Chapter 10
There’s too many tripwires, tangled and snarled, waiting to ensnare them with every movement.
Uchiha’s clearly had practice navigating this web, stepping sure-footed from one indistinguishable “safe” area to the next.
The rest of them aren’t nearly as experienced.
Kiba hops into the “safe” zone Shikamaru just vacated. He stumbles forward an inch too far.
A wire twangs.
It feels like slow motion, watching the wire pull on another and that tug another, all the way to an abandoned kimono shop filled with piles of abandoned knives, kunai, and shuriken, which Hinata’s frozen in front of.
Pwack.
The last wire drifts harmlessly to the ground from where it snapped under the stress, the detonator left unactivated.
She heaves out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding, bracing her hands on her suddenly weak knees.
“Uh...whoops?” Kiba says, scratching the back of his head. He then yelps when Akamaru begins gnawing on his hand with his sharp little teeth as everyone complains at him at once.
“Be more careful, dog breath!!” Ino screeches, shaking a fist. “Don’t you know how bad it could’ve been if—”
Chouji shifts backwards, away from Ino’s yelling.
A wire twangs.
This one doesn’t snap harmlessly.
She doesn’t quite remember moving. She just sees Chouji’s scared face, staring in dismay at the projectiles racing towards him as the boom resonates in her bones.
She grabs him, twists his head down and away, trying to cover as much of him as she can, feels another arm grab her dress—
Pain burns across her shoulder blades.
She can’t quite bite down on her scream.
It hurts, it hurts, oh dear Merry, it hurts!!
She tries to keep herself standing despite how much she wants to collapse into a little ball and sob, telling herself she’s had worse than this, it isn’t that bad, she was shot in her last life for the love of Sunny.
The way her back burns like it’s been set aflame is a pretty good counterargument to that though.
She blinks hazily down at Chouji who, aside from looking like he’s going to cry, seems to be unharmed.
Good. That’s good.
But she seems to have shifted sideways from her original position—?
The grip on her dress loosens.
Ino tilts forwards, whimpering, several needle-like projectiles embedded in her lower back, wet blood beginning to spread across the yellow of her shirt.
Chouji’s face grows even paler as she lands on his shoulder and begins to slant towards the ground.
She grabs the blonde girl by the shoulder and pulls her up to lean against her shoulder, gritting her teeth against the flare of pain the increase in weight brings.
“INO-CHAN!!” Sakura screams, sounding more scared than she’s ever heard her.
“Haruno, don’t move.” Shino barks, the buzz of his insects audible even from their position. “Why? Because another explosion could endanger their lives beyond any hope of rescue.”
Sakura stops short, eyes wide and watery, staring at their little trio like that could somehow transport her to them.
“I-I’m fiii–iiiine!” Ino blubbers against her neck, hands alternately tightening and loosening on her and Chouji’s clothes. “Don’ w-worry, a-a-a Yama-ma-n’ka d-does-doesn’t—”
Her sentence devolves into a pained wail, shoulders hitching with sobs.
She tries rubbing small circles into the crying blonde’s upper back to soothe her, tearing her gaze away from the dripping red shirt to stare up at the ruin of a grocery store that now resembles a structurally unstable pincushion.
“Ino...” Chouji says, voice trembling dangerously. “Mayu-chan...I-I’m so-sorry—”
“S’not your fault, Chouj.” She weakly tries to smile. “Not letting you get hurt.”
“Y-yeah.” Ino sniffles. “We’re go-gonna be Ino-Shika-Cho. ‘S my job t-to keep you-you numbskulls safe.”
Chouji’s eyes take on a watery shine, and he begins hiccuping dangerously.
Oh Chopper, no. A crying Ino, she can manage, but if Chouji joins in there’s no way she’ll be able to hold back the waterworks herself.
With her luck, they’ll end up setting off another tripwire and dying because their vision was impaired by tears.
