Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Amanda wakes up with a pounding in her head and a missing leg. 

After heaving herself upright, she goes through the motions of putting her prosthetic on. Even with the worst hangover in all hell she’s got work to get to. The office waits for no man (or woman) and her boss is going to kill her if she’s late again.  

The prosthetic fits a little differently than she’s used to: it’s both heavier and lighter at the same time. Standing up makes her stumble, but she writes it off as the same drunken sickness she faced last weekend and slumps off to the bathroom, knocking her toe against a coffee table she must’ve forgotten she had in the process.

She presses her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror and spits a glob of god-knows-what into the sink. Her mouth tastes like death but all of her drawers are organized wrong. She can’t find her stupid toothbrush for the life of her. Finally, she braces herself for a full blown migraine and squints her eyes open.

The face that squints back at her is… different. 

She frowns, a hand coming up to rub at old scars she doesn’t recognize. The zit on her forehead is finally gone, but there’s a faded white slash trailing from her cheekbone to her jaw. There’s a more recent reddish gash on her eyebrow, cutting across the thick ginger brows in a manner that’s a mockery of an old trend. Scars on your eyebrow were cool a year or two ago. She wonders what possessed her to get one last night. She sincerely hopes she doesn’t have any new tattoos.  

Her forehead clacks against the mirror when a loud clang sounds from outside. 

“Fuck,” she hisses and snaps her hands back and away from the sink as shards of glass clatter into the sink. There’s a sudden wetness she knows is blood on her forehead and she groans.

Still cursing whatever god is up there, she wads up tissue paper to press into the fresh wound. The added pain does not help with her hangover. 

Truly, this is a terrible morning. 

“I heard glass break,” a voice says, gender neutral and completely unfamiliar, right outside the door to the bathroom. “You good in there?”

Jesus, what did she do last night? 

“Yeah,” she says around the frog in her throat. “Just give me a minute.”

“Mmk. I’ll make some breakfast.”

What a nice one night stand she’s saddled herself with. If only she could remember their name.

The bleeding’s stopped by the time Amanda checks the tissue. Oddly enough, the wound reflected back at her in the shattered mirror looks like it’s already scabbing over. Weird, but whatever. Maybe it was just a scab that got picked. A scab she didn’t notice. Whatever. Not going to think about it. Not while her brain feels like it’s trying to leak out her ears. 

She splashes water on her face and decides to deal with the broken glass and unbrushed teeth later. She makes her way out of the bath, mentally cursing as she continues to stumble around. It’s not like her to be so clumsy, but her center of gravity is completely different. Her apartment is still her apartment, but just like her face it’s different somehow. 

She’s never felt so… off before. 

Her whole brain is fuzzy, wrestling through what might be memories and what might be dreams. She’s 90% sure she didn’t spend the last week staking out a rich asshat who lives in the desert (she spent the last week crying over a deadline and trying to talk Sandra’s brother out of buying a house in the suburbs), but the 10% lingers. She can close her eyes and picture the red sand of… Wind Country? She can smell the rich perfumes vendors tried to pawn off on her for way too much money and she can hear as the wind bellows between the high dunes of the desert. Clear as day she can remember the noise that rich bastard made as he choked out his last breath. His face was purple and green as she ripped the oxygen from his bloodstream. She never laid a hand on him, instead blending in with the painted clay ceiling of his summer home, watching from above as his servants scrambled to save their boss.

She went to a bar afterwards. Maybe for celebration, maybe because framing some innocent servant for her crimes always made her feel a little queasy. She got some drinks and talked with the locals, listening to all the gossip about the local landlord’s sudden heart attack.

She also ends up getting punched in the face for flirting with some shinobi’s girlfriend. 

The guy was some Sasori wannabe- so focused on puppeteering that she had to fake the fall to make her civilian cover believable. Taijutsu, clearly, was not his strength. So much so that her eyebrow injury didn’t even come from him, regardless of the metal rings he wore.

Is it really a wonder why the Sand village is losing business when their chunin are so weak-

Wait, what the hell is she saying? 

“You look a little lost there.”

Amanda blinks twice, trying to clear her head of weird dreams and this wretched, horrible, no good, very bad headache. 

“I feel like shit,” she says to the stranger, deciding to just roll with the punches life sends her for now. She’s too exhausted to care. 

The person in her kitchen flits around like they’ve done this many times before. Amanda doesn’t recognize them. She’d remember someone with hair as well dyed as that. If she didn’t know better, she might’ve thought it was naturally pale blue. Not a root to be seen.

“My brother asked about you again.”

Amanda blinks and squints at the person’s back through her headache. Maybe she heard them wrong. “What?”

“My brother,” they say. Androgyny aside, they’re tall, fit, and look like they could crush Amanda’s skull with their biceps. Nice. Now if only they had a name. “He wants to know what your plan is, if you hate his so much.”

Amanda blinks. “...Should I have one?”

The person snorts. They never look up from the pan of scrambled eggs, smiling fondly at… the eggs? “I told him you weren’t much of a planner. Even being a sensei won’t change that.”

Sensei? Like karate class? 

“Are you in the right house?” She asks, because this is getting kind of weird. “Like- you can use my phone if you need to. I think you went home with the wrong person last night.”

“Stop being dumb.”

Not the reaction she was hoping for. 

“We gotta go soon,” the blue-haired-gender-neutral-model says, putting a literal fuck ton of eggs on two plates and handing one to Amanda. Are they supposed to eat ten eggs each? That seems excessive. “I already scoped out my team. I doubt they’ll pass.”

“Oh. Uh, that sucks?”

They shrug. “The blond one’s got promise, but I’m not dealing with two shitheads just to pass one lukewarm boy who’ll never make chunin. What were they expecting, giving me a team of three boys? Idiots.”

“Okay. Yeah. You’d make a terrible teacher anyway,” Amanda muses. She’s met this stranger maybe five minutes ago and already knows they’re terrible with kids. What kind of person just breaks into someone’s house to make them breakfast? Good breakfast too. These eggs are great. Amanda’s always end up too dry. Maybe she will eat all ten. 

They shrug, shoveling food into their own mouth. “Not everyone can be as good as Chiasa-sensei.”

(There’s a dark-haired woman in circular sunglasses smiling at her. The sun is blacked out but a massive swarm of insects and Ohta knows she’s screwed. Beside her, Ayane looks close to tears, Michi is unconscious across the field already. Ohta’s too prideful for tears, though, so she clenches her jaw and plugs her nose. The last thing she sees is a flash of white teeth as her sensei’s hands rise up and the swarm descends-)  

Amanda doesn’t recognize the name.

“Chiasa-sensei was too good for us,” she says. She’s not quite sure what makes her say it, but she knows in her bones she’s correct. The blue haired stranger smiles wistfully and nods.

“I bet you’d make a good sensei though. Have you checked out your team? You didn’t tell us about them yesterday.”

Amanda looks over her shoulder instinctually. Across the room and at the foot of her bed is a manila folder with three files in it. Three files which she knows she read front and back over and over in disbelief last night instead of going out to drink with the rest of the prospective jounin sensei. She can’t for the life of her remember a word that was written down. 

But didn’t she go out drinking with work friends? She dragged Lanore, the new intern, out to join Shayna, Jackson, and her for drinks. She knows she did. Lanore threw up in her purse. Why would she ever bring office work home with her?

“No.” she says, wracking her brain for what might be their contents. She doesn’t know. She can't remember? 

“Keeping it a surprise then. I can respect that.”

“Mm, yeah.”

“So, uh,” the blue haired person coughs, raising a judgemental and perfect eyebrow at Amanda. “Are you going in your pajamas or…?” 

She picks at the T-shirt she’s wearing. There’s japanese writing on it that she knows says “Super Soup Day” even though she’s never once tried to pick up japanese. Her shorts are shorter than she usually wears and-- holy shit did she lose weight? Why are her thighs so muscular? 

“Um,” she mumbles, looking at the thigh muscles that were not there yesterday. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll go get dressed.”

The stranger is looking at her, eyes steeped in worry as Amanda stumbles off the stool and back towards the bedroom. 

“I’ll wait for you outside,” they call and Amanda sends a half-hearted wave over her shoulder. 

Like everything else, Amanda’s closet is both the same and different. Her clothes are mainly shades of green and navy, which are her favorite colors but their style just doesn’t feel right. She can’t put her finger on why the vest in her hands is so familiar and foreign at the same time. She wore it two days ago, on that mission. Or was she wearing black slacks and a scratchy men’s button down, since the department head kept complaining that her outfits were “too revealing”? That jackass only got the job because of his dad. What’s it matter if she has nice tits or not? Why’s he even looking at her tits since he’s married-

Shit. Her head is killing her. 

Amanda falls to her knees, the prosthetic clanking loudly against the hardwood ( she hates hardwood- she always slips ). She’s got a full blown migraine now, the left side of her face pulsing in pain as she searches blindly around the ground for something to wear. 

Her head feels better in the kitchen, for some reason. 

She ends up changing into what actually might also be pajamas right there behind the counter. She does not look at her body, because she does not want to find that it is not actually her body. This is too weird and her head is killing her. Does she have amnesia? Did she quit her job and become a body-builder, just to forget about the past five years of hard work? 

She jumps into navy sort-of sweatpants and a turtleneck made of the same breathable material. Almost automatically, she grabs a similar vest from the earlier one from the armchair in her living room. It’s the same army green and, again, reflexively she pulls something out of the breast pocket. 

It’s a headband. A black one with some scratched up metal plating on it. 

It’s… also weirdly familiar. 

The blue-haired stranger bangs on her door, an obvious “hurry-up,” and Amanda puts it on the counter. She slips the only shoe she sees by the door on her foot and swings the door open.

“You’re impatient,” she snaps. 

“You’re late,” the stranger huffs, giving her a once over. “Are you wearing standards?”

“Uh,” Amanda picks at the blue shirt and shrugs. “I guess.”

“Huh, you really do want to make a good first impression.”

She just grunts back, her head still hurting. Amanda shuts the door, kicking her heel against the concrete to fix the fit of her sandal and- 

Is that Mount Rushmore? 

.

.

.

That is not Mount Rushmore. 

“Oh,” is the first thing she says. Followed by, “fuck.”

The blue haired person frowns at her. They look a little annoyed at this point. Amanda can sympathize. She’s certain she’s being kind of annoying. “What’s wrong now?”

“Nothing,” she shrugs. Nothing besides having transmuted into her favorite childhood show. Jeez, this was thirteen year old her’s dream. Why’s it coming eighteen years late? “My headache’s just gnarly.” 

“‘Gnarly,’” they echo, appreciative, “that’s a new one.”

“Sorry.”

“Doesn’t matter,” they shrug, “come on, we’re going to be later than Hatake at this rate.”

Hatake. Like Kakashi Hatake. From Naruto. Ha. She’s in Naruto.

The blue haired stranger leaps away, jumping off the railing of her apartment and landing on the roof of a shorter building. They don’t wait for Amanda and just keep heading in a blur of movement towards what must be their destination. It’s a tall building in the center of the city, visible from all angles. It’s got a red roof. 

Amanda watches their long blue ponytail bounce off and debates the pros and cons of throwing herself over the railing. 

Bad idea, she decides and runs a hand across the hard abs of her abdomen. There’s a chance she’d survive the fall in this new absolute unit of a body. No wonder her center of gravity is off, she lost twenty pounds of fat and gained thirty in pure muscle. 

Dying might not even bring her back to her world anyway. 

Shit, what a mess. 

“Ohta-chan,” A voice calls, “you’ll be late if you just stand there.” 

She glances up and makes eye-contact with literal rubies. On her roof is a goddess. A beautiful mane of black curls frame the most flawless face Amanda has ever seen. The woman’s eyes are bright red and shine with the kind of mirth that Amanda knows means trouble. Her outfit is a little weird, but damn if she doesn’t look good. 

Amanda’s mouth is dry. 

“Yeah,” she squeaks, suddenly motivated to not throw herself off her balcony. “I’m coming. Don’t worry.” 

The woman smiles, her red painted lips forming a lopsided arch before she takes off in a blur as well.

Apparently walking isn’t the usual way to do things around here. 

Looking down at the dirt and cobblestone road, littered with early risers and not much else, calling a cab also doesn’t seem like an option. 

Shit, she thinks and hikes her foot onto the railing. 

Shit, she thinks and leaps as hard as she can toward the next building. 

Shit, she thinks as she overshoots it, landing on the potted plant of the balcony on the other side of the building. She just barely catches herself on the railing, the metal actually snapping in her hands before she realizes that hey-- she’s fit as hell and her core strength is actually wicked good. She drops the metal with a clatter, catching a raw egg in its shell that was beamed at her head. 

There’s a woman in the apartment, red faced and screaming at her. Amanda waves sheepishly and places the egg on the ground, dodging a frying pan as she does. She catches that one too, which, pretty awesome reflexes, bravo, and glances inside at the blonde woman as her --familiar??-- daughter tries to calm her down. Amanda fumbles her way through what might have been an apology and jumps with less power this time. She lands on the roof of the next building, rolling once and not quite sticking the landing. Her prosthetic, a blade piece that’s matte black and stiff rather than the flexible plastic she’s used to, does not slip, which is a mercy. 

“Okay,” she murmurs, “it’s okay. You got this.” 

Her body knows what to do. She just has to trust it. 

Trust has never been something that’s come easy to Amanda (or Ohta). 

“Okay,” she whispers again and jumps to the next building. She lands with a wobble this time. She’s too heavy. Everything feels wrong. It’s all too fast and too slow at the same time. Her eyes say she’s going too slow, and her legs ache to launch with twice the power of that first too-strong jump. Yet, her mind is saying this is already way too fast . A human being shouldn’t be able to leap twenty feet. You’re not a human, though? You’re a ninja. No you are, I’m a lawyer.

She’s too close to the red roof to be jumping around like a flea. Someone this body knows is going to see her and say that something is very truly wrong with her. Something is very truly wrong with her, but she can’t let them know that. 

On her next jump she cushions her descent somehow, not making a sound as she lands on her foot and a knee on the ceramic tiled roof.

On the next she lands on her foot and prosthetic before wobbling and catching herself with a single hand. Again, she makes no noise, the prosthetic sticking the landing just as easily as her foot. 

On the next she doesn’t even skid, landing in a controlled crouch and leaping immediately to the next wall. She bounces off like spiderman, barely grazing the brick with her foot before making it an additional twenty feet. She lands on the roof closest to the red tower, safe and sound. 

The blue-haired stranger and red-eyes goddess are together at the base of the tower. Amanda holds her breath and hopes she sticks the landing as she jumps down to meet them. 

Neither of them seem to notice if she lands funny. Amanda thinks she did rather good, all things considered. She’ll have to send that woman who’s balcony she destroyed a fruit basket. 

“Yo,” the blue one salutes her, smiling lazily. 

“Kakashi-kun almost beat you, Ohta-chan,” the red one jokes, “I warned you.” 

“Yeah, well. I’ve got a lot of… stuff. On my mind, I mean. I’m tired.” 

The blue one scoffs and links arms with her. “You’ve got a lot of stuff too, you hoarder.” 

How do they know that? 

“You’re not actually going to pass your team, are you?” they ask, practically dragging Amanda into the tower. The red woman follows them idly, looking around her as if she’s waiting for another. “Who am I going to go on missions with if you’re busy with brats?” 

“We don’t go on missions together,” Amanda says. She’s not sure why she’s so certain about that. She looks at her hand, the one that crushed metal in her bare palm. It just looks like a normal hand. Maybe a bit more callused than her usual one, but it was still her hand.

“For old time’s sake! Come on!” 

“Go with Ebisu, then.” Who even is that?

“Ew. Absolutely not.” 

“Fair,” she shrugs anyway. 

The red woman skips ahead when they walk further into the tower. She leans into a tall and hairy man who looks more like a lumberjack than an assassin. 

“Asuma,” she greets, a bit coy.

“Kurenai,” the man smiles back, copying her tone. 

“And Michi!” the blue stranger bounds ahead, letting go of Amanda and wrapping their arms around the two lovebirds. The two end up smooshed into ‘Michi’s’ chest, Kurenai giggling and Asuma waving his arms around like he doesn’t know where to put them. “Now we all know each other. How about you two flirt not in front of me and instead let’s go beat up some little kids!” 

Kurenai wiggles out of Michi’s grasp, laughing. “Sounds like a plan, Michi.” 

Asuma’s face is bright red as he tries to stammer out something witty. He does not succeed. 

“Right on,” Michi says, slinking away and waving Amanda over, “Come on then-- Daddy’s waiting.” 

Asuma pales. “Please don’t call him that. He’s my actual father--” 

The doors slam open from the force of Michi’s push. The sound of them clacking against the wall drowns out the rest of Asuma’s complaint and thoroughly interrupts the scene inside the room. 

Two men and two women ranging from their thirties to mid fifties stand around a desk. Each of them looks a bit annoyed by the intrusion, but none look as shocked or disturbed as Amanda feels. Behind the big oak desk is a wrinkled old man wrapped in what looks like a blanket and a silly triangular hat. 

The old man sighs, a pained smile on his face. 

“I consider you all my children,” he says, “but please don’t call me that, Michiyo-san.” 

Michi(yo?) salutes him half-assedly. “Yessir.” 

“Now then, come on in. We’re just waiting on one- oh. Hello Kakashi-kun.” 

A man in the window who was definitely not there a moment ago raises the book he’s reading as a greeting. “Yo,” he says as the wind from the open window blows his page over. He licks his thumb through the black cloth mask he’s wearing and turns it back. 

The old man smiles, clearly entertained, and suddenly his eyes lock on Amanda. 

“Ohta-chan, it seems you’re the last one to arrive.” 

Amanda blinks once, then glances down. 

She hasn’t crossed the threshold yet.

Chapter Text

In stories, thresholds signify the protagonist passing a point of no return. 

Crossing one signifies they’ve dedicated themself to their journey and that the protagonist will see it through, no matter the consequences. Crossing over means this is the start of an odyssey, rather than just another super shitty Tuesday. She’ll have to give herself to this cause, whatever it is, and see it through to the end. 

She never liked stories.

Real life never ends so neatly. 

“Ohta-san?” 

She looks up, her head feeling heavy and awkward as she does. Her headache is back. It’s too weird responding to that name. This is all too weird. 

