him. All of them were watching the interaction below.

“Kakashi,” the old woman called back, keeping her gaze forward. “Get your runts and your skinny ass down here and introduce yourselves.”

Sasuke watched as the jounin’s body language seemed to shift from tense and ready to fight to a more deceptive laziness that Sasuke had come used to from their sensei back in the village. The Uchiha was reluctantly impressed when he realised that it was not only a practiced movement to deceive any enemies, but that the man could probably move into the more dangerous stance just as quickly.

“Maa, maa, Baa-san,” Kakashi drawled lazily as he landed next to the woman just as silently. “It’s not that skinny.”

The slow assessing gaze the jounin levelled at the new Hatake as he spoke was returned by the other man.

Sasuke shared a quick glance at both his teammates, meeting green eyes, then blue, before turning back to watch their sensei carefully.

“Still skinny, brat.” The old woman snorted at Kakashi.

“I’ve never had any complaints.” He drawled back.

A slight twitch of the man’s fingers and Sasuke jumped down, knowing without looking that the Idiot had jumped at the exact same moment, Sakura slightly behind them. Sasuke didn’t even look to the side to know that they had landed, with much less noise and skill than they had previously shown most of this group, in the exact team formation he had wanted them to. Sakura directly behind, and covered by Kakashi, between him and the Idiot, flanking them both.

(That weird ability to coordinate with the Idiot was still not something he wanted to deal with in this situation, but if it would get them through this test without failing spectacularly, he’d take it.)

The two Hatake women looked back at them with slightly raised eyebrows, before turning back to the long-haired man.

“This is Haru’s boy and what is left of his pack,” the older woman told the newcomer, as the wolves that had stuck around Kakashi since that first day finally followed them out of the trees to join them.

“Haru,” the man muttered with a quick glance at the woman and the wolves that surrounded them. “As in your youngest son, Tsukiko-sama?”

Sasuke could feel the way the long assessing gaze of the other man went back to Kakashi and slowly proceeded over each member of the team. The way that Kakashi seemed to tense slightly, only just noticeable in his lazy stance, as that gaze swapped from him to the Idiot, then behind him to Sakura.

Sasuke stopped paying as much deliberate attention to his teammates when that dark blue gaze landed on him. The man seemed to take in everything he had ever been proud about sharing with his family (despite how it sometimes made looking at himself in the mirror a nightmare).

The Hatake frowned at him.

Sasuke glared right back.

Chapter Text

Tsukiko watched as Kakashi started to tense further as Susumu’s staring contest with the grumpy Uchiha dragged on.

“Yes,” she answered before this became a problem, even before they entered the compound.

She knew her time travellers would be trouble; it was to be expected. But she was sure that Susumu’s mother had drilled in better manners than this.

“My Haru’s boy, and his pack.”

Tsukiko could practically feel Asa’s curiosity radiating off her at the mention of her baby brother, just as she had the first time Tsukiko had brought him up in relation to their new find. But she wanted to be sitting down and have a moment to relax before she tried to explain. Maybe even have some more time in which to figure out how much she wants to tell her children about the situation. So she shot Asa a look to stop her from interrupting before continuing.

“They’ll be staying with me for a bit while they settle in,” Tsukiko declared. She smothered a smile at the varied and humorous reactions of her time-travelling troublemakers.

(Honestly, that boy obviously needs help. He didn’t think she was going to leave him alone with those cubs until she was sure he could handle them. Especially after what wasn’t said in his explanation about his previous reputation.

Add in his own reactions to just vaguely speaking about his previous packmates, and she wasn’t leaving them alone for now.

She may want to figure out how he was able to keep going in his state, but she wasn’t going to let him stay alone with a group of obviously troubled cubs, without any kind of help from the clan over it. He’d been right in what he said earlier about how they were going to survive in this world, with everything Tsukiko had seen, all four of them were in need of help to survive.

The cover story they’d put together may be just that, a story, but if she was going to include her baby in it, she was damn sure going to play it for what it is worth. She’d claimed them now and they were just going to have to deal with it.)

Susumu met her gaze as the information she had given him sunk in, so she allowed him a small nod of reassurance.

“Understood, Tsukiko-sama,” the boy answered with a small bow towards her. “Was there anything I can do for you?”

“Aren’t you on patrol duty today?” Tsukiko asked, pulling up her mental roster, and looking at his current post at the gate.

“Yes,” he answered. She could tell he was trying to look as truthful as possible, which caused her to narrow her eyes. “Nobu-nii had to help Kaa-san with something quickly so asked me to wait a few minutes to watch his post before I left.”

Tsukiko snorted, raising an eyebrow at Susumu. Honestly, that one.

“He picked up her weapons pouch instead of his own on the way out for his shift again, didn’t he?”

Asa and Riku both snorted laughter.

“Uh, well,” Susumu mumbled, looking away from them.

“Remind him, a hangover is not an excuse for not keeping track of your own weapons at his age. He should be able to remember where he left them before passing out.” Tsukiko shook her head at his reaction. Knowing that he would pass on his words to the right person, and not try and fox her to keep his brother out of a scolding again. She led their little traveling group through the gate into the compound.

A faint snort behind her had Tsukiko turning to raise a brow at Kakashi. The boy raised his own back, a lazy and relaxed air having fallen over him again as he ushered his cubs after her.

“Good to know that we weren’t the only ones to have alcohol-related equipment issues,” was the only explanation he gave.

Tsukiko was impressed at how relaxed he appeared, lazily managing to cover all three of the cubs at once. It certainly backed up her previous impression of Kakashi’s skill level. Her instincts and experience were telling her that he was not missing a single detail of their surroundings, ready to move at one wrong impression.

“Have some good stories, nii-san?” Riko piped up at hearing that. Once again surprising an old woman about how perceptive he was, providing a distraction from the tenseness of that she could still sense in Kakashi.

“I’m not sure you’re old enough to hear any of them.” Kakashi returned, gaining barks of laughter from Tsukiko and Asa. Their reaction to the banter seeming to help him unwind.

“I’m not a cub!” Riku gave a growl and launched himself at the older boy.

Kakashi casually sidestepped the lunge, grabbing a laughing blond cub out of the way of Riku’s unexpected follow-through.

“You don’t act like it.”

“Com’on,” Riku whined, righting himself.

Kakashi dropped the cub, unwinding even further as he gave Riku another of his eye-smiles that Tsukiko was starting to dread being pointed at her.

“I’ll give you this,” Kakashi started, tone somehow tipping off Tsukiko that he was up to something. “If you run with a poisoned weapon user, best to carry around all the antidotes when going drinking with them.”

Riku blinked at him, obviously intrigued and confused.

“What happened?”

“Hmm,” Kakashi hummed, looking innocent as he continued following the path. “What?”

Little shit, Tsukiko thought, realising what the time traveller was doing as he passed her on the path.

“Why should I get the antidotes?”

“You might need them for the hangovers.” Kakashi answered lazily, still walking.

“Com’on Kashi-nii,” Riku whined running after him. “You can’t leave the story at that!”

“What story?” Kakashi asked innocently.

“The story behind the antidotes.” Riku finally snapped, lunging at Kakashi again.

Kakashi sidestepped again, still walking.

Oh, yes. This one will fit in well here.

Kakashi blinked slowly up at the large building that seemed to loom over the protective wall marking the boundary of a traditional property, set slightly away from the rest of the housing in the compound. A property that the path they had been following seemed to be heading straight for.

“Umm,” he hummed, stopping in his tracks to look up at it.

“Yeah, it’s a bit civilian.” Tsukiko snorted at his reaction, as she walked past to the gate in the wall painted with a massive Hatake crest. “But it keeps the so-called more civilised bastards from looking down on us when they drag their asses around to ask us for help.”

“Ah,” was all Kakashi could reply to that. The Senju and Uchiha clan compounds from the village were the only ones that could have been compared to how grand this was, though the Hyuuga one may have come close. Kakashi knew that he shouldn’t compare it to the small, rundown property that had been where he had grown up, but it was certainly a massive difference between the two.

He suddenly wished that he had spent more time paying attention when his elders had tried to explain the Hatake’s role in the village. Then he may have had answers about how the clan had gone from this size, reach and influence, down to just him.

“It certainly got those stuck up Hyuuga Old Man Inuzuka dragged over with him last time to stop being such assholes.” Asa clapped Kakashi on the shoulder on the way past, following her mother. The distraction caused Kakashi to shake off his thoughts and check the genin were also following before moving again.

When Kakashi stepped through the gate he could see why it might have done as Asa had said. It was a beautiful formal courtyard leading to the entrance of the massive building before them, two smaller buildings flanking the courtyard connected to the impressive building by the engawa.

It looked more like the formal houses of one of the civilian nobles or really wealthy merchants he had entered (not always through the traditional entrances) in his career than any shinobi house.

“Don’t worry.” Riku muttered as he came up to walk beside Kakashi. “This is just a front for clients and outsiders, keep them from trying to swindle us wild animals. No way we would actually live in a building as stuffy as this. The clan head’s residence and clan meeting spaces are through the other side of the monstrosity.”

Well, that’s interesting to know, Kakashi thought. But not anywhere close to what I was thinking about.

“Those are the formal guest rooms and secondary clan guardhouses.” The boy continued, pointing at the smaller buildings then back at the gate and wall. Kakashi’s eye followed the finger and could see stone rooms built into the inside surface, which were discretely covered by the landscaping of the courtyard.

“Stop gawking and hurry up.” Tsukiko growled from where she had already entered the main building. “You’ll have time to look around after you’ve settled in.”

Riku gave Kakashi a rueful smile and shrugged.

“I’ll show you around more later.”

Kakashi gave him an eye-smile as Riku began to hurry after the two women. The jounin then looked around at the genin that had stopped, crowding around him and waved them up after the boy and the grey wolves that had followed him.

“You got to admit,” Hayate muttered from where he had remained at Kakashi’s heel. “He was right about it being stuffy.”

“It serves the purpose it was built for.” Kakashi muttered back, making himself loud enough to be heard by the genin, hoping they were taking in as much information as they could from their surroundings.

He could at least hope they weren’t forgetting their training.

It was just the Hatake version of Hokage tower, he told himself as he walked through following the party. A place for outsiders to come and hire their services without having to be confronted by the violence of what shinobi truly are.

(Maybe the reason he was so taken aback by this building was that it was so jarring compared to the rest of what he had seen of the Hatakes of this time.

They had been so unapologetic about their natures. They were upfront about being wild predators. They had their code and would follow it, help those it said to help unless that person broke it. Challenge you to test whether you followed it too.

Kakashi thought they were oddly honourable in their own way, product of Konoha and its darker shadows that he was.)

“We’ll set you lot up in the east wing.” Tsukiko was saying from outside the other side of the main hall. “That’s where I stuck my runts as they grew up.”

“We should be able to get the shoji room dividers in again so you can have your own rooms in there,” Asa called back to Kakashi as he brought up the rear of the group, stepping out onto the engawa and looking out at the much less formal courtyard that greeted them. One that was definitely more fitted out like a shinobi residence.

Kakashi followed their party along the engawa towards the smaller building on the east side of this courtyard. The idea of finally getting some space of his own, away from the genin, was a very tempting one. But the thought of actually following through on the temptation made something pull tight in his chest, the same thing that he struggled with during the first few days in this time.

“No hurry on that yet,” Kakashi answered lightly, knowing, at least, the two women deduce his reasons.

When he noticed the way that Sakura slumped a little, he sighed and backtracked a little.

“But a privacy screen for changing might be useful, if there is one laying around.”

Asa looked back at them, huffing a laugh as she followed his pointed look at his young kunoichi.

“I’m sure Riku can pull one of those out of storage somewhere.” She answered with a smile at the girl.

“Why?” Riku asked, looking a little confused. Kakashi wasn’t sure if that was because he had been voluntold for the task, or if he genuinely had no idea why Kakashi had asked for one.

“‘Cause I said you could,” his mother said, swinging up to cuff him on the back of the head.

Tsukiko sighed as Riku rubbed the back of his head. She grabbed the back of her daughter’s collar dragging her back to her side.

“You can set up your things in there,” the older woman said, waving her free hand at the open sliding shoji to the building. “There are clean futons in the cupboards in there.” She paused for a moment, narrowing her eyes at the courtyard. “At least there should be, if the runts know what’s good for them.”

Kakashi may not have had many dealings with displeased family elders, but he suddenly felt a shiver up his spine in solidarity with any of the so-called runts that might not have left the spare futons clean.

“Riku can dig up that screen,” Tsukiko continued, looking pointedly at the boy and then shaking the collar her daughter had yet to successfully pull free of her grip. “I’ll take this one to the family hall and get someone to figure out a proper dinner for us all.

“You can come join us for some tea after you’re done, and we can all figure ourselves out.”

Chapter Text

Kakashi ushered the cubs into the family hall behind Riku. He was exhausted from having to corral them into the setting up the room they would be sleeping in, on top of everything else he had to deal with. He could still feel the drag on his chakra system from the latest round of chakra exhaustion so soon after the episode in Wave, still recovering to his highest levels even if he was now at the level of recovered that he could be fully functional in the field. The mental exhaustion of having to try and keep up with three juvenile ninja, with their own particular ticks but without the training to act like Kakashi was used to in a shinobi team, was something he had resigned himself to a few weeks into his assignment as jounin of this incarnation of team seven.

They had, fortunately for the last occupants of the room, found the clean futons and bedding. After Kakashi had cased the room and set some of his own privacy measures he had allowed the genin to choose their own sleeping layout within the space.

The little terrors may be exhausted from the journey but as soon as Riku had left them, with much whining behind Tsukiko as she dragged his mother after her, to go dig out the requested privacy screen they had started to remind him that unless anyone was passed out, they could, and would, find the energy to snipe at each other. Luckily, their states had ensured that there was none of the physical violence he had grown too accustomed to deal with.

Riku returning with the screen had been a sage-send, much like he had been for the most part of the week they had known each other. He had been able to help deflect some of the sniping as Kakashi had helped to place his find where it could be used without getting in the way before Kakashi lost what little control he had over them, helping in some of the other tasks in set up before helping herd them all out to meet back up with his grandmother.

Kakashi just wanted to collapse in some semblance of peace for a moment. Maybe have some time to actually get some of his long mental lists of skills each of the cubs needs to learn to survive in this time in some sort of order. Now he wouldn’t be solely responsible for having to worry about something new twist in the situation coming at them or having to keep the cubs from attempting to murder each other, he could find a way to prioritise and divide what one or two of them already knew and what they all needed to be taught.

Taking in the way that the large round table in the centre of the room was set up, he realised it would be a bit before he got time for any of that. It looked like this was going to be more than just tea with the known Hatakes.

Kakashi sighed and hoped that there would at least be a decent meal that came of this. (And more space to relax by themselves afterwards.)

The low table was set with ten places. Two seats were already taken by Tsukiko-sama and Asa. Another two places beside Tsukiko-sama were filled by two other, unknown Hatake. One an older man, about the same age as Tsukiko-sama and scared with it, Kakashi could swear that he saw streaks of white in his short Hatake-silver hair. The other stranger was a woman with a soft, pleasant face, but Kakashi noticed the kunoichi clauses and shuriken scars on her hands as she brought her teacup to her lips.

It appeared they were going to have a run on the cover story already, Kakashi flicked his gaze over the cubs and hoped that they would remember it. Here’s hoping they don’t make too much of a mess of it.

“Come sit, runts,” Tsukiko said as soon as she looked up to see them entering, gesturing roughly at the empty places at the table.

Naruto met Kakashi’s eye nervously, flicking his own gaze at the new faces as if unsure what was going to happen. Kakashi nodded pointedly at the other two genin and then at Riku, who was already taking a seat next to his mother.

The blond looked around at the glaring Uchiha and the fidgeting Kunoichi, took a breath, drew his village smile onto his face, grabbed them both by the arm and dragged them both over to the places next to the younger Hatake.

Kakashi ambled after them, nudging the wolves that still hadn’t stopped following him everywhere and were milling around his feet while he did. Riku managed to help Naruto pull Sasuke into the place beside him, while the blond also maneuvered Sakura into the next place around from the Uchiha. Naruto flopped into the place flanking the Kunoichi as Daisuke lay down behind them, the big grey spread out behind all three of genin, acting as seat back and guard rolled into one.

“Who’s the oldies?” Naruto blurted out in what Kakashi assumed was his attempt at a whisper as the jounin settled down next to him.

“Shut up, Idiot!” Sakura snapped, cuffing him on the back of the head.

Kakashi sighed, looking up at the older Hatakes, only giving them a tired shrug.

The younger of the two new Hatakes only laughed. Now Kakashi could get a better look at her, she appeared to be somewhere between the ages of Tsukiko-sama and Asa. The older man beside her quirked a brow, the scar through the feature pulling his eye almost shut due to the intersection between it and two others.

“Yoshi, Sumiko. These are the reasons I wasn’t here when you tried to give me your reports this morning.” Tsukiko spoke to the two strangers with an amused glace at the genin. “Riku managed to find himself one of his more elusive cousins and pack during a simple messenger mission.”

Here we go, Kakashi thought with a slow blink to settle into the cover more deeply as Riku squawked his indignation at the tease.

“In Riku’s defence,” Kakashi started, a quick glance around the table showing he had everyone’s attention as he spoke, and he allowed himself to fall back into his usual lazy persona with a shrug. “He didn’t so much as find us as he ran straight into one of Naruto’s traps in the dark, so you could say we found him. Gift wrapped even.”

“Hey!” Riku squawked louder, while Naruto fell backward into Daisuke’s side in his laughter and the other two genin looked between Naruto and Kakashi with confusion.

“Really?” The new woman asked with an amused smile as she looked over the cubs.

Kakashi hummed in agreement, distracted from his plan to ask Tsukiko-sama for an introduction when a large, muscled brunet man appeared at the door laden down with food.

“A little help may be needed,” the man said as he stepped into the hall, juggling his grip on one of the steam-basket towers and a rice bucket, causing Riku to jump up to try and grab some of it from him to bring to the table before the man dropped any of his burden.

“Honey, you could have asked for help to bring some of it in,” Asa told the man, standing only to walk around the table to help setting the food in the centre.

“And miss an opportunity to impress you with my carrying ability?” The man asked, in what may have been an attempt at a private undertone, if the room was not mostly filled with Hatakes, a smug grin on his face.

“Really, Tou-san?” Riku grumbled at his parents' actions, as Tuskiko-sama and the two new Hatakes rolled their eyes at the display. “I’m right here.”

“Ah, welcome home,” Riku’s father turned to his son, giving him a rough pat on the back. “Don’t worry your mother like that again.”

“Did the worry take too much attention off you?” Riku asked sarcastically.

“Yes,” the man pouted, playing along with the tease. “She doesn’t want to cuddle when she’s worried.”

“Honey!” Asa slapped her partner on the arm, with a slight blush on her cheeks as she looked back at her mother at his words.

“I don’t know why she still gets so embarrassed by your craving her affection,” the Hatake man spoke for the first time since team seven entered the room, speaking directly to the other man. “Nothing wrong with open affection between partners.”

“Some people prefer to keep those moments to themselves,” Kakashi muttered, getting a couple of strange looks from the other Hatakes, but a thankful one from Asa.

“Can I really eat this?” Naruto exclaimed from beside Kakashi, dragging everyone’s attention back to the food, and the cubs, and away from the awkward topic. There was a lot of food and it all looked and smelled fantastic.

“Just remember to leave some for the rest of us,” Kakashi teased, really not wanting to go back to the previous topic. He reached for the rice bucket and spoke to all the cubs. “Pass me your rice bowls.”

His words were greeted by the blond scrambling for all their bowls to hand over to him, with glares at him the other two. Asa and Riku returned to their previous seats and Riku’s father took the empty seat next to Kakashi.

“It was rude of us to get between a cub and his food,” the new woman said pleasantly as Kakashi started scooping the rice out for the cubs, ensuring Sakura and Naruto both got larger than traditional serves. “I’m Sumiko.”

“That’s Kakashi-nii,” Riku introduced him when Kakashi only nodded and continued to ensure all three of the genin were eating appropriately. A hard stare at Sakura had the girl actually putting some of the chicken before her that she was about to ignore, in her bowl. “The blonde is Naruto, the girl is Sakura and this is Sasuke.” Riku indicated the black-haired boy beside him with a shrug.

