Derecho

Sasuke sets foot within Konoha’s gates for the first time in three years.

He’s sixteen now, with head held high and long simmering rage finally banked and safely stored. It had taken a long time, and quite a few nasty beat downs, for the Uchiha to successfully pull his head from his own ass, but he did it.

He’s glad for it, and for his team always at his side, for their unerring determination to urge each other on into only the best versions of each other.

Now they’re back three years later, and Sasuke has some unfinished business.

The teen leaves his team at the check in desk at the front gate, walking down familiar streets in search of a very distinctive chakra signature. Jiraiya is probably half way to Ame by now, the perverted Sage sighting the need to make some kind of check in with his spy network the reason for refusing to enter Konoha.

Coward, he’s just afraid of facing the new Hokage. Saskue’s heard he’s very strict, and has already reworked and installed new systems and rules. The teen traces amused eyes up the Hokage mountain, finding the carved face of his Jounnin sensei. Hatake Kakashi’s face is hewn from sun warmed rock, masked face staring off into the distance, both eyes revealed in his stone portrait. The Sharingan is not detailed in this rendition, and Sasuke knows that the man probably fought tooth and nail just to be depicted with the mask on.

Sasuke finally feels the familiar, impossibly bright chakra sear into the edge of his sense and the Uchiha turns down a side street to wander casually towards it. This street is lined in Shinobi clothing and weapons stores, street level entrances used mainly for shipping and receiving large loads of materials and purchases. As such, there aren’t many people on the street itself, mostly newly graduated, civilian born Gennin.

Sasuke leaps up onto the roofs of the street, and the real traffic is revealed to him. The buildings all have Shinobi friendly entrances up here, with display windows, store fronts, and brightly painted signs denoting each store. Smaller stores have open stalls up here, and the weapon’s smiths repair and forge simple weaponry in the open thick, black smoke billowing into the sky. The arrangement of stalls, display windows, roof side entrances, and store fronts working together to make a maze of roads and thin alleys much like the civilian shopping districts. If the occasional leap from multi storied buildings to reach the store across the street was ignored.

The rooftop shopping district thrums with life, the opposite to the near abandoned street below. Shinobi flit from store to store, some laden with truly staggering amounts of clothing bags, some rushing to one smith or another cradling broken weapons, and others meandering through the crowds with a casual air.

It only takes a few minutes for Saskue to locate his unfinished business. Hatake Mayu, daughter of the Hokage and the one person whose brief but harsh influence in his life changed him more than anyone else.

The girl is still terribly short, about five feet if that, and she’s got a handful of brightly colored bags folded over her arm. She’s dressed in standard black boots, cargo pants wrapped and tucked appropriately though the tan and brown camouflage print would be more useful in a climate like Wind or Rock country. Her shirt is a warm, soft red and cropped short as most prefer in the midst of a Konoha summer, her silver hair is pulled up into two small knots on top of her head.

Mayu is talking animatedly to a, frighteningly, pale teen beside her in an equally cropped shirt. His shirt is in black, though Sasuke notes that they’re both in camouflage printed pants, again the other teen’s in varying shades of black.

Weird, but ok.

Sasuke steps up behind the two, eyes intent on Mayu, but the pale teen is already staring at him over his shoulder. Hollow, black eyes off putting as they watch him, piercing. Mayu, sensing the distraction of her companion, turns around and blinks in surprise at his presence.

“Sasuke! Long time no see, looking for something?” The smile on her face is fang filled and edging into vicious. Good, he wants her vicious.

“Yes. You. Rematch?” Bit on the blunt side, but Sasuke has socialized with the same three people for three years, and after awhile social decorum becomes redundant when you’ve seen each other naked on multiple occasions.

Sasuke and Mayu’s shared smiles are more bared teeth and violence than anything else, the pale teen only watches the two, hollow eyes taking in every interaction.

_______

Anbu Otter appears in the Hokage’s office, disheveled and smelling of smoke and ozone.

“Hokage-sama, your daughter has decimated training ground seven! She and her cohort have moved onto training ground eight and nine-“ Otter is cut off by the sound of distant explosions, across the village and fourteen stories above ground the office floor shakes.

Kakashi sighs, exasperated, there goes his lunch break.