“Are you alright, Ohta-san?” the old man asks, looking at her with his head cocked to the side. He doesn’t look concerned, just analytical. Amanda is, in fact, acting like a freak, so she supposes the reactions she’s gaining are warranted. 

“Yeah,” she says anyway, “Yeah, I’m alright.” 

She steps over the threshold. The doors close behind her. 

She doesn’t meet the eyes of the people who are Ohta’s friends, nor the eyes of Ohta’s leader. She stares out the window behind the old man’s head instead. Maybe staring into the sun will render her blind and she’ll wake up from this nightmare. 

“Good then, and greetings to all of you,” the old man-- hokage her mind unhelpfully supplies--says, to all of them this time. “I’m glad you’re all here.” 

He deliberately looks across the room at Kakashi. Kakashi, in turn, deliberately pages through his book. There’s no way he’s managed to read a single page yet. 

The hokage gestures to a stack of manila folders to his right and an aide picks them up swiftly. “We have a truly astonishing pool of potential this year. While I’m sure you’ve all seen your assigned teams already, as is tradition, we leaders shall share the burden of responsibility together. The creation of the future is not a one-man job, after all. You must all aid each other in nurturing tomorrow, whether that means training, advising, or collaborating with the fellows in this room.” 

The aide is handing out folders. The folders aren’t labeled, but he hands them out in a very specific order. Ohta gets hers and already knows the contents. She, like the others in the room, doesn’t bother to open it. Amanda has no idea what’s going on. 

“You will each have an opportunity to assess your teams whilst they break for lunch, after which team assignments will be announced to the students. As always, you may use your judgment to determine whether your team will continue on the genin tract or not. I trust each of you implicitly,” he pauses to puff on his pipe, tapping the papers in his hand on the desk. 

“We’ll start with team ten, led by Sarutobi Asuma. As per tradition, the team will consist of Akimichi Choji, Nara Shikamaru, and Yamanaka Ino. Team nine is omitted, due to the presence of team ten.

“Team eight, led by Yuhi Kurenai,” Ohta’s eyes slide over to the beautiful women off to the side. Kurenai's flat expression doesn’t change but her eyes seem to sparkle, excited. “Will consist of Aburame Shino, Hyuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba and his ninken Akamaru.”

The Hokage taps his files on the desk again, gathering the attention he already had. He coughs into his fist. 

“Team seven, led by Kurasaki Ohta, consisting of Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke, and Uzumaki Naruto.”

The room was silent to begin with, but suddenly that silence is partnered with tense movement. The people who Amanda does not know, who Ohta does, move to glance at her, to gape at the Hokage, to send sympathy Kakashi’s way. They’re professionals, so it’s not terribly obvious, but some part of Amanda is also a professional, so she notices. 

Not one person in the room expected that outcome. 

Including herself. 

The manila folder in her hand suddenly feels a lot more familiar. She was issued an identical one last night along with all the other senseis. She and Michi opened their together, Michi instantly complaining that her team was of three boys and Ohta instantly snapping hers shut, hiding the rushed movement with a laugh at something her friend said. She remembers focusing on Michi. Michi and Kurenai, who were both certain their teams would fail out before the first chunin exam. Kurenai was sad, because she was excited for her first team. Michi was grateful, because the less men in this profession the better, in their opinion. She remembers waving off their invitation for drinks. She remembers flipping through the folder over and over on her bed, memorizing and panicking over why the hell the Hokage would put her in charge of this dumpster fire. 

The Hokage, to his credit, continues announcing teams and names as usual. 

The air is brittle, though, and it stays that way for the rest of the meeting. No one chit chats. No one whines. No one says a single word or dares to look at either Ohta or Kakashi again. Kakashi gets assigned team five. Michi gets assigned team two. 

By the end of it, Amanda feels like she might snap in half from the pressure. 

Michi is the one to pull her from the room, waving off Kurenai and Asuma as they try to follow. They wrap an arm around Amanda’s shoulder and lean their head into her neck. 

It’s comforting. It’s familiar. Sandra would do this. 

“Jeez,” they sigh, “No wonder you’ve been acting weird. I wouldn’t touch that team with a ten-foot pole.” 

“Be honest: am I fucked?”  

“Yup.”

“Shit.” 

“Mhmm.” 

“Shit.” She says again, with feeling. 

The two of them get as far as the first turn down the corridor before they stop. Standing as still as the potted plant beside him, Hatake Kakashi is leaning against the wall. He doesn’t look up, but also doesn’t seem to breath as he turns the page in his book. 

His posture is nonchalant. His presence before her is anything but. 

Clearly, he also expected him to be the sensei of team seven.  

Michi looks between them and quickly takes two large steps back. “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell Asuma something. Be right back, Ohta. Don’t get lost or whatever.” 

Amanda’s scapegoat runs off with their tail between their legs. 

Coward. 

“I’m supposed to offer my support,” Kakashi says, breaking the silent pause between them. He doesn’t look at her. She doesn’t look at him either, instead staring at the plant beside him. 

She hums, her eyes sliding to find something else to look at. “Thanks?” 

Her gaze lands back on him in time to meet his own. His eye slides up from the book to her, assessing, calculating. Ohta-- she’s Ohta? Is she Ohta?-- and him are the same rank, but something in Amanda knows right away that he’s the bigger fish here. 

“It’s been a while,” he offers, a little awkward, “since we last talked, I mean.” 

They’ve talked? Why would they have talked? Jesus, what is happening. 

She rubs at her chin, a nervous tic that gave her a lot of acne in the past. 

“I’m not sure what to say,” she says honestly. Should she offer to swap teams? Should she tell him she’s an imposter? 

He blinks at her, slow and drawn out like a cat, before going back to his book. 

“I guess there’s just not much to say,” he shrugs. 

She sighs, dragging her hand across her chin and offering him a shrug of her own. He doesn’t seem determined to interrogate her, which she appreciates, but there’s a lot of emotional baggage here that she does not appreciate. Especially since she doesn’t know what it is. 

“Right,” she mutters, “you, uh, well-- I’ll see you around.” 

She doesn’t look back to see if he nods or shakes his head or flips her off. 

She stares straight ahead, trying her very best not to freak the fuck out. 

She’s doing a stand up job, if she does say so herself. 

She spends the next hour throwing up in the bathroom, cursing off any random chunin or aides who dared to ask if she was alright. She is fine, thank you. Leave Her Alone. 

Asuma, of all people, is the one to find her, wiping her mouth as she leans heavily against the red-roofed tower. She just wanted some fresh air, but of course she runs into an actual person. The actual person who’s probably dating the hottest person she’s ever seen, so, on principle, she doesn’t like him. 

“Yo! Ohta!” he grins, annoyingly handsome and annoyingly frat-boy-esque. “You look like shit.” 

“Go away,” she grumbles. 

“You’re going to be late for announcements. Don’t tell me you’re going to pull a Kakashi?” 

“Go. Away.”

“Jeez,” he sighs, holding up his hands in a surrender motion, “I’m just trying to help. I, well, I can understand where you’re coming from. With the nerves and all that. I get it.” 

Dammit, how dare he try to be nice.

“Thanks,” she says blandly, her mouth still tasting like ass. 

“Anytime. I know we’re not exactly close, but you’re one of Kurenai’s good friends. I… would, um, appreciate it if we were… closer.” 

Holy shit is he trying to get her blessing? Right now? 

She pushes off the tower and wipes her mouth again. She’s not dignifying that request with an answer. Whether Kurenai and him date is not her problem. 

“Let’s go get our teams,” she says.  

“Oh yeah, for sure. Let’s go.” 

In a way, Asuma’s presence worked out, because otherwise she never would’ve found the classroom they were supposed to collect their teams at. Michi is already there. They’re with their team of three boys, already looking thoroughly annoyed. Amanda waves as Michi passes by. Michi flips her off. 

Amanda snorts and Asuma glances at her, curious. 

“Don’t mind,” she mutters and gestures to the sliding door before them. “So, are you going in or…?” 

“Of course not,” he grins. 

“Huh?”

“Gotta make an entrance, after all,” he winks at her, disappearing in a flurry of leaves and steam. 

Gasps and awe come from the otherside of the door and Amanda curses not knowing how to teleport. How come she’s gotta follow after the cool sensei? Now those twelve year olds are going to think she’s lame for using the door. Thanks a lot Asuma. 

The jerk himself slides the door open, three shockingly short children trailing after him. He winks at Amanda as he ushers the kids by, each of them casting her a curious glance. 

“Come on then, team,” he says, not breaking eye contact with Amanda. “It’s time to turn you into the strongest shinobi ever. Better than every other team.” 

“What a drag,” one of the boys murmurs. Amanda can relate. 

“It’s not a competition,” she snaps. 

“Then why do you sound like a sore loser?” 

“Fuck off.” 

“Language,” Asuma sing-songs, slamming the door shut in Amanda’s face. She glares at him. He grins back. “We’re around kids, after all.” 

“I hate you.” 

“You’ll get used to it!”

Asuma is her mortal enemy, she decides then, and reaches for the stupid paper screen door.

It clatters awkwardly on its guide, getting stuck midway through and slamming too heavy into its compartment. Amanda winces at the noise and shuffles in, her footsteps sounding too loud in the suddenly silent room. 

There’s eighteen pairs of eyes staring at her, barely-contained excitement shining in all of them. The teacher is giving her the stink eye in the corner. He definitely heard her curse. 

“Um,” she coughs into her fist, clearing her throat before her voice cracks. “Seven?”

Three kids perk up in the fourth row back. One pink, one yellow, one blue. Great, they’re color coded. At least that hasn’t changed. 

“Cool, cool. Come with me.”

She’s trailed by the kids as she wanders down the hall. She’s not exactly sure where she’s heading, but she’s sure she’ll eventually stumble on some sitting area where they can do introductions or whatever. More presently, Amanda debates just handing the team over to Kakashi right now instead of later. Maybe she can fake an illness. Or death. 

No, she decides, not quite seeing but somehow sensing more than three pairs of eyes on her back, faking anything is probably impossible in a 1984-level surveillance state. She’s lucky no one’s arrested her so far. Frankly, she doesn’t want to push her luck. 

Maybe Ohta hated being watched too, and that’s why they swapped places. Did they even swap places? God, this is the weirdest day ever. 

She runs through some hand signs reflexively, lingering on the last one enough to study it --Rat, obviously, what else would it be-- and the extra eyes slide off the four of them. Now that’s more like it, she thinks, stuffing her hands into her pockets and letting herself relax a bit.

“Um, sensei?” the pink one squeaks a moment later. She’s glancing around them, looking a bit confused. “Did you do something? A genjutsu?” 

Amanda just slides the door of an empty classroom-- how did she know it was empty? --and ushers them inside. 

“Do I really need to answer that?” she asks.

As the boys look at them puzzled, Sakura’s face goes beat-red. She nods sternly, taking what Amanda said as encouragement to trust her gut rather than a lame excuse to not answer her. Amanda mentally congratulates herself on another bullet dodged, because really, what the hell is genjutsu? 

“What happened to your leg?” Naruto asks, squinting at the metal where her foot is supposed to be.

Amanda raises her eyebrows. On actual earth, she was just born this way. She’s not sure if the story is the same here on… ninja-earth? 

“I ate it.”

Naruto sticks his tongue out. “Liar.”

“So they say,” she waves him off, gesturing vaguely to the desks behind them. “Go sit down.”

The yellow and blue ones give her a supremely unimpressed look. The pink one just looks happy to be there. 

They sit as far as physically possible away from each other: Sakura pushing Naruto away from her and Sasuke slyly using their scuffle to avoid them both. She watches their interaction with a vague interest, gauging just how much work she was going to have to put in before handing the team over to Kakashi. 

Preferably, none, but that doesn’t really seem like an option. 

Shit, she’s got to come up with a team building exercise for them. She always sucked at those company retreats. 

Didn’t Kakashi do a bell test for them? Yeah, he did and then they wouldn’t stop thinking about it for the entire series. Jeez, if only she watched the whole thing. Well, she’s got maybe up to when Sasuke leaves down… maybe. She kind of breezed through a few of the boring parts. Most of it, even. Isn’t there a guy with cow pants? Was he their sensei? No, it was definitely Kakashi… She had a crush on the lazy kid right? Is he going to show up? 

Bell test. Right. Two bells, three losers.

…Or was it one bell?

“Sensei…” the pink one drawls, looking warily between Amanda and the blue one. Sasuke looks like he might blow a fuse if he waits any longer. Naruto too. “... should we do, um, introductions… maybe?” 

Amanda absolutely does not want to hear three twelve year olds talking about their likes and dislikes. That would be hell. She’s in hell. 

“I already know you,” she says, curt, and goes back to contemplating the number of bells she should buy, if any. 

“Well, we don’t know you-”

“And why would you have to?” 

That elicits some interesting responses. 

Sasuke just about lunges at her, hackles raised. 

“Is this a joke?” he hisses, glaring at her. His knuckles are white on the desk. Amanda thinks he might try to throw it at her. 

Sakura hovers like she wants to grab him (or the desk). “Sasuke-kun wait!” 

“You’re our sensei!” Naruto shouts maybe as an answer. His earlier excitement has melted into a confused sort of betrayal, his fists clenched at his side. “What are you talking about ‘I don’t need to know you’!? You’re not allowed to ignore me, y’know!” 

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” she chides, frowning at him. Damn, they took that personally. “And settle down.” 

She glances at Sasuke because, ninja or not, the pissed twelve year old looks more like a wet cat than a threat. The boy doesn’t settle so much as he simmers, still glaring at her with distrust. 

Naruto, for all his bravo, looks dejected. “But sensei-” 

“Why do you need to know me?” she asks again, sitting on top of the desks across from them. “It’s a question, not a threat.” 

After a beat, Sakura raises her hand. 

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Oh! Well, um,” she starts, flushing, “we need to know you because you’re our sensei. And in order to create a productive environment we should form a good relationship with you. That way we can optimize our chances at becoming great shinobi!” 

“To create a productive environment,” she summarizes and looks to Sasuke. “Do you agree?” 

Sasuke huffs. “I don’t need to know you. I just need you to teach me.” 

“Oi! Bastard! I was going to say that!” Naruto shouts, “Don’t steal my line!” 

“Shut up, dunce.”

‘Dunce.’ She hasn’t heard that word since… maybe ever. Who the hell calls people dunce? So old school. Maybe Kakashi was onto something--beating teamwork into them instead of outright telling them. Man, she wishes she remembered more of the show.

“Hm, okay,” she says and leans back. Maybe this can work. Clearly the boys aren’t as bright as Sakura, and clearly, Sakura already has a (very) basic understanding of their purpose here. “Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but you’re not quite my students yet.”

“Huh!? But you called team seven?! This is team seven!” Naruto shouts, clutching at his hair, “don’t tell me you called the wrong team!”

“Well, I can’t have students who aren’t ninjas.” 

“We have our headbands,” he jabs a thumb at the metal on his forehead, still looking at her like she’s crazy, “we’re ninja, y’know!” 

“Ah. Then I must not be a ninja.” 

The kids really look at her for once, taking in her unimpressed stare and disheveled hair. She’s dressed like most of the other jounin she’s seen so far--navy turtleneck and sort of sweatpants, army-green vest, and a freaky sandal that exposes her toes--with one exception. 

“You don’t have a headband?” Sakura blinks. 

“I do,” she shrugs. It’s on her kitchen counter. She put it there before realizing she was in the Naruto World. Sue her. “Not that it matters.” 

“Then…” Sasuke drawls, quick to catch on when it involves him. “Are you saying that we’re not actual ninja yet?” 

“Ding. ding. We have a winner! Thanks for playing, folks.” 

Naruto’s up in arms again. “But that’s not fair! We already passed the exam!” 

“How do we become ninja?” Sasuke growls, ignoring Naruto’s declaration. 

“Excellent question,” Amanda applauds, which only serves to piss Sasuke off more. “To become a ninja you have to complete two tasks.”

She holds up a finger. 

“The first task is to call me by my name. You get one chance and that’s it. Say the wrong name and I fail you.” 

She lifts another finger.

“The second task is to be at my doorstep by sunrise tomorrow. Capeesh?” 

Questions shoot at her from three mouths at the same time. She smiles at them, tuning out the chaos. 

“Good luck. If you’re not there tomorrow, consider yourself a failure.” 

…

The obvious solution is to tail her. 

Amanda lets them for a while. She goes to the parts of town that feel entirely unfamiliar. The Ohta in the back of her mind doesn’t even recognize the ramen place she ends up eating at, but she acts friendly with the owner. The address was, after all, listed on Naruto’s file.  

“Hello again,” she smiles. 

The man behind the counter blinks, clearly not recognizing her, but the service industry runs on lies. “Always a pleasure.” 

The kids linger outside the shop, just out of view, as she sits down. She orders a large bowl and quickly gets to work butting into the owner’s personal life. 

“Your daughter works here?” she echos, “how old is she?” 

“She’s seventeen this february.” 

“Ah, we’re both aquarians!” 

The ramen man, Teuchi, laughs sheepishly, clearly not knowing a thing about zodiac signs. His smile wobbles as he looks at her, before sighing. 

“I sorry,” he starts, “But I really can’t seem to place your name.” 

Amanda laughs, good-natured. Behind her, the kids perk up. “That’s alright. My name’s Sarutobi Asuma. I live in the blue building down the street.” 

Teuchi says a proper greeting and Amanda finishes her meal, knowing full well there is no blue building down the street. 

She spends the next four hours in a similar way--exploring the village and letting the kids waste their time following her around. She walks by where she said her house would be, just to drive home that she’s a lying liar who lies to the kids and keep them tailing her. To keep it interesting she talks with strangers, acting friendly and pretending to be friends with them. She waves at chunin who she definitely doesn’t know and pats some kid’s head affectionately.

She goes to a weapons store she’s never been to. One that was listed in Sasuke’s file repeatedly. 

“Hello,” she greets as she enters. The kids are still lingering outside. The clerk nods back and she waltzes right up to him. “My name’s Yuhi Kurenai. I live in the townhouse across the street.” 

“Really?” the man blinks, putting down the katana he was polishing. “I don’t recognize you.” 

“Yeah well, my family’s always gone to a different smith, but it closed down recently.” 

“Bonbon’s place? I heard he retired…” 

“It’s a shame. He did good work,” she shrugs. “But we shinobi need our tools, no?” 