“Haru’s boy and his…pack.” Kakashi noted the way Tsukiko paused slightly with a flicked look at them before the last word in her own muttered add on to Riku’s introduction. Kakashi wasn’t sure if his instinctual flinch at the term would help their cover or bring more questions, but he didn’t have the energy to deal with that at the moment.

“As you may have guessed, that’s my tou-san,” Riku pointed at the man for the sake of the genin.

“Hiya, jii-san,” Naruto yelled happily through a mouthful of food, managing to launch some grains of rice the entire way across the table. The other two genin just turned to the man, giving the blond similar disgusted looks as they did. Sakura bowed politely in greeting between mouthfuls and Sasuke scoffed and turned back to his plate.

“Jiro,” the man introduced himself with a polite nod. “You the lot that managed to help out my boy?”

“I think it was more that we helped each other.” Kakashi answered vaguely.

“Yoshi and Sumiko are Clan Elders,” Riku continued, ignoring his father. “Which means that they basically have the headaches of making sure everyone has what they need, and the cubs in the clan are looked after, respectively.”

“You live long enough; you get stuck with the boring jobs again.” The man, Yoshi, spoke, smile tugging at some of the scars on his face. “But at least Tsukiko knew better that to try and stick me with the demons.”

“The cubs aren’t that bad, old man,” Sumiko turned to her companion.

“Remind me again, how many unconscious ones did you have to drag out of the pond this morning after one got annoyed at her brother during the swimming lesson and pulled a raijutsu?” Yoshi just looked at his fellow elder with another raised eyebrow.

“Again?” Tsukiko turned to them with a look of her own. “I thought we had been over this with them before.”

“Let’s go over that later,” Sumiko gulped as she turned back to the table, obviously trying to find a different topic and eyeing the cubs. “You lot look exhausted; do you have any plans here yet?”

Kakashi blinked at the table, just to be sure that this was the topic that they were going to stick to for now.

“Right,” Tsukiko helped to continue it with a slight glare at Sumiko. “You mentioned wanting to find us to help with the cubs, but do you have any plans about that yet?”

“Not yet,” Kakashi said, double checking his mask was back in place after his own hurried eating, following the older woman’s lead on this point of their cover. “Some time to settle in and let the cubs rest after that last leg would be nice, give me some time to throw together a plan. But otherwise, some space to train without having to worry about being on the watch for hostiles will be helpful.”

Kakashi sent a glare at the genin to stop the inevitable protests about needing more rest.

“I can take you to the training grounds,” Riku piped up. “I was going to show you around anyway.”

“Tomorrow,” Asa told the boy. “You all look like you could settle in a bit before getting overwhelmed by more new places.”

“She just wants to get him home to check him over,” Jiro-san muttered to Kakashi from his side, causing the jounin to turn his head slightly to the man, which earned him a wide grin.

“Thanks,” Kakashi nodded at Riku, otherwise ignoring Jiro-san’s contribution and grimaced down at the genin before muttering. “We have a lot to work on.”

Tsukiko snorted and looked directly at Sakura before turning back to Kakashi.

“I’ll send Chie around to help Sakura with her hair before you wander off, then.”

“What’s wrong with my hair?” Sakura piped up before Kakshi could try and quiet her, tugging at the long braid said hair was still held in.

“The same thing that was wrong with the orange.” Riku answered before anyone else.

“There is nothing wrong with orange,” Naruto pouted with indignation.

“My hair is not that bad!” Sakura squawked at the same time.

Sasuke scoffed quietly in response to both his teammates.

“If we could not have this argument again over dinner?” Kakashi sighed at them all.

“I meant that the same rule applies to the hair as it does to the orange,” Riku whined as he rubbed his ears in an attempt to deal with the pain the cubs’ responses that dealt to them. Kakashi figured that if he had spent a week with them and hadn’t yet figured out to be at a distance before outraging any of them, it was his problem.

“Do we want to know?” Tsukiko looked at them all with an interested, but cautious expression.

“No.” Kakashi said. “If this Chie can help talk some sense into her, it would be helpful.”

One thing he didn’t have to argue with the cubs about would leave him strength to argue one of the many things left to him to deal with.

Why did his sage-forsaken Hokage have to dump this dumpster fire on him again? And why did he get given another team 7?

My hair is incredible, Inner Sakura continued to grumble as Kakashi-nii, and the wolves he had told them he had summoned, herded them back into the big room they had set their things up in. Much better than Ino-pig’s and mum and all the aunties back home were so proud of how I looked after it too.

Sakura agreed with the angry side of her on this, how they could think to say her hair was as bad as Naruto’s stupid jumpsuit. It was the one thing about her appearance that she was happy with, and no-one had ever insulted it before. She self-consciously pulled the braid over her shoulder and ran her fingers over it as she went over to where she had set up her own futon, finally a respectable distance from the boys, even as she wondered why Kakashi-nii hadn’t allowed them to have their own rooms when they had been offered to them.

Sakura watched as Kakashi-nii shut the door behind them and settled himself down on his own futon with a sigh, while the wolves spread themselves around the room as well. She had noticed vaguely over the past week that the summons had been with them that when they were all together in a space, one usually seemed to stay near the jounin while another, usually Daisuke, gravitated over to near the genin in the team. The boys had also gone to their own futons while she had been working through her anger internally. Naruto having flopped backwards onto his sloppily and Sasuke-kun having sat properly and started checking his shuriken again.

Right, best to ensure you know the weapons you have on hand, Sakura straightened her posture again and reached for her own weapon pouch as she remembered the way their academy senseis had made a point to try to drill that into their heads. Sasuke-kun is so smart, always remembering things she seemed to always forget in her exhaustion.

Sakura was checking the edge of the first kunai she pulled out when she realised that this was pretty much the first time since she woke up from that weird light thing that team seven was alone without expecting anyone to interrupt them, except for the wolves that had been summoned. Sakura remembered that from the few hours of lessons they had had on summons that the summoned animal was supposed to be loyal to the summoner first, it was included in the contract, so even if this was a test, she could expect anything said in front of the wolves to be kept as secret from anyone else so long as Kakashi-nii said so.

They had been so good during dinner with all those strangers, they hadn’t slipped up on the cover Tsukiko-sama had given them that morning. They’d only had Naruto’s usual stupidity and her own outburst, but what could they expect from comparing her hair with Naruto’s clothes. Still, it had been better than the mess they had been at Tazuna-san’s house, Sakura thought that at least meant they had earned some actual answers.

“So, what actually happened back in that clearing?” Sakura asked their sensei.

Naruto bolted back upright at her words while Sasuke-kun just looked up at her for a second before turning to stare at Kakashi-nii. The silver-haired nin looked up at her with his visible eye and blinked slowly.

“An old, defective transport seal,” he answered. “I explained this back at the first camp.”

“But time travel is impossible, everything we covered in the academy says so,” Sakura sighed. “How can you even come to that conclusion? You don’t have any proof of your claims when there are more sensible conclusions. Why should we believe the ridiculous?”

“You’d be surprised what seals can make possible,” Kakashi-nii said after a pause during which he took in the attention directed at him by the entire room. He then seemed to look directly at both the boys separately before continuing. “And what knowledge isn’t covered in the academy.”

The man stood after saying this and walked over to the door, warily.

“Iruka-sensei told me he didn’t even know everything people could use seals for, but he seemed to know a lot of ways to use them in pranks.” Naruto piped up loudly, tilting his head to the side. “He said that the fourth knew how to use them pretty well though.”

Sakura rolled her eyes at the random interruption from the blond, not really wanting to look away from their sensei to let him slip away without answers or distract them from the information she wanted using other information again. She could swear that he seemed to startle and glance more at the blond’s stomach than his face when Naruto spoke, but she had no idea why that was a thought she had.

“The lot of you aren’t just going to listen to your commanding officer, are you?” Kakashi-nii muttered with a sigh as he looked around the room again.

Sakura flinched at his words, proper ninjas were supposed to obey superior officers and follow their commanders’ instructions. It said so in the shinobi rules.

Even when what they say is completely ridiculous? That angry inner part of her she never let out whispered. A glance at the boys confirmed that they seemed to agree with that part of her so she persisted.

“Not if it doesn’t make any sense,” Sakura said, drawing all her courage to argue, and thinking back on the academy lessons that may help to keep what they were doing from being a complete destruction of the rules. “We’re not in combat and we are going along with this cover, but information can make for more effective fieldwork.”

“Yeah,” Naruto called out while Sasuke turned to stare at her blankly for a bit before turning back to Kakashi-nii and nodding.

Kakashi sighed at their answer. “I guess you aren’t just going to let this go,” Sakura thought she heard him mutter as he reached into a pouch in his vest, pulled out a seal paper and stuck it over the seam in the door.

“I guess the first thing I should ask is how much of the way the lights showed up do you all remember?” Kakashi asked as he slid back to his own futon, serious in a way that kind of reminded Sakura of how he had explained that they hadn’t actually dealt with the issue in Wave after that first fight with Zabuza, but less exhausted.

“The lights hitting Sasuke-kun and him collapsing,” Sakura answered, thinking back. “Then they made their way over to us on the boulder and then a pull at my hair and that’s it.”

“I put my hand down and then the lights came up,” Naruto answered for himself and shivered with a frown. “Then the Bastard fell, then you two fell and I couldn’t get up and help, then nothing until I woke up with you running.”

Kakashi-nii looked at Sasuke pointedly, he scowled back and shrugged.

“The Idiot fell over, and weird lights started up around him.”

The man sighed, shaking his head and putting one hand on the top of Hayate’s head as the wolf laid it in his lap while staring at the man.

“Did anyone see the way the lights formed?”

Sakura looked over at her fellow genin who met her gaze with similar confusion.

“Did it all appear at once? Was it a block of light or were there patterns?” Kakashi-sen-nii looked at them as if he were trying to lead them to look at what they saw more closely. Like some of the academy senseis had tried to teach them.

Look underneath the underneath.

“It started where the Idiot put his hand down,” Sasuke grumbled, glaring at the jounin.

“Umm,” Sakura hummed in agreement, thinking back on what she saw as she had looked down on the boys from the boulder. “It crept out in patterned lines from above.”

“Naruto’s injured hand,” Kakashi-nii nodded. “He cut it during his fall and the lines of light followed the way the lines cut into the stone of the clearing floor.”

“So?” Sakura asked.

“Naruto, you mentioned Iruka taught you about seals,” Kakashi-nii turned to the blond instead of answering directly, and only continued at the blond’s nod of confirmation. “What are the most common triggers for them?”

Sakura turned to Naruto who tilted his head and chewed his lip like he had in some of the classes when he had been interested in the subject and been thrown a question. Sakura was still a little sceptical that there was a topic that Naruto was more knowledgeable of than her or Sasuke-kun, but as he had mentioned that it was connected to his pranks, she could believe it for now before she saw it.

“Putting chakra in it, hitting it and...umm...blood?” He mumbled, as if he were unsure of the last one.

Kakashi-nii nodded and looked around them, as if trying to make sure they were all following.

“Naruto scraped his hand when he fell over, that was the hand he put down and stuck to the ground as it triggered the seal carved in the stone,” Kakashi explained slowly, as if he was trying to ensure that they were all following. “As you may have noticed by the number of clones he throws everywhere, Naruto has a bit of a chakra problem. As in, he has way too much of it at all times, it leaks out without him meaning it to. The blood and the leaked chakra triggered the seal on the stone. Following?”

Kakashi-nii looked around at them all to ensure they understood what he was saying, but Sakura was blinking at Naruto as she took in that explanation.

“So, Naruto triggered a seal?” She asked.

“But we helped feed it.” Kakashi-nii confirmed. “Chakra exhaustion. All by accident though. From what I understand from some of the conversations I’ve heard it was a bit of an Uzumaki problem.”

“Uzumaki problem?” Sasuke seemed to focus on that part of what had been said, while Kakashi-nii looked distracted by his explanation.

“Umm, it was why they used seals so much they didn’t have to put any thought into giving them the chakra they needed to trigger them. There was a problem of accidentally triggering blood-triggered seals when they were injured though.”

“Just because there was a seal doesn’t prove that we time travelled!” Sakura exclaimed. She was getting frustrated as they seemed to be moving away from the purpose of this discussion again.

Kakashi-nii seemed to shake himself out of his thoughts and look directly at her and asked quietly.

“Sakura, do you know the other title the fourth held?”

“The Yellow Flash.” She answered confidently. She would always be proud of her academy marks, they had gotten her in Sasuke-kun’s genin team, hadn’t they?

“Do you know why?” He asked, looking her in the eye seriously which started to make her feel uncomfortable.

“He was really fast,” she muttered, looking down feeling as if she were speaking on a topic, she shouldn’t with him. “And there was a technique he was famous for. Something about being the only one other than the Second to be able to use it.”

“Hiraishin,” Kakashi-nii said, pulling an odd, three-pronged kunai from his waist pouch. “The Flying Thunder God. A space-time jutsu that included a seal component.”

Kakashi-nii casually tossed that odd kunai to her, which she scrambled to catch.

“The handle.” He told her. He ran a hand deep into russet fur as Hayate seemed to climb further into his lap as Kakashi-nii spoke.

Sakura inspected the section he indicated and recognised some of the swirls on the seal stuck there. They did match some of the patterns in the lines of light she had seen briefly before the darkness.

“This is…?” She gasped and looked up at the man, who was trying to pay as much attention to the wolf on his lap as possible.

“Yes.”

“How did you get it?” Sakura asked excitedly.

“Gift.” Kakshi-nii grunted, reluctantly.

“From who?”

“Minato-sensei.” He seemed to be answering her while his mind was far away from the conversation. But Sakura was more concerned with his answer which caused her to gasp again and lean forward toward him. She recognised that name.

“He was your SENSEI?” She squealed.

“Who?” Naruto asked, looking between the two of them.

“The Fourth.” She answered and only just caught a flinch from their own sensei at her answer, though she was sure she caught a glance from him to the blond before he spoke again.

Her sensei’s sensei was the Fourth Hokage, Sakura did her best to hold in a squeal at the revelation. Why hadn’t he said so before? She could already imagine Ino-pig’s reaction to her finding out!

“Let the others see it.” He ordered her tonelessly.

Sakura was reluctant to let such an artifact of a great ninja go, let alone to throw it like Kakashi-nii had done. But she had a feeling that that was what he wanted her to do with it. So, she softly tossed it to Sasuke-kun.

“Some of the lines in the centre look like some of the grooves in the stone.” Sasuke-kun said after examining the seal on the handle and tossing it on to Naruto.

“I haven’t seen some of these marks in any other seals I’ve seen,” Naruto added during his own examination. “But some of these look close to what you see on storage seals and others on explosive ones, but they are connected different.”

“Sealing is an entire specialty in ninjutsu,” Kakashi-nii nodded as he caught Naruto’s toss of the kunai. “And there are different speciality areas with it. There were many arguments between Minato-sensei and… another seal-master about the placement and use of different elements of the hiraishin, but most time-space seals have similar elements in different combinations.

“So, the seal Naruto activated could have been a time-space seal,” Sakura had calmed herself down from the discovery of their sensei’s sensei while the boys were having their look at the seal and now wanted the next piece of the answer. “How did you get time travel?”

“First, you all heard wolves explain the dangers of time-space seals and Naruto’s explanation of what happens when you use damaged seals,” Kakashi held up one finger as he continued.

Sakura nodded, seeing Sasuke-kun do the same out of the corner of her eye while Naruto scoffed.

“Not doing it again,” The blond said as he lifted up a hand to his eyebrows.

Kakashi-nii nodded at Naruto then held up a second finger.

“Second, given the state of the stone of the clearing and the lack of known seal-masters, that stone was very old, probably used to transport resources quickly and bypass dangerous areas in between destination and source.”

“What do you mean by lack of seal-masters?” Sakura asked, looking over at Naruto who seemed to at least know a little about them from Iruka-sensei.

“When we left for Wave, Konoha only had one on our roster,” Kakashi-nii answered, looking a little annoyed at the interruption. “We have some shinobi who can use them well enough, but he is the only one with the current ability of a master.”

“Oh.”

Kakashi-nii held up a third finger.

“Third, when I woke up after the light, we were in a clearing covered in grass,” Kakashi continued, back on topic. “I then travelled in the direction of Konoha from where we had stopped for the time it should have taken to get back to the village, and instead I found the cliff of Fire Rock we camped in.”

“How are you so sure you went in the right direction?” Sasuke-kun asked.

“I’ve been a Konoha nin for over twenty years,” Kakashi-nii glared at him, dropping the had he had been counting his points out on, as he spoke quietly. “I have made the way back to the village, chakra-exhausted, bleeding out and half-dead, carrying dead and dying teammates without taking a wrong turn. You learn not to when your team’s lives are at stake.”

“The rest of the explanation?” Sakura asked quietly after the long silence that followed those words. She was sure the man wasn’t done yet.

“The cliff was pure Fire Rock,” Kakashi-nii answered matter-of-factly. “I’ve travelled Fire Country and beyond as long as I’ve held my registration and only ever seen one full cliff of the stuff. The closest that comes to it is the Valley of the End and that is still mixed stone cliffs. Also, from the top of the cliff, if you laid a map of the village over the scenery it completely matched, with a few extra trees and a lot less buildings.”

“Oh,” Sakura muttered, putting it all together. It certainly seemed a lot more plausible with all that information, at least enough for her to go along with it until she could find her own proof. “Okay.”

Sakura shared a look with her fellow genin. Naruto nodded as if it made sense to him, though she wasn’t sure how much of the explanation he actually understood. Sasuke-kun seemed like he was accepting of it, but he was also still looking at Kakashi-nii.

“What else?” He grunted at the silver-haired man.

“Hmm?”

“There is some other proof you haven’t mentioned, what else?” Sasuke-kun asked. “Something that is keeping you from questioning your conclusion.”

Hayate yelped from Kakashi-nii’s lap, bringing Sakura’s attention to the tight grip he had in the russet fur as he slowly let go.

The man shut his eyes and took a very obvious deep breath.

“Riku.” He whispered, tilting his head towards the door. “All of them.”

“Huh?” Naruto voiced the confusion the rest of them were feeling. Even Sasuke-kun looked baffled by his answer.

“My father died in the beginning stages of the third war,” Kakashi-nii spoke, slowly meeting each of their eyes in turn. Sakura saw something in that eye that made her breath catch. “Since then, I have been the only living Hatake, anywhere.”

Chapter Text

Sakura found her way back to consciousness to the sound of the now familiar usual bickering between Naruto and Sasuke-kun. Her sleepy sweep of the room as she opened her eyes showed her that she was once again the last to wake up, causing her to wince to herself. Her still half-asleep brain couldn’t figure out what the two boys were arguing over, but she was sure Naruto was the one that had started it as usual. Kakashi-sensei seemed to be ignoring the two of them, which she was just as familiar with at this point unless they started to get on his nerves about something, or he decided it was too dangerous to let them continue. Instead, the jounin was placing even more seal papers around the room.

She sleepily wondered what those papers were for. She didn’t see why they might need more of them than he had already put up the night before, both before the dinner and in the unusual silence that had fallen over them all after the revelations of the night before.

My father died in the beginning stages of the third war. Since then, I have been the only living Hatake, anywhere.

Those last words spoken at the end of the conversation last night rang in her head. It had marked the end of the conversation because no-one had said anything after Kakashi-sensei had said those words. Everything had felt too heavy, and she hadn’t been able to find any words that she could get to come out of her mouth after that. Sakura figured, for once, the boys had felt the same.

She sat up, wiping the sleep from her eyes to allow her to look more clearly at her teammates. She was sure they had had as hard a time in getting to sleep as she had last night. She had certainly heard a lot of restless movement from the direction of the boys' futons that she hadn’t when they were back at the camp, or any of their travels so far. Sure enough, now her brain was more awake, Naruto’s insults were at a much lower volume than he usually used in the arguments he picked with Sasuke-kun and Sasuke-kun was responding mostly in grunts and snarls rather than his usual calm authority. She also swore she saw shadows under both boys’ eyes that she didn’t think were there at dinner the night before.