The man grins. “Well I’m not one to turn down new business. What can I do for you?” 

She spends an hour at Sasuke’s favorite weapon smith, looking at swords and chains and knives. She ends up buying some senbon, because they were the cheapest, and restarts her wandering. 

Then, just as the streets are starting to clear out, she vanishes. 

It’s not hard to disappear when you’re a jounin. Amanda doesn’t know how to do it, but it’s not like she’s just Amanda, now is she? Just like at the academy, her hands form into a series of signs she can only barely recall-- boar, tiger, bird, rat --and suddenly no one pays her any mind. The few civilians that were still on the street at dusk ignore her. The eyes on her back slide away. She jumps --that was a body flicker-- to a nearby roof and watches as the kids expose themselves. 

They yell at each other, blaming one another for being distracting, for alerting sensei of their presence, for being an idiot. For a moment, Amanda thinks they were actually working together, but then Sakura punches Naruto in the head and says she told him not to follow her. Naruto says he was just following their sensei and it quickly becomes clear that rather than dividing and conquering, all three of them have been wasting their time following the same dead end independently. Sasuke rolls his eyes and storms off toward the weapon shop, no doubt going to interrogate the owner for her information.

Well, her work here is done, Amanda decides. She stands up from her crouch and jumps off, taking the rooftops to her apartment. She pit stops at the balcony she wrecked this morning, apologizing properly to the mother who lived there. She offers to come by tomorrow and fix it. The woman huffs and puffs but her husband just smiles and says thank you. Amanda smiles back and shakes the pink-haired man’s hand. 

“I’m Haruno Kizashi,” he introduces. “This is my wife, Mebuki.” 

“A pleasure. I’m Hatake Kakashi, I live in the building-” she gestures to the opposite side of the building, toward the less-nice apartment building behind this there, “-over there.” 

“Ah! We’re practically neighbors!” 

“Seems like it,” she smiles. “Well, have a good night.” 

She waves as she jumps to the roof and to her own balcony, mentally patting herself on the back for how clever she is. The kids will probably be running like headless chickens trying to find clues when the answer is right there at Sakura’s house. Is it mean? Yes. Does she care? No. She’s tired. And frankly, if Sakura doesn’t tell the boys where to go that’s all the better. She can fail all three of them without worry, because they genuinely failed her exam. 

Not that they’ve got a chance of passing in the first place. Who’s to say they’re even able to figure out her real name. Plus, if they do find out she gave the wrong name, then they won’t trust the information about the apartment either. Sasuke will trust his blacksmith, Naruto will trust the ramen man, and Sakura will trust her parents. Each of them has a piece of the puzzle, but the odds that they put that all together is… quite low. 

The perfect crime. 

She opens the door with the little 45 on it, still mentally patting herself on the back. 

What a day, she thinks, and shuts the door. 

She goes through the motions of making a cup of tea. She scans Ohta’s bookshelf for something to read while her tea steeps. 

Once her tea is done she sits herself down on the couch and realizes that for the first time since she woke up this morning, she’s well and truly alone. 

Amanda punches a hole in the wall and screams so loud into a pillow the neighbors bang on the wall. 

Holy shit. 

She’s in the fucking Naruto world.

Chapter Text

After her temper tantrum, Amanda gains two bloody knuckles, a smashed cup of tea, and two pillows where there used to be one. 

As she watches the feathers float to the ground, peaceful in the aftermath of her rage, she thinks of what to do next. Clearly, she’s in the Naruto World. She met Naruto for christ’s sake, so there’s really no denying it. Improvising has worked so far but she’s supposed to be the goddam teacher--improvising is not going to work forever. 

She needs to figure out who the fuck Kurasaki Ohta is, and why the fuck Amanda Bennet is here in her place. Ohta is a ninja, clearly, and she’s obviously good enough to make jounin. If Amanda’s memory serves, jounin is, like, the top of the ninja pyramid. 

Amanda works a desk job. She’s been in one fight in her life and that was in high school. She’s 31. She’s a lawyer. 

Ohta was just assigned three kids to teach. She spent the last week hunting down some rich asshole in Wind Country and that’s not even the first time she’s done that. She’s also 31. She’s a freaking assassin. 

And yet, despite their obvious differences, no one noticed that Amanda isn’t Ohta, when Amanda was just acting like herself. 

Which means Ohta is, essentially, Amanda. 

And Amanda doesn’t throw anything remotely important or valuable out. Ever.

She springs from the couch, kicking one half of the pillow off her prosthetic as she makes her way through Ohta’s-- Amanda’s? --apartment. Amanda knows her earth-apartment has an office. Ohata should have a ninja-office in her ninja-apartment if they’re meant to be… alternate versions of each other? Amanda doesn’t want to think too deeply about it. 

Sure enough, in what should be the spare bedroom is Ohta’s office. Amanda has to shoulder the door open, a hazardous stack of textbooks falling over as she squeezes her way inside. The room it’s filled to the brim with documents, family records, scrolls, and the now scattered pile of textbooks. What isn’t covered in paper is holding up knick knacks and old uniforms. The collection ranges from her childhood set of kunai to a filing cabinet of B-rank or lower mission reports. There’s a stack of novels in one corner, collecting mold and dust. Beside her desk is the corpse of a plant in a pot that looks like a child painted it. 

Everything Ohta has ever done is in this room. 

Amanda has got a similar room back home. 

Amanda’s room has copies of every case file she’s ever worked on, business cards she never called, and textbooks from her bachelor degree she’s not even sure she ever opened. There’s years-old statistics homework, her grandfather’s old country vinyls growing mold in the corner, and a surfboard she hasn’t touched in almost a decade. 

She wonders if Ohta is there right now, digging through Amanda’s life in the same way she’s digging through Ohta’s. 

Maybe Ohta is just as confused as she is, trying to find a way back. 

Maybe Ohta’s a total jerk and did all this on purpose. 

Amanda decides not to think about it as she picks through the filing cabinet of missions. The Wind Country one isn’t here, but that’s probably because Ohta doesn’t have the clearance to take an A-rank mission file home ( why does she know that? ). It’s probably a big ask to take a B-rank file home, but Ohta’s a convincing packrat and Amanda’s certain collecting isn’t the most damning vice an assassin could have. She’s certain plenty of people indulge Ohta, just like how plenty of people indulge her back on earth. Real earth. Not ninja-earth. 

Two hours later, she’s sorting through the paper on Ohta’s desk when things get creepy. 

They’re eerily similar: Ohta’s life and her’s. 

Ohta is Amanda in a different universe, she supposes, so of course they have personalities that resemble each other. But upon further inspection, there are parallels here, in Ohta’s life, for every major event there, in Amanda’s life.

Ohta became a jounin at 24. 

Amanda graduated law school at 24.

Ohta’s best friend got sick when she was 25. She had to go on a mission right afterwards and was actually sent home because she couldn’t focus on her tasks. Michi was poisoned, it turned out. But they made it through. 

Amanda’s best friend was diagnosed with and beat breast cancer when they were 25. Amanda baled on a huge case that would’ve changed her whole career to be there with her instead. She doesn’t regret it. Sandra made it through. 

Ohta still has the engagement ring her fiance gave her. It's a cheap thing, but it’s red, which matched his eyes and she loved that. His family hated her and refused to give him anything remotely sentimental that represented the clan. So, he made his own. A letter he wrote her is there, explaining that while the family and village may not approve of their union, it didn’t matter to him. He loved her. The letter is signed “yours” with no name. It’s the last one he ever sent her before he died, just after they celebrated his 27th birthday. His name, she vaguely recalls, was Botan. 

Amanda has the engagement ring Lana got for her. The one that’s a simple gold band. Her parents wanted nothing to do with Lana or her. They never approved of Lana’s choice, always thinking her gayness was a “phase.” They met in law school, though Lana dropped out to pursue art instead. Lana loved everything to the fullest, and that included Amanda. Lana would’ve given the world to her if Amanda asked. She died in a freak accident, a building collapsing like sand under its own weight. She was 27.

Just one week ago Ohta was staking out that Wind Country tycoon. She had been hired by the village, obviously, but the mission was paid for by a trading company who accused the man of blackmarket deals to monopolize the Wind Country markets. 

Just one week ago Amanda had finally put to rest a case against a real estate conglomerate in Egypt. She was helping represent one of his business competitors, who accused him of making illegal deals to shorthand them and push people out of their homes. They settled, obviously, but the real estate conglomerate really had to bite the bullet for it not to come to light.

A ninja in one life is a lawyer in another. Who’d have thought?

She plops down on the desk chair with a sigh. The task of uncovering Ohta suddenly became a task of uncovering Amanda and that is much less fun. It’s one thing to root through a stranger’s life. It’s another to relive every terrible thing you’ve ever experienced through a different lens. 

Case and point: there’s a box under the desk that Amanda refuses to open. She had one just like it back home. 

She kicks it with her foot and knows for certain it contains baby clothes, neatly folded and never worn. She could bring herself to get rid of the cradle and the toys, but never the clothes. 

They’re for a little boy. In another life, his name was Riley and Amanda couldn’t wait to meet him. Seiji, her mind supplies. And Ohta couldn’t wait to meet him either. 

She sits like that for a while, overwhelmed and silent, just taking in the life that is hers but at the same time isn’t. 

Ohta tried to pick up the Japanese version of the flute --Shakuhachi, her mind supplies-- when she was younger. It sits in the corner of the office collecting dust, just like Amanda’s flute from the highschool band. She wasn’t very good. 

Ohta, it seems, is also tone-deaf. 

There’s a small window in the room. Amanda distracts herself from the insanity by watching the stars slowly disappear, the sky lightening in color. She spent the whole night in this room, angry, exhausted, and hoping that something anything in here would be a clue to get her out of this mess. 

The Naruto world. She’s in the Naruto world. What the hell? What the hell? 

Indigo becomes violet becomes blue. Soon, soft orange is peaking out from behind the apartment complex the window points at. 

It’s morning. 

Was something supposed to happen this morning?

Amanda stretches out her arms. She took off the turtleneck and vest a while ago, so she could, in theory, just go to sleep in her tanktop and the pants. They’re comfy enough. She doesn’t feel like wrestling with her stump cover. Maybe she’ll just sleep here so she can’t feel bad about it later. Then, she can pick right up where she left off going through Ohta’s family records. 

Yeah that sounds--

She almost falls out of her chair when someone bangs on the door. 

“Shit,” she hisses, grabbing her turtleneck and hobbling over to the door.

“Shit,” she repeats, tugging the shirt over her head and feeling blindly for the way to the entryway. 

“Shit,” she mutters, peering through the peephole and being met with three nervous faces. 

This wasn’t supposed to happen. 

They were supposed to fail. They were supposed to give up and not work together, instead fighting and eventually ending up at the wrong house. 

None of them should know her name. Even their academy teacher wouldn’t just hand out random jounin’s names. That’s such a no-no in Konoha. How the hell did they end up here? 

“Sensei!” Naruto bangs on the door with his fist. “Sensei! We’re here!”  

“Shut up, idiot!” Sakura shouts at him. “She’ll come when she’s ready!” 

“But Sakura-chan it’s dawn! What if we’re at the wrong house!?”

“We’re at the right place,” Sasuke asserts.

Amanda takes a deep breath and steals her nerves. 

Shit. Shit. Okay, but, like, shit. This sucks. 

Behind her the apartment is in… disarray, after her little breakdown. She grabs what she can, picking up feathers and the ripped pillowcase and the broken pieces of her mug. They’re shoved out of view, which should be good enough to give off an aura of “has her shit together.” There’s nothing she can do about the holes in her drywall. 

Right before Naruto bangs on the door again she swings it open, trying to look like she wasn’t just running around at the speed of light trying to make Ohta’s apartment presentable. 

The three of them are positively beaming at her (well, sasuke looks smugly satisfied, which she supposes is the same for him.). 

“Uh,” she says, brushing a stray feather off her shoulder. “What’s up?” 

“This is your house!” Naruto announces to the neighborhood. 

Amanda winces at the noise. “You figure? I could be squatting here.” 

“We broke into your landlord’s office,” Sasuke says, a little too much pride in his voice for a kid who just admitted to a major offense. “You’re a private person, obviously, and jounin have a certain right to privacy, but not a complete one. Most apartments are listed to a number, rank, and an age. This apartment is the only one in the building rented to a jounin in your age range, who completely blocked out their name and lives alone.” 

“You think I live alone?” 

“You don’t look like you’ve got a boyfriend,” Sakura says, blunt. That stings a little. “Plus! No one with a significant other would ask their students to meet them at their house so early! That’d be cruel.” 

Touche, Sakura. Touche. 

“Also!” She continues, excited, “there’s a butcher that sets up before sunrise my parents go to. The owner said a red-headed ninja comes by sometimes and gets pork. You got pork ramen yesterday for dinner! You told Teuchi-san it’s the only meat you like to eat.” 

Naruto butts in, bullying his way in front of his teammates. “And! And! The blacksmith said you spent the most time looking at wires, even though you bought senbon! There’s two shops near here that have way bigger selections of wire. I go to them for me, you know? And your apartment number is hung with a kind of wire that’s only sold at Weapons R Us! It’s the cheapest kind in the whole village!” 

They really Sherlock-Holmes this. Huh. 

Well, sure, Sakura’s test scores were good but she assumed putting them in a room together would cancel out all the brain cells. 

“Alright,” she sighs, resigned. She shouldn’t have given Sakura’s parents her real apartment complex. Dammit. She’s dug her own grave. “You found me. Good detective work. That was impressive.” 

Naruto sniffs, acting bashful. “Aw that? That was nothing, sensei! Just wait till you see me in action, you know?” 

“Yeah sensei!” Sakura beams, punching the air, “Let go to the training ground! Then we can really show you what we can do!” 

Sasuke huffs out a breath, crossing his arms and straightening his posture. 

It’s ungodly annoying how smug they all are. How dare they. 

“‘Sensei,’ ay?” Amanda hums, leaning against the door frame. “Then you three didn’t figure out my name.” 

“Sensei!” Sakura shouts, serious, “only the second task had a time constraint! An implied boundary isn’t a certain one! Technically, we haven’t failed the first yet.” 

“Yeah sensei!” Naruto yells. Even Sasuke is nodding beside them. 

She’s right, which kind of pisses Amanda off. They’re also getting along, which pisses Amanda off more. This wasn’t supposed to happen. 

“So we’ve found ourselves in a bit of a limbo: you didn’t pass, but you didn’t fail.” 

The kids don’t say anything in reply. All three are looking up at her expectantly, hope in their eyes. Sakura and Naruto are actually making puppy dog eyes at her, which is kind of cute. 

Sasuke looks like he’s about to say something when his stomach grumbles.

Loudly.

They must’ve been out all night, tracking down leads and people who were still awake. Beside Sakura’s home, Amanda’s not sure where they would’ve gotten food. She sighs. She may not want to deal with them, but she’s not a monster who’ll let three little kids starve. 

Resigned to her fate, she steps to the side. “Alright, get in here.” 

Sakura and Naruto high-five as they enter Ohta’s apartment. Sasuke waltzes in like he owns the place, his cheeks a little flushed. 

“Sit on the couch, I’ll make some breakfast. Then… we’ll have our first day of training, I guess.” 

Naruto cheers, bouncing around the room. Sakura and Sasuke are scanning through her bookcase, no doubt looking for a scrap of paper with her name on it. There isn’t one, so Amanda doesn’t stop them. So long as they don’t enter her study, they won’t find Ohta’s name. 

Amanda gets to work frying all of the eggs left in her fridge and all of the fat slabs of bacon she knew Ohta was looking forward to cooking with. She leaves the pork belly, because she’s selfish, but dumps her whole rice-cooker’s worth of rice in a dish. Thank you Ohta, for setting up an automatic timer, and thank you Amanda, for not eating it yesterday. 

“Sensei?” Sakura calls, tentative, “Can I read-” 

“Grab whatever you like. Just don’t dog-ear ‘em.” 

“Thank you!” 

She can feel Sakura’s joy at the permission, for some reason. This chakra-sense shit is weird, frankly, but very helpful. She can even feel Sasuke as he grabs for a book of his own. Ohta thinks she’s no good at chakra sense, going as far as to buy whole books dedicated to honing one’s senses and stacking them in her study. Amanda, on the other hand, thinks going from no sense to even Ohta’s shitty senses is a wicked weird change. She may be bad for a jounin, but Amanda can’t imagine Ohta is bad in general. 

She finishes breakfast fairly quickly, unceremoniously laying everything out on a baking tray, and carries it to the coffee table. The kids seat themselves instantly, and Amanda hands out chopsticks and plates. 

Naruto and Sakura clap in sync, saying “thank you for the meal” at different volumes.

Sasuke digs right in without the prayer. Amanda does too, so she can’t really fault him. 

Midway through the meal, Naruto squints at her. 

“Hey sensei,” he starts, swallowing around his too-big last bite of meat, “what’s with the holes in the wall? You got anger issues or something?” 

Amanda gives him another piece of bacon as a distraction.

“We’ll be going to training ground seven once you’re done,” she says, because yeah Ohta had a map but the only training ground she remembers the location of was seven. It’s the closest. “You’ve got your arsonals, right? You’ll need them.” 

“Yes sensei!” Sakura salutes. 

Sasuke nods. 

“Yesh seshshe!” Naruto gurgles around his food. 

She ignores as Sakura kicks him in the shin. He deserved it.

She doesn’t have much of a plan for when they get there. Mainly, she just wants them to hate her so she gets fired and Kakashi takes over. Or, she’s given a good reason to fail them and the Hokage gets all butthurt and gives them to Kakashi. Or, Kakashi shows up and takes over. 

All her plans seem to revolve around Kakashi. Weird. 

“Say his name and he shall appear,” she mutters wistfully to the training ground. 

They arrived without much fanfare, the three kids following her lead like ducklings after she made them wash the dishes. As she led them through the village, she only had to send a warning glare at Naruto once for picking a fight with Sasuke. Other than that things were alarmingly smooth. 

And yet, Team Seven’s rightful leader does not answer to her mantra. Amanda is disappointed in him. 

“What was that sensei?” Sakura asks, cocking her head.

“Nothing, don’t mind it,” she grumbles, spinning around to face the three of them. She still doesn’t have bells, so she’s not sure how to motivate them into giving it their all. She also doesn’t know if she wants to fight them, given that she’s Amanda and not Ohta. 

Then again, she’s in Ohta’s body. 

Ohta’s body that has killer reflexes and knows how to use genjutsu without thinking about it. Who knows what else she can do? This would be a good time to kill two birds with one stone: she gets to test her own abilities and fail them when they can’t beat her, or if they do beat her. 

Yet another flawless plan. Hopefully this one actually works. 

“Okay,” she starts, snapping her fingers and pointing at the three of them, “this is a baseline test. Do you know what a baseline is?” 

Sakura nods quickly and Sasuke rolls his eyes. 

Naruto’s mouth wobbles before he scoffs. “Of course I do!” 

“Mm, right. Sasuke, what’s a baseline?” 

“A baseline is an initial measurement. It’s used for comparison to look for changes in any given skill or ability.” 

“Yes, correct,” she nods, looking at Naruto to make sure he understood. “So, today is about me gauging your skill level. Give it your all and then some. If you can’t move, move anyway. Remember that you’re not ninja yet: I reserve the right to pull you from the program whenever I feel the need, got it?” 

The three of them nod, determined. 

“Good,” she says and slides into a familiar stance, “then, come on and fight me.” 

… 

There’s a weird kind of familiarity in Sasuke’s fighting style. 

He kicks a lot, keeping his hands free for what she knows is fire jutsu, even though he hasn’t used one yet. The moves are incredibly well choreographed, each of her counters being met with an appropriate adjustment. Each adjustment, for some reason, is also incredibly familiar. 

He must also notice this trend, because after just a few exchanges he begins to glare at her. 

They fight like each other, she realizes, feeling a bit disoriented and sad. 

Why do they fight like each other? 

She doesn’t get the chance to dwell, Sasuke coming straight at her this time. Unexpectedly, he mixes the academy standard kata with his other style. The mix up is enough to catch her off kilter and Sasuke manages to get one punch in that she’s forced to block instead of dodge. 

It connects solidly to her forearm as it guards the right side of her face. 

It’s a strong punch, but it doesn’t have the umph she was expecting. Amanda thought the punch would make her bruise, at least, but it felt more like punching a wall, only she was the wall instead of the punch. Yeah, it was a good punch, way stronger than what a twelve year old his size should manage, but it was just… lacking. Something. Lacking something. 

Amanda retaliates with what feels natural. 

Sasuke retracts his fist and twists in midair, aiming a kick at her shoulder. In one motion she adjusts the arm she used to block his punch to smack his foot down with her elbow. His center of gravity interrupted and his feet now unexpectedly on the ground, Sasuke tries to drop into a crouch to collect himself. 

Amanda meets him half-way with a kick of her own, her foot making an audible thump against his chest as he flies back. 

Ah, chakra. That’s what Sasuke was missing. 

He wasn’t using chakra in his attacks. 

Amanda watches as he skids to a stop, her foot still outstretched from the attack. Balancing on her prosthetic is a breeze, thanks to what she now knows is chakra. But chakra, it seems, is a lot more potent than she first thought. She didn’t give the kick anything close to her all--she didn’t even fully extend her leg--but the kid’s quite literally twenty feet away from her now. 

She lets out a nervous breath when he staggers back to his feet, glaring at her. 

He’s fine.

She drops into a crouch before she even knows why. Blinking, she watches as three Narutos sail over her head, each coming from a different angle with their own unique war cry. 

Two of them collide, disappearing in a cloud of smoke, while the third tumbles and lands on all fours. He springs right back at her like a cat, kunai in hand like claws. 

If Sasuke was structure, Naruto is instinct. 

There’s not really a set pattern to his attacks, but they are obvious. Baiting him into certain moves is a breeze, but he’s a squirmy little guy. Somehow, he manages to surprise her with something unexpected once every ten moves or so. A flip turns into a kick, an Academy-standard move turns into some bastardized but nonetheless effective version of it. Something about the clones he’s using is making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. There’s just something wrong about him using them. Not them, themselves, but him using them. 

The fact that she didn’t faint at the sight of a real-life clone is a win in Amanda’s book, though, so she doesn’t dwell.

Naruto, just like Sasuke, does not use chakra in his physical attacks. 

Fighting Naruto isn’t boring, but she does have three students to test. Sakura, it seems, is feeling a little shy. 

She plucks him out of the air easily, her foot connecting to the face of his clone and dispelling it. Naruto, to his credit, shouts and reaches up to grab at the arm that has him by the collar. His hands are situated to grab and twist at the skin there, but right before he does, Amanda drops him--

--and punts him like a football over to where Sasuke had landed.

She huffs out a laugh as he lands on his feet, just to fall on his ass. 

“Sensei!” he cries, panting slightly and rubbing his bottom, “That hurt!” 

She ignores him, standing straight and glancing at the bushes around them. Sakura’s hiding in one, looking for an opportunity to ambush Amanda. 

Before she can pinpoint her, however, chakra swells, loud and powerful off to her left. 

She leans out of the way of a small fireball, its partner missing its mark entirely, and glances at Sasuke as he runs through another set of hand signs. 

The grand fireball technique wails toward her. This one, she cannot lean out of the way for. It is, in fact, much too large.

Vaguely impressed with the carnage, she skips to the side and into the forest, keeping her eyes forward and on Sasuke as he winds up for a third fireball. Amanda crouches on a felled tree, her legs tense and ready to spring, when something glints in her peripheral.

Clever of Sakura to use Sasuke’s ninjutsu as a cover for her own chakra signature.

Clever of her to come at Amanda’s left side, the one she just landed on and would be less capable of dodging from, given the terrain.  

Not clever of her to run straight into Sasuke’s follow-up attack. 

Her left hand catches Sakura’s wrist, stopping the kunai before it collides with Amanda’s shoulder. Almost instantly, Sakura drops the knife in a fluid motion and grabs it with her other hand, now aiming for her waist. 

Amanda hooks her prosthetic around the felled tree, levering it up and steadying it with her other hand. She twists slightly, pulling Sakura closer to her body and the kunai misses its mark, instead imbedding into the log. 

She huffs and wills air into and around the log. It gains an almost sparkly sheen as sharp chakra covers the log, causing it to splitter and crack under the pressure. 

Sakura shrieks when fire bellows from behind the log, spitting angrily around them and incinerating the surrounding foliage. Amanda just tucks her into her chest and mentally pats herself on the back. When the fire dies out, Sakura blinks, dazed and a bit panicked, up at Amanda. Amanda winks at her. 

“Oi,” Amanda calls and the log splinters apart, crumbling into coal and ash at their feet without her chakra to hold it together. Again, the fact that she just did the impossible isn’t shocking or uncomfortable, it just… is. She’s not sure how to feel. So, instead of thinking about it she picks Sakura up, dangling the shocked girl in the air by the grip on her wrist before tossing her toward Sasuke. “Friendly fire. Watch it.” 

“It’s her own fault. She got in the way,” he growls. 

Amanda does not like that tone. 

“I said watch it, ” she snaps. “That was not a suggestion.”

Sasuke scowls at her. 

Amanda frowns back and cracks her knuckles. 

Maybe she should go on the offensive… just for the sake of testing, of course. 

No other reason. 

Things continue in that back and forth motion for the next two hours. Sometimes she runs away, playing a sort of one sided hide and seek to see if they can sense her. Sometimes she puts them in a simple genjutsu, curious if they can escape from it (only Sakura can, and even then it’s one out of every three fairly weak genjutsu). Sometimes she flips the script, chasing them around and making craters in the ground they leap from just to scare them. 

They never stop for a real break, and if Amanda takes joy in smooshing Sasuke’s face in mud that’s nobody’s business but her’s. Naruto is just as fun to mess with, because no matter what Amanda throws at him the kid just pops right back up. He’s like a hydra-- cut off one Naruto and two more pop out. It’s kind of mind boggling how much chakra the kid has for being a genin. He’s got more than her, easily. 

Sakura is less fun to mess with, but that’s mainly because she seems to be copying the boys’ attacks more than finding her own. If she used her head, she might have done better, but she seems more determined to solidify herself as a compatible partner for Sasuke than a student of Amanda’s. 

Not that Amanda wants her as a student. Frankly, all three of them were their own can of worms that Will Not Be Opened. 

Bored of inspecting her nails and giving the kids a breather, Amanda looks up. There’s a taunt ready on her lips, but she stops short. 

The three of them are in varying states of… almost unconscious. Naruto is face down in the dirt, his arms shaking as he tries and fails to ease himself into cobra. Sakura is upright and standing, but panting and sweating buckets. Her gaze is hazy and her knees are knocking together from how bad she’s shaking. Sasuke is better than the others, but not by much. He’s got one hand on a tree to steady himself and the other wrapped around a kunai. He’s panting hard as well, squinting at her through the sweat dripping down his forehead. 

Hopefully this doesn’t count as child abuse, she thinks. It probably does. 

She meant to make them hate her, but she didn’t mean to kill them. 

“Alright,” she coughs, standing straight. She’s not even winded, so she’s a little surprised the kids are as bad as they are. Aren’t kids usually balls of energy? Sure they stayed up all night but so did she. They’ve only been at it for a couple hours… “That’s it for today.” 

She gets three groans in reply. 

Sakura drops like a ragdoll, flat on her back as her chest heaves up and down. Sasuke, to his credit, takes a controlled slide down the tree, leaning against it and letting his head drop into his chest as he huffs and puffs. He discards the knife in his hand without a second thought. Naruto stops his struggling and collapses face down in the mud with a splat.

After about five minutes of them catching their breath, Naruto is the first to ease his way up to his hands and knees. His back is soaked with sweat and it seems like he can barely squint at her, but he grins all the same. 

“I did pretty good, huh sensei? I almost… I almost had you,” he pants. 

He really didn’t, but Amanda shrugs anyway. She gives a so-so motion with her hand. 

He beams at her, bright and so proud before collapsing back into a heap in the dirt. 

“Oi, don’t fall back down. We’re done. Go home. Get some sleep or whatever.” 

“Sensei,” Sakura croaks, gasping for breath, “I don’t think… I can move…” 

“Move anyway.” 

“Aaahguh…” 

“That’s not--” she cuts herself off, rubbing at her chin. 

She might have overdone it. She certainly can’t leave them here, defenseless and practically dying. So she huffs, a bit frustrated at her own oversight and grabs the crazy Nanny McPhee scroll she knows is in her vest pocket. Out pops three bottles of water and three ration bars. The markings on the scroll swish around a bit, letting her know the scroll’s adjusted contents. She’s got five bottles of water, two ration bars, and six soldier pills left. 

Ohta, thank you for being so well prepared. Amanda will restock, just for you. 

She puts the supplies on the ground and goes over to each kid, picking them up and dragging them over to the supplies. Sasuke puts up the best fight, but only for two seconds before falling limp on her shoulder. Soon, the three of them are sitting cross-legged, still panting but at least hydrated, in front of her. 

“Feel better?” she grins, aiming for compassion. 

Sasuke’s glare makes her think her compassion came across as something else. 

“Sensei,” Sakura says between gulps, “is training going to be like this every day?” 

She shrugs. “That depends on how fast you improve. If you get better at fighting, we’ll move on to something else.” Hopefully, this will be their last training day and Kakashi will take over the team, but she can’t just say that. 

“That means jutsu, right!?” Naruto yells, suddenly full of energy again, “you’re going to teach us cool jutsu!?” 

“Nada,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder and sitting him back down. “You learn jutsu when you show me you can handle them.”

She pauses, gauging their ability to comprehend her. They’re alert and oriented again, so now might be the best time to break the news. 

“In fact, Sasuke, Naruto, I don’t want you to use your techniques in training anymore.” 

“ You can’t--” 

“Wha-- But I just learned--” 

“Hey,” she barks. The boys’ mouths snap shut, their eyes startled but still agitated. It’s like taking a toy away from a toddler, truely, only the toy is one that can kill people. And she’s never been around toddlers. 

“I’m not doing this lightly, so I don’t want to hear any back-talk. Your technique,” she says to Naruto, “is wildly inefficient to the point of being flat out wasteful. Yes, the clones are good for surprising your opponents, and it is very cool that you managed to learn such a technique, but your abilities are so subpar that you seem to be using them as more of a crutch than a technique. And you--” she snaps, cutting off the blond’s irked stammering and pointing to Sasuke, “--when you demonstrate that you can use your techniques without inflicting major collateral damage you’ll be allowed to use them. Until then, taijutsu only. For both of you.” 

“That’s not fair,” Sasuke snaps, pointing his water bottle at Sakura, “she got in the way--” 

“Accidents happen,” Amanda holds up a hand, cutting him off, “You’re right. Sakura was in the wrong in that instance. But your reaction to the incident is what solidified this decision. Your complete disregard for her safety and your part in compromising it is what I’m talking about. How can you call yourself a ninja, or a man for that matter, if you cannot take responsibility for your own actions?” 

Sakura looks green around the gills, glancing nervously from Sasuke to Amanda. Sasuke holds Amanda’s gaze for a tense moment, opening his mouth once before thinking better of it.

“Taijutsu,” he grunts, jaw clenched, “you’ll teach me taijutsu, then.” 

“I will.” 

“Fine. Fine, whatever. Just teach me.” 

“I will,” she says and smiles. “So long as you pass my test, that is. Don’t forget about that first task. As for you, Sakura, same story: no techniques until we build up those muscles.”

“M-muscles?” She squeaks, still looking green. “Like yours?” 

“Uh, yeah.” 

“But, um, aren’t they kind of… masculine?” 

Amanda’s not sure how to respond to that. 

“Well,” she smiles, standing up and brushing off invisible dirt on her vest and pants. She doesn’t have the time or energy to deal with internalized misogyny right now. “I’m sure you’re all tired, so, go home, rest up, and take a long hot bath or shower.  I want you to return here in two days at seven. You are going to be sore tomorrow, so please, eat a lot of meat and sleep-- doctor’s orders.” 

The kids wobble on their way to their feet. She shoos them off one by one, watching as they disappear from sight. Naruto pouts over his shoulder at her, like he wants to keep training, but eventually scurries off. Once they're gone, she looks down at her hands, contemplative. 

So, she’s a wind user. Neat. 

Time to see what Ohta can really do.

Chapter Text

Three hours later, the sun is starting to set and Amanda is back in her apartment. 

She’s icing her hands because, familiar or not, ninjutsu is a volatile art. Genjutsu comes like second nature to her, for some reason, but ninjutsu is too weird for Amanda to trust it fully. She can imbue other things with her chakra--like wires, her prosthetic, and that tree earlier--but outright using something she didn’t have before to make something that didn’t exist a moment ago is… weird. 

Weird and painful. 

There’s chakra burns on her hands and arms, red and angry. Some sixth sense she has knows they’ll fade in time, but for now they hurt like a bitch. She can barely hold a cup of tea. 

So: genjutsu, check. 

Reading about an illusion, doing some hand signs, and making that illusion happen is easy enough. She can trick the kids like it’s nothing, and she tricked a few adults back at the academy. They were probably chunin or so. 

Ninjutsu… working on it. That just needs time.

Taijutsu… well. That’s complicated. 

Upon further research a lot of Ohta’s taijutsu borrows from the Uchiha style. 

This is a troubling determination, given that she can’t just outright ask for texts on a massacred clan’s secret techniques. She also can’t ask Sasuke, her student, to give her a refresher. That would be… so inappropriate. For so many reasons. Specifically because she just promised to teach him everything she knows. 

The framed picture on Ohta’s nightstand is of her as a kid, linking arms with Michi and another nervous looking girl with dark hair and eyes. These two, Michi and Ayane, were Ohta’s teammates, and Ayane was the strongest of the three of them. She was nervous and, in Ohta’s young mind, cowardly, but the girl had a natural talent no one could deny and the Sharingan to boot. Amanda can easily recall how fond Ohta was of her. It hurts to think about, the loss still raw and aching, but it doesn’t give her the migraine she gets when thinking of Ohta’s other Uchiha ally. 

Ohta’s fiance was Uchiha Botan. He made Jounin well before Ohta did, even joining the ANBU forces before being discharged due to some political nonsense he never talked to her about. Still, Botan loved Ohta. He loved her so much he offered to forsake his entire clan for her. If his relationship with Ohta mirrors the one Amanda had with Lana, Amanda is sure he taught her everything he knew, just to ensure she was the strongest she could possibly be. 

The two of them died during the massacre.  

Both her sources of taijutsu knowledge are extremely raw and brutal deaths that she does not want to relive the emotions of. Botan and Ayane mirror Lana and her sister, who both died unexpectedly in an accident almost five years ago. Remembering Ohta’s version of the events is just like remembering her own. And yet, she’s got no choice:

If she just suddenly up and has a completely different taijutsu style, people are going to notice, and they’re going to ask questions. 

If she suddenly starts being absolutely terrible at taijutsu, people are also going to notice and ask questions. Instinct can only get her so far. Case and point: the burns on her arms. 

So she’s going to have to think about it. The past, that is. She’s going to have to remember all the times Ayane and Botan taught her how to move like they do. 

Oh god. She really doesn’t want to. 

Because Amanda is Amanda. Not Ohta. 

And she is Amanda, not Ohta. 

So what if she’s got some of Ohta’s instincts and memories and feelings and thoughts? That doesn’t mean anything. One day, she’s going to wake up in her bed. Her real bed. The one with faded green sheets and six pillows. Not this one with faded green sheets and… six pillows. 

Okay, bad example. But her point still stands: Amanda doesn’t belong here and she’s going to get out of this mess. 

Eventually. 

“Shit,” she groans, flopping back into Ohta’s six pillows. “What the hell am I doing?” 

The Naruto world. 

She’s on ninja-earth, being a ninja-teacher to three wanna-be-ninjas. She’s a ninja.  

On one hand, cool. She’s got super powers. She can send literal tornadoes across a field--that’s pretty awesome. On the other hand, she’s 31 and way past her days of wanting to be a superhero. She’s a lawyer. Who’s going to handle the Mason case if she’s not around? 

The firm… will be fine. Her partners have good heads on their shoulders. They’ll be okay if she’s missing for… an undetermined amount of time. They might lose the Mason case, but they’ll live. 

She, on the other hand, will get interrogated and executed if people start noticing she’s acting like a total psychopath. She’s in a surveillance state for crying out loud. 