Not that she could really blame them, if they had lost sleep last night taking in everything that they had been told. It had been one thing to be told that they had time-travelled to before the village existed when it seemed like a ridiculous concept for a training exercise after the simple C-Rank mission had turned into a B-Rank, which had almost been a failure. Now Kakashi-sensei had given a comprehensive and logical explanation to how he came to that conclusion, it was starting to look a lot less like it was a training exercise and was actually something that had happened to them, as ridiculous as it seemed. She was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that something she had thought was just an impossible idea that was used in books and plays, was something that actual masters of a ninjutsu style had not only contemplated but might have actually passed on theories about. Let alone that it could actually be real and she had experienced an event that proved those theories.

That wasn’t even taking into account the sheer number of other pieces of information that had been dropped during the explanation, and there had been a lot.

Their sensei’s sensei was the fourth Hokage. She guessed it did explain the strength he had shown during the mission, but really, he didn’t act like he had such an important person as his teacher. Sakura hadn’t even been sure he was strong enough to be an actual jounin until he had fought Zabuza that first time, and even then, he had fainted of chakra-exhaustion as soon as the fight was over. Jounin were supposed to be the strongest in the village after the Hokage and Kakashi-sensei spent most of his time acting like slacker and a troll, not at all like she always thought an actual jounin would act when the senseis at the academy talked about the shinobi of the rank. How did he manage to get the fourth Hokage as his sensei?

I’ve been a Konoha nin for over twenty years. I have made the way back to the village, chakra-exhausted, bleeding out and half-dead, carrying dead and dying teammates without taking a wrong turn. You learn not to when your team’s lives are at stake.

Sakura shivered at the memory of the man’s growled answer to Sasuke-kun’s insinuation that he had gone the wrong way back to Konoha.

Then she stilled as a fact from that reply stood out at her. Kakashi-sensei had told Tsukiko-sama that he was twenty-six, and he said he had been a Konoha shinobi for over twenty years. Sakura did the math in her head, which just made her even more confused. The academy didn’t allow attempts to graduate until the student was ten. Naruto had tried to take the graduation exam as early as the first year when he heard that was how he would become a shinobi. Iruka-sensei had been adamant that he wasn’t allowed to take the exam before the specified age.

Every time Naruto had tried before he was ten, Iruka-sensei had given his lecture to their class about the regulations around graduations. That they were welcome to try and take the exam as soon as they turned ten, with guardian permission, but they weren’t going to have completed the full academy course until they were twelve. It was why all the clan kids had stayed with their class despite having been old enough to graduate, their families had wanted them to complete the academy course.

Sakura turned to the Hatake, who had finished putting up the seal papers and was pacing the walls of the room.

“How old were you when you made Genin, Sensei?” She asked, figuring she it wouldn’t hurt to ask such a simple question now to stop it bothering her. She had enough questions that would be needed to be answered to clarify everything she was unclear on, that she didn’t even know all points of everything she didn’t know yet.

The man stopped pacing and turned to her, tilting his head.

“Five,” he answered, with a one-eyed blink as if trying to figure out where the question had come from. “And it’s Nii-san, remember.”

Sakura could feel her cheeks start to heat up at the admonition of her slip up, she knew she could do better than that.

“Right,” she ducked her head, to show that she was taking the caution seriously then looking up at the man with her head tilted to the side. “Isn’t that too young, though? Academy doesn’t allow graduates younger than ten.”

“It still happens,” Sasuke-kun grunted. Sakura hadn’t even realised the boys had stopped bickering, she had been so caught up in the swirling thoughts in her head she had easily tuned out the familiar noise.

“War-time allowances are a lot different than peace as far as requirements to graduate, as a matter of Village security,” Kakashi-nii said after a quick look at the Uchiha. “But there are still some exemptions to graduate age approved by the Village council, but the particular graduate has to meet a particular range of standards for it to happen.”

The Hatake seemed to meet Sasuke-kun’s eyes for a long moment before he continued in a quieter tone, with a slight tinge of something Sakura couldn’t quite read clearly.

“Whether those exceptions should have been made or not, it’s not my place to question the council.”

The russet wolf that Sakura hadn’t really been paying attention to as he followed Kakashi-nii’s pacing pushed up against the man’s side in the silence that fell over the room.

Before anyone could say anything more, a knock sounded.

All the occupants in the room turned to stare at the door that still had the seal paper over the seam from the night before. Kaori, who had been the closest to the door, pushed herself up to her paws with a sigh.

“Chie.” She said with a small whine after sticking her muzzle up against the door.

“Who?” Kakashi-nii tilted his head in the direction of the smaller grey wolf.

“Our summoner’s baby sister,” Daisuke pushed himself up from where he had sprawled in the middle of the room to answer for his sister, who kept her nose to the door. “Baa-chan said she’d send her over to help with pinky’s hair last night.”

Sakura suppressed her inner growl at the nickname, almost missing the nod of acknowledgement that Kakashi-nii gave the wolf for the information.

“Guess I should unlock the door then,” he sighed and eye smiled as he walked toward the door, which distracted Sakura enough to remind herself that she had just sat up in her futon and hadn’t made any effort on her appearance and he was about to let in a new person to meet her.

Her eyes opened wide for a split second before she quickly pushed herself up and grabbed her pack, dashing for the privacy screen, stumbling slightly as her foot caught on the bedding. She was always a mess in the morning, and she hadn’t had much choice in the camps to make a proper impression on Riku and Tsukiko-sama. But they had been housed in a decent room for the night and the least she could do was make herself presentable.

She could already hear her mother’s scolding about first impressions being important and would reflect on how strangers would see her and her family.

She took a deep breath to steady herself, the sound of the door sliding open and welcoming yips sounding.

In the silence that followed, she pulled out the flip case mirror her mother had insisted all girls should carry with her to check how much of a mess she was. It was only as she was looking into her reflection that she realised she was still wearing the shirt-dress thing they had created out of Kakashi-nii’s ripped up uniform. She bit her lip; she had been so focused on finally getting answers that she hadn’t even remembered to change into the pyjamas she had in her pack that she had used back at Tsunami-san’s house. Not that those pyjamas had been washed since she last wore them as they were supposed to be heading straight back to Konoha and standard practice was to remain fully dressed in camps when travelling, so she hadn’t seen any reason to impose further on Tsunami-san who was still recovering from the celebrations for her facilities, when her mother would be able to deal with it back at the village.

“Ka-Kaori?” A high-pitched voice stopped Sakura from continuing to spiral in her worry about the lack of remembrance to do something as basic as use the correct clothes in the correct situation.

Sakura looked down and assessed that the dress she was wearing was one she had already worn for two days and was wrinkled beyond acceptable. A quick sniff at the collar also proved that it smelt like stale sweat too.

(There was a rumble from beyond the screen and the high-pitched voice was naming the large grey wolf before there was a thump like someone had dropped something heavy.)

But the only clean outer clothes she had was her red qipao, that she had had the chance to wash back that the cave when they switched clothes. But Kakashi-nii had been adamant that she wasn’t allowed to wear it. She bit her lip and pulled out her wash kit and used a little water they had in a basin behind the screen to dampen a cloth and wiped her face and switched into a clean set of underwear, which she at least had from when they had cleaned their clothes back before they had left the cave.

(There was a hum from Kakashi-nii and padding of paws on the tatami followed by rumbles from the other side of the screen. The boys were being oddly quiet about something.)

She contemplated the two dresses, spread out before her. She really didn’t want to wear the smelly dress she had worn for the last two days.

Grr, it can’t hurt to ask, she finally threw up her hands and stuck her head out from behind the screen, being sure to keep the rest of her mostly naked self behind it.

“Kakashi-nii,” she started before took in the image before her and fell silent.

Sitting in the doorway was a woman surrounded by the two grey wolves Team 7 had been travelling with, somehow forming a messy pile of human and wolf. She was pretty, maybe slightly older than Riku, wearing what Sakura thought was a grey, white and red patterned yukata, and her hair was up in a braided bun the the back of her head, held in place with two silver hair sticks. Sakura could see that there were charms dangling from both but couldn’t see them clearly with the distance of the whole room between them. All she could tell was that the largest charm on one looked squarish and the one on the other looked like it was an irregular shape, like it was the silhouette of something. They were very pretty. Sakura had always loved to use the special hair sticks her mother had bought for her to use only on special occasions.

“Sakura?” Kakashi-nii asked, as if he had already attempted to get her attention and prompt her to continue whatever she had called him for. Sakura shook her head with a slight blush, realising she had been staring at the woman.

“Umm, can I wear my qipao?” She asked, being sure to look away from the woman and the wolves and at the man. “I don’t have anything else clean.”

Kakashi-nii tilted his head to the side.

“We aren’t really leaving the compound today, right?” Sakura pushed, his pause giving her hope. She really didn’t want to put the dirty dress back on.

“I guess,” he answered slowly. Then suddenly pointed toward Naruto. “Not unless you have another shirt to wear with the eyesore.”

Sakura quickly ducked back behind the screen with a grin before the jounin changed his mind.

Hya, she fist-pumped quickly before drawing on the clean qipao.

“Chie-nee?” Riku’s questioning voice flowed through the door as Sakura came out from behind the screen, fully dressed, weapon pouches in place and running her brush through her hair.

“Riku,” the woman still buried under grey wolves answered him back with a bright smile, even though Sakura could now see the glint of the sun off tears on her face. “It’s Daisuke and Kaori.”

Riku came into view carrying large, layered food carrying baskets in both hands and looked down at the pile blocking most of the doorway.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Kakashi-nii accidentally summoned them, they’ve been helping him with the cubs. Didn’t Baa-san warn you when she asked you to help them out?”

“Yeah, but…” The woman nodded slightly, lifting a hand to dash at her eyes.

Riku grimaced, bit his lip and stepped past her into the room.

“I meant to be here early,” he directed at Kakashi with a slight tilt of his head. “But Tou-san insisted I bring you all breakfast.”

“Boys,” Kakashi-nii called as he nodded to the younger Hatake. He reached to grab one of the baskets with one hand and gestured to a low square table set near the wall of the room. “Bring that over here.”

With surprising lack of snarking both boys rushed to do as they were told, probably eager to eat. When the table was placed in the indicated clear space, Sakura set her brush down on the surface and helped both Hatake’s set out the dishes from the baskets in the centre of the table.

“Have you eaten, Chie-chan?” Kakashi-nii asked the Hatake woman at the door as Riku passed out the bowls and utensils from the last layer of the basket.

“A little,” she answered softly, finally removing herself from the wolf pile and entering the room. “But no-one in the family turns down Jiro-oji’s cooking when they can get it.”

Riku huffed a laugh and laid out a last place for the woman as Kakashi-nii started reaching for team 7’s bowls, filling them from the bucket of rice that he had unearthed from one of the layers and set in front of himself.

“Sorry about that,” the woman tilted her head toward the door where the two wolves had also stood up and began to gravitate over to the table. Daisuke plonked himself behind Naruto, who had taken the seat beside Riku, Kaori settling herself beside the woman and Hayate having placed himself close to Kakashi-nii as the wolf that hadn’t been known to the woman.

(Sakura held in her inner squeal when Sasuke-kun chose to sit between her and Kakashi-nii, ignoring the fact that Naruto was on her other side.)

“I’m Chie, Daisuke and Kaori were my older sister’s summons.”

Kakashi-nii waved a hand lazily as he handed Sakura her over full rice bowl and pushed the rice bucket toward the other two Hatakes, indicating to them to start serving themselves.

“Kakashi, Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto,” he responded, pointing to each of the three of them in turn as he gave their names. Chie nodded elegantly to each of them as they were introduced, causing the charms on her hair sticks to tinkle slightly with the movement. Sakura could now see the main charms clearly, the square held the crosshatch pattern that she had seen all the Hatakes she had met so far wearing, the one that Kakashi-nii had sown over the spiral on the back of his flack-jacket. The other was a silhouette as she had thought, it was the shape of the head of a howling wolf delicately engraved.

“Sakura,” Kakashi-nii growled warningly, causing Sakura to snap back from her staring at the pretty hair ornaments. She looked to the jounin to see what she might have done, but he was glaring at her untouched bowl of rice. “Eat.”

Riku frowned at her from his place and placed one of dishes of mixed vegetables and meat that had been closer to him pointedly in front of her.

Sakura blushed a bit when she noticed that Chie seemed to be paying attention to this interaction.

“Baa-san said something about sending you to help with Sakura’s hair,” Kakashi-nii directed at Chie after he had watched her pick a range of food from the dishes before her into her bowl.

The woman hummed as she looked at Sakura, who blushed again at the attention.

“It’s such a pretty colour,” she said with a gentle smile. “It would be a shame to have to cut it to keep it from getting in the way. I think I can show her some ways to keep it out of the way. If you’re alright with me playing with it?”

She directed the last question at Sakura.

Sakura looked at the way Chie’s hair was arranged and thought she wouldn’t mind having something like that, she secretly wished she was pretty enough to pull it off. But Chie said she could show her a few ways to put it up, so maybe one of them would suit her, and she had said she didn’t want to cut it, which Sakura thought might be something Kakashi-nii had been implying she do every time her hair was brought up. So, if she could find some way to avoid that she would be happy.

Maybe she will give me a chance to admire her hair sticks, or even let her touch them, Sakura thought as she snuck another look at the delicate silver accessories. If I’m really lucky she might even tell me where I can get some like it.

Sakura gave the woman a small smile and nod in reply to her question. She had loved it when her mother had played with her hair, when she wasn’t being rough in getting it in a particular style that she felt was needed for an event they were going to.

“We need some more clothes as well,” Kakashi-nii continued, looking at Riku this time. “We are down to pretty much one set for everyone but Sakura. So, if you can point us in the right direction to getting some spares, we’d appreciate it.”

“Our bedrolls need washing too,” Sakura piped up, remembering the fact that they hadn't had the chance to clean them back at the caves either.

Riku turned to Chie for a moment, before turning back to Kakashi-nii.

“Well, I did offer to take you to show you around today,” he said slowly. “Maybe, I could show you around and you can leave the cubs with Chie-nee.”

Sakura swore she missed something after Riku finished this sentence because his eyes widened slightly, and he continued as if he was tripping over his words to get them out fast enough.

“I mean, you leave Daisuke and Kaori with them, and you take Hayate with us. You said the cubs need some more rest after the last leg and Chie-nee can help watch them, help with Sakura’s hair and maybe give them a good overview of things here in Fire Country, she’s much more on top of those things than I am.”

Riku stopped for a moment, eyes still on Kakashi-nii as if waiting for his answer to the suggestion. When the jounin nodded slightly, the younger man turned to Chie, who had her eyes politely diverted from them all as she ate gracefully.

“I don’t know what you were told about this lot, but Kakashi-nii and the cubs are still new to Fire Country.”

“I wasn’t told all that much, honestly,” Chie answered him with a slight smile, looking over the whole of team seven curiously. “Just that you had managed to find one of our cousins and that he needed a little help with hair styling. But I had a day off anyway, so I don’t mind helping out with the cubs.”

Riku cleared his throat and leaned closer to the woman. Sakura caught the hushed phrases of “pack left” and “alone with the cubs” in the rushed whisper that Riku spoke, but Sakura was paying more attention to the way Chie’s eyes seemed to go wide and then turn sad and respectful towards Kakashi-nii than exactly what Riku was saying.

Kakashi-nii for his part seemed to be ignoring the conversation. Sakura was sure he could hear it, given how close he was to them and her assumptions on the Hatake’s range of senses. But he just started to clear up the empty dishes and pushing those that still contained food towards Naruto and Sakura. Sakura grimaced but resigned herself to eating more than she really thought she should to keep from being force fed, she really didn’t get why everyone was so pushy in getting her to eat.

“I can take them to find some spare clothes and to do some washing while Riku gives you a tour of the compound, Kakashi-nii,” Chie spoke softly after the last of the dishes had been emptied, which had been enough time for Riku to finish his explanation to her. Her gentle smile seemed to encompass everyone in the room as she continued. “I don’t mind watching them, and I wouldn’t mind spending some time with Daisuke and Kaori either.”

“If you really have nothing else you needed to do today,” Kakashi-nii responded after a long pause where he seemed to have a staring contest with the big grey wolf behind Naruto. “They are still recovering from chakra-exhaustion, and the long journey probably didn’t do them any favours.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she answered with a nod.

“You sure she can handle them?” Kakashi-nii directed his question at Riku with a casual tilt of his head.

“They aren’t that bad, Kakashi-nii,” Riku sighed, while Sakura glared at her jounin sensei, silently agreeing with the younger Hatake.

“Sakura isn’t stuck in bed anymore, and they aren’t as exhausted as they were,” Kakashi-nii shot back.

“Hey,” Sakura piped up, then glared at Naruto who had echoed her.

“They are a handful,” Kakashi-nii continued as if he hadn’t heard them, this time directing his words towards Chie. “They will end up fighting, whatever you do.”

“That’s fine,” Chie answered, with a sweet giggle. “I’m sure Daisuke and Kaori will help, and if it gets too out of hand, I’ll call in a hand from a packmate. We know how to deal with a couple of unruly cubs around here.”

Sakura turned to the woman in shock at her words. They really weren’t that bad, really.

“We’ll see,” Kakashi-nii answered her with a look at the three genin as if he really didn’t believe she could handle them.

“I was told our compound is larger than many of the other clans here in Fire Country,” Riku told Kakashi, after an hour of walking them both around the centre of the compound as they passed another cluster of houses. He was finally taking the two of them deeper into the compound away from the central headquarters of various aspects of the clan he had shown Kakashi, working outwards from the Clan Head’s residence they had been settled into. They had occasionally stopped in their tour to introduce Kakashi to various Hatakes that came up to introduce themselves to the unfamiliar face with Riku. Hayate occasionally ranged from Kakashi’s side to sniff at something that caught his interest before circling back to the same position. Now a lot of small clusters of houses, with what was set out with small food producing gardens and fields separating them and different storage buildings sprinkled between.

“At least as far as ground within the compound walls,” Riku continued as they walked. “Kaa-san says that there is enough shelter to hold all the members of the clan if they need it. Even the ones that generally stick out in their own packs and only really contact the clan for supplies and missions. But a lot of the houses here are empty, and people who live here in the compound will just kind of move into one if they feel like they need some space from their family. The whole clan living on top of each other isn’t good for anyone.”

Kakashi hummed in acknowledgement that he was listening, from what he had seen so far, the compound seemed like it was the same size as the Konoha, with everything they needed within the walls. It was both a convenience and a safety precaution, as it would allow them to survive if enemies tried to lay siege. His eye caught on a group of brunette figures in the centre of one of the fields they were walking past, not the usual Hatake silvery grey or white.

“Most of the houses in the centre either go to families with cubs, or the civilians that decided to come live with us,” Riku continued as he noticed the direction of Kakashi’s gaze. “Most of them are either married in like Tou-san, or family of those that did. But we occasionally get some that come who heard that we let civilians live and work in the compound and come for the safety. Rare, but if they can live with us and pull their weight with the fields, Baa-san lets them stay.”

“Really?” Kakashi asked. He was used to the idea of shinobi living beside civilians, but he hadn’t thought it would be something that happened before the Villages. With all the clans focused on fighting each other rather then focusing on other economies.

“They usually end up married in within a few generations,” Riku barked a laugh. “It lets most of the trained shinobi to deal with security and missions to bring in money, and we usually get a decent harvest with the fields seen to regularly.”

Kakashi hummed, it did seem that both sides come out on top. Work was allocated to those that it was best suited for, and the clan was well supplied without having to haggle with outsiders who may not be happy to trade with shinobi. Kakashi was familiar with civilian prejudice against shinobi from his time, he figured that it would probably even worse with various clans were actively trying to kill each other within the country and not bothered about the collateral damage. But he guessed the prospect of protection within the clan compound walls and not having to worry all their work in the fields were going to be destroyed by a random shinobi battle would be a powerful lure.

“Anyway, the houses closer to the walls are mostly for shinobi,” Riku continued as they kept walking. “They are responsible for helping with the protection the wall, but the space for their summons to run and easy access to the training grounds are usually enough of a trade-off. At least if the freedom from having someone randomly dropping a bunch of cubs to watch on them isn’t enough.”

They continued to walk for a few minutes more past some more of the crop fields towards a ring of trees left as windbreaks, until Kakashi started to make out the telltale sound of fighting, metal-on-metal and flesh-against-flesh accompanied by growls and snarls.

“And that?” Kakashi asked, tilting his head in that direction.