Also her credit score-- what’s she going to do if she’s late to pay her cards? She knew she should’ve set up an automatic payment… 

Do ninjas have credit scores? 

Is she fucking up Ohta’s credit score?

She slaps herself and immediately regrets it. Sitting upright, she pouts at her now throbbing hand. The pain sets her brain right all the same. 

She’s blatantly avoiding the task at hand. She can’t avoid Ohta’s past forever, not if she wants to make it out of this mess alive. No matter how difficult (or painful, given that she can already feel a migraine creeping up on her) it is, she needs to know. 

She needs to know what Botan and Ayane taught Ohta, all those years ago. 

…

Her head still hurts. 

It’s been three days and her head still hurts. Why does the world hate her so much? Why does she have to get a migraine every time her mind remembers memories that are not hers? Why is she even in this mess to begin with?

She has no idea how to make this headache go away. 

She also has no idea how to deal with the adolescents trailing after her like ducklings. 

More importantly, she still has no idea how to deal with herself. 

She knows who she is, sort of, but she still needs time to figure out why she’s here and how she’s getting back. Remembering Botan and Ayane just made her sad and angry. It didn’t provide any life-changing insight on how to get the fuck out of here. 

Instead of focusing on that, however, she’s supposed to be a teacher to three needy brats. Kakashi hasn’t even shown his face to them yet, but she could feel someone lurking around the training ground when they’re there, taking peeks at the four of them when they think she’s not looking. Coward. 

The “team progress” meeting she had with the Hokage yesterday was also a bust. It gave her no insight on whether or not she’ll be reprimanded if she flat out fails them. He didn’t seem overjoyed to hear that they haven’t passed yet, so she probably will be. So much for “up to the jounin’s discretion.” Hypocrite. 

She needs to keep the kids out of her hair. Her mental state is too fragile to be constantly bombarded with questions and sticky fingers. The easiest way to do that, she figures, is by tiring them out and sending them off with some menial advice. That said, it’s not like she can get away with beating them up every day. Eventually, she’s going to have to train them. 

She was a teacher’s aide throughout college, so she’s got plenty of tutoring under her belt. But the only thing she’s ever trained was the family dog she had in highschool. 

Hopefully it’s not that different from training a dog. 

Naruto kicks the rock he’s been pushing around a bit too hard. It clatters towards a pair of civilian men, who turn just enough to glare at the boy. Sakura waves sheepishly at them and punches Naruto in the arm. 

It’s been four days since the Baseline Test. Yesterday and the day before she took great joy in making them run laps and critiquing their form as they ran through the Kata she forced herself to remember. That was easy to do even with her brain trying to bust its way out of her head. 

Right now, however, they’re deep into the markets of Konoha, walking through the main street. All around them are vendors of every kind, each one calling for their attention and money. She pinches the bridge of her nose and coats her ears with a layer of chakra, dimming the sound a bit. It doesn’t help. 

Rubbing his arm, Naruto runs up to Amanda’s heels, tugging on her shirt. 

“Sensei,” he says, squinting at her, “it kind of feels like you’re just taking us on a walk.”

“I am.” 

“Wha-” 

“You’re all doing terribly, by the way.” 

“Huh?” Sakura blinks, trotting up to match Amanda’s speed. “How are we bad at walking, sensei?” 

“Why are we even on a walk?!” Naruto whines, tugging at her vest. Amanda bats him off, but he just grabs at her pants. “We’re not dogs, you know! We should be learning jutsu! Jutsu!”

Sasuke, who’s slowly been growing more and more annoyed since they started their little walk, outright glares at her. 

“Because you all walk like academy students,” Amanda chides, kind of making it up as she goes. She’s got a good grasp on what she’s trying to say, but she still doesn’t know the actual words for it. “I expected you to walk like ninja, seeing that you’re so set on becoming genin.” 

The kids don’t have much to say to that. Sasuke’s annoyed glare grows suspicious. 

“What do you mean…” he grumbles, arms folded across his chest. 

“Ninja are not meant to be seen, heard, or even sensed. Naruto, you’ve been kicking rocks at people. Sakura, you’ve been waving at them. And Sasuke, you’ve become too used to people watching you. That’s not a good thing.” She ignores the way they look at her (affronted, humiliated, irked) and holds her arms out to her sides. She gestures to her person. “I want you three to look at me, really look at me.” 

Amanda is not a small or mousy woman. Neither is Ohta. 

She’s nearly six foot with muscular arms. Just like Amanda, Ohta’s got an annoyingly large chest and a natural pudge to her stomach that’s never gone away since puberty. Her figure is mainly hidden by the frumpy clothes Jounin are supposed to wear, but that just means she looks both tall and wide in a village where most women are on the short side and aim for thin. 

Also like Amanda, Ohta is missing her left foot, the limb cut off just past her knee. She stands on a black blade prosthetic which shines slightly in the sunlight, not due to paint but rather the chakra that’s constantly coursing through it (the stability of this new prosthetic is something she’s going to miss. Chakra, it turns out, lets her stick to surfaces she otherwise would slip on. She can finally step into the shower without almost dying). She’s got long ginger hair sorted in frizzy curls, chin length bangs framing her face while the rest was tied back into a low ponytail that reaches her mid-back.

If she was less fit, shorter, or had both legs she may have passed for unnoticeable. The combination of the three attributes, however, made her a sort of head-turner. And yet, she doesn’t turn any heads. 

The kids probably have figured as much, given how they don’t scrutinize her appearance for that long. She doesn’t need to teach them perception, at least. Bless the small mercies in life. Or whatever. 

“I’m not exactly subtle, am I? I’m pretty clearly a ninja, and my appearance is rather unique.” 

Sakura’s knotting her hands, probably worried she’ll offend. 

Sasuke is fine with offending. 

“Yeah, so what?” he asks, “What’s it matter if you look like a freak? Tons of ninja look weird.” 

Sasuke. You little menace. 

“Oi, bastard! You can’t just say that!” 

“She admitted to looking weird.” 

“ You look weird.” 

“Shut it, dunce.”  

Again with the ‘dunce.’ That’s such a weird insult. 

“Settle,” she snaps. Thankfully, the kids are familiar enough with school that her tone gets their attention. “So we’ve established that I’m a freak of nature, great. Now, tell me why no one around us seems to care.” 

“Because they know you?” Naruto guesses, his hand raised. 

“You really expect every vendor in Konoha to know me? Half of these people are foreigners.” 

“Is it a genjutsu?” Sakura tries, her hand also raised, “like back at the academy.” 

Amanda shakes her head. “I wouldn’t waste my time like that.” 

Between them, Sasuke narrows his eyes at the people around them. He watches as they glance at the group, focusing more on Naruto than anything else, before quickly losing interest and looking away. “It has… something to do with your chakra?” 

Amanda smiles. She might even be a little proud. Just a little. 

“And why do you say that?” 

“Chakra and reputation are the two things people can’t control,” Sasuke says, “Naruto’s got a shit reputation and terrible chakra control, so he gathers the most attention.” “Hey!” “--You must have a minimal reputation and good control for no one to bother with you.” 

“A little harsh, but I think you’ve got the idea,” she shrugs. She puts her hands on her hips and puts on her lecture voice, the one she uses with particularly spoiled clients. “Kids--charisma and charm is one thing, but in this world, the real way you gather and lose attention is with your chakra. You’re not wrong about your reputation theory, but let’s be real, I’m a jounin. Kind of a big deal.” 

Sasuke rolls his eyes. 

Amanda continues her lecture. “What you’re going to learn today is how to control your presence. One’s presence is a combination of their outward appearance and attitude, as well as the… vibe their chakra gives off.” 

“Like killing intent?” Naruto asks, hand raised again. She needs to get them to stop doing that. “Something Iruka uses that to seem scarier than he already is.” 

“Exactly like that, Naruto. Good inference.”  

Naruto grins and sends a vying look Sasuke’s way. For the fifth time today, Sasuke rolls his eyes. Sakura still looks a bit confused. 

She also raises her hand. “How can we control how our chakra feels, sensei? Isn’t chakra just an energy we use for techniques? Since it's made of our physical and mental energy, it’s a biological component of who we are. Changing it would be like changing our hair color at will.” 

Amanda raises an eyebrow at her. “Genjutsu can change hair color, can’t it?” 

“Oh. Well, yeah, but-” 

“Critical thinking, Sakura,” she chides and holds out a hand, “if a genjutsu can cast illusions, and you can control the genjutsu, what else do you control?” 

“My… chakra?” 

“Yup,” she smiles and brings the hand closer. Sakura hive fives it timidly. “Just like molding it for a technique, you can mold your chakra to have a different, uh, atmosphere. You’ve heard people refer to chakra signatures, right? Good, good. Well, they call it that because your chakra is unique to you. Your personality has a strong effect on it and so do your feelings. That’s why sensors can identify people by their chakra alone. But a truly skilled ninja can alter their signature regardless of how they’re feeling.” 

“So you’ve been using your chakra to be unnoticable,” Sasuke’s eyes are starting to light up. He’s not quite hooked, but it seems like Amanda’s managed to get through his thick skull. “It’s not exactly a genjutsu, but you’re…  artificially changing how people perceive you.” 

“That’s practically a jutsu!” Naruto shouts, leaping at her. Amanda side steps his attack and stiff arms him. “Sensei! I knew you’d come around! I knew you’d actually teach us something!” 

Amanda’s eye twitches. 

“But how are we going to learn that?” Sakura asks, blinking at her. “I mean, yeah. we’re surrounded by people, but how are we going to know if they can’t see us or if they’re just ignoring us?” 

Amanda grins. For some reason, it makes the kids shiver. 

“By stealing.” 

… 

Her plan works better than expected. 

She’s stationed in a dark corner of the room. No one pays her any mind as they go about their business, and Amanda has to keep from grinning as she watches the scene play out before her. 

“Sensei! Just bail us out already!” Naruto yells to the ceiling, yanking on the bars to their cell. “Please! I’m not made for prison! I’m supposed to be Hokage!” 

Sasuke is glaring at the wall, pure venom in his eyes. There’s steam coming out of his ears and even Naruto’s smart enough not to bother him. Amanda can practically hear the curses he’s telepathically sending her. 

Sakura looks close to tears, kneeling on the cold cement of their holding cell.  

“I never even got detention!” she cries to one of the guards. He pays her no mind and continues paging through some paperwork. “It was a mistake! It’ll never happen again! I swear!” 

They’ve been in holding for about an hour now. An extremely pleasant, quiet hour that Amanda has been cherishing dearly. She bought herself mochi. She sat by a lake. Was this a bit cruel? Absolutely. Trial by fire, as they say. It’s the best way to impart wisdom. 

“Konoha’s got no tolerance for shoplifting,” a heavy-set guard says gruffly. “Consider yourselves lucky. In any other hidden village you kids would’ve had your hands chopped off.” 

Naruto snaps his hands back to his person defensively. 

“But it wasn’t our fault!” he yells, “we were going to pay! I swear! Just, after we took the--” 

“That’s not how buying things work! You brats think that just because you’re ninja rules don’t apply to you!?” 

“Well, we aren’t actually ninja,” Sasuke snarks, glaring at the man. “We’re in ‘limbo.’”

“That’s worse!” 

“What’s worse is your priorities,” he snaps. “What’re you policing the market for shoplifters for? Don’t you have better things to do? Like catching real criminals.” 

The guard’s face is beat red as he smacks the bars, Sakura and Naruto flinching back as Sasuke and the guard glare at each other. 

“Why you little--” 

“Oh good, you’ve still got your hands,” Amanda smiles as she steps out of the shadows. Things were getting heated. The gruff guard glares at her, but straightens and backs away from the cell when she flashes a smile his way. Being a jounin has its perks, domestic immunity being one of them. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” 

“Jounin-san,” the guard huffs, the red slowly draining from his face. He grins at her, sharp and prideful, “I take it these ninja are your responsibility?” 

She smiles back, just as sharp. “Not at all, sir. These three aren’t genin. They’re under your jurisdiction, not mine.” 

“What- Then what are you doing here?” 

“Ensuring three of the village's children aren’t being held without cause, of course,” she shrugs, “Civilian children charged with shoplifting are to pay a fine equal to the value of the stolen goods, no? Don’t tell me they haven’t got any money? The man up front said you already collected their wallets and belongings.” 

The guard’s face is gaining its color again. “They’re wearing headbands. You expect me to believe they’re not ninja? The charge for shoplifting for adults is a fine, restitution, and up to six months in jail. Given their character, I’ll see to it that they receive the full sentence.” 

Naruto and Sakura are white as sheets. 

“But they aren’t adults,” Amanda raises an eyebrow at him, “they’re not ninja. You ran their IDs didn’t you? You’d know that if you did.” 

“Well, uh-” 

“You didn’t, hm?” she tuts, “well that’s one code of malpractice.” 

“We--”

“And Sakura-chan here told you she’s got parents, didn’t she? Why didn’t you contact them? She’s a child, after all.” 

“That’s-” 

“And the poor boys are orphans. Did you notify the Hokage about this incident, given that those two are under his charge until adulthood? To think, all this trouble just for some bruised apples…” 

The guard’s face is beat red again. “That’s- this is-- you-- you can’t--” 

Amanda gestures to the cell gate, smiling pleasantly. 

“I’d like for you to let them out now,” she says, not leaving room for argument. “My day just got pretty complicated, you see? Given that I have to notify their guardians of this incident.” 

The guard catches her bluff, knowing full well she’s got no intention of bringing the Hokage into this mess. He takes the easy way out all the same, grumbling about abuses of power as he unlocks the cell. 

Her students swarm behind her. Sakura is clutching on Amanda’s vest, stars in her eyes as she looks up at her. Naruto sticks his tongue out at the man as Sasuke continues to glare at him.

“Thanks,” she nods, waving him off, “bye now.”

The guard grumbles illegibly at her head the whole way out of the police station. He stops at the door, but another signature hidden from view picks up the slack, stalking them down the village walkways. Amanda pushes Naruto in front of her, a hand on his back just in case, as they walk towards a quiet, but ninja-dense area of the village. 

She wants to slap herself when a flash of silver hair catches in her peripheral. Of course it’s that asshole. This is the third day in a row he’s tracked them down. 

She lets her shoulders droop a bit and takes her hand off Naruto’s head, having all three of them stop as they cross a small bridge.

Amanda sits on the railing and crosses her arms over her chest. 

“So,” she starts as the three kids regain their barings. They’ve been unusually quiet. Maybe she spooked them a bit too much. Hopefully Kakashi doesn’t have her arrested for child abuse. “What did we learn?” 

“That’s you’re the worst,” Sasuke growls at the same time Sakura cheers, “That you’re awesome!” 

“You both flatter me,” Amanda says, bland, “but really, what did you learn?” 

“Not to steal,” Naruto pouts, staring at his hands, “I need these… I don’t know what I’d do without them…” 

“Hm. Anything else?” 

“That if we were actual ninja, you would’ve left us there to rot,” Sasuke grumbles. 

“Indeed I would’ve. Anything else?” 

“That…” Sakura swallows thickly, the cogs turning in her head, “an actual ninja faces real consequences. So, if we want to be ninja, we need to be skilled or prepared to face the consequences.” 

“ Very good,” she grins, all teeth as she ruffles Sakura’s hair. “You three know that you’re not kids anymore. With those headbands, you’re ninja, and people will treat you as such. That doesn’t mean they'll grant you respect, rather, it means they’re going to hold you to a higher standard of conduct. If you stray from that standard, there are consequences.” 

Naruto squints at her. “So… don’t steal?” 

She gives a so-so motion with her hand.

Sasuke huffs, a smirk playing on his lips. “So don’t get caught,” he corrects, fingers twitching to get moving again.

Naruto blinks at him, wide eyed. “But… then… are we--”

“Now…” Amanda grins, a shiver running down Sakura and Naruto’s spines. The two look up at her, betrayed, as Sasuke’s smirk spreads into a matching grin of his own.

“Try again. And don’t get caught.”

… 

The kids are improving too fast.

They still don’t know her name, so she’s not liable if they break (or steal) anything, but it’s actually frightening how quick they pick up on things. 

At the end of their session, Naruto and Sasuke toss her two apples each. Sakura tosses an impressive four. 

She hadn’t expected any of them to succeed, but they got lucky with the lack of jounin in the streets today. Their “enemies” were civilian vendors (don’t underestimate them-- they were the one who caught all three the first time around), shoppers, genin, and a few chunin. Even then, the kids had more than a few close calls. 

Even still, they’re improving. 

They can each hide and strengthen their signature at will now. During a spar against Naruto that night, Sasuke took it a step further and tried to use chakra to strengthen one of his kicks. It didn’t do much, instead throwing him off balance and granting Naruto his first win out of ten matches, but that was exactly what she was looking for. She gave him a pat on the head that she doesn't think he appreciated. 

Overall, they’re showing the potential to be good ninja. 

She, on the other hand, still feels like a desk job would suit her better than this. 

Amanda glares at the dimly lit training ground, frustrated at her own inability to progress. She sent the kids off with orders to rest and hydrate, sticking around to run through the taijutsu forms she could bring herself to actively recall. Taijutsu is getting… well, not easier since every time she uses it she gets a sharp stab to the heart, but… it’s improving. She’s getting better. She feels more fluid and more in control of her (Ohta’s?) body now. 

Plus, it's easy to ignore how shitty it feels to move like Sasuke when Sasuke is so clearly glad she does. He won’t say it and Amanda doubts he’ll ever thank her for it, but the familiarity seems to put him at ease. It’s probably the only reason he hasn’t chewed her head off yet. 

She was worried, given that he probably expected the next time he fought someone in his style it would be a death match, but the kid’s full of surprises. They all have been.  

Naruto is the slowest at picking things up, which was expected, but he’s not an idiot like his test (both written and practical) scores indicate. He learns in his own way, usually by reworking the problem into something digestible rather than taking her advice at face value. 

She expected him to be a kinaesthetic learner: prone to working with his hands and getting right to business. Instead, he seems more like a visual one. He likes when he can see Sasuke or Sakura succeed in something (though that success is more often met with competition rather than admiration). He likes when she guides him through the movement by doing it herself. 

In contrast to the boys, Sakura’s only held back by her own lack of effort. She doesn’t want to do better than Sasuke, so she dumbs herself down. She doesn’t want to gain muscle like Amanda, so she does the required exercises and nothing more. She 

She’s remarkably talented: quick witted with near perfect chakra control. If only she actually wanted to succeed. As it stands, she just wants to woo Sasuke. 