“The first lot of training grounds,” Riku said looking ahead. “We have a few, different sizes, different levels of privacy. Some even have allow for free for all, allowing anyone who comes along to join in the spar.”

Kakashi stopped walking and raised his visible eyebrow toward the younger man. He could already imagine the absolute chaos that last idea would have been in Konoha, it had often been crazy enough when you were sparring with an organised training group.

“Yeah, it can get crazy,” Riku answered with a laugh. “Not always great for the ego, but Baa-san encourages it. You can never assume the enemy is going to be at a level that you expect out there. Of course, cubs aren’t allowed near those grounds, and tend to get the worst punishments if they are found near them.”

“That is true,” Kakashi conceded. But I foresee a lot of unnecessary injuries and ridiculous match-ups.

“This one is one of the larger cleared grounds, it’s mostly used for ninjutsu training,” Riku explained as they continued forward. “But it is also used to train for combat in cleared land.”

Kakashi kept his mouth shut on his thoughts as they finally walked past the trees blocking the view of the training ground that the sparring nin.

“Ahh, it’s Nobu and Yuma-nii.” Riku said, stopping to watch and identify the two sparring before them.

Kakashi assessed the combatants himself, noticing that they both seemed to be sticking to taijutsu with weapons, mostly kunai and shuriken from what he could see flying through the air between them and the slight glint from clenched fists. Both were wearing the same grey and white clothing that he had become accustomed to with the Hatakes, one with half sleeves on their shirt and the other with no sleeves and a tanto strapped to his back.

The one with half sleeves had his Hatake grey hair help in a short tail. The other had his cut close to his skull, but for a section around one ear which was held in a thin braid close to his skull and hung long to his shoulder.

“Who are they?” Kakashi asked casually, noting that one with the tanto was obviously the superior of the two in taijutsu. Jounin level, could probably be a decent sparring partner for when he had time to condition himself again after he started getting the cubs up to scratch. In comparison, the other was possibly mid-to-high chunin.

“The one with the tanto is Yuma-nii,” Riku answered. “He’s from one of the branch families, but he grew up with Nanami-nee. When missions came up that she needed a team for, they usually got sent out together.”

“Ahh,” Kakashi acknowledged the information, scanning the man again with this new information. A teammate (packmate, a section of his mind insisted) of the late summoner of Daisuke and Kaori, his respect for the woman was growing with each new piece of information that he was given.

To have a teammate that good, with both of them having survived as long as she had (and all reactions to the wolves indicated that the loss was still recent), in this battlefield of a time. This Nanami must have been a truly impressive kunoichi, because Tsukiko-baa didn’t seem like the type of fool to team the shinobi he was watching to a lower-level shinobi for milk runs when there was more useful places he could be.

“The other one is Nobu,” Riku continued with a vicious shake of his head, as if to shake away bad thoughts. “You know the older brother Susumu talked about at the gate yesterday.”

“The one that grabbed the wrong weapon pouch because he was hungover?” Kakashi asked after a pause to try and place the name.

“That’s him,” Riku snorted, amusement shining on his face.

He paused as they watched the spar for a bit longer, only to snort again when shortly after Yuma seemed to have had enough playing and easily pinned Nobu under him with a blade to his throat.

“Is this Yuma going to have a similar reaction to Chie to Daiske and Kaori?” Kakashi leaned closer to ask Riku as the two negotiated the end of the spar and picked themselves up. The young woman’s obvious grief brought about by seeing the two summons had been uncomfortable and obvious enough that even his two boys, with their very questionable social skills, had silenced themselves and attempted to allowed the girl some privacy.

“Probably not as dramatic,” Riku answered. “Chie-nee is very open with most of her emotions. Yuma-nii is...more reserved.”

Veteran. The careful way the boy phrased the last section gave Kakashi all the information he needed to put together the facts about the other man.

“Yuma-nii!” Riku waved his hand above his head and yelled out the greeting to the man as the two former combatants seemed to notice their audience. Kakashi winced at the volume and rubbed the ear closest to the boy pointedly.

The named man raised a hand in greeting and started to make his way towards them with Nobu following along. As they made their way over Kakashi used the clearer view of the men to take in more detail. Yuma was tall and broader than most of the Hatake men he had seen so far, thick muscles in his arms. He was built more for strength than the lean muscles built for speed that Kakashi shared with many of his clanmates, including Nobu, who was also much shorter, and probably closer in age to Chie than his recent sparring partner as well.

Kakashi decided to let the two greet each other without him looming over the boy and knelt to scratch at Hayate’s ears as the wolf returned from another of his short explorative ventures from his side. The action having the dual purpose of making himself less of a perceivable threat and a chance to observe the new Hatakes without being as noticeable.

“Riku,” Yuma acknowledged with a nod when he came close enough to communicate at an acceptable volume. “I heard you had finally made your way home. I’ve been waiting for your mum to call me in to help with the search.”

“Really? You too?” Riku groaned. “I’m not a cub.”

“You’ll always be a cub to those that taught you to throw your first shuriken, Riku.” Yuma rumbled, his deep voice amused at the reaction the boy had given him. Nobu seemed to be chuckling at the interaction behind the older man. Kakashi managed to stifle his own amusement, only sharing a glance with the wolf he was pretending had all his attention.

“I sent word as soon as I knew I was going to be delayed,” Riku huffed, then pointed at Kakashi as he continued. “And it wasn’t like I was all on my own at that point anyway.”

“Yo,” Kakashi lifted one hand to the two who finally seemed to turn their attention toward him. He gave Hayate one last ear scratch and pushed himself slowly up to his usual lazy slouch, giving the two time to do their own assessing sweeps of him.

“You the one Susumu said came in with Riku and Tsukiko-sama yesterday? The one with the weird cubs?” Nobu spoke up for the first time, assessing gaze still rather obviously sweeping over Kakashi with a tinge of curiosity.

“Yep,” Kakashi made sure to pop the p in his answer as he stuck his hands in his pockets.

“You got cubs?” Yuma asked. Kakashi wouldn’t even have noticed his assessment of him if he didn’t know the tells of an experienced shinobi for such things.

Definitely mid-to-high jounin.

“Three.” Kakashi answered jovially, only allowing a small tell that he may not be happy to be talking about them with someone that he didn’t know to show, as a test.

The other man immediately switched his own body language to non-aggressive and switched the topic.

“So, you were with this runt when he was running late?”

“Part of the reason he was late too,” Kakashi answered casually, with an insincere shrug. “Sorry.”

“Yuma-nii, Nobu,” Riku broke the silence that followed Kakashi’s words as the two new Hatakes blinked at him. “Kakashi-nii just came to Fire Country from out near Whirlpool.”

“One of your cousins, right?” Nobu asked.

“Haru-oji’s,” Riku answered easily after so many similar introductions that morning to other Hatakes.

“What brings you back to the clan?” Nobu asked Kakashi, causing Riku to freeze and stare at him with wide eyes, which in turn seemed to get Yuma’s attention. Hayate pushed up harder against Kakashi’s leg.

That boy is wasted as just a messenger if this was a sample of his ability to keep a cover, the thought flashing though the back of Kakashi’s mind again after watching Riku similar tells through every introduction he had made for Kakashi so far. Giving the impressions expected for what they had set up in their cover story perfectly.

“Had some trouble and needed a safe place for the cubs for a bit.” Kakashi answered flatly, which seemed to finally cause Nobu to look around at all the other Hatakes and seemed to figure out something wasn’t quite right.

“Wanna spar?” Yuma asked, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen after Kakashi's last words and tilting his head to the training ground behind him.

“Maybe next time,” Kakashi answered. “I don’t think the cubs would appreciate me showing up scratched up so soon after last time.”

The other Hatakes all froze after his words which caused Kakashi to chuckle slightly in amusement.

“Besides, Riku is supposed to be showing me around,” Kakashi gave them an eye-smile as he continued. “And we really should finish that and get back before the cubs destroy something, especially if that something is poor Chie’s sanity.”

Two sets of eyes widened at his words.

“They really aren’t that bad, Kakashi-nii,” Riku tried to protest for them after a beat to process what he had said.

“Who knows them better,” Kakashi shot back. “You, who had the luck of being asked to babysit when they were exhausted, or me, who has been stuck with them alone for a lot longer?”

“Fine,” Riku sighed, with a slight wave to the other two Hatake. “We should get going then.”

After a quick exchange of parting words both parties started off in different directions. They got a few yards away before Kakashi had a thought that made the corner of his mouth tug up under his mask.

“Hey, Yuma.” He stopped in his tracks and turned to call to the other man.

“Yeah?” Yuma replied, stopping and looking back over his shoulder at the call.

“You trained Riku, yeah?”

The other man gave a nod of acknowledgement in answer, confusion starting to creep over his features.

“When you have time, come find me, we’re staying with Baa-san at the moment. If I have time, I might take you up on that spar.” Kakashi started eye-smiling, anticipating the reaction he was going to get as he continued. “Even if I don’t, I might just tell you how Riku managed to gift wrap himself for us.”

“Hey!”

Ah, the sweet sounds of a trolling done well.

Chapter Text

Chie ran her fingers through the soft pink hair of the girl sitting before her, focusing on thinking about which styles would serve best for the girl. The task was an easy way to bring herself into the moment and away from the emotional upheaval that had been triggered by her sister’s summons. She could set aside for when she had time for herself later, rather than when she was in charge of these three odd cubs of the just as odd newly found cousin.

(She didn’t often lose her composure like that. The shock of seeing Kaori again, having just come to terms with the fact that she might only see the familiar wolf again if she happened to be in particular trouble (dying) and tried to summon. She hadn’t quite been able to stop herself from searching the room for any sign of her sister, despite knowing she would never see her again.)

There was no denying that she had noticed that this group was odd. The hushed explanation that Riku had given her wasn’t quite able to explain everything about them. The way that Kakashi-nii hadn’t reacted to said explanation despite knowing he could hear it all, the fact that Grandmother hadn’t given her a rundown before sending her to them. The odd little ticks in their behaviour that they weren’t even trying to hide that she couldn’t figure out what they mean despite her own training and specialty.

Not that it mattered. Grandmother had brought them here, whatever she was planning and had claimed them as family, as pack, so Chie would do treat them as she should pack.

She shot a glance at where Daisuke sprawled, big body half resting against the closed door of the room, fondly watching the boys clean up the table. At Kaori, with her head settled on the girl’s thigh.

Chie reached forward to run a gentle hand through the grey fur in reach, a soft smile pulling at her lips.

No, it didn’t matter what their story was. Pack was Pack.

“What styles do you usually do?” Chie asked the girl before her.

Sakura, her name was Sakura, such a beautiful name to go with such pretty hair. Chie wondered where her shinobi talents lay, taking in the way her posture would be considered perfect for a high-class merchant’s daughter and the care shown in the condition of her hair.

“I usually just leave it out,” Sakura answered shyly. A quiet moment passed before she suddenly sat up even straighter and rushed to continue. “I brush it out properly and everything, but I haven’t been able to wash it properly for a bit with everything, so it's pretty bad at the moment…”

“It’s fine, Sakura-chan,” Chie cut in gently, sensing the girl was working herself up over something that she didn’t understand, mentally noting the reaction to a list of things about the girl. “I wish half the people I knew cared for their hair half as well, it would make playing with it so much more fun.”

Not many Hatakes cared for trying to play civilised, and even less for infiltration work that Chie so enjoyed, but she still wished that more would understand that just because they enjoyed the wild didn’t mean they couldn’t like playing with how their hair appears.

“I can braid it and do a decent ponytail,” Sakura continued after a short silence as she calmed down. “I’ve had other styles, but they were done for me.”

Chie hummed as she thought about what would work with what the girl was able to do.

“I don’t want to cut it,” Sakura whispered, sounding miserable. Chie only just caught the words beneath the two boys sniping at each other behind them.

“You won't have to,” Chie whispered back to her. “What makes you think you would?”

“Everyone keeps saying I need to fix my hair.”

“Having long hair loose can be dangerous in the field,” Chie told her. She was starting to struggle to understand why Sakura was having such a hard time understanding this simple fact of potential danger when from what she understood so far, these cubs were far from the sheltered Hatake cubs of the same age who had only lived in the compound.

The thought of these cubs in danger, having to fight to survive, possibly having lost pack members their own age made Chie nauseous. They were just cubs, how much of the monsters of their world had they been witness to?

Chie grit her teeth and continued, trying to keep her voice even.

“It can be grabbed, and the enemy can use it to help to hurt you, they are just worried.”

“But…”

“We just need to find a hairstyle that keeps it from getting you in trouble in a fight,” Chie said, moving on before the girl could get too caught up in the thought, gently tapping on the metal plate of the hitai-ate she had noticed all four members of this little pack wore, not wanting to accidently bring up bad memories if it was what she suspected it was. “Do you want to use this as part of that hairstyle?”

“Yes,” Sakura answered easily, causing Chie to breathe and internal sigh of relief for not upsetting the cub. The girl seemed to hesitate for a moment before continuing quietly. “And the bangs.”

Chie moved to get a better view of said section of hair, assessing what she was working with.

“I might have to trim them down a bit, to make it work better, make sure they aren’t going to get in your eyes or block your vision.” She said carefully.

Sakura lifted her hand to touch said bangs, what Chie could see of her face as she moved to settle behind the girl again twisted, as if coming to a hard decision.

“None of the rest of it needs to be cut.” Chie told her as she reached to untie the hitai-ate.

“Okay,” the girl answered quietly.

“Good, we’ll keep it simple for now,” Chie started, pulling out a couple of plain senbon from the holder up her sleeve. “We’ll use these to hold the style for now and I can help teach you a couple of different styles you can use to keep your hair out of the way later.

When we are not going to get interrupted by your packmates.”

Chie raised her voice to get the boys’ attention as their sniping had turned to bickering and had reached a level that even without turning around, she could tell it was about to turn physical.

“Boys, if you're done with that, do you want to tell me how much you know about Fire Country so I can help with this overview my dear cousin told me you need.”

The boys came around to sit in front of her, seeming to exchange wary glances between themselves that Chie pretended not to see as she reached for the girl’s brush and started to run it through the hair in front of her.

“Not much,” Sakura started carefully, as if she wasn’t sure how much she was allowed to say. Understandable enough if they weren’t yet ready to trust a clan, they hadn’t really had contact with much outside of a few individuals, or even just someone they had met less than an hour ago. “We stayed around the Uzu area.”

“Yeah,” Naruto piped up. “We just know that there a lot of different clans here and stuff.”

“Shut up, Idiot,” Sasuke grunted, visibly refraining from hitting the blond.

“Kakashi-nii didn’t really want to bring us here,” Sakura continued after a short moment where she was probably glaring at the blond herself from the way her head moved. She was still cautious in her word choice, as if she were weighing up her words before she said them. “Something about it not being particularly safe, but not really having a choice after…”

The way the girl trailed off after that and the way it linked back to the information Riku had whispered to her at breakfast made Chie flinch in a way that she couldn’t suppress.

Chie muttered a quiet apology to the girl for the way her instinctual reaction must have pulled her hair, taking a moment to separate out her bangs from the rest of her hair as she let them all settle from the reminder of their loss, and to pull herself together. Chie can’t imagine losing a large group from her immediate pack at the same time. The loss of just her sister was still an open wound and that was months ago now, she wondered how long ago it was for them. It couldn’t have been that long, despite the cubs seeming to take it all well. Had it even hit them what they had lost yet?

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. She didn’t want to bring up memories of what happened for them, but she had allowed herself to be nominated to ensure the cubs were educated in this, so she needed to know what they had a handle on.

“Anything else?”

“Just that some of the clans are at war with each other, even when not competing for contracts and stuff.” Sakura answered for them again.

“The hunts.” Sasuke grunted quietly, looking away from them.

Chie grimaced as she slacked her hold on the girl's hair when both the boy’s packmates jerked to look directly at the boy.

“Hunts? What hunts?” Naruto asked, obviously confused as he looked between them all.

“The Senju and the Uchiha,” Chie said gently, trying to get all their attention back on her. She could understand why the darker haired boy might have been warned specifically about this particular danger, given the boys very obvious tells as to his heritage. The other two needed to be warned too, if they were to leave the compound with him. “They have been at war for so long no-one remembers what they started over. But they tend target younger members of each other’s groups before going after the older, more experienced combatants.”

Chie grit her teeth, she hated the mere thought of these tactics, she didn’t know how her aunt had married into such a clan, just for that, but it got worse.

“They also hunt down any children that they happen to find on the opposing side and kill them.”

Sasuke glared at the woman that had been with them all morning as he followed along behind her as she led them to where she had told them they could wash their clothes and their bedrolls. She had been informative and helpful in showing them where they could get the things they were running low on and other things they needed that they had not thought to bring with them for their mission. But she was irritatingly bossy, treating him as if he was a child, as he wasn’t a capable shinobi that had taken part in a A-ranked mission so soon out of the academy, that he hadn’t lived alone for the past six years looking after himself just fine.

(He wouldn’t admit that the fact that she did the same to the other two added to his frustration at the way she acted. Sasuke didn’t know how capable of living alone Sakura may be.

(“He just doesn’t have parents to teach him right.”)

(Probably not much)

But he knew the Idiot was just as capable at most skills at survival in the village without adult supervision.)

Sasuke had managed to bite his tongue every time the woman had mentioned the Uchiha had taken part in the hunts, not just the Senju, like the stories his aunts and uncles had used to warn him to be good (back when they were still around to give the warnings). He had wanted to defend his clan, that they would never be so cruel as to hunt down untrained children, but he held his silence.

(He refused to think about the mentions of the celebrations of the death of one of the Senju clan head’s children in one of the history scrolls he had found hidden behind one of the shelves in the clan archives. He refused to think about how they spoke of how many Uchiha were listed in the informal report of the actions they were celebrating.)

He thought he did well in keeping to the story they were meant to here. Not that he really believed that they time travelled, it was a ridiculous story for a training exercise, but he knew he could have an easy cover if the woman questioned his knowledge of the hunts that seemed to surprise his teammates.

(“Since then, I have been the only living Hatake, anywhere.” The way Kakashi-sensei had said those words had pulled at something in Sasuke’s chest, as if his instincts could trust what the man said, by the way he said it that he knew what it was to lose a clan, a connection to their history, to their biological history.)

Sasuke will admit that some of the rest of what she spoke about after explaining the hunts had been informative, though some of it he remembered hearing from Riku back at the cave-camp they had settled in. As she spoke, he came to realise that the history of the time that they were saying they were in, was not really covered in the academy. He had some knowledge of the time from his random choice of history scrolls from the clan archives (only read when he felt the most lonely in an empty compound, when he most missed the connection of stories of their clan’s triumphs), but outside a short unit on the friendship of Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama that lead to the founding of Konoha amidst the chaos of the warring clans, very little was mentioned about the time before the village in the academy.

(Sasuke remembered the frowns on the other clan kid’s faces he briefly noticed through a break in the dark clouds that surrounded his thoughts at the mention of his ancestor in class, the way he was acknowledged in such a clear way in class. He remembered noticing that the frowns appeared when it became clear that the only clans acknowledged in the creation of the village would be the Uchiha and the Senju. He remembered the brief moment of thought that he had when he thought about how he would feel if the Uchiha were not mentioned at all.)

At least she had given them some time to think and try and place as much of the new information with what they had known while she finished messing around with Sakura’s hair.

Of course, there had also been the information that Kakashi-sensei had dropped during his own explanation the previous evening to take in and digest as well. His explanation of time travel could be a logical conclusion to their experience did have some merit and made him think about it as more than a random story made up to try and get them to go along with the flow and training exercise he seemed to have devised (possibly to train them in being able to adapt to unexpected circumstances).

Sasuke will never admit that learning that he was put on a team led by a student of the fourth Hokage had soothed the last of the sting that he had felt when he had met the man and he seemed so much like an idiot. Much of the sting had gone out of it after the first fight with Zabuza back in Wave, when the Mist nin had mentioned that the jounin was well known and feared enough to have a bingo book entry, and then the fact that he had a Sharingan, it really started to make sense.

(“Last request”)

(“Your mother helped.”)

The anbu tattoo that was now visible on his shoulder certainly explains why none of them had heard about him before he was made their sensei though.

(Sasuke refused to remember why he knew what that tattoo was, where he had seen the only other such tattoo he had seen before.)