There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to be a ninja. 

There is, however, something wrong with becoming a ninja for the wrong reasons. This isn’t a leisurely career. She’d know, she’s currently trying to play catch up on 30 years of hard earned skill--

The back of her neck prickles. Her hand snaps outward and two sendon launch towards the offending signature before she even turns around.

They don’t hit their mark, plucked from the air with a little too much ease. 

“Senbon, huh?” Hatake Kakashi drops down from his perch, idly inspecting the cheap wood in his hand. They're from the set she bought at Sasuke’s blacksmith. They were, in fact, ridiculously cheap and poorly crafted. “I thought you hated using these.” 

“I got a good deal on them.” 

“I didn’t realize you were so frugal.”

She catches the weapon as he tosses it back, putting it back with its sisters. He continues to twirl the other in his hand and Amanda frowns at him. Yet again, she’s not exactly sure what to say here. 

Whatever history Ohta and Kakashi shared, it clearly didn’t warrant remembering. All Kakashi’s name brings her is a vague sense of annoyance, which Amanda finds relatable. 

“I can appreciate a good deal,” she shrugs, narrowing her eyes at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Can’t I visit a friend?” 

“We’re not friends.” 

“Hm.” He looks up at the trees, his posture at ease as he continues to toy with her weapon. “Maybe we should be?” 

Amanda feels the urge to punch him in the head.

“I respectfully decline,” she says, “now what do you want?” 

Kakashi stares at her for a long moment, quiet and pensive. Amanda genuinely has no idea what he’s doing here, sneaking around when the kids aren’t even here. It’s annoying and a bit insulting that he’d resort to spying on her rather than outright asking to meet the kids. She’d be more than welcome to hand them over to him. He just has to ask. 

God, they sound like divorced parents, don’t they? 

…Maybe divorce is the best way to deal with this. She’s dealt with civil cases before. She can do this.

“You’re more than welcome to meet with them, you know,” she says, breaking the silence and their staring contest. Kakashi blinks at her, blank, but she soldiers on, “If you don’t want to flat out take over the team, I get it. I won’t ask you to, but if you are going to lurk around me like this it might be a problem. We could always co-teach, but that’s going to require structure. If you want to be involved you’ve got to show up for all the little un-sexy stuff too because there’s no way I’m doing that all by myself. Yesterday I had to teach Naruto how to properly trim his hair. Have you ever taught a twelve year old how to cut their hair? It’s incredibly frustrating and not sexy at all. So-- why are you looking at me like that?” 

“Like what?” he coughs, quickly schooling the utter panic on his face.  

“Like I’m telling you to dress in drag and do the hula,” she snaps. “Do you want to be a part of this or not? You’re giving me mixed signals here, man.” 

Kakashi fumbles through what might be a sentence before finally settling on a shrug.

“Hm. I hope you understand how incredibly frustrating this conversation is.” 

“I--” Kakashi cuts himself off, grabbing at the air in front of him like the words are out there instead of in his mouth. “I have my own team.” 

Amanda blinks. Then blinks again. 

“You do?” 

“I do.” 

“No you don’t.” 

“Ah,” he coughs, “Yeah, I don’t.” 

Amanda deserves a medal for dealing with this shit. Three little gremlins and a grown man, all of them capable of pushing every single one of her buttons. 

She turns around to keep from staring at his extremely punchable face. 

“Okay,” she sighs, defeated, “listen, man, I’m not going to read your mind, and I’m not going to hunt you down to get an answer out of you. If you want to help or meet them just… drop by. Okay? This doesn’t need to be a whole thing. I won’t introduce you or tie you down. Just show up. And if you want nothing to do with them, don’t show up. That’s fine too. But this whole following us around thing is annoying and weird. Knock it off.”

Amanda never thought silence could piss her off so much.

“Fine-- if even that’s too much for you, you can just--oh.” 

The space behind her is empty. The only evidence that he was ever there at all is her senbon, lying lifeless in grass. 

Chapter Text

As always, Amanda is the first to the meeting place. 

The training ground is quiet and peaceful. She’s been here since three in the morning, trying to remaster some wind jutsu Ohta was particularly fond of. 

She groans, tired of failing, and looks up at the pink-ish sky. The kids will arrive soon. She always tells them to meet at seven but lately Naruto’s been showing up even earlier. Sasuke follows after him, having figured that she’ll spar with him if he gets there soon enough. Sakura, ever the rule follower, comes at seven on the dot. 

“Sensei!” Naruto shouts, his shrill voice startling a few birds in the area. “I’m here! Teach me a jutsu!” 

Amanda lets him get all the way up to her before responding. 

“No.” 

“But sensei--” 

“Did you shower?” she asks, cutting him off. The kid’s in fresh clothes, but he’s still got yesterday’s grime on his scalp. His shoes, too, look like they might fall apart. She didn’t realize they were so bad.

Naruto flushes, sheepishly taking a sniff of his sleeve. “Do I smell?”

“A little.” 

“Ha ha, sorry sensei. I didn’t have time this morning!” 

“You’re here two hours early.”

“Oh yeah, uh, well-- you know how it is!” 

“Do I?” 

Naruto’s boyish grin is getting thinner. Amanda raises an unimpressed brow and he crumbles. 

“I, uh, didn’t have hot water,” he mutters, before snapping back into a grin, “but no big! Really! I mean-- it’s not the first time they’ve turned it off and cold water washes too, you know? I just, uh, I just didn’t want to stay in for too long… so, uh, I…” 

Ah, shit. 

She hasn’t brought them on any missions because, frankly, they suck and would probably burn a house down before they clean it. There’s also the problem of them not passing her test yet, which means they aren’t technically ninja and cannot take missions. For Sasuke and Sakura, the lack of income meant they didn’t have some pocket change. For Naruto, it meant he didn’t have water, electricity, or food. Two weeks without income is two weeks he hasn’t been able to pay. 

Shit. She’s such an asshole. Why didn’t she think of that?

“Come with me,” she says. 

Naruto trots beside her, asking if he’s going to learn a super secret jutsu.

“Sort of,” she shrugs, “Naruto, do you think you’re fast?” 

“Yeah! I’m the fastest!” 

“Incorrect. You’re actually remarkably slow for a ninja.” She holds up a hand, cutting off his stammering. “Don’t worry, speed is one of the few things that has a quick fix to it.” 

He blinks at her, owlish. “Really? I thought I’d have to do leg day or something…” 

“You do, but a ninja’s body has to be strong so it can act as a vessel for their chakra. Think of, uh, ramen. The broth is the most important part, right? Otherwise you’re just eating flavorless noodles.” 

“Okay…” Naruto nods, steam coming out of his ears. “So my body is the water… and my chakra is the flavor that makes it a broth? And the noodles are my techniques?” 

Amanda pats his head. “Bingo, kid.” 

“So leg day is adding water! And what you're going to teach me is improving the seasoning!” 

“Right again,” she smiles. Naruto’s charming and bright. It’s actually impressive. “What we’re going to work on is an offshoot of chakra control. As it stands, your ramen is a hodgepodge of a million different flavors, and it doesn’t taste very good--” “hey!” “--but we’re going to change that.”

She draws a line on the ground, right in front of his toes.  

“Jump as far as you can,” she says, standing at the line. 

“Alright!” he grins, wiggling his butt as he crouches low. “Prepare to be amazed, sensei!” 

He leaps, making it an impressive eleven feet before digging his heels in the ground and steadying himself. 

Amanda makes it twice the distance in one effortless bound. She looks over her shoulder at him. 

“Now what do you think was different about our jumps?” she asks as he scurries up to her. 

“Isn’t it always chakra?” he grumbles, squinting at her. Good. They’re learning. It is, in fact, always chakra. 

“Yup. Remember when Sasuke kicked you yesterday?” 

“Yeah! I beat him right after!” 

“But the kick connected, no?” 

Naruto pulls up his shirt with a grin, showing off a big purple splotch on his abdomen. “It was bigger last night.” 

“Ice it when you can,” she advises, “but what I want you to do now is what Sasuke did last night.” 

“Use chakra? To jump? What if my feet fly off?” 

“Then only use a little chakra. Just mold it, like you do when you’re expanding your signature. Spread it to your arms and legs then jump from here--” she draws another line in the dirt, before walking fifteen feet. “--to here.”  

She makes him jump between the two lines for a few minutes. He starts off undershooting it, then overshooting it. He never quite gets a solid grasp on the concept, so Amanda decides to speed things up a bit. 

“Okay,” she says, “now follow me.” 

Before the boy can respond she takes off running, faster than he could possibly manage without chakra. She jumps as soon as they break out of the training area, landing soundlessly on the roof of an old storage shed. He catches up, panting, and grins at her.

“You’re fast sensei!” 

“I’m actually pretty slow for a jounin,” she hums, jumping from one storage shed to the next. It’s a good twenty foot gap between them. Amanda waves him over. 

She has to catch him as he nearly soars over her head. The boy really does stink. 

“Try again,” she says and points to the next building, a single story house on the outskirts of the village, “don’t think too much about it. Just spread out and jump.” 

She only babies him for the first few jumps, before taking off on her own. She’s kind enough to go moderately slow, but not kind enough to guide him through the less busy parts of town. Naruto gets cursed at and one woman throws a rotten tomato at him as he falls into her fruit stand. 

The blond is too focused on keeping up with her to pay them any mind. 

“Focus your core,” she calls as he rolls instead of landing on his feet, his balance off kilter. “Don’t jump with everything you’ve got, just jump. It’s easy.” 

“That doesn’t make any sense, sensei!”

Maybe she should try another ramen analogy. 

Nah, she thinks, watching him re-discover his balance as he falls from another roof. He twists midair and lands in a crouch on the ground, unharmed from the thirty-foot drop. 

“Hey!” he yells, leaping from the ground, to the roof of a single story house, to the balcony of an apartment building. “Like that, sensei?” 

Ignoring the scuff marks he’s leaving, yes, exactly like that. 

“Less chakra,” she says back, beside him after a single bound, “think about where you are and where you’re going, then go. Don’t go any further, or any shorter. You don’t want to overflow your chakra either.” 

“Like boiling noodles…” he mutters, determined. 

Amanda doesn’t ask. “Sure. Like noodles.” 

About an hour after they started this exercise, they arrive at their destination. Naruto lands beside her almost perfectly. He hasn’t figured out how to use chakra to stick to things, so she has to catch his collar before he barrels into her door. 

Naruto, panting, looks up at her. “We’re--ha--at your house?” 

“Yup,” she says, opening the door. She steps to the side and gestures inside. “Go shower. You know where the bathroom is, right?” 

Naruto kicks off his sandals and laughs his way through her apartment. 

He takes exactly seventeen minutes and forty eight seconds in her bathroom. He fumbles around with the handle and lingers in the hallways for longer than Amanda would like, but eventually, he makes his way back to her in the kitchen.

He comes around the corner absolutely glowing. She slides a cup of tea and a protein bar across the counter to him. 

“Sorry I took so long, sensei!” Naruto says and catches the mug. He shakes out his wet hair in her kitchen. Ohta eyes the droplets on her stove impassively. “Your water’s really hot! I almost burnt myself, you know? And why do you have so many kinds of soap?”

She sips her own tea and shrugs. Naruto makes a face at her, clearly not impressed by the lack of conversation. He sniffs at his tea and makes a sour face before trying (and failing) to take a polite sip. 

“You don’t have to drink it.” 

“I don’t like tea,” he admits sheepishly, handing the mug back to her. He unwraps the protein bar though, eating half in one bite. “Sorry sensei!” 

“Don’t sweat it.” 

“I don’t like bitter things, you know? Like the chocolate that rich people eat and vegetables.” 

He doesn’t eat vegetables? 

Amanda hums, thinking up a plan to cook hidden vegetables for this brat. She’s going to have to go shopping. How can she convince them to come to her house again without it seeming weird? 

“We should get going,” she sighs. “Did you eat this morning? Besides the bar, I mean.” 

“Yup! I had three bowls of ramen, since you said I should eat more!” 

That’s… hm. She supposes they can stop at a food stand on the way to the training grounds. She can buy him a proper lunch. Dammit, she’s spending too much money on these kids. Why isn’t anyone else teaching them about nutrition? 

“Uh, good effort,” she mutters, pushing him out the door as he wrestles with his sandals. Maybe she’ll get them ‘congrats on passing’ gifts if they actually figure out her name. That way she can get Naruto new shoes without it seeming too… favorite-y. Or charity-like. 

“Come on then,” she says once the door is shut behind them, “You know where we’re going. Lead the way.” 

Naruto beams at her from over his shoulder. 

“Try to keep up, sensei!”

…

It’s right before seven when they arrive. Both Sasuke and Sakura are waiting for them. 

Naruto lands first, huffing and puffing but with a good color to his cheeks, and Amanda lands just a beat after. 

“Good morning Sakura-chan!” he greets cheerily. His voice takes on a more sinister tone as he turns to Sasuke. “And bastard, how are you this morning? Would you… care to race?” 

“Naruto! Don’t pick fights so early in the morning,” Sakura chides. 

Sasuke glares at him, suspicious. Naruto has a special knack for bushing Sasuke’s buttons, it seems. “I’ve beaten you in every spar since our first day at the Academy. Whatever cheap trick she taught you isn’t going to help.” 

“Then race me!” he glares, his expression halfway between excited and offended.

“It’s not worth my time.” 

“Sounds like you’re sacred!” 

“Sounds like you’re an idiot.” 

“Hey! You’re just scared I’m gonna be faster than you! I’ve been training hard, you know!?” he jogs in place, as if showing off how fast he is. 

Sasuke jabs a finger at him. “Fine,” he snaps, “but when you eat my dust don’t go crying to sensei about it.”

“S-- sensei?” Sakura squeaks, “shouldn’t you stop them?” 

Amanda pats her head. “Let’s just see how this plays out.” 

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto shouts, Sasuke and him already lined up. “We’re racing to that big oak tree and back! Sound off.” 

The girl looks up at Amanda for approval, but Amanda’s busy inspecting her nail. Timidly, Sakura raises her arm. 

“Alright…” she mutters. “Ready… Set… go!” 

Dust and debris get kicked up as the boys take off. Sasuke’s launch causes the earth beneath his feet to crack and crumble, the force of his kick compacting the ground. The place Naruto started at, however, looks like a small meteor crashed into it. The dirt is scorched, harsh divots forming wherever Naruto’s feet land. 

He’s still using too much chakra. 

Shitty control or not, Naruto skips over the finish line a full five seconds ahead of Sasuke.

Sasuke catches him by the collar mid-gloat. 

“What the hell was that.” 

“Oi!? Bastard! Let go!” 

“How did you do that?” He hisses, looking like he might actually kill the blond.

Amanda chops her hand between them. 

“Okay that’s enough. Sasuke, would you care to take a gander at why you can’t beat Naruto?” 

She feels more like a hair in his food than his sensei with the way he looks at her. “Chakra,” he grunts, “it’s always chakra, isn’t it?” 

She smiles blandly. “And it always will be. Naruto's learned how to integrate his chakra into his entire body. What do you think that would lead to, Sakura?” 

“Increased speed, obviously,” she says, tapping her chin, “but also increased strength and endurance, I guess?”

“Right on the strength, wrong on the endurance,” she blinks, “well, actually, Naruto has a lot of chakra, so you might be right in his case. But for you two and just about everyone else on the planet, using your chakra this way has very little effect on your endurance. Yes, you’ll get further faster, but you’ll tire out at just about the same rate as before. If you use too much chakra, however, you’ll drop. So don’t do that. Just stop when you get tired.” 

“How do we know when we use too much?” Sakura asks. 

“You’ll know.” 

“That’s not very helpful, sensei!” Naruto pouts. 

Amanda waves him off. “Now, Sakura, Sasuke, I want you two to jump from here to…” she points to her right, “there. Go as far as you can standing still.” 

Sasuke makes it an impressive fifteen feet. Sakura makes it an average eight. 

She motions for Naruto to try. He makes it almost thirty, laughing as he soars past his gaping teammates. 

“Back here,” she whistles. The three of them scurry up, Sasuke and Sakura sending frustrated looks in Naruto’s direction.  Naruto, meanwhile, is laughing with his belly, his hands locked together behind his head. 

“I’m the best, aren’t I sensei?!” 

“You could do better,” she says, dismissive. She ignores his betrayed look and draws a line in the dirt. She walks about twenty-five feet and draws another. “Now, Naruto: jump from here to there.” 

She’s barely finished speaking before he launches at her. He lands with a barely-there stumble, before planting both feet on the ground firmly. Naruto’s head snaps her way earnestly and she nods approvingly before looking at the other star-struck genin. At her side Naruto’s grin threatens to stretch off his face. 

“Naruto lands accurately a good three times out of ten.”

“That’s… not very good?” Sakura mutters, unsure. 

Amanda shrugs. “It’s better than you two can manage. By the end of today, I want you each to be able to jump precise distances accurately seven times out of ten. You’ll start by using these two lines here. Once you’ve got that down. Lower the distance by ten, then expand it by fifteen. Keep repeating that process until you can jump forty feet reliably. You know how to use measurements, so make sure your distances are accurate. You’re not babies. I shouldn’t have to keep drawing lines for you.” 

Naruto is counting on his fingers, but Sasuke and Sakura nod. 

“Good,” she says, clapping. “Then get to work.” 

The three of them balk as she vanishes from view. 

…

She hasn’t left them to their own devices before this. 

She knew in theory that the three of them didn’t get along, but their mutual fear of her smashing their faces into mud usually keeps them in (relative) check. The Baseline Test had plenty of purposes. Its first purpose was to let her play around with her (new?) abilities. Its second was to show them she is not to be messed with. 

Without that threat hanging over their heads, however, things dissolve into chaos rather quickly. 

“Naruto!” Sakura shrieks, barely catching herself on her hands as the boy whips by her, “watch where you’re going, you idiot!” 

“Sorry, Sakura-chan!” he chirps, digging his heels in the ground only to land three feet too far. “Shit.” 

Sasuke stumbles on his take-off, his toe catching on some upturned dirt, and splats face-first in the now muddied starting line. 

Naruto points and laughs. 

Sakura throws a clump of dirt at the blond, running over to help Sasuke to his feet.