Sasuke refused to think about the other things that had been brought up in the same explanation, and what they could mean though.

(“Since then, I have been the only living Hatake, anywhere.”)

(“I’ve heard it was a bit of an Uzumaki problem.” As if the Idiot was a part of a clan he had never heard of before.)

(“Uzumaki red,” his mother said with a sad smile as she passed him a deep red crayon…

His mother crying, holding a photo frame. The hasty way she put it back in the locked box in her room when she realised he was at the door…

A photo of his mother younger and laughing with her arm around a woman with deep red hair, in that same frame, found when missing his mother had become a hole he wanted something to hold to try and fill.)

It didn’t mean anything to him.

(He lied. He wasn’t the only one that was the last of a clan, it meant something to him.)

Eventually the woman had finished putting Sakura’s hair into some unnecessarily complicated bun and taken them to find new clothes they could change into, like she had promised Kakashi-sensei.

The old Hatake man they had met at dinner the night before, who had been in charge of the clan stores of stuff had at least been able to find them clothes that weren’t in the grey and red that Sasuke had noticed most of the Hatakes they passed on the way to the storehouse were wearing. Sakura didn’t seem to mind, or just didn’t notice that these appeared to be the Hatake colours, and the woman with them seemed to make it her mission to wrap all three of them in them. Naruto, at least, seemed to be as wary of them as Sasuke was, though not in the same way that made Sasuke eye the crosshatched design present on most of the clothes that were pushed at them.

They also had dark blues, browns and blacks in sizes that would suit them, particularly as many of them were more traditional, like the many yukata that had piled up in front of them to see, and so could be manipulated for a better fit.

(Sasuke remembered the explanation for clan stores of clothes from when he had asked his mother when she had taken him with her as she checked on the Uchiha one. Easier to keep around for a large clan where anyone may need to grab new clothes from the clan store to fit rather than the specific sizes from the stores back in the village that were meant to be sold to a single person.)

Proper nin-mesh undershirts had been a bit harder to find in their sizes, but the old man had been easily convinced to take their measurements from Sakura to pass on to the clan members that made such things for them. (The woman with them had scowled through that conversation but even Sakura had been in agreement with them that they should be wearing them, so she couldn’t seem to object with their decision.)

(Sasuke pretended not to notice the way the old man had pointed to the Idiot and himself when the woman had gone up to the man while the genin were selecting clothes. Probably pointing out what they were already wearing.)

Naruto had complained about the colours, but a few nudges from the wolves they had with them and a rather loud whack to the back of his head from Sakura had kept him from being too annoying about it, even as he joined Sasuke in collecting a range of clothing in mostly navy and black, with a few of the browns that looked close to the shades common in Konoha, that were without the probable clan design.

(Not that Sasuke would be wearing them as they were. He would be asking Sakura for the use of her embroidery kit when they were alone. He may have to deal with everything for this cover, but he would not be wearing anything without his clan design on it. He would not.)

The female Hatake had been really pushy about him changing into one of the new sets of clothes, like the other two. The Idiot had started up about how hungry he was and wanting to get the washing done so they could have a big lunch after, and Sakura starting one of her rants at the Idiot, was the only thing that had kept Sasuke growling at the woman as he grabbed his bedroll and started out of the room.

(Sasuke would say that he was just trying to be efficient in grabbing the blond’s bedroll along with his own when he collected the dirty clothes other than what he was wearing. They had ended up closer to each other when they were tidying up earlier after all, despite the other boy’s backpack being further away. It had nothing to do with the way the blond had seemed to be reluctant to change into the new set of clothes they had collected. Nothing to do with the way the blond seemed to be rubbing at the hem of the undershirt he had removed when he changed and the flash of blue eyes at him as the other boy opened his mouth.)

“Here we are,” The woman said as she led them out into a clearing near the river, as if it wasn’t obvious that it was where they had been aiming for with the group of people standing or kneeling near the shore of the river and cloth hanging from ropes tied to trees and stakes in the ground.

Sasuke eyed the large devices that were set out on the shore that many of the gathered adults and teens were using as children of different ages ran between them and played in the water as the adults worked. The small piles of buckets and other smaller devices were more familiar than whatever the Hatakes where mainly using, so he made a beeline toward those. None of this was how he was used to doing his washing back at the village, but he had done something similar a couple of times before, including back at the cave camp where he and the Idiot had had to correct Sakura a couple of times, so he could manage.

“Do you need any help getting anything washed?” The woman with them asked as Sasuke dumped the cloth he was carrying on top of the pile the Idiot was carrying in order to have free hands to grab what they needed to wash laundry in the river.

“Hn,” Sasuke grunted at her in answer and ignoring anything else that might have been said as he started to lead his teammates to a clear area on the bank, weaving through the people. Trying not to glare at the little kids who ran directly in front of him as he walked with his hands full, thanking his training to keep from bumping into them.

A few shrieks behind him and a slightly lower annoyed grunt behind him as he walked gave him some idea that he wasn’t the only one that was bothered by the kids’ actions, though there didn’t seem to be anyone watching them to stop them from tripping anyone.

When they reached the spot he had picked, there was a debate as to what to start with, but eventually bedrolls were agreed to need it the most as they now had new clothes to change into. Sasuke and the Idiot kept an eye on Sakura as she worked with the devices that she had rather obviously never seemed to have used before. The woman with them helped with the bedrolls due to their size, and they managed to get them clean and hung up to dry without much of an issue.

They were about to head back to work on their clothes before they were distracted.

“Chie-san.”

Sasuke looked around at the soft-voiced call of the name of their current Hatake companion. There was a dark-haired woman stepping toward them awkwardly from a nearby hanging line, looking directly at the named Hatake.

“Ume-chan,” the Hatake woman greeted with a slight waver in her voice, causing Sasuke to look at her and noticed a bit of red on her cheeks.

Not dealing with that.

Sasuke grunted and just headed back to get a start on the rest of their laundry.

Sakura and the Idiot joined him very quickly and they managed to get through most of the rest of the washing, sending the Idiot to hang up what was done as they finished a piece while Sasuke and Sakura worked through the pile they had put their clothes in.

(Not without some protests from Sakura when she realised that they were going to all put their underwear in the pile as well and that they could end up washing each other’s. Sasuke just kept going, even when she shrieked at realising he had grabbed a piece of her own underwear. Glaring at her for the noise so close to his ear.)

Daisuke made the trek to the line with the Idiot while Kaori remained laying down near the bank with the two of them.

“Hi. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”

Sasuke had seen this group walking in their direction, two boys following a girl, about their age, all with the grey hair that Sasuke was figuring was a dominant colour in Hatakes and wearing grey and red. He had hoped they would just walk past and he wouldn’t have to deal with them, with the Idiot off on another trip to the line and Sakura just looking up at them as if she were prey watching a predator that they didn’t realise was there until it was too close to run.

(Like Sasuke had seen her act around the louder civilian kids while they were still at the academy.)

“What are you doing?” The girl asked, stepping towards them and leaning over Sasuke.

Sage, the tone of voice, the way she was looking at him. It was the same way those crazy fangirls back in the village did, at least Sakura had always been more shy about it, and had mellowed a bit since Wave.

“Laundry.” Sasuke grunted, when it became obvious she wasn’t going to back away without an answer and the two boys behind her started to frown at them as if they were the ones being rude.

“Oh, what are you in trouble for?” The slightly taller of the two boys asked.

“Nothing.” Sasuke grunted back, checking Sakura’s work on the latest piece of clothing, where she was still working with her shoulders up around her ears.

“Our parents only make us do the laundry when we are in trouble,” the other boy said with a shrug, the smirk on the boy’s face was starting to get on Sasuke’s nerves as much as the girl still leaning toward him. “Why are you doing it if you aren’t in trouble?”

Sasuke grit his teeth at the implication that parents should be the ones doing their washing, but he noticed that something seemed to have flipped a switch in Sakura as she went from pulled into herself to standing and glaring at the boy.

“Leave Sasuke-kun alone,” she shrieked at the boy, as Sasuke noticed the Idiot was making his way back towards him and speeding up at the tone of Sakura’s voice, he obviously caught the volume she was using.

“We’re just asking a question,” the second boy said, snorting at Sakura’s reaction. “We didn’t do anything to Sasuke-kun.”

“We were talking to Sasuke-kun,” the girl finally stopped leaning into Sasuke’s space and moved to stand in front of Sakura. “No one asked you to interrupt, ugly.”

Sasuke watched with red tinging the edge of his vision, slowing down the vision of the girl pushing out at Sakura and the pink haired girl losing her balance and falling backwards, but he wasn’t able to stand up in time to reach and stop her from falling back into the river behind her.

Sasuke didn’t even have time to process the shriek and splash as Sakura hit the water before he was seeing yellow, and then almost instantly seeing red.

Chapter Text

Kakashi and Riku had completed the tour of the outreaching areas of the compound and almost made it back to the centre when Sakura’s familiar high-pitched screech reached his ears, followed quickly by the yelling of a certain unpredictable genin echoed from multiple identical mouths.

Kakashi was running in the direction of the sound before the big ball of flame in the air visibly showed where the genin were, ignoring Riku’s calls when the boy realised he wasn’t beside him.

Kakashi noted the other grey-haired figures heading in the same direction as he took the rooftop highway shortcut to his cubs, and he genuinely hoped that it wasn’t just a small argument between the three of them that got out of hand. Not exactly the way to introduce themselves to what looked to be a good chunk of the currently available fighting force in the compound.

It wasn’t until he saw the small sea of blond in the cleared area near the small river that runs through the compound that the clan obviously used for washing and drying clothes, that he realised that his hope was true, but the situation might be worse. The clones seemed to be mainly clumped near one section of the river, but Kakashi noted the smaller groups of clones spread around in other places in the clearing. That defensive stance was the same as the one Kakashi vaguely recalled the boy using when he’d first been left with the other two unconscious genin just over a week ago.

He ignored the gathered adults surrounding the clumped group of clones, some trying to usher cubs he didn’t recognise out of the area, as he hunted out his other genin in the crowd.

And there, Kakashi could see his Uchiha standing among the blond figures, not buried under them as they would be if they had decided to have one of their usual arguments.

Kakashi came to a halt, searching first for his last cub and the two wolves he had left with them. Finding the first on the bank of the river behind the dense wall of clones that Naruto had created between her and anyone else in the area, looking a little wet and standing in a defensive stance, kunai in hand, Kaori standing alert at her side. Daisuke stood hunched and growling in warning, in front of the wall of blond clones, nearer to Sasuke who was standing in a looser circle of clones.

Whatever happened, if it got his cubs to react like this in a place he had allowed them to believe was mostly safe, it would not be happening again. He was going to make sure of it, he thought, noting the approach of chakra signatures that he was more familiar with and flicking out the signs to create a handful of lightning that he could quickly change to a more powerful jutsu if needed.

With the small part of his brain trained to take in all the details of a situation, Kakashi noted the small knot of Hatakes, about his cubs age and a little older that looked slightly singed and bloody clustered behind the group of adult Hatake closest to the main grouping of clones as he scanned the area for what set them off.

“What happened?” Tsukiko barked out, loud enough to bring everyone's attention to her as she entered the clearing, the clan elder in charge of supplies behind her.

(Yoshi, a distant part of his brain supplied.)

“That is what I would like to know.” Kakashi allowed his voice to take on a growl as he landed in front of the main Naruto wall, palm sparking with lightning and letting out a small bite of killing intent, barely registering Hayate as the wolf pushed up beside him, growling at the gathering. Kakashi took in all the gathered Hatakes and those civilians they allowed to live in the compound, noting that some of them had been introduced to him earlier in his tour, and the way most of them flinched back at his appearance.

“Kakashi-nii,” Riku’s voice wavered a little as he landed in front of him, hands out to show he wasn’t a threat. “I’m sure no-one here meant your cubs harm.”

Kakashi pretended to listen as the boy attempted to talk him down, noting the way Yoshi began to coordinate the more experienced shinobi in evacuating the civilians and less experienced out of the clearing, including the singed and bloody cubs he had marked as possibly having something to do with this mess. He also noted the look Tsukiko leveled at him, the amusement and approval hidden in her eyes behind the serious mask she was projecting.

So, this was the best play for the situation, Kakashi thought as he continued to watch the clan's response to his current act.

Well, mostly an act, Kakashi thought as he hoped that the actual Naruto was somewhere in the bunch close to him rather than the groups of blond setting a guard around the clearing.

Kakashi may not have all that much knowledge of how the Hatake clan declined, but he certainly remembered the legends of Feral Hatake. Those weren’t even just a Hatake legend either, but a scary story told within the Village even when he was still a child, given his memories of random kids coming up to ask him about them when he was trying to train.

Given the cover they had been given, Kakashi should have been borderline feral, by their own clan standards, so this would not just ensure the cubs weren’t threatened but also give everyone present little reason to question the story.

If that was what Tsukiko was planning, he didn’t think he would have much trouble playing the part at this moment.

(He wasn’t even acting that hard.)

“Come on, Kakashi-nii,” Riku continued soothingly, “no one here will harm the cubs, we won't let them. Right, Baa-san?”

“True,” Tsukiko grunted, stepping forward as Kakashi allowed the lightning in his palm to slowly fade. “Pack of Clan is Clan and we’ll rip any moron who attempts to harm clan cubs to pieces.”

Kakashi let his killing intent to ease back as he noted the way Tsukiko was signalling that it was enough of this nonsense, taking the time to appear to be closely assessing the woman.

“Naruto,” Kakashi said, flicking his fingers to indicate behind them where Sakura was standing. He made sure to leave some of the growl in his voice, not looking away from the Clan Head.

Kakashi only allowed himself to move his vision enough to allow the indicated position to enter the edge of his limited peripheral vision as the smoke of dispersed clones filled the clearing. When it cleared enough all the genin were standing in a group, Daisuke joining them and his sister, while Hayate remained at Kakashi’s side, no longer growling but still standing alert and pressed to his side.

“What happened?” Kakashi asked, taking in the shaken looks on all the cubs, even Sasuke, who was managing to cover his reaction quite well. Sakura was standing with her arms wrapped around herself, some of the hair Kakashi was sure had been up with the rest of in the bun style having come out and hanging in the way of her face as she looked at the ground as she dripped water onto the bank.

Both boys looked at each other before turning to Kakashi with what he recognised as their versions of angry righteousness.

“I’m sorry, Kakashi-nii,” Chie stepped forward cautiously, eyes on Kakashi as if he was about to go straight back into his aggressive stance when she revealed what she knew. “You left them with me to watch and I got distracted. I only noticed something was wrong when Sakura yelled as she fell, and I saw Mio, Yudai and Hifumi with them. Then well…”

Chie gestured around the clearing and the bank as if to indicate what he had arrived to.

Kakashi noted the way that the girl seemed to fold into herself when she caught the unimpressed glare sent her way by Tsukiko. He couldn’t bring himself to pity the trouble the girl was now in with her grandmother. He had warned her the cubs would be trouble, had trusted her when she said she could handle it.

“They started it!” Naruto shouted. The tone reminded Kakashi of the number of times the boy had tried to explain himself in Konoha after he had given up on his side actually been taken into account before he was blamed for everything. “They pushed Sakura-chan into the river and called her ugly for no reason.”

Yuma, who must have arrived after Kakashi started his little show, sidled up beside Chie, keeping a cautious eye on Kakashi as he seemed to take in what the cubs were saying.

“She was just trying to get them to back away from me,” Sasuke added in a growl. “They were in my space and wouldn’t take a hint.”

Kakashi sent a quick glare at Yuma as he stepped forward, coming in line with Tsukiko and Riku, closer to Kakashi and the cubs, while waiting for his last genin to add to the explanation. Kakashi recognised what the man was trying to do, moving into position to aid his clan head should Kakashi prove violently hostile, but he didn’t appreciate the added threat so close to his cubs given the situation.

When the silence continued for a beat too long, Kakashi had to fight his instincts not to allow any of the adult Hatake in front of him out of his sight to turn further toward the cubs. His pink cub hadn’t moved, still looking down at the ground with her arms wrapped around herself.

“Sakura,” Kakashi prompted as softly as he felt he could in this situation, stepping back further towards the group of wolves and genin.

“The girl was just standing over Sasuke-kun,” Sakura said quietly, almost uncertainly, not looking up or moving. “He doesn’t like it when people do that. And they were saying that we’d done something wrong because we were doing our washing, and their parents only make them do that when they were punishing them.”

Kakashi growled as the situation came together for him, noting the three echoes to the sound as he did, Tsukiko, Riku and Yuma were all seemingly close enough to hear her explanation and seemed to be just as annoyed at the Hatake cubs.

“I’ll deal with the other cubs,” Yuma volunteered, when Kakashi turned back at the sound. “With your permission of course, Tsukiko-sama.”

“Granted,” Tsukiko grunted. “It seems that some cubs have been a bit too spoiled, they need a bit of a reality check about what life is like outside our compound.”

“You said it was Mio and two of her followers?” Riku turned to Chie.

“Yes.” Chie answered her younger cousin, eyes bouncing between Tsukiko, Yuma, Riku, Kakashi and the cubs.

“She’s been testing her dominance on the other cubs her age recently,” Riku informed Yuma. “It's been a bit of a debate among those of us that get pulled into watching them when we should draw the line. She’s using the fact that she is the only main family cub that age in the group rather than her own skills.”

Tsukiko quirked an eyebrow at that, which had Kakashi guessing that there was something off in that as the situation went over his head, he just wanted to know that they will not have to deal with this again.

“Well, that’s not really the case anymore, is it?” Yuma sounded almost amused under his annoyance as he tilted his chin at Kakashi’s cubs causing him to growl at the other man.

“Yuma,” Tsukiko ordered, causing the man to snap his attention back to the woman, nodding and jumping away. She waved her hand and all the other Hatakes except for Chie and Riku relaxed completely and started to move on. “I think we’ve had enough excitement for today.”

Kakashi noted the three Hatake were still watching him cautiously as he double checked everyone had stood down. When it seemed to be clear, Kakashi dropped his shoulders and allowed himself to relax as he stepped up to the cubs and ran a quick diagnostic jutsu over all three to check for any injuries from the incident.

“I think maybe you all need to have some space for a bit,” Tsukiko approached just as Kakashi noted the slight scratches on Sakura as the only injuries. The girl’s head still bowed and held herself. “Head back to your room, grab some lunch and cool down a bit.”

“But the laundry…” Sakura finally lifted her head a bit, turning toward a small pile of cloth a little to the left of their group.

“Chie can handle it.” Tsukiko rounded on the younger girl with a slight growl in her tone as Chie ducked her own head.

“But…” Naruto started, eyes dancing around the clearing and a white-knuckled grip on his pants.

Kakashi grimaced as he realised that the incident had pushed the blond back into his mindset from the village, one that had been put aside after realising those outside Konoha didn’t treat him the same as those he had grown up with.

Kakashi bit back another growl at the damage that those other cubs had done to his without realising before it could leave him and startle anyone back on the defensive.

He flicked his gaze around the clearing himself as he attempted to find an answer that wouldn’t stress the genin out more, while the Hatakes looked over them with some confusion. Sasuke inched closer to both his teammates, red beginning to tint his eyes, as if he picked up on their distress.

“Sasuke, eyes,” Kakashi chided absently. So much for keeping that under wraps for a bit, a slight shake of his head as he recalled the scene he had arrived to, two cubs lost in a sea of clones of his third.

Naruto’s clones are always Shadow Clones, Kakashi then wanted to slap his head into his hands when he remembered.

Kakashi reached out and set his hand in blonde hair, getting the boy’s attention, and feeling him relax slightly. Kakashi looked over all his genin, not wanting to embarrass the blonde by making it too obvious Kakashi is aware of his real problem with just leaving his things out in the open, even though the jounin was well aware of what would happen to anything Naruto left unguarded where civilians and many of the shinobi could get at it. Kakashi also knew Sasuke would object to missing out on a possible training opportunity, and he couldn’t just leave out Sakura if he was going to modify it for Sasuke to take part.

Kakashi took a second to check his own chakra reserves with a mental sigh, still not completely recovered to the highest levels but he was planning to start reconditioning anyway.

(Two major incidents of chakra exhaustion in less than a month would do that to anyone, and he didn’t usually have the rest to get that far unless he was kept sedated anyway.)

“Let’s do a bit of a training exercise,” Kakashi started gently, making sure all three genin were watching him before lifting his hand off the blond and flashed through the hand signs until a shadow clone stood next to Kakashi, startling everyone in the immediate area. “You are going to make clones and see how long you can keep them going.

“You two,” Kakashi pointed at both Sasuke and Sakura. “One standard one each, this is a test of reserves as much as skill, I want to see how we are going with them before trying anything else.”

Kakashi waited a moment to ensure they both understood. Sakura ducked her head back down while Sasuke nodded mulishly.

“Naruto, no more than two of your usual,” Kakashi ordered gently, getting a confused look from the boy. Kakashi absently wondered if the boy was fully aware of the full use of the clones, waiting as the four clones appeared around them. “All the clones are going to quietly sit near where our laundry is hung. Naruto, yours and mine are going to make sure that none of it blows away and let us know when they are dry.”

The multiple confused looks Kakashi’s way caused him more amusement than it probably should.

“Clones with me,” Kakashi’s clone ordered as he began to herd the genin clones off toward the hanging lines.

“Chie,” Kakashi started, eye smile firmly in place when he turned to the younger kuniochi. “You will make sure no-one disrupts our training, won’t you?”

Chie nodded quickly, looking between him and Tsukiko.

“Hmm,” the older woman was watching the clones as they reached their destination and settled down. She turned back to them, running her gaze over them all before meeting Kakashi’s eyes. “Let’s go get your cubs fed.”

Sakura kept her head down as she shoved the last of the food on her plate around, having put enough on it to keep anyone from forcing more on her, but she wasn’t hungry, her brain was spinning too fast and making her stomach twist along with it. Just like it had since the whirlwind that had been the incident near the river.

(“He just doesn’t have parents to teach him right.” That is what she had said about Naruto and his behaviour. But Sasuke-kun didn’t have parents either did he?)

She remembered how she felt when she looked up from the last shirt she was washing and just seeing those three kids their age standing so close to Sasuke. She was ashamed that she had frozen like that, her shyness when dealing with strange people her age, not knowing if they were going to follow the bullies or not.

(And Naruto wasn’t the only orphan at the academy either. Sure, there were more that were older than them than their age and younger, but they didn’t act like Naruto.)

She had noted the way the girl had stood over Sasuke-kun, the way that many girls in the village did as they tried to get his attention, the way she had always been too shy to try even before she saw that it always made him tense.

(They weren’t treated like Naruto either.)

She doesn’t know why it was the comments about parents that made her act, yelling at them to get away from Sasuke-kun.

(Maybe she had been thinking about everything that Kakashi-nii had said the night before, as she helped work through the pile of laundry. If this was time travel, and an accident. And Kakashi-nii didn’t know how to get them back, which seemed to be what had been implied by what he had said, then none of them had any parents here. She just wanted to see her parents.)

Sakura didn’t exactly follow everything that followed her yelling and the girl pushing her, it happened so fast. Losing her balance, splashing into the water, scrambling to get back up, rocks scratching her as a flood of Narutos surrounded her and the flash of heat of Sasuke-kun’s fireball.

Yelling, lots of yelling.

All because Sakura failed at getting some kids to leave them alone and keep her balance.

(“They started it! They pushed Sakura-chan into the river and called her ugly for no reason.” He’d never been one of the bullies when they were kids, would always get in the way when they started on her.)

Embarrassment had kept Sakura quiet since Kakashi-nii had settled the incident. Even when her curiosity wanted answers about what the training exercise with the clones were about. She didn’t want to make any more of a fool of herself in front of the other Hatakes. So, the walk all the way back to their room with Tsukiko-sama who sent Riku-nii to pick up some lunch for them from the kitchens she held her curiosity to herself. Even when Kakashi-nii asked for a list of available specialties in the compound, some of which Sakura really wanted to know more about, she kept her head down.

“Kaa-san wanted me to put some time at the training ground today,” Riku-nii said, pulling Sakura’s eyes up and seeing him starting to stack the dishes on the table, forcing herself to stuff what is left on her plate in her mouth. “You lot going to be okay if I leave you?”

“Maa, we’ll be fine, I think we will stay in, organise some of this mess,” Kakashi-nii handed him a few more plates to stack, indicating the piles of clothes they had left near their sleeping areas before taking out the laundry. “And do some training for more boring things. We still have our other training going and I don’t want to mess with the results. If we get too restless, they can show me to the stores to pick up some clothes for me and some other supplies that they may have forgotten.

We’ve got to get our laundry later too.”

“I’ll bring some dinner around later,” Riku-nii nodded, taking the last dish, and standing. “No-one should bother you after…”

Riku-nii tilted his head in the direction of the river, causing Sakura to duck her head and quickly move back to her pile of new clothes.

She was sure that she had remembered to grab everything she needed, but time to set each piece out and match it to check how many outfits she had would be helpful.

(Maybe if she put all her focus on this, she could stop the thoughts spinning through her head.)

Sakura startled as she noticed a bare foot next to the meticulously folded pile of pants, she had chosen to wear under the short-cut yukata shirts she had found that would sit at her mid-thigh when worn, that she was about to place the third she had folded as she sorted her clothes. She looked up and saw Sasuke-kun standing there and glaring down at her.

Sakura squeaked and looked back down at her sorted clothes.

Why was he standing there? Was he finally going to tell her how useless she was back at the river? Was he…?

“Maa,” Kakashi-nii interrupted her thoughts before she could spiral further. “What do you need from Sakura, Sasuke?”

Sakura looked over at Kakashi-nii, confused as to why he was getting involved in their interaction so quickly. The jounin was sitting at the low table, he had pulled over near his area in the room a scroll in front of him, pen in hand, Hayate lying at his side. But had his free hand out in an obvious stop signal to Naruto, who Sakura noted with a quick glance was over with his own messy pile of things, glaring at Sasuke-kun, while Kakashi-nii was looking directly at Sasuke-kun.

Sasuke-kun just grunted.

“You need to use your words to ask someone a favour, Sasuke.”

Sakura blinked at the jounin, before turning her attention to Sasuke-kun. He just looked angry to her, she couldn’t figure out what Kakashi-nii was talking about.

“Embroider.” Sasuke-kun said, pointing slightly back to where his things had sat in piles Sakura was sure had some sort of organisation.

“Ask, Sasuke.” Kakashi-nii said in a firmer tone.

“Please?” Sasuke-kun looked away from Sakura.

Please? Embroider? Sakura was still just as confused as to what Sasuke-kun wanted, but Kakashi-nii seemed convinced that he was asking a favour, so she looked back at the direction Sasuke-kun was indicating.

Oh, Sakura thought, seeing the piles of folded and sorted clothes there, and her eyes flicked to the hem of the clothes they had fixed up at the cave that he was still wearing.

“Do you want me to embroider the crest on your new clothes, too?” Sakura asked, trying to make sure this was what he was asking.

“Hn.”

Sasuke jerked his head down in a nod, still looking away from her.

“Of course I will,” Sakura answered happily, realising suddenly that this might be the reason he was so reluctant to change before they went to do the laundry.

How could she not have realised that? She always paid attention to Sasuke-kun, she knew how much having the crest on his meant to him, especially after the argument about clothes at the cave. How come she missed that?

(She didn’t think about how it was Naruto being loud and annoying that got Chie-san to stop pushing him to change and just grab the laundry and leave.)

Sakura rushed to stand, but stopped when she realised she was still holding the folded pants she was sorting onto the pile when she was interrupted. She looked back at her still unsorted pile of clothes and back over at Sasuke’s clothes he wanted help with, biting her lip.

“Finish with your clothes first,” Kakashi-nii said. He still hadn’t gone back to whatever he had been doing while they sorted their new clothes, looking at Sakura now. “I want to be sure we have a full accounting of everything we have, and what we might need, before we go back to the clan store. The boys can count their other supplies while you finish up your clothes.”

“Oh, okay.” Sakura said, looking back at Sasuke-kun who just nodded and went back to his futon and continued his inventory.

Sakura turned to blink at Kakashi-nii, who just eye-smiled at her.

“Let me know numbers of your supplies as you finish,” was all he said as he pointed his pen at her piles and turned back to the scroll in front of him.

Chapter Text

“Um, Nii-san?” Sakura tentative question pulled Kakashi’s attention from the two scrolls he had set out in front of him. On one he had been noting the current assets they had and the other with the start of a training plan he was creating to get the whole team up to standard to survive in this time period.

He was starting with the very basics, before he was going to bring in any specialist training they may be suited for. He needed to assess any potential specialist trainers before he let them anywhere near the cubs. So, they were going to go back to the very foundations of nin-training first, which honestly was something he was probably going to have go back and strengthen anyway before building more on them, from what he had observed in this time with them. He still wondered what exactly they had covered in the academy.

The lack of nin-mesh outfits in the cubs’ sizes until the order Sakura had reported they had made comes in may also be a stumbling point in his physical training schedule depending on how long it will take. He didn’t want any of them in any combat training or sparring if they weren’t wearing some, too much of a risk of something going wrong. But he was perfectly aware of how disgusting the stuff could get after hard work, day after day, a particular annoyance when you were wearing clean clothing over it.

(There had been a shortage in nin-mesh not long after he had graduated, and what there was was needed to supply the shinobi on war missions, before customising a set for a tiny green genin.)

Kakashi hummed to indicate she had his attention.

“What was the training thing with the clones?” Sakura asked, looking at him rather than down at the embroidery she had started on the first set of Sasuke’s new clothes.

(And wasn’t he so proud of his cute little genin for actually asking for help with something the boy felt he needed. He probably needed to be more socialised, if that was so hard for him, but Kakashi didn’t think that was going to be an easy feat with the Hatake cubs after what happened earlier.)

“What did you mean that your clones would let you know that the washing was dry? They're just illusions, and only really useful for distractions, right?”

Kakashi studied his three genin.

Sakura was seated cross-legged with the cloth of one of Sasuke’s new shirts spilling over her lap. Comfortable working on something she knew she was good at and without the risk of messing up. Curiosity sparking in her eyes, with still slightly damp hair falling out of the bun and around her face.

(He probably should have had he change as soon as they got back to the room, but they had all been so unsettled and she hadn’t thought to do it herself either. He figured now he knew where the bath houses were, they could all wash up and change into clean clothes after their supply run. Particularly after the mess that the river incident had made of the new clothes that the cubs had changed into before doing the laundry.)

Sasuke was seated on the other side of the table from him, working on the calculations as to how many ninja tools they had to collect from supplies to ensure everyone had a Konoha-standard full set. A job he was given when they had finished their inventory count and Kakashi had realised that the brunette had been the only genin who had started the Wave mission with a full mission-grade set. And even those were obviously second hand and well used.

(Hadn’t Kakashi been surprised and slightly annoyed at how undersupplied they had really been at the start of that shitshow of a mission.)

(He’s not even going to get into the quality of those supplies, and it wasn’t just Naruto’s that made him wish he could storm into the Hokage tower and demand who oversaw checking in on the village’s shinobi stores to ensure their stocks met the village standards set in place by the Nidaime. He just wanted a little chat with them, honest.)

Kakashi also didn’t want to deal with them giving each other serious injuries in training if he could help it. He wasn’t entirely sure how good the medic-nin and medical jutsu were at this point in time. He was sure that he had heard a bit about the Nidaime and Tsunade-sama having some strong hands in ensuring the level of both the nin training and the jutsu.

So, mission-grade tools wouldn’t be used in spars until he was sure that they could at least know when to pull an attack to not cause those. His experience with the genin told him that training at the levels and speed he was going to have to push them to was going to be chaotic enough, without them having razor sharp mission-grade weapons at their disposal during that training. So, a second set that can be blunted down for training, if the clan didn’t stock mission-weighted practice sets, were added to the mental list he was also currently keeping of the supplies they needed to get.

Naruto was on the far side of the room, sitting amongst his remaining prank (trap) supplies. Happily making a list of what he would need to create a similar set-up as he had in the cave and double it.

Kakashi was going to take that list when the blond was finished and mark what could be easily gained in nin-tools and what were speciality items and make sure the numbers were added to the supply lists for both.

But apparently, the cubs had all finally settled after the excitement of earlier. Enough to start asking questions of him again, at least.

Kakashi eyed the shoji door they had left open for the breeze, and to allow the wolves to wander out to the engawa and the courtyard beyond while they worked on the inventory.

“Naruto,” Kakashi called the cub closest to the door, raising his voice slightly to warn Daisuke and Kaori who were currently outside. “Please shut the door.”

Naruto shot him a confused look but stood to follow the order, only pausing slightly to let the wolves back in.

“This too?” The blonde asked as he touched the privacy seal still half hanging from one side of the door from where he had partially removed it that morning.

Kakashi nodded and waited for the blonde to return to his seat before starting to answer Sakura’s questions.

“You remember how I mentioned Naruto’s Uzumaki chakra problem?” He started, gaze taking in his whole audience as their confusion made itself known at his mentioning of this.

“He has too much,” Sakura answered haltingly.

“You were all in the same academy class, so I’m sure you all saw the results of Naruto’s attempts at the academy standard clones you were using,” Kakashi continued, catching Naruto’s flinch at the reminder, while Sasuke sneered. “The clones use very little chakra, which is the reason it is an academy standard jutsu. Naruto was overloading them.

“If anyone who knew anything about Uzumakis had been paying attention, they would have put a stop to that effort in stupidity. Naruto is physically incapable of using that little chakra in one burst. My understanding is that it was extremely rare for Uzumaki’s to do so, and usually involved the Uzumaki having extensive chakra control training.”

“Oh,” Sakura exhaled, seeming to take in this information.

Sasuke looked like he had been slapped, while Naruto just looked confused.

“You may have noticed between the academy and your test with me, Naruto could suddenly actually use clones,” Kakashi continued, almost enjoying the way the information was making the genin speechless. “He learnt a physical type of clone, which he should have been working with in the first place.”

Kakashi stopped to close his eyes and take a deep breath when he heard the growl in his voice. He finally allowed himself to acknowledge the frustration that he still felt at finding out how Naruto’s academy training had been handled. Something he had silenced within himself since he found out.

He heard a shuffling beside him and felt a canine head settle itself on his thigh as the silence stretched as wrestled himself back into control.

“To answer your earlier question, Sakura,” Kakashi continued as he opened his uncovered eye to look at the girl, who was looking back at him as if he had destroyed everything she had ever known about the world. “Physical clone-types can be used as more than distractions, as you should have realised from how Naruto uses his. They can interact with the world in limited ways, such as offensive and defensive manoeuvres in battle, some jutsus, and sacrificial use in Kawarimi as distraction. These tend to need to use more chakra than illusory clones.”

Kakashi noted in Sasuke’s posture about hearing about these clones as he continued his lecture.

“The ones Naruto uses is a particular type that I don’t know has technically been invented at this point in time,” Kakashi grimaced, checking the privacy seals around the room before continuing. “Shadow clones are considered a kinjutsu, purely due to the chakra reserves needed to create and maintain them, as they split the original’s reserves evenly between the clones. But they also have one particular benefit that no other clone has: when it is dispersed, it returns all the experiences it had to the original, without any wounds the clone may have received.”

“What?” Naruto exploded, jumping to his feet, as Sakura and Sasuke’s heads whip around to look at the blond. “They do that?”

Kakashi blinked at the boy.

“Yes,” he said slowly. Had the boy been throwing those clones everywhere and not realising? “When the washing is dry, either mine will disperse or force one of Naruto’s to and we will know. So, make sure you are paying attention to any sudden new memories from the river so you can tell us it’s time to get the laundry.”

Kakashi aimed the last reminder to Naruto as the blond sheepishly sat back down.

“Just like that?” Sakura asked, looking between Kakashi and Naruto.

“Yes,” Kakashi answered, shrugging off his confusion about Naruto not even realising that he was getting extra memories. The boy’s mind was unfathomable on the best day, Kakashi didn’t want to spend too much time trying to plumb those depths when he had so much else to focus on. “It usually just occurs to you that the experience has happened, like a memory of something you have just done, but it conflicts with what you already remember you have just done. It can be very disorientating at first.”

“Teach us.” Sasuke grunted, staring directly at Kakashi.

“No.” Kakashi deadpanned immediately, turning back to the scrolls in front of him.

“But surely that would be a useful jutsu to learn?” Kakashi could see the way Sakura cocked her head to the side as she asked.

“Did you miss me calling it a kinjutsu that evenly splits the original chakra reserves?” The jounin looked between both Sasuke and Sakura calmly, noting Naruto’s confusion. “Overdo the numbers and the split brings down the available chakra. And as we have proven in the past month, we need to have a certain level of chakra available in order to function.”

Kakashi made sure to note the flinches of the two genin before continuing.

“If you drop your available chakra stores low enough, what happens?”

“It can kill you,” Sakura answered softly, like the jounin expected of his academy theory-specialist kunoichi.

“Naruto throws them around all the time,” Sasuke protested, frustration with Kakashi’s refusal boiling over.

Kakashi firmly put his pen down on the scroll in front of him, glaring at his arrogant Uchiha. Without moving his gaze, he pointed toward Naruto who had just been watching the entire conversation with confusion on his face.

“Uzumaki chakra reserves.

“You have decent reserves for a recent graduate genin, but you are constantly overestimating your abilities,” Kakashi continued, voice hard to try and get this point through the stubborn Uchiha’s head. At least, until he started the training regime he was putting together, which the jounin was sure was going to put a physical full stop in the point. None of the genin were going to thank him for the amount he was going to work them when they started the training, of that he was sure, but they had little choice if they were going to get the results they needed fast enough.

“Sakura just barely makes the graduate cut-off for reserves, if they were even slightly lower, she would have failed to graduate. Until you both grow your reserves and can truthfully, accurately and consistently assess your levels, in all your basic skills, neither of you are to even think about using that jutsu.”

Kakashi took pleasure in the silence that followed his firm words, taking time to pick up his pen and returning to his plans. Sasuke just blinked at him while Sakura, looked down at the embroidery on her lap with pink staining her cheeks at his assessment.

After a moment the kunoichi’s forehead wrinkled and she turned to Naruto with a thoughtful expression.

“Who are the Uzumaki?” Sakura asked, breaking the silence after a few minutes. “You talk about their chakra like it’s part of a clan marker, but I’ve never heard of an Uzumaki clan before.”

Kakashi slowly put down his pen as flashes of long red hair and a large smile obscured his vision. A brush of warm fur against his other hand shook him from the memories.

“And the game Ino’s dad had us play included all the Konoha clans if they had at least one living member, even the Hatake.” Sakura seemed to speed up her talking as she continued. “Our cover also included being off near them so if we get asked, we should at least know a bit about them, right?”

Kakashi closed his eyes and took a deep breath, steadying himself for what it seemed he couldn’t put off. He opened his uncovered eye, visually checking each of his genin, flinching away from the eager way Naruto was tilting his body in his direction at Sakura’s line of questioning. Kakashi looked down at the table again, if he was going to get anything out, he was not going to be able to take watching any of their reactions to the information, even Sasuke who only seemed to be vaguely interested.

“The Uzumaki were a clan,” Kakashi started, then shook his head remembering the time period they were in again and corrected himself. “Are a clan, in this time they still are. But they were never a Konoha clan, or even a Fire Country clan, despite the strong links they had to some of them.”

The hushed shifting of the cubs was the only sound as Kakashi took a moment to breathe again, hand settled in warm fur that shuffled into his lap, before continuing.

“They’re territory was, is, out in Whirlpool Country. An island chain off the coast out east, between Fire and Water, where around the time of Konoha’s founding they established Uzushio.” He stopped and thought for a second. “Not that they really needed to, there may have been some small clans and civ-borns among their ranks, but everyone knew it was the Uzumaki village as they were the large part of their shinobi forces.”

“A whole ninja village of my family?” Naruto asked, the excitement and joy in his voice made Kakashi flinch.

“Pretty much,” he answered, still not looking up as he turned to his pack to pull out the scroll that held what was left of his old uniform.

“But I never heard of Uzushio,” Sakura protested.

“You wouldn’t have,” Kakashi answered simply, unsealing the long sleeve uniform shirt from the scroll and placing it on the table before him. “It was Konoha’s Greatest Shame.”

Kakashi let the sarcasm drip from the title that had been given the incident, remembering the hurt and anger that Kushina used to bleed every time someone referred to it as that as if it wasn't also one of the Village’s greatest tragedies.