Sasuke, not for the first time, looks like he’s considering double homicide. 

Amanda, safe and hidden in her tree, giggles at the carnage. 

The suspicious figure beside her sighs. 

“Isn’t this kind of mean?” the suspicious figure says. 

Amanda doesn’t look up as Kakashi takes a seat beside her, his legs dangling off the edge like it's a swingset. He’s been watching since Naruto and Sasuke raced, but this is the first time he’s spoken to her. At least he’s not lurking anymore, so Amanda counts it as a (tentative) win. He is, however, still an asshole. 

“If you just came here to critique my techniques I reserve the right to kick your ass.” 

He flips the page. For some reason, she feels like she lost that argument. 

“Why’d you give Naruto a head start?” he asks eventually. 

Amanda shrugs. “Not every rhyme has a reason.” 

“Still.” 

“You are more than welcome to take over.”

Kakashi flips to the next page. This time, she feels like she won. 

They sit like that for about two hours. Eventually, Kakashi pulls out a deck of cards from who knows where. Amanda teaches him to play Gin as the kids fail to make any meaningful progress. 

Naruto looks like he’s constantly about to rip his hair out, Sakura’s covered head to toe in dirt, and Sasuke has taken to punching an innocent tree each time he fails. 

Naruto did excellent up until the forty foot marker, which seems to be his threshold of control. Sakura can’t figure out how much chakra to use for thirty. Sasuke hasn’t made it past fifteen, and even then his twenty-five was shaky at best.

Looking at the blood now oozing from his knuckle, the brunet takes a deep , deep breath. He lets it out, the air pouring from his chest heavily, at the same time he catches Naruto by the arm. 

“What gives?” Naruto snaps, trying to wrench his way out of his grip. 

“How are… you doing that?”

The question comes out like more of an accusation, but Naruto’s head grows three times bigger all the same. 

“Hee, hee, I’m pretty good at this, aren’t I?” he sniffs, nose in the air. 

“I didn’t say that.” 

“Yes, you did,” he sing-songs, taunting his dark-haired teammate. 

“Fine,” he jabs, dropping his hold on the blond and stomping away, “don’t tell me. See if I care.” 

“But, I--” Sakura calls, her face red. She grabs both the boys, holding Sasuke in place before he storms too far off. “Naruto, I want to know too.” 

The blond’s face explodes with color. “Oh! Yeah, totally Sakura-chan! Let me show you!” 

She stiff arms him before he hugs her. “But! I, um… I want Sasuke to do good too. Not that he needs your help or anything… just, if you’re going to share, you should share with both of us. For, uh, teamwork’s sake, or… something…” 

Naruto and Sasuke squint at each other.

Sakura send Naruto puppy-dog eyes. 

Naruto blushes and wags his finger at the two of them, channeling his inner zen.

“You are a bowl of ramen,” He says sagely, “your body is the water and your chakra is the seasoning--Ow! Sasuke I’m being serious! Don’t punch me!” 

“How was that serious?!”

“Do you want to know or not, bastard!?” 

Amanda can see Sasuke’s jaw clenching from her. Kakashi and she watch with bated breath as the boy huffs. 

“I do,” he grumbles, crossing his arms. “Fine. Yeah. Go on with your ramen-talk or whatever.” 

Naruto sticks his tongue out before continuing. “You’re a bowl of ramen,” he asserts, saying the words straight to Sasuke’s face, “your body is the water and your chakra is the seasoning. Right now we’re like the water when the packet of seasoning is first put in-- all of the powder is clumped in the middle. To make a good broth you gotta stir the water, you know?” 

Sasuke moves to punch him again. 

Sakura catches his arm as Naruto flinches. 

“Wait, that actually makes sense.” 

“Sakura-chan! Don’t sound so shocked!” 

“No, no,” she turns to Sasuke, her eyes lit up with life, “chakra is the key, remember? That’s what sensei keeps telling us. We don’t need to move all our chakra to our legs and jump with a specific amount-- we should be spreading our chakra throughout our whole bodies!” 

“That way…” Sasuke starts, mostly to himself, “it’d be just like jumping without any chakra at all. Our strength would be heightened, but not centralized to one area."

Sakura nods, excited. "It’d be more like waking up in a new body instead of controlling a firehose-- we already have everything we need to control it, we just have to get used to it!”

“That’s what I said!?” Naruto gawks. “Broth! Stir the broth!”

“Spreading,” Sakura smiles, closing her eyes, “just like when we hid from the vendors, we need to work with our chakra, not against it.” 

Up in the tree, Amanda is punching the air victoriously. Kakashi ducks out of the way of one of them. 

“Fuck you,” she says to him, feeling absolutely tickled. 

“Oh come on.” 

“Eat my shorts. Seriously-- eat them. You didn’t think it’d work, did you? Ha! Eat them. I hope you like the taste ‘cause I’m going to be proving you wrong left and right.” 

“I never said I didn’t believe you.” 

“But you thought it.”

“You can’t prove that.” 

Amanda hums a little ditty and slumps back into the tree, her cards forgotten. Kakashi takes one look at them and drops his own deck. 

“Gin,” he says, a smile in his eye. 

Meanwhile, far below Amanda throwing her cards at Kakashi, the kids are already improving. 

All three of them start from scratch, Naruto catching Sakura as she stumbles. He wags his eyebrows at her and she punches him in the nuts. Sasuke is smirking as he sticks his next landing. 

With Naruto briefly out of commission, the two of them make it four successful rounds before he catches up. By then, though, the other two are running much smoother. 

Sakura quickly pulls ahead, easily having the best chakra control of the three of them.

Wordlessly, the two boys start to race each other. They don’t come to an agreement to start, but somehow they manage to start at the same time. Naruto keeps track with tallies in the dirt as to who finishes their lap first. Sasuke calls him out on not landing directly on the line and Naruto returns the favor. They start to keep each other in check, Sasuke even chiding Sakura when she tries to move ahead after stumbling on a landing. 

Five hours and one extremely rushed lunch break later, Sakura completes her eleventh and final round. She lies on her back, panting as she watches the sun get lower and lower. The boys are just if not more exhausted, but still on the ninth round, struggling to land exactly on their forty-five marker. The further the distance the harder accuracy is for them. 

Kakashi left just after Amanda threw her cards at him. He leaves all the cards for her to pick up and she’s not planning on returning them. 

She shuffles through them idly as the boys groan each time they miss a mark. Sasuke’s footwork is getting a bit too precise as he tries to cut corners and Naruto’s is getting too sloppy as he wastes his energy making unnecessary movements.

Anticipating disaster at the sight of a small mound in front of the finish line, Amanda drops to it in a flash.

“Alright,” she calls, landing between them as they stumble over it. She catches the boys, one in each arm, before they eat dirt. “That’s enough for today. You’ll hurt yourself if you keep going.” 

“But sensei! We almost had it!” Naruto whines, wiggling in her hold. 

Sasuke grips her forearm, huffing. “Just… one more time, sensei.” 

“You two are going to throw up at this rate,” Sakura chides, still staring at the sky. 

Amanda hums and drops them. The boys stumble, blinking up at her confused. “If you two want to go once more, go ahead.” 

The boys look at each other, sparks of competition flying between them. 

“Alright!” Naruto yells, squaring up at the line. “Sensei! Sound off!” 

Amanda frowns at the order.

“Uh, please sound off?”  

She shrugs and holds up a hand.

When her arm drops, Naruto and Sasuke jet off, bounding across the field faster than before. At the far line, Naruto turns around fully before leaping again, whereas Sasuke conserves his energy by approaching the line at an angle and leaping from it in one movement. 

They both land soundly in line with her, crouched, but not unbalanced. 

“Who…” Sasuke pants, “...won?” 

“Naruto did.” 

“Again!” he shouts, glaring at the blond as he cheers. 

“Again!” Naruto yells this time, after Sasuke beats him by a landslide. 

“Again!” Sasuke snaps, already in position. 

By round six, neither boy can make it to the second line in just one jump. By the tenth round, they’re flat out running across the field. 

By the eighteenth, Sasuke wins by crawling over the finish line. 

“I… win…” he huffs, collapsing onto the ground. 

Naruto drops next to him, breathless. “A…again….” 

Amanda actually laughs at him. She can’t help it. 

“Sakura,” she calls to the girl who is now fully recovered, “go grab their packs for me.” 

The boys groan as Amanda picks them up, slinging one over each shoulder. 

“We can walk…” Sasuke grumbles, clutching at the back of her vest. Naruto groans senselessly on her other shoulder, already limp. 

“I sincerely doubt that,” she snickers, waiting for Sakura to hop over. “Alright Sakura, we’re going to my place.” 

“Okay sensei!” 

Amanda makes sure to walk there, nice and slow, just so that everyone still on the streets can see how dumb the two of them are. 

Her karma is Sakura chattering her ear off, asking for better chakra control techniques and ways to make her jumps more efficient. 

By the time they get there, both boys are knocked out on her shoulders. Amanda has Sakura fish the key out of her mission pouch to open the door. 

She plops Naruto down on the couch, letting him groan and moan as he snuggles into her upholstery. 

Sakura giggles as Sasuke is placed beside Naruto, who immediately snuggles into him. Sasuke starts drooling on his teammate’s hair. 

The boys come to after half an hour on the couch, Sasuke wrapped in all four of Naruto’s limbs and still drooling into the blond’s hair. 

From the kitchen, Amanda and Sakura share conniving grins as the boys shout, trying to push one another off the couch. Amanda hears a loud thump and more curses as Sakura runs out to watch, keeling over laughing as soon as she rounds the corner. 

“That’s what you get,” she giggles, breathless, “for passing out after a simple training exercise!” 

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto cries, muffled, “that was mean! And gross! So gross!” 

“Alright, alright,” Amanda chuckles, rounding the corner at a much more relaxed pace. She nudges Sasuke off Naruto with her foot, releasing the blond from being pinned. He gasps, his face finally free from her carpet and begins to rub at the wet spot on the back of his head. Both boys look at her with betrayal in their eyes. 

They grab the mugs she hands them anyway. 

“Drink all of it, it’ll help you replenish your chakra.” 

“But sensei,” Naruto groans, looking into his mug pitifully, “you know I don’t like tea…” 

“I sweetened yours.” 

“Sensei! I love you!”

“Eh.”

“It’s actually pretty tasty. I drank mine already,” Sakura pipes, smiling at the boys, “Sasuke-kun, I brewed yours…” 

The boy grunts, taking a small sip. “Uh, thanks…”

Amanda stays long enough to make sure they’re actually drinking it before turning back around. “Are beef bowls good with you two?” she asks over her shoulder.

“Of course, sensei!” Naruto beams and Sasuke nods, squinting at her. 

“Cool,” she hums, walking back to the kitchen. 

Sasuke follows after her, which means Sakura follows him, and Naruto follows her. Soon, all three are seated at her counter, watching as she fumbles through seasoning an ungodly amount of beef with whatever was left in her cupboard. She never claimed to be a chef. 

“Sensei,” Sasuke drawls, putting down his mug. 

Amanda hums and looks over her shoulder at him. 

His serious expression makes her turn around entirely, the sizzling of half-cooked meat forgotten behind her. Sasuke’s dark charcoal eyes search her light brown ones. His expression is guarded but he’s leaning forward, toward her rather than away.

“Sensei,” he says again. Sakura and Naruto perk up beside him, catching the vibe that Sasuke is about to do something wildly out of character. 

He takes a breath, steeling himself and asks: 

“What’s your name?”

Kurasaki Ohta smiles back at him. 

“I’m glad you asked.” 

Chapter Text

Sometimes Amanda wakes up and forgets where she is. 

Sometimes she reaches for a half-finished book on her nightstand, only to remember that the title never existed here. Sometimes she hobbles her way to the bathroom and gapes at the scars she has but can’t recall getting. Sometimes she craves a certain cereal that is way too high-fructose-corn-syrup and processed for this early-industrial society to even comprehend. 

Sometimes she wakes up with some random person in her bed: someone who didn’t know Ohta or Amanda, who could take her mind off things. Sometimes she wakes up alone: completely and entirely alone in a world she doesn’t entirely understand, feeling like she’s always two well-meaning steps away from breaking some grave taboo. 

Sometimes she wakes up and grabs for her forehead protector like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Sometimes the ceiling is familiar because she’s the one who painted it that pale blue. Sometimes the face in the mirror is the same one she’s always had. 

Those days are the ones she hates the most.

The line between Ohta and Amanda is getting thin. Amanda can’t function in this world without Ohta’s body, reflexes, and skill, but with those come… other things. Thoughts and memories that are both hers and aren’t: a strong hatred towards a dish she knows she’s never had; an old woman who’s greeted her each morning the same way for five years but she’s only been here for two weeks; a tendency to track dirt in her apartment when she forgets to stop channeling chakra through her prosthetic.

Habits and opinions she would have no way of forming come as easy as breathing (She taps her chopsticks on the table each time before eating-- she doesn’t shower during thunderstorms-- she casts a longing look at what used to be the Uchiha police station every time she passes--). If she tries, she can remember as far back as Ohta’s fifth birthday, when her father got her a doll instead of the tanto she wanted. 

"Shit," she says, kneading the palms of her hands into her eyes.

She’s had a splitting headache since… well, since she got here. It never really went away. The more she thinks of Ohta, the worse it gets. The more she acts like Ohta, the more her skin feels too tight, too small to house whatever she is. 

Is she a demon? Is she actually possessing Ohta? Did she die, and this is some kind of purgatory?

“Shit,” she says again, snapping upright at the sight of the clock on her nightstand. Purgatory or not, she’s late. 

Feeling more like a live wire than a person, she peels herself out of bed and throws on her standards. She barely brushes her teeth, throws her forehead protector onto the couch when she can’t figure out how to tie it properly, and shuts the door with her prosthetic as she wrestles with putting her sandal on. 

The three of them are waiting for her by the time she gets there. 

“Reports,” she orders, cutting off Naruto and Sakura’s teasing at her lateness. 

They’re too used to how mean she is, clearly, because they fail to look dejected as they dig into their mission pouches, presenting her with three stacks of paper varying in thicknesses. 

She eyes Naruto’s as he places it in her hand. Sakura and Sasuke’s are pristine and ironed flat. Naruto’s, however, is crumpled and missing a corner. 

“Right…” she mutters, tucking the papers into her own pouch. “Let’s go get you three a mission.”

Naruto bounces excitedly around her. “Hey, hey Ohta-sensei! Can we go on a C-rank today? D-ranks are too easy, you know!? If I’m gonna be Hokage you’ve gotta challenge me!” 

“No.” 

“What!? Why not sensei!? We’ve been training like crazy!” 

“Because I said so-- oi. Knock it off with that face, I don’t want attitude.”  

“But sensei…” he whines, trying for puppy eyes. 

Amanda flicks him on the forehead and he tumbles back, landing on his butt. 

“The more you whine the more brain cells I kill,” she threatens, “you don’t have enough to spare. Come on.”

“Sensei!! You’re so mean!” 

Their walk to the mission desk is, as always, filled with bickering. Sasuke snarks at Naruto, Naruto snarks back, Sakura defends Sasuke, and the cycle begins anew. At this point, the constant chatter is more background noise than the headache it used to be. Of course, Ohta thinks it’s disrespectful of her authority. Amanda thinks it’s just kids being kids. 

But they’re not kids, they’re soldiers-- they still have baby fat. They’re kids. 

Amanda shuts down that line of thought as she slides the door open, gesturing for the kids to enter. She nods to Sakura as she passes, who takes the lead. Sakura gives an extremely thorough report of yesterday’s dog-walking mission as the boys continue to elbow each other. She’s almost done telling the Hokage about how one of the pugs chased a passerby, when Naruto lifts his fist. 

Amanda grips both boys by the top of their heads, maneuvering them to flank Sakura. 

One sharp look Sasuke’s way aborts any whining at the manhandling.

“That was detailed,” the Hokage smiles, cutting in when Sakura goes to take a breath. Amanda pats her shoulder reassuringly. “Ohta-san, is your team ready for their next mission?” 

“Yes sir.” 

With a knowing grin the Hokage hands her a D-rank. Neither Ohta or Amanda know exactly what the man is thinking, but she nods back to him anyway. The kids practically run out the door (reports were always their least favorite part of the day), waiting for her at their usual stop across the street. 

“Alright,” she says, re-rolling the scroll and stuffing it in her pack. “D-rank number eleven, let’s go.”

…

She is quite literally watching paint dry.

The kids were charged with painting a fence. She already read through their reports, taking great pleasure in using her red pen to ruin their day. Sasuke’s was too brief, Sakura’s was too long, and Naruto’s… well, Naruto’s was a jumbled mess. He tried, though, so she was nicer than usual.

She glances over at them, looking for some semblance of entertainment, but the scene is the same as it was two hours ago. Sakura says Sasuke is the best painter, while secretly going over his sections herself. Naruto is trying to paint as fast as humanly possible, so he ends up with gaps and bubbles throughout his sections. And Sasuke doesn’t think this is worth his time, so he’s half-assing it and his sections are too light. 

Meanwhile, Amanda (Ohta?) got real bored of talking with the owner of the house real fast. He was an older man who kept asking why she wasn’t married. He’s got a grandson her age who’s also unmarried. Apparently, Ohta and him are soulmates. Amanda doesn’t feel like finding the merit of that statement. 

So she waved him off, feigning interest in Sasuke’s painting technique. 

She should’ve brought a book.

Speaking of bringing a book… 

Amanda glances up at the new presence. Hatake Kakashi lifts a hand in greeting as he drops from the tree he was perched in. His other hand is holding his book--that same raunchy novel he always has--too close to his nose. She’s not convinced he actually reads it. Maybe it’s a way to keep people from talking to him?

Ohta and him were familiar, but not close. They ran in similar circles, but never outright talked until maybe three years ago, not long after Ohta lost her fiance and teammate in one night. Ohta doesn’t remember the night very well, which, understandable. Amanda had a similar encounter on real-earth after Lana passed away unexpectedly. She also does not want to remember or think about that night.

Amanda figures their relationship is one of shared hurt and little else. The only reason he’s here is for the kids. The kids who should be his students, not hers.

“Yo,” he greets. 

“Yo yourself.”  

“Ohta-chan is mean today.” 

“I’m older than you,” she chides, “you should call me -san.”