“Shame?” Sakura sounded confused as Kakashi arranged the shirt to be sure the Uzushio spirals were visible.

“We were sister villages, right from the start,” Kakashi answered, pointing to the spirals as he did. “The First Hokage was married to the Uzumaki princess after all. We had the deepest ties any shinobi village can have.”

Kakashi looked up at the genin for the first time since beginning his history lesson, noting the interested way they were looking between him and the spirals on the shirt.

“And we did nothing when they were destroyed.”

The silence was heavy as Kakashi watched this knowledge hit each of his genin.

“Destroyed?” Naruto’s voice was as shattered as his expression and Kakashi quickly looked back down at the shirt on the table.

“It was during the beginning of the second shinobi war, before I was born. I can only tell you what I was told, so I don’t know how much was placed under higher than S-Rank clearance about the incident.” Kakashi needed them to understand that things could be known to the Village that weren’t known outside of a select few in the Village and decided that this was the tale he could tell that could teach them that.

“An alliance against Konoha and Uzushio decided that they needed to break our alliance. The first Village and a Village made up of mostly shinobi with insane chakra levels. That alone would have been considered too much of a threat, even without even mentioning the Uzumaki specialty in sealing. It was how we managed to win the first war, and they didn’t want to have to face us both working together again. So, they sent a concentrated force to take out Uzushio in a surprise attack, scorched earth style.”

Sharp intakes of breath from in front of him and off to the side indicated that at least his kunoichi and Uchiha understood the tactic he was describing.

“By the time Konoha became aware of the attack, it was already over and all that was left was the dead and a destroyed village.” Kakashi continued, remembering the rants Kushina used to go on around the anniversary of the incident, about how there should have been signal seals activated that couldn’t be disrupted, on top of all the other ways messages could be sent out, Konoha should have had some sort of warning of it occurring before they did.

“What happened to the survivors?” Sakura asked quietly.

“As far as Konoha is aware, there weren’t any Uzumaki or any other Uzushio villagers that were there during the attack who survived.” Kakashi grimaced. He didn’t blame them if there were that didn’t make contact with Konoha, the fact they should have had warning and started to mobilise before all was lost, they should have had time, it would have taken more than a day to completely take out the Village with what Kushina had let slip about some of the defenses that were in place.

“But how…?”

Kakashi could hear Sakura’s confusion and guessed she was indicating Naruto.

“Mito-hime still lived in the village, and she was getting old and homesick,” Kakashi explained, remembering the story Kushina had explained to him that she was originally told to tell people about why she was sent to Konoha. “But she couldn’t leave Konoha, she was too much of a figurehead due to her position as the First’s wife. So, the Uzukage agreed to send his niece to keep her company.”

“Oh, the niece stayed?” Sakura asked thoughtful, as if she was starting to put things together.

“Yes, she stayed.” Kakashi said, flashes of the red head in the village running through his mind.

“Then…”

“Did the hunt things the lady this morning talked about really happen?”

Naruto’s random interrupting question was loud over the top of Sakura’s curiosity and shook Kakashi out of his memories where he found himself looking down at his hands buried and gripping the russet fur of the wolf who had apparently attempted to fit his entire body in the jounin’s lap, and not completely succeeded.

Kakashi struggled to drag the information to answer the blond’s question from his mind, as the memories tried to take it over again.

“Everything I heard about this time says they did,” Kakashi answered. “Riku’s report that first day in the cave backed up the historical information I had. I know the village didn’t like bringing up the thing so I’m not surprised if you hadn’t heard of it. I only vaguely remember it being brought up in Hatake stories about the Hatake who became Lady Senju.”

Particularly about how they couldn’t believe a daughter of the Hatake clan head would marry into a clan that took part in such things, Kakashi remembered.

(There were also those rumours that went around the village in the few years before the Uchiha Massacre, a small part of Kakashi’s mind reminded him which had caused him to remember any of those old family stories he had mostly forgotten by that point. The rumour seemed to jog the memory family stories about the practice for quite a few other villagers too, now Kakashi thought of it.)

“They happened,” Sasuke grunted, bringing Kakashi’s attention to the Uchiha. The boy was looking down at his piles of weapons with a scowl, obviously not liking having such a dishonourable practice from his ancestors brought up.

“Was there proof outside of clan stories?” Sakura asked, sounding almost hesitant, as if she realised this question was insensitive in a way that she hadn’t realised in any of her questions before.

“Clan history records,” Sasuke muttered, still not looking up. “Field reports.”

Kakashi flinched as he realised that Sasuke probably should not have been able to read some of those. Why was he allowed to stay where he could run across those things at who knows how old? And without the full training he should have to understand any of the choices made.

“Ah,” Sakura murmured as she seemed to realise that her teammate had actually read these records and reports.

“So they happened,” Naruto broke the silence loudly again, nodding. “So, we all just have to be careful when we go out, shouldn’t be too hard. Awesome ninja are sneaky and careful outside safe spaces anyway.”

Kakashi would have taken it as just another one of the random unpredictable things that came out of the blond’s mouth if he didn’t see the quick dart of blue eyes toward the Uchiha as he spoke. The way the said Uchiha looked up and glared at the blond after he spoke, losing the almost defensive way he was holding his shoulders in his irritation with his teammate.

Hmm, Kakashi logged that realisation as he came to the conclusion that there wouldn’t be anymore questions and returned to his planning and scrolls.

Naruto stayed close to Kakashi-nii as the Bastard led them back to the store place they had gone to with the lady that morning.

While he wouldn’t tell anyone, he had been nervous to leave the room that they had been set up in. He wasn’t entirely sure why it was affecting him, or what it was that had made him feel that way.

It was a little like when he needed to leave his apartment to go shopping, when he knew he had to go into the shops with the mean shopkeepers who were always trying to kick him out as quickly as possible, even when he hadn’t gotten everything on his list yet. The ones that would grab him and throw him out if he took too long.

Naruto didn’t know why; he wasn’t the one that had been pushed into the water back at the river. That had been Sakura-chan.

(Just like it had always been Sakura-chan that the civilian girls at the academy went after when they couldn’t find him.)

Back at the river, he really hadn’t wanted to leave their things there without them to watch them after that, too used to things not being where he left them after leaving them unattended. Though he thinks he might have been alright with it before the other kids had done what they had done. But Kakashi-nii had had them leave clones to watch the clothes before they left, which made him feel a bit better, even though he hadn’t really understood why they were leaving them there.

At least, he hadn’t known until Kakashi-nii had explained that he would get the memories of his shadow clones. Naruto didn’t understand how he hadn’t known this was something that he was getting from his clones. He used them all the time and hadn’t even realised.

Naruto’s brain had spun at the new information, trying to figure out if it was really true. But then he had flashes of when he had used them for the first time against the traitor bastard teacher, and he realised he had memories of punching the traitor in the face and another memory of watching the beatdown and waiting for his turn to hit from the branches above from the same time.

Then on top of that, he had learnt about more his clan. And they were powerful.

(So powerful that whole villages had come together to ensure they all died.)

His clan wasn’t talked about in the village because the village didn’t want to remember the shame of not helping save them.

(“It was Konoha’s Greatest Shame.”)

(And they had treated him the way they did despite this shame.)

If he had read beneath what Kakashi-nii had been saying right, his mum had been a princess.

(A princess, and he had been treated like he was trash on the street.)

Naruto had been excited about learning so much about his family at once. But then he had noticed the way Kakashi-nii had been gripping Hayate’s fur as the wolf climbed further into the man’s lap and Naruto remembered the way that he had begged not to be forced to say more when the blond had tried to get him to talk about his family back at the cave.

He’d heard enough for the day. It had been so much that Naruto needed to think about and try and get it to make sense with everything he had known about himself before.

He was proud of the subtle change of topic he had made too.

Naruto was drawn out of his thoughts on it all as they entered the store.

Naruto stayed close to Kakashi-nii as the man walked through the store to the old man in charge of the stores that they had met yesterday, who was back at the desk he had been at the last time they were in, writing something in a scroll he had in front of him.

Naruto tried to remember the man’s name. He knows he heard it properly yesterday; it was Yo-something.

Yousuke? No.

Yosi? No, close but not quite right.

“Back again?” the old man asked when he glanced up and saw them. “All okay?”

“Fine now,” Kakashi-nii answered casually. “Need clothes for me and a few things the cubs didn’t grab earlier.”

Yoshi. Yeah, that was it. It was Old Man Yoshi.

“Clothes your size should be on the second table to the right, there,” Old Man Yoshi answered, pointing in the direction of the table he meant. “The nin-mesh for you would be on the table next to it.”

“Sakura said she ordered a set for each of them?” Kakashi-nii asked over his shoulder as he walked over to the table he had been directed to, Naruto and Hayate following him like a shadow and noting that the Bastard had wandered off to look at the weapons display area with Daisuke and Sakura-chan had made her way over to what looked like sewing supplies with Kaori.

“May take a day or two to get them in,” Yoshi nodded as he finished up whatever he was writing and putting down his pen. “We don’t usually get an order for their sizes, but general restock is not backlogged so they can put that aside for custom work. When they get done, I’ll send them on to you.”

“Can you add another set for each of them to the order?” Kakashi-nii added as he reached the table and started picking through the pile. “We have a lot of training ahead of us, and I would prefer them to be able to switch into clean sets after training.”

“I can have the order run, but it will take another couple of days to do,” the older man said as he came around his desk toward them. “What else was on your list?”

“Do you have training-blunt, mission-weighted kunai and shuriken sets? Or do I have to blunt mission-grade sets for training?” Kakashi-nii tilted his head slightly at the man’s movement and tapped Naruto on the shoulder, sweeping his hand in the direction of the man, and then toward their teammates, before turning to focus on folding a pile of clothes that he had picked out from the table.

Naruto took the signal to mean that he was to keep watch while Kakashi-nii was distracted. So, he focused on the old man as he wound his way around the table toward them, he also noted the way the Bastard’s attention came back to Kakashi-nii at the mention of weapons.

“We’ve got training sets,” Yoshi answered. “Not quite mission-grade, can’t waste good steel by blunting the best made stuff, but close enough to not matter for most.”

“Hmm,” Kakashi-nii tilted his head still facing the table, while Naruto watched the man. “So long as it is mission-weighted, it should work, even if the steel isn’t up to par. We need 4 sets of each.”

Naruto glared at the man as he noticed the way his eyes flicked over his teammates before turning back to him and Kakashi-nii, though Naruto didn’t know what the quick expression that flew over the man’s face meant as he did.

“Training sets for all of you,” he said gruffly, with a short nod and a weird looking frown on his face. “That’s all good. Anything else from the basic nin-tool stock before I send off to have them brought to you?”

“At least two full sets of mission-grade shuriken and kunai and some replacements to fill out two depleted sets,” Kakashi-nii seemed to finish picking out and folding normal clothes, grabbing his pile and turning toward the nin-mesh on the next table as he spoke casually. Naruto kept pace with him as he moved, making sure he was keeping the position he had taken after jounin had seemed to have given him the watch.

The old man scowled and flicked his eyes over them all again before he answered. Naruto thought he seemed as if he was upset about the fact that they had to replace so many weapons, but not like the store-keeper in charge of basic weapons stocks for the village shinobi that he had had to go to after he had worn out the training set he had been assigned by the academy (or the times he had had to replace them after another break in at his apartment).

“Sasuke has a list of the other nin-tools that we need, with numbers if you would prefer to send that out to collect?” Kakashi-nii continued as he lifted one of the nin-mesh shirts and tested the material. “So long as he hasn’t attempted to add anything further to the list while he was over there with your weapons display.”

Naruto caught the scowl on the Bastard’s face at the jounin’s dig at him, fighting down his own laugh as the old man barked out a laugh.

“I’ll take the list to send to weapon storage,” Yoshi said, moving off to get the list from the Bastard who had created most of it but that Kakashi-nii and Naruto had added to before leaving their room. “Are the shuriken and kunai sets on the list?”

“The mission-grade ones are, but I wasn’t sure about the training ones, so I had them left off.”

“I’ll add them before I send it off.” The old man said. “Do you want to wait here to check them, or would you like them to be sent to your room.”

The Bastard handed off the list with a scowl as soon as the old man reached him.

“We can wait here,” Kakashi-nii answered as the old man took the list. “I’d prefer to make sure we have everything we need from that list sorted in case there is a mix up. We still have a few more things to get, and the last stop of today will just be the bathhouse after this.”

“You sure this is everything you need from the weapon storage?” The old man asked with the list, and an eyebrow, raised as he returned to his desk.

“I’m pretty sure the rest of what we need will not be in weapon storage,” Kakashi-nii stated slowly checking another nin-mesh shirt, while the old man quickly added to the list and then pulling a piece of paper over to write another note. “Unless you also keep your explosive seal papers with your base nin-tools.”

“In the same place that the older cubs are often set to work maintenance and inventory duty? Not likely,” the old man scoffed, with a slight smile. “They may have been cleared to train and use those basic tools without supervision, but for some reason even the most level-headed and trained cub can’t resist the temptation to set off an explosion where they really shouldn’t.

“I’ll get this and the addition to the nin-mesh order for the cubs out, then we can get though the rest of your supplies.”

Yoshi headed out behind his desk toward the back of the store with both papers as he spoke.

Kakashi-nii’s hum was the only reply to the man as he left.

“We are making sure we all have the basics down before we are going to start on new weapons,” Kakashi-nii spoke, focus still on checking his way through the pile of nin-mesh, just as Naruto noticed the Bastard had turned back to the jounin with his mouth opened.

Naruto caught the growl that the Bastard let out at the way he had been cut off before he could even start.

“Have a look around,” Kakashi-nii said as he folded and places a nin-mesh shirt on his pile of clothes. “If you can find anything practical, that is not weapons, we can add it to our supply list.”

The Bastard scowled and stomped away from the weapons display with Daisuke, while Naruto noticed that Sakura actually reached out to pick up something from the display she was looking at, that he had noticed she had been reaching toward and pulling her hand back repeatedly for the past few minutes.

“What did you find, Sakura-chan?” Naruto asked, still not comfortable leaving Kakashi-nii's side, even with the way the jounin had given permission to look around, something the lady from earlier hadn’t really given them. She had been focused on getting them clothes. Particularly the ones in grey and red, that made Naruto slightly uncomfortable after seeing so many of the Hatake wearing the same colour, like the uniform back in the village that he doubted he would have ever been comfortable with wearing.

Sakura-chan jumped at his question, pulling her hand with the object she had picked up close to her chest, bring the attention of all their team to her.

“Em-embroidery thread,” Sakura-chan stuttered, looking down as she answered.

“Hmm,” Kakashi-nii looked over at her and eye-smiled. “Good thinking, Sakura. Get as much as you think you need, and anything else that could make that job easier for you too.”

Sakura-chan seemed to be surprised by Kakashi-nii’s praise, looking up with her eye’s wide.

“Yeah,” Naruto beamed at the girl as the memory of the way Kakashi-nii had indicated the spirals on his old uniform shirt when talking about Uzushio came to him. “Is there any orange thread?”

“Um, a little,” Sakura answered, biting her lip.

“Can you get it?” Naruto bounced in place at the idea of being able to possibly get his clan spirals (his clan spirals, the spirals he had always loved from the Konoha uniform where a connection to his clan) in orange like Sakura had done for the Bastard and his clan symbol.

Sakura-chan seemed to look up at Kakashi-nii with wide eyes.

There was a huff from the jounin as he nodded.

“Can you make sure you have green and black too?” Was all the jounin said.

“Black and green what?” The old man asked as he came back into the main area of the store, while Sakura-chan nodded quickly and turned to collect all the threads she needed.

“Just making sure Sakura has all the colours we wanted for her embroidery,” Kakashi-nii said nodding to the man and turning back to checking on his pile of clothes and chakra-mesh.

“Oh, then she has free choice on those,” Yoshi said, looking over at Sakura-chan picking through the selection of thread. “Don’t get many clanmates who have any skill at it, so they are open for any who do, mostly it’s the civilians in the compound. Main rule is only take what you think you need and don’t hoard too much of it.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Kakashi-nii answered, sweeping a hand around to indicate all the genin. “Just need to use it to distinguish everyone’s clothes, small details, but quite a few of them.”

Naruto looked at Kakashi-nii quickly before turning back to the old man, confused at his explanation. But Naruto guessed that if he didn’t want to explain that the Bastard didn’t want to wear any clothes without his clan symbol it was a good cover. It might even prove to be a used in that way too, if they were all going to wash their laundry together again too.

“Smart way to deal with the eternal problem of missing clothes after laundry day,” the old man said with a nod of appreciation of an idea to Kakashi-nii. “What else was on your list of supplies that I can help you with?”

“Three writing sets and a set of paper and writing scrolls for each of the cubs,” Kakashi-nii started. “And any theory scrolls, and instruction scrolls you can recommend to ensure they have all the basics.”

“The writing supplies I can get you, but you will have to get the basic theory and instruction scrolls from Sumiko, she has the library of those.”

Naruto scrunched his nose as he tried to place the name the old man gave, he was sure he had heard it before.

Oh, that was the lady they had met at dinner last night.

“Should have figured the elder in charge of cubs would have those,” Kakashi-nii stated as he set aside a set of clothes from the pile of clothes and nin-mesh he had put together for himself and pulled a scroll from his jounin vest. “Do you need to take a count of what I have here?”

“I think I have it,” the old man said. “You are good to go on that.”

“Good,” Kakashi-nii said as he spun the scroll and added all but the set of clothes he had set aside into it. “Then unless, the cubs find anything else practical, we only have two more major points on the supply list.”

“What is it?” The old man answered as Kakashi-nii turned to face him fully.

“Chakra Induction Paper, three pieces,” Kakashi-nii answered flatly.

The old man’s eyes darted around the team again with a grimace.

“So, they haven’t been tested yet?”

“No.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised, hard to get the stuff without a clan to back you,” the old man sighed as he shrugged. “I’ll have them sent along to your room tonight, best not to bring them out here and risk them reacting before you can test your cubs.”

“Thanks,” Kakashi nodded and turned to head toward the area Sakura-chan was still looking through the sewing supplies. Naruto followed the man with Hayate brushing his side as they maneuvered through the aisles of tables and racks.

“And your last major point?” Old Man Yoshi asked as Naruto, Hayate and Kakashi-nii reached the sewing area and the jounin grabbed some dark sewing thread before turning to the bolts of material on the racks near the thread stand.

“Storage sealing scrolls, at least six of them,” the jounin answered glancing back at the other man. The old man made a face at that, which Kakashi-nii sighed when he saw and made that weird crinkle thing with his eye he made when he wasn’t looking forward to whatever he was about to say or do. “Or I’ll take sealing-grade scrolls if you don’t have enough, I can do the storage seals myself if I have to. I was going to ask for a sealing ink and brush kit as well, but I’ll need a higher grade than just for explosive tags for the scrolls.”

The old man’s eyebrows raised, and he whistled.

“Probably should have figured you had some sealing skill, coming from Uzu,” he started, looking Kakashi-nii up and down. “I only have two storage sealing scrolls in stock, hard to trade for those out here in Fire with less Seal Masters. But we have plenty of sealing-grade scrolls in stock, just don’t have many to make anything of them. If you can make me at least four storage scrolls this week on top of the ones you are making your cubs, I can give you free choice of the rest of the sealing supply stock we have.”

“I’m no Master,” Kakashi-nii held up his hands to the old man. “I can get by with basic seals, but…”

“If you can make a storage sealing scroll that works, that makes you better than anyone we have here in the compound,” Yoshi interrupted. “We usually have to wait for one of our wandering packs to come through to make more, or trade for them.”

Kakashi-nii sighed, before reaching out to set his hand on top of Naruto’s head.

“Naruto needs his own sealing kit anyway,” Kakashi-nii replied to the old man while Naruto was dealing with the sudden warmth flooding through him, remembering the way that Kakashi-nii had accepted that Naruto could create all the seals he used in his pranks when the jounin asked after going through the list of pranking supplies that Naruto had created when the older man had asked him to. (And the way that Kakashi-nii had implied that Uzumakis were sealing specialists.)

“Throw in any sealing instruction scrolls you have and a decent supply of seal tag paper, and you’ll get your storage scrolls.”