“No thanks.” 

“Ohta-sensei! Who’s that?” Naruto yells, running over. He’s got white paint all over his face and hands. It’s going to be a pain getting him clean before they have to meet their next client. 

“Who’re you!?” he shouts at Kakashi, taking a defensive stance in front of Amanda. She’s touched by his stupidity, truly. “Are you a ninja!? Are you strong? Are you gonna teach us some jutsu!?” 

Kakashi flips through his book. “Rowdy.” 

Naruto squawks, offended.

“I’m working on it,” Ohta shrugs. 

Naruto squawks again, betrayed. 

“Get back to work,” She orders, “look at your teammates. See how they aren’t bothering me? Go do that.” 

“You’re mean sensei!”

“Shoo.” 

Kakashi lifts his eye enough to watch Naruto trot away. The kid sticks his tongue out at her. She flips him off. 

“I’m not sure that’s appropriate.” 

“If you can’t take them, I don’t want to hear it.” 

“Hm,” he grunts, looking back at his page, “fair.” 

So he can’t take them. That’s annoying. What could possibly be more important to him than these three? Doesn’t he like them? Ah, shit. Maybe he learns to love them or something. No, that’s not right, because why would he keep visiting if he didn’t care about them? 

Her relationships with Botan and her (admittedly short) time as Uchiha Ayane’s teammate are probably why she’s Team Seven’s sensei. Since Ohta clearly had certain allegiances with the Uchiha Clan, maybe they thought she’d know how to deal with Sasuke’s… everything. That and Ohta would’ve been able to formulate a team centered around a strong Uchiha frontliner, just like her own team was. 

But didn’t Kakashi have the sharingan? 

That’s, like, a major plot point in the show. Judging by how Ohta has both eyes, she certainly doesn’t have the sharingan, so why would they give her this team anyway? So what if she was buddy-buddy with a few Uchiha? That doesn’t make her more qualified than one of the main characters. They’re main characters for a reason. This team and Kakashi are probably supposed to save the world or something. That’s usually how anime shows like this go. 

Dammit. Never in her life would she think finishing Naruto of all things would be helpful. She was a fan, sure, but the obsession died before it even started. She got bored pretty quick and started watching HXH instead since that’s what all her friends were watching. By the time she finished high school, Naruto wasn’t anywhere close to her radar. She didn’t even watch anime anymore.

If Kakashi doesn’t become their sensei soon, however, she’s certain things in the “timeline” are going to change.

She glances at him, trying to gauge his current emotional investment in her team, but he’s just blushing at whatever he’s reading. 

She looks away, a vague feeling of repulsion swirling in her chest. 

She’s too tired to deal with his weird-ass vibe. Relearning how to be a ninja while simultaneously teaching three freakishly talented kids how to be both ninja and functioning human beings is hard, you know? She barely has time to research how to get back. In fact, she barely has time to sleep.

“Have you been training?” 

“Huh?” she squints at him, a little offended. “Of course I've been training them. I’m their sensei.” For now. 

“Not them. You.” he asserts, “have you been training?”

That feels like a loaded question. On one hand, yes, because she needs to (re-)learn her techniques. But on the other, no, because she’s probably weaker than she was a month ago. 

She settles on answering with a shrug. 

“You seem different,” he says mildly. 

Amanda hopes the cold sweat she breaks out in doesn’t show in her stance. “...We aren’t that close.” 

“Stronger, then,” he amends. “More in control.” 

How out of pocket was Ohta that she seems more in control now?  

“Uh, thanks,” she mutters, “I think.” 

“It was a compliment.” 

“I didn’t know you knew what those were.” 

“I’m a man of many talents.” 

“Gross.” 

“Not like-” he stops himself, blinking. “Well, maybe like that.” 

Amanda snorts. “Gross.”  

“What can I say? I had a good teacher.” 

Holy shit have they fucked? What a twist. 

“Uh,” she coughs, “dude, what are you doing here? For real.” 

Kakashi has the gall to look smug at throwing her off balance. He turns the page in his book and shrugs. “I thought I’d scout out the ‘future of the village.’ Since it's my duty and all.” 

“How noble of you.” 

“I am, aren’t I?” 

She hums, eying his posture. He’s only looked at her and his book. For someone so dedicated to the village’s future, it’d be nice if he looked at them. 

After all, the three brats can’t keep their eyes off him. 

“Focus on your job,” she calls, glaring at them. “Or would you rather do drills?” 

“No sensei!” Naruto and Sakura shout, painting with more fever. Even Sasuke starts to put some more heart into it.

Beside her, Kakashi is silently laughing. “Who would’ve thought Ohta-chan would make such a good sensei?”

“You and I have different definitions of good.” 

“They listen to you,” he shrugs, “that’s more than Asuma can say.” 

The fact that she’s beating Asuma at something does not please her. It doesn’t. 

“Don’t look too smug. His team may not listen to him but they’ll wipe the floor with team seven. I hear you don’t even let them use jutsu.” 

“Hey,” she frowns, “I’m growing flowers in the desert here, cut me some slack.” 

“You and I have different definitions of desert.” 

She can’t really argue with that. They’re the main characters, after all. 

“Oh, and by the way,” he adds, “Asuma wanted you to know Team Ten is taking a C-rank mission soon. He said they leave friday.”

Huh, good for him. 

“That bastard.” 

“Ohta-chan, you’ve mixed up your thoughts and your words.” 

“Team,” she yells across the yard, “are you almost done?” 

“Yes, Ohta-sensei!” Sakura chirps from where she’s putting away the painting supplies. Naruto snaps up but is dragged right back down by his collar. “Naruto, you’re not going anywhere until these are clean! Sasuke-kun already did his half!” 

“Clean those brushes, Naruto,” she orders, hands on her hips, “Pronto. No time to waste.” 

They’re ready for a C-rank. If that jerk’s stupid team is ready for a C-rank, so is hers.

She pointedly ignores as Kakashi sighs. 

She ignores him as he sits in on their post-mission meeting. 

She ignores as he chuckles at something Sasuke snarks at. 

She ignores him as he trails after them on their way to the mission desk. 

She ignores him as he tries to follow her in, getting shoved out of the room for his efforts.

“Ah, Ohta-chan--” Amanda slides the door shut on him, the shadow of his silhouette visible as he hovers outside. 

“Ignore him,” she tells the kids and turns to the Hokage, “Sorry for slamming the door.” 

The Hokage shrugs in a ‘what-are-you-gonna-do’ kind of way. Beside him, the kids’ academy teacher is still giving her the stink eye. He’s going a whole month of glaring at her. Impressive. 

“Sensei,” Naruto hisses, Sakura blushing beside him. “Was he your…” 

He holds his pinky up, winking at her.

She ignores them too. 

“Hokage-sama,” she announces, loud in the sudden quiet of the room, “Team Seven reporting in. We’ve completed our eleventh successful D-rank mission. I would like to formally request a C-rank.” 

From beside the old man, Iruka balks. 

From beside her, her students cheer. 

The Hokage and jounin stare at each other silently as the room erupts. 

“A C-rank! A C-rank!” Naruto and Sakura chant, skipping around each other. 

“You can’t be serious!?” Iruka shouts. “You’ve been an official team for barely two weeks!”

Sasuke smirks at the ground, his chest puffed up. “It’s about time…” 

Kakashi opens the door, sneaking in to stand a step behind her. “Hm? Did I miss something?”

The Hokage sighs, closing his eyes to rub at the bridge of his nose. Ohta has won the staring contest. 

“Ohta-san,” he starts, “is this because of Team Ten--”

“It absolutely is.” 

He blinks at her bluntness. “Well, Team Ten has a lot of experience working together, you see. When it comes to cohesiveness, Team Seven isn’t really… at their level.” 

“We’re totally ready, jiji!” Naruto yells, punching the air. “We’ll kick any enemy ninja’s butt! Ohta-sensei has been training us like crazy! And I’ve been eating more vegetables!” 

“What do vegetables have to do with--” Iruka cuts himself off and takes a breath. “Naruto, you’re not ready for a C-rank! And show some respect-- you’re in the presence of the Hokage!” 

“And you’re in the presence of the future Hokage! Give us a C-rank old man!” 

“Ohta-san,” the Hokage says and gestures to Naruto. “Please.” 

She looks at her nails.

Kakashi hums, rocking on his heels beside Ohta. The Hokage switches his exasperated gaze to him, immediately putting the pieces together. He frowns at the man, who whistles innocently and turns a page in his book. 

“Fine,” he sighs, reaching behind his desk and pulling out a scroll. “Team Seven, congratulations on completing eleven successful D-rank missions. I hope this C-rank goes just as smoothly.” 

Naruto hoots, his hands thrown up in victory. 

“Then, Team Seven you are dismissed. Kakashi, stay,” the Hokage’s voice leaves no room for debate. It’s his serious voice, the one he used for important missions and threats. “I’ve got a mission for you as well.”

Amanda snickers and ignores the betrayal on Kakashi’s face as she slams the door shut. 

He can fend for himself. 

Sakura catches her sleeve when they exit the tower. “Ohta-sensei, why did Hokage-sama mention Team Ten?” 

“They’re going on a C-rank too,” Amanda says, scanning the scroll’s contents quickly. It doesn’t look that bad. They can probably handle this much. “We’re even going to be leaving around the same time.”

“Oh,” she mutters, looking like she stepped in dog poop, “neat…” 

Naruto announces her inner thoughts for the world. “Those guys stink, Ohta-sensei!” he yells, bouncing in place from excitement. “We’re waaaaaaay better, you know!? You can believe it!” 

“You better be,” she grunts, pointing at them. “Best behavior on friday, got it? I want Asuma-sensei to be embarrassed at how much cooler you three are.” 

Sasuke raises an unimpressed eyebrow at her. “What, are you two rivals or something? Isn’t that childish, sensei?” 

“Shut up. He’s not my rival, he’s my nemesis. We’re after the same lover.” 

“A love triangle!?” Sakura squeals. “Sensei! I didn’t know you were so romantic!” 

“I’m not.” 

“But I thought you were dating that other weirdo?” Naruto squints, “the one who kept following us around?” 

“I’m not.”

Sakura lights up and sticks her pinky out to him. “What if he’s the love interest!” She whispers excitedly, as if Amanda isn’t right in front of them. “The one who’s love they’re competing for!” 

Naruto links his pinky with hers and matches her grin. “Then that means sensei is winning!”

“Of course! Sensei is the best!” 

Amanda’s not sure how this got so out of hand. 

“Enough speculating about my personal life,” she waves, frowning at them. “I want a full report of today's mission in my hands by noon tomorrow. If I see so much as a spelling error you’re doing it again. Once you give me an acceptable report, you’ll be debriefed on our next mission. If you can’t give me a flawless report by Thursday, no one is going on that C-rank.”

Naruto groans. “Sensei! You know I hate those.” 

“Yeah, and you suck at them. That’s why I’m doing this. If you want to go on high rank missions, you need to show me you can manage it. That means being good at the ninja stuff and the paper stuff.”

“But the paper stuff’s boring…”

“Naruto,” she says, trying not to sound exasperated. It’s been a while since she’s had to deal with kids. She’s a little short on patience. “Think like a Hokage-- if a shinobi goes out and completes a mission, but doesn’t tell you they hurt their leg during said mission, what could happen?” 

“Oh!” he snaps upright and crosses his arms in thought. “Uh, well they’d be hurt! But… if I didn’t know they were hurt and they didn’t tell me… I might send them on another mission?” 

“Good, and how do you think that next mission would go?” 

“They’d… fail?” 

“That’s right,” she says and pats his head. “Working with incomplete information means mistakes are more likely. Things like that happen all the time. A ninja forgets to mention they crossed paths with another team and that team later goes missing. How will the Hokage know to contact that ninja about the team’s last known location if he never knew they met? Omitting details, even little ones you think are unimportant, could be the difference between life and death. That’s why we practice these written reports.” 

Naruto looks like he still doesn’t want to, but he nods. “They still suck though…” 

They do, so Ohta’s not going to argue about that particular point. 

She shoos all three of them away with her hand. “Uh-huh, cool. Now go away. You’ve got about 60 hours maximum to get me that report.” 

Instinctually she looks at what should be her watch to check the time. She’s starving, so maybe she can pick up some take-out on the way back to her- Ohta’s apartment. 

She blinks at her bare wrist for a moment, ignoring the curious looks Sasuke and Sakura are sending her before turning her back on them. She shakes her hand out, mentally mourning the loss of her apple watch (and her cellphone. Oh my god the amount of times she’s checked her pockets for that little rectangle-) before beginning her trek back. 

Glancing up, the sun is… up there. Like, further to the west than noon so… it’s… 

She has no idea what time it is. 

Is that sushi place even going to be open? Is it even going to be good? They’re like… super far inland. 

Can you have freshwater sushi? Rainbow trout rainbow roll? 

Shit. She missed pizza so bad.

And coffee. They don’t have coffee here. It’s shameful. 

“Isn’t it a bit soon for a C-rank?” 

Amanda’s hand hovers over the railing. She forgoes going up the stairs to turn around and scowl at her pursuer. Kakashi stands behind her like he doesn’t have a care in the world: his hands in his pockets, his posture lax.

“What did I tell you about lurking?” 

Kakashi shrugs, not looking very sorry. Amanda scoffs. 

“I didn’t realize you’d be such a backseat driver.” 

“A what?” 

“Never mind,” she grumbles, “just quit complaining. I get enough shit from the kids, I don’t want to hear it from you too.” 

“Sasuke’s taijutsu has improved, but his chakra control is still where it was before,” he says, talking like he’s commenting on the weather and not about how he’s been stalking her and her team. “Naruto’s control has improved, but his taijutsu is just as flimsy as before. Sakura is, well, she’s lukewarm at best. The three of them aren’t ready to leave the village. They’re too weak.” 

“Well, maybe that’s why I want to bring them on a mission.”

“Putting them in situations they aren’t ready for helps no one.”

“How else are they going to learn?” she says and restarts her trek up the stairs. He’s so annoying. It’s like talking to a wall. 

“Keeping them in a bubble doesn’t help. If we want them to be good ninja, good people, they need to experience the world around them. They can’t just stay in the village and train until they’re ready to be shipped out for battle or whatever. They’re kids. They need a chance to explore on their own.” 

“Now isn’t the time for exploration,” he counters, keeping just two steps behind her. “They can explore when they’re stronger--”

“They’re rebellious little shits. If they don’t get the chance to blow off some steam--”

“Then let them use jutsu-”

“They aren’t ready to use jutsu.” 

“Then how are they ready to leave the village?” 

She turns around at the top of the stairs. Her apartment door is maybe two meters away, so she’s almost done dealing with psychos both big and large for the day. Two more meters and she can lie down with a book and a cup of tea, forgoing the craziness of being a goddam ninja for half a minute before she loses her mind again. Those two meters, however, make for an incredibly harrowing journey when it’s Kakashi Hatake you’re running from.

Time to hurt his feelings. 

“You’re mad that I’m their sensei.”

She holds up a hand, stopping him before he speaks. Obviously he doesn’t want a lecture, but neither does she. If he gets to give unsolicited criticism, so does she. 

“I get it, you know? You think that you’d do a better job than me.” 

“I don’t--” 

“Well, you probably would,” Ohta shrugs, already very set on that particular truth. “I’m not arguing. You’re stronger than me, I get it. I didn’t expect to get this team either, but here we are. And you know what? I’m dealing with it, and I’m doing a pretty bang-up job if I do say so myself. Naruto’s not dressed in rags, Sasuke’s not constantly threatening homicide, and Sakura’s keeping up with them like a champ. But you know what isn’t very helpful when dealing with things you don’t want to deal with?”

Kakashi coughs, looking away from her as she leans over him, taller by about a foot thanks to the stairs. 

“Backseat… driving?” he wagers. 

Ohta pats his shoulder. “Nice deduction.” 

Kakashi doesn’t appear to appreciate it.

“Leave it to me,” she smiles, aiming for confidence but falling somewhere closer to exhaustion. “I’m a jounin too, you know? Plus, you already said that they listen to me-- they’ll be fine.” 

“You’re…” he glances away. He doesn’t fidget because he’s a trained killer, but Amanda gets the impression this careful stillness is his version of fidgeting. After a pregnant pause, he glances make, his mind made up. “Very dedicated.” 

“Am I?” 

“You spend a lot of time with them.”

She does. Which is probably the worst part. She didn’t think it’d be weird to spend most of her time with them, but it’s not like she’s got a great frame of reference here: Ohta wasn’t a sensei and Amanda was never a ninja. 

That said, did Amanda love hanging out with twelve year olds day in and day out? Absolutely not. In fact, it was draining and mundane. No matter what Lana --Botan?-- used to say, motherhood truly does not suit her. Sensei-ship is annoying enough as is. 

But being the kids’ teacher was the lesser of two evils. Otherwise, she’d have to hang out with adults. Ones who knew Ohta and are trained from adolescence to recognize spies from a mile away. She’s not exactly positive what would happen if someone realizes she’s been… compromised? Abducted? Possessed? 

All she knows is that this is a military state and it would probably react the way a military state would. That is to say, with force. 

So, she’s not testing those waters for sharks. She can already see the fins as is. 

“Yeah,” she shrugs, waving around her vaguely, “I’m, like, super patriotic and all that.”

Kakashi blinks. “Right.” 

“Right,” she says, just as bland. She casts him one more look, just to make sure the conversation is over, before turning around. Her door is right there, but still, Kakashi is a step behind her. 

She turns around with a hand on the knob. Kakashi stares back at her. 

“...Have you caught the hint that I’m not inviting you in, yet?” 

“But Ohta-chan, aren’t we friends?” 

“No,” she squints, “we’re acquaintances, if that. I’m friends with Michi and Kurenai and her shitty stupid boyfriend because I have to be.” 

“I thought you hated Asuma.” 

“Yeah, well-- keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” 

“But aren’t I your enemy, then? You should invite me in.” 

“We’re co-... teaching? Sort of. It’s more like you give me unsolicited advice and I get annoyed, but whatever. We’re not rivals or enemies. Just coworkers.” 

He sighs, his shoulders sagging dramatically. “Ah, Ohta-chan, you break my heart.” 

“And you’ve broken every social courtesy I’ve extended to you. Now go away.” 

The sound the door makes as it slams in his face is almost cathartic.