“Done.” The old man bounced happily on his toes as his eyes flicked quickly in Naruto’s direction before jumping back to Kakashi-nii.

Chapter Text

Kakashi finished his last kata and straightened up, taking in the mess of shuriken, kunai and broken earth strewn around the secluded training ground he had taken over for his own training for the past two days.

The jounin grimaced at how exhausted the basic anbu training routine he had just put himself through had left him as he moved to pick up his equipment. No need to be annoying old man Yoshi for more equipment so soon, because he lost some to the earth jutsu he’d use to reset the ground. The basic jounin routine he had run the day before hadn’t left him too bad off afterward, but today’s had shown him just how much he had let himself slack in the last few months since being removed from the active anbu roster.

He’d actually become lazy, rather than just acting it.

No wonder Gai had been on a winning streak the last few times they had run into each other. Just after Kakashi had managed to pull ahead with a decent number of wins, too.

(Kakashi ignored the twinge of something in his chest at the memory of the flamboyant green beast, and the fact that they may never be able to break the tie of wins Kakashi had left for Wave with.)

Kakashi sighed as he dragged his tired body to stand after crouching to hit the training field with the earth jutsu to flatten out the craters and mounds he had made of the ground. He knew he was going to have to drag himself through this same training routine as often as he was going to throw the training at the cubs in the next few weeks to get himself up to standard to survive in this time. He was suddenly not as excited as he had been to watch them struggle through the training as he was before he realised he was going to be having to work just as hard, for the first few weeks at least, just to get back to anbu conditioning.

Then there was the amount of work he would have to put in to ensure that he was ready for anything this time could throw at him, while still being able to protect his team. There was no room to be lazy in the situation they were in, not when their current protection relied on the acceptance of a clan Kakashi was well aware that he didn’t have all the necessary context for interacting with. Especially given that he still didn’t know what they wanted in exchange for all the aid they were giving them.

He had at least completed two of the four sealing scrolls Yoshi had wanted in return for the run of the clan sealing supplies, so he knew where he stood with the man.

Kakashi shook his head and forced his mind turned to the issue of the cubs training as he turned back toward the main house, Hayate clambering up from where he had sprawled on the side of the training ground out of the way to observe as he had the day before to rush to walk back beside him. Kakashi had left the cubs under the care of Riku with a list of tasks to direct them to do, in order, if they got bored and bratty about whatever tasks he had set them and started to cause trouble, so he can move them into instead.

Kakashi grimaced again at remembering just how much he could have set them to help with their training, even if they were still technically resting, and the list of things that needed to be covered had just grown over the last couple of days as even more new issues had come to light.

How they had been approved to graduate with so many skill gaps was a question that had been stuck on repeat in his mind over the past couple of days. The one thing he was grateful for was that for the most part their gaps were covered by the strengths of the others, so he would have given some credit to the group who created the teams of genin graduates. If he wasn’t aware that they were the result of the old, traditional teaming of the highest scoring male and female graduates with the lowest scoring graduate.

The jounin had taken as many chances as possible to test their knowledge on various theoretical knowledge and possible civilian skills that may be useful not just for life in this time, but also in any undercover situations they may find themselves in. He needed to know what exactly they were able to do outside of battle as much as he needed to test their skills in that area. They were essentially on their own or would be without the current help of the Hatake clan, and he needed to ensure that they would be able to function without him if something were to happen to him here, which given the mortality rate he remembered from this time for shinobi was actually more likely than he would like to think about.

He had started testing them as soon as they had left the warehouse, as they made their way to pick up their laundry, (after Kakashi had stuffed all the new acquisitions into on that were not going to be delivered to them, like the basic sealing supplies, into one of Kakashi’s scrolls). He started to give each of the genin random questions on various shinobi and chakra theory questions he could remember from his time in the academy and what he found he needed later to understand and put into practice to help build on his skills and continued until they that completed washing up in the bathhouse.

(It had been a surprise that he had managed to get Sakura to join them in the same private pool with only a little blushing, and some fussing with positioning a towel around herself even in the water but without any arguing. He guessed the incident at the river was still not that far from any of the cubs’ minds at that point.

He was glad that at least one of his young genin appeared to have some awareness of the possible dangers of the vulnerability of such a situation and would have to find the time to make sure they were all aware of what could go wrong and how best to get as far from those situations as possible. But the sooner they all realised that shame and body-consciousness was not helpful among teammates. They were the same people who may have to rip off pieces of your clothing to put you back together and stop you from bleeding out. Kakashi understood discomfort in showing parts of your body that you would rather be covered, but the hesitant shame that Sakura was showing constantly could cause her to hesitate in a moment where that moment may be the difference between life and death of a teammate.)

(He also glad that even with his own discomfort at having to share space while bathing with only a small towel covering his face between him and other humans, he hadn’t been forced to fight his instincts and worry about having to get through, or around, a wall if something potentially happened to one of the cubs.)

During this questioning, he confirmed that Sakura could give the almost textbook answers to most basic theory questions, with some odd gaps that Kakashi figured were not covered in the academy but struggled a little with some application of the theories. Sasuke could apply some of the theories, but wasn’t able to remember all the theory, and Naruto was clueless on most of the theory, but could sometimes give roundabout answers to application questions that often left out key vocabulary, as if he knew how to do something in practice, and could explain the feeling of the flow of what was happening but did not understand the theory behind why it worked the way it did.

This, of course, had been what he had expected from their academy results, even if some of the things not covered had left him a little confused, it was a basis of what needed to be covered in that area of their training plans he was putting together.

Despite knowing that it was not going to be relevant in this time, he also asked Sakura to give him a basic understanding of what was covered in their history, society and ninja rank and reporting protocols so he knew what they knew. He also wanted to try and get a record of the history and social structures as they knew it in their time down and encrypted so they could see if they could remember any major events that they needed to avoid. (Dangerous battles they had dates and locations for being the main points on his list of “not going to be anywhere freaking near there”.)

He was going to have to get Tsukiko to have someone run through exactly how the Hatake’s and other clans handle mission ranking and reporting, but he was going to be making use of Sumiko’s library to cover the history relevant to this time and the wider social structures they would be working within. He doubted much would have changed as far as the civilian leadership power structure would be too far from what they know, but the shinobi part of society would be very different.

The real shock of what needed to be covered in their training had come the day before after Kakashi had managed to get copies of most of the basic theory scrolls. Kakashi suppressed a growl as he remembered realising just how badly Naruto’s education was neglected, and Kakashi had already thought he had figured out how badly he had let down his sensei, by trusting the boy to the village systems to raise as he had been ordered to, without proper oversight.

Kakashi settled the pile of scrolls on the table as he settled down to check through them to see what exactly they included in them.

He had easily obtained them from Sumiko when he had gone to find her at the gathering point of the clan's cubs that morning. It seemed that Yoshi had sent a message to her at some point after their visit to the warehouse about him possibly looking for theory scrolls for the cubs.

The older woman had mentioned that these were the scrolls she had spare copies of on hand, and if he needed anything else he was free to come to check her library with the cubs later.

Kakashi looked up after organising each of the scrolls into categories and checked each of the cubs as they worked on their individual tasks. Sakura was working her way through the embroidery of Sasuke’s clothes that hadn’t been finished the night before. Sasuke was organising the nin-tools into four piles, ensuring that everyone had the correct numbers of tools each. Naruto was sitting on the other side of the table, tongue sticking out slightly as he created a range of speciality explosive tags that Kakashi wanted in all their arsenal after realising that Naruto wasn’t exaggerating his sealing skills and was actually capable of creating multiple varieties.

(Anytime Kakashi was able to get custom seals without having to do all the work in creating them he would take it. Tags that were beyond the basic explosive tags available to all Konoha nin were more versatile in their application, but while Kakashi had some ability in sealing, he sure didn’t enjoy having to put in the effort to them.)

Kakashi waited for Naruto to finish the tag he was working on, watching the rhythmic tapping of the finger of the hand not holding the brush as he worked. The jounin figured the blond was the closest to him and the one that needed the most basic theory information, so when the boy placed his brush down and set aside the completed tag to dry before moving to the next, Kakashi rolled the most basic scroll from the set over to the boy.

“Read that out to everyone,” Kakashi told him when the blond grabbed the scroll and looked up at him with confusion. “Saves you all from reading the same thing, next scroll will go to someone else.”

Kakashi indicated the fidgeting boy to open the scroll and get going, while he pulled out the scroll he had been using to make notes of what needed to be included in each of the genin’s basic training routines.

The jounin didn’t even get through the first few notes he wanted to add before he looked up at the blond with confusion.

He was sure that scroll had only been written in hiragana. Naruto should not be having so much trouble reading it, stopping and starting as he seemed to work through each character one at a time, and still not quite all of them getting them correct.

The blond’s face was red as he focused entirely on the scroll in front of him.

“What was that, Idiot?” Sasuke sneered from over in his corner. “I don’t understand a thing of what you are saying.”

His words broke Kakashi out of his confusion, where he had been glancing between the blond struggling to read a basic scroll and the perfectly completed sealing tags on the table beside him.

Kakashi glared at the dark-haired boy, before turning to Naruto who had gone silent and shrunk back into himself at the Uchiha’s words.

There had not been any notes in Naruto’s file when it was given to him about the reading and writing issue that mixed up the characters. It came up often enough, but it was compulsory to put it in a shinobi’s file to make sure information was passed in a way that orders weren’t going to be miscommunicated. So, even despite the way that Naruto’s other academy classes had been sabotaged, that should be in his file if they saw any evidence of it. If it came out later that anyone in the academy didn’t include it, it would be a false reporting charge against them. A charge which had a severe punishment attached.

“Naruto,” Kakashi pulled a sheet of spare paper toward him as he asked. “How did you learn to create seals again?”

The blond looked up at him uncertainly, before looking back down at the seals beside him.

“Iruka-sen-nii taught me,” he mumbled, tripping over the honorific used for the other man.

“Was it just when he was making you replace the ones that you had stolen for a prank, or did he continue to teach you afterward?” Kakashi asked as he quickly sketched out the hiragana alphabet onto the piece of paper, then next to it drew the training seal that Sensei had used to help teach him to “read” seals. “Did he take the time to explain and check that you understood what each component of the seal did, more than once?”

“He explained each part that I needed to add,” Naruto mumbled, now looking at Kakashi with confusion. “He made sure that every time I was in trouble for using one in a prank I remembered what each part of the seal did.”

Kakashi pushed over the paper he had been drawing on.

“Can you point to each character on this and read it for me?” Kakashi grimaced as Naruto struggled through much of the alphabet, stopping and starting, and occasionally misreading the character.

Kakashi held up a hand to keep the other two genin speaking and interrupting as he asked the blond to do the same with the components of the seal.

He was able to name almost all the basic components, with only a couple that he admitted to never seeing before.

So, it wasn’t the characters themselves that were the issue. It was recognising the sound they represented.

Kakashi gritted his teeth to repress a growl as a thought came to him.

They wouldn’t have.

“Naruto,” Kakashi asked after a deep breath to ensure that he didn’t make it sound like he was angry at the boy. “When you started at the academy, who was your reading and writing mentor?”

“Who?” Naruto asked, face scrunched as he looked up at the man.

“The academy has clear expectations outlined to parents, that they are to spend at least an hour helping their children to learn to read and write from their first year to their third year at the academy.” Kakashi spoke very slowly, taking a deep breath to try and appear as calm as possible. “If they, a family member or friend are not able to do this they can set up a recurring D-rank with the village to ensure their child is practicing these important skills.”

Kakashi noted the way both the other genin nodded as if following his point, but looked confused about where he was going with this information.

“The orphanage has a system where they are meant to assign each orphan with a permanent reading and writing mentor, who is paid from the village fund to ensure their charge can keep up with their reading and writing. They are supposed to be checked in with by members of the village administration and the academy to ensure that they are completing the task they are paid for.

“Naruto, who spent that time with you teaching you to read and write?”

“No one came for that,” Naruto answered, cocking his head to the side. “Was I meant to go somewhere at the orphanage for that?”

“No,” Kakashi growled, no longer able to hide his anger at the revelation. Naruto flinched back at his answer, so Kakashi tried to calm himself before continuing. “If you didn’t live at the orphanage, they should have come to you.”

Sakura gasped as she seemed to put together what Kakashi was getting at, causing the jounin to turn toward the other two, catching the shocked look on the Uchiha’s face as he did.

Forget a false reporting charge, Kakashi thought as he struggled to keep from expressing his (useless) sudden desire to chidori his way through the Konoha administration. These bastards managed to embezzle from the orphanage fund, protected by some of the strongest laws the Nidaime could put in place for non-treason.

In the end the main training Kakashi had set the genin for the past two days was having Sakura help tutor Naruto in reading and writing, while working through all the embroidery Kakashi had eventually asked her to ensure was on every bit of their clothing. (There had been some embarrassed arguments when she realised that he really meant all the clothes they had, but while Kakashi had half made up the idea of having the embroidery to identify their clothes when doing laundry, it was a practical idea. So, he had had to argue with a pre-teen that yes, he did mean he wanted her to also put at least the Konoha leaf on their underwear too, it would ensure that they would not go missing, or that they could locate it, given the clan all do their laundry communally.)

As for Sasuke, he had been left to practice calligraphy with Sakura checking in on his work, having found that it was another skill that her parents had found out had been introduced in the academy that they were more than happy to ensure she had ample practice in.

(From some of the other skills she had mentioned they had pushed her toward perfecting Kakashi wasn’t entirely sure if they wanted her to focus on becoming an infiltration kunoichi, or if they were using the relatively cheaper academy to ensure she was well trained up with high-class skills that were otherwise very expensive to gain tutors for and then have her drop out of the shinobi corps and marry up. Maybe it was just his shinobi paranoia about motives though, because both options had implications that were slightly disturbing for civilian parents when applied to their daughter.)

(Civilian and Shinobi parents had different mindsets when raising their children right?)

Kakashi shook off the thoughts as his mind turned to continuing to line up the list of elemental jutsu which would be suitable and usable by the genin, and also work in tandem with each other.

The Elemental Induction paper that had been delivered to them as Yoshi promised, right before Riku had shown up to deliver their dinner the evening after their warehouse trip. Kakashi hadn’t made them wait too long to find out why they needed it, after explaining the purpose of the paper to find their elemental affinities, the elements that were easiest for them to use in elemental jutsu. He had had to calm Naruto down by explaining that they could work on other elements outside these affinities but would be best to learn from their affinities first, as they were easier to learn to create and control the jutsu than those that were not your affinity.

The jounin had ensured that he had uncovered Obito’s eye as he had each of the genin place a small amount of chakra in their paper, one at a time. The result of this was that he was able to see and replay each of the surprising reactions of the paper clearly.

The way Sakura’s had wilted and darkened in colour as if damp before crumbling away, indicating that she had strong affinities for both water and earth. No fire affinity, which was the main minor, if not major, affinity found in Fire Country, which surprised Kakashi a little, but will be helpful in covering them here in this time as having come from outside Fire.

Sasuke’s had wrinkled toward his fingers, before setting alight causing him to quickly drop the sliver of paper before burning his fingers. The lightning affinity had been a bit of a shock to Kakashi, while the fire had decidedly not, given the Uchiha’s whole focus on the element. But the lightning may be something to help back up their story about him being a mission child, at least.

Naruto’s had been the most subtle while also not, Kakashi didn’t think he would have caught it if not for Obito’s eye, but there had been a slight darkening and wisp of smoke off the paper before it had rather dramatically split in two. The jounin figured he wasn’t all that surprised about the strong wind affinity, when he thought about it. Minato-sensei had a wind affinity, and Kushina had also had a strong affinity to both wind and water, so that also accounted for the slight water affinity the darkening suggested. The slight fire affinity was the one that gave Kakashi pause, neither of the blond’s parents had any affinity for fire, they had learnt how to use fire jutsu, but it hadn’t been either of their specialties.

(The blast of hot air, fires flaring all over the village as tails larger than any of the village buildings lashed the air.)

The genin having all the elemental affinities between them left Kakashi having to come up with some basic elemental jutsu for every affinity. A difficult task when the only basic elemental jutsu scrolls he had access to were the Hatakes’ who had a large range of lightning jutsu, but not much of a range of the other elements. This was also an issue as Kakashi’s own copied repertoire of jutsu tended toward D-rank and higher, rather than the basic training E-rank.

The jounin was still mulling over his list of jutsu when he turned into the courtyard outside their room to find Sasuke and Naruto slowly going through a Kata while Sakura was sitting on the engawa reading aloud and rewording chakra theory from an open scroll on her lap. Riku was comfortably leaning on one of the support posts of the engawa with his eyes closed, looking rather ridiculous with about four leaves stuck to his face.

Kakashi swept his gaze over the courtyard around them, noting the way Daisuke and Kaori had sprawled in the sun on opposite sides of the courtyard and the line that someone had strung between posts on the engawa with bedding hanging over it to air.

The cubs must have gotten bored with the reading and writing practice, Kakashi thought as Sasuke reached out and swiped at Naruto who had sped up the rhythm of the kata. Hayate wandered off from where he had been brushing his side the entire way back to sprawl in a shady area with a huff of greeting to the occupants of the courtyard.

Kakashi visually checked the boys’ forms as he moved past them towards where his kunoichi was seated, noting that the speed was the only issue that had caused the correction. (Kakashi also noted the way Sasuke had to lift his hand after the swipe to grab the leaf that had fallen from his forehead to replace it after the extra movement, causing the man to lift an eyebrow.)

The jounin nodded to the girl and indicated that she was to continue, noting the two leaves stuck to her forehead as he toed off his sandals and moved to sprawl beside the other Hatake as he opened his eyes.

“Any issues?” Kakashi asked quietly, not wanting to disrupt the current, unusually calm, environment.

“Nothing much,” the younger man shrugged and vaguely indicated the airing bedding. “They got a bit snippy with each other after about an hour in, so I had them clean the room. By the time they were done, Sakura and Naruto had calmed down, but Sasuke was still grumbling, so I had him do the chakra leaf thing too when they started this training combination.”

Riku smirked as he described his punishment for Sasuke’s behaviour.

The younger man had taken a liking to the leaf chakra training activity when Kakashi had explained and demonstrated it so the cubs would be aware of the training activity combinations he would be leaving with Riku when he was doing his drills while they waited for their chakra-mesh to be made. He particularly enjoyed that both Naruto and Sasuke had so much trouble with keeping even one leaf in the same spot and not randomly ripping apart, when he was able to keep more than three perfectly in place even while moving his face, and enjoyed showing off to them by walking around and talking while the leaves where stuck to his cheeks and chin.

The training combination the genin were currently working on was meant to have each of them completing two tasks. Sakura was to be reading basic chakra theory out to the boys, rewording the theory to help build the boys' understanding of the theory, while also deepening her understanding and developing applications for the theory. She was also expected to keep at least two leaves attached to her while doing this, building her chakra pool and control, while not being able to focus her entire attention to the task. Naruto was to be paying attention to Sakura as she recited basic chakra theory, while he was also to follow along with Sasuke’s katas, building his technique, which was rather abysmal, from everything Kakashi had seen of it. Sasuke was supposed to be running through the katas slowly ensuring his base forms were perfect, while monitoring Naruto’s forms.

Kakashi felt his own lips twitch up beneath his mask at Riku’s idea. Sasuke essentially had to split his focus in three directions compared to the others’ two. He wouldn’t have the mental space to focus too much on grumbling about anything if he was properly focused on the training.

It appeared that Riku had picked up on the only way to stop the Uchiha’s issues taking up all the space in the day was to have him focus on training.

“Oh, right,” Riku sat up, as if just remembering something, and pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, handing it to Kakashi. “One of old man Yoshi’s minions came by just a bit ago, said to hand this to you when you got back.”

Kakashi opened the note.

“Hmm,” he looked up at the younger man. “Where would the chakra-mesh workshop be?”

“Something wrong with the order?” Riku asked.

“They just want the cubs to come in for a fitting to double check they have the sizing right before they complete the first set.”

“I’ll take you there now,” Riku said, reaching to pull the leaves off his face. “I should probably be heading home for lunch anyway, and it’s on the way.”

“Thanks,” Kakashi said, beginning to rise to his feet and indicating to the cubs to wrap up what they were doing. “The sooner these sets are ready, the sooner we can get to some real training.”