Shikamaru lets out a huff, posture tense. “Stop being so troublesome. Chouji, are you hurt?”
“I-I’m fine!” He calls back, sniffing loudly and scrubbing at his eyes.
“Think you can carry Ino?” Shikamaru shouts.
Chouji nods, determined. He shuffles around very carefully, eyes fixed on the wires still surrounding them, until she can carefully maneuver Ino off her shoulder and onto his back in a piggyback carry.
Ino whimpers as the position change shifts the needles in her back.
“Do I go forward or back?” Chouji calls.
“Go back!” Kiba yells. “Blondie and Dead-Fish-Eyes need a doctor!!”
She cranes her head to look over her shoulder instead of physically turning.
It’s an awfully long way to the door of the compound.
And, aside from the spot where Lee’s standing, she has no idea where any of the past “safe zones” are.
“How can we?” She shouts. “There’s nothing to mark the path back!”
There’s a slightly horrified silence.
“Well fuck.” Kiba says. Then, “Don’t tell my Ma I said that.”
“M-maybe Sasuke-kun could go back to show the way?” Sakura suggests.
“What, and knock the rest of us into his death-trap?” Shikamaru sneers. “No thanks.”
Uchiha puffs up in indignation. “It’s not my fault!! I told you not to mess around if you didn’t wanna die! This is designed to stop that man, so if you’re too fat and dumb—”
“If Uchiha Itachi was half the ninja everybody said he was, he’ll know how to walk up walls and use roofs to avoid ground obstacles.” Shikamaru cuts in coldly. “So all this is pointless effort.”
Uchiha’s mouth works soundlessly, cheeks flushing a bright red as the other boy mercilessly continues, “Plus the junk on your compound walls are just cheap substitutes for real siege defenses, so any genin who can climb a tree could slip between the gaps.”
Ouch. She almost wants to wince in sympathy.
Uchiha’s face goes a deep, angry crimson, and he bristles like he’s seconds away from launching himself at Shikamaru, death trap between them or no, while the ponytailed boy is glaring holes through him.
“U-um!” Hinata yells, sticking an arm in the air like she’s being called on in class. “I-Ino-san and Mayu-san really need m-medical attention for their injuries! So-so w-we should focus on this first! U-Uchiha-san, you have a first aid kit a-at your house, r-right?”
“Obviously.” Uchiha snaps, not taking his eyes off of Shikamaru.
“O-okay, thank you, Uchiha-san.” Hinata fidgets. “Akimichi-san, d-do you think you can get to the next part of the pa-path towards us?”
Chouji scans the web in front of them. “I–I think I can!” He calls back. “I’ll do my best!”
“Go-good!” Hinata nods. “Ma-Mayu-san, do you need any help with your injuries?”
She rolls a shoulder, wincing at the fresh wave of pain. It hurts, but her vision’s not blacking out anymore, so...“I think I’m good, Hinata!”
“...Are you sure?” Hinata asks, doubt coloring her tone.
“As sure as I can be.” She says, pretending that the aching doesn’t make her want to scream.
The pale-eyed girl gives her a little purse-lipped expression of displeasure which really should not be visible given how far away she is, but is somehow.
“Worry not, Hinata-san!” Lee calls from behind her. “I will ensure Mayu-chan’s safety as we navigate!”
“O-okay then, I leave it to you, Lee-san!” Hinata replies.
She almost feels insulted. What, she can’t be trusted to look after herself now?
“Uchiha-san.” Hinata asks tentatively, “W-would it be alright with you if we use-used your first aid kit to treat Ino-san and Mayu-san’s i-injuries?”
There’s a silence that stretches on about a minute too long for comfort.
“Sure. Whatever.” Uchiha turns his back on them. “No messing around this time, got it?”
They continue to the main house in silence.
The only noises are Ino’s whimpers and gasps of pain when Chouji lands a little too hard in the next spot. He always murmurs a soft apology and tries not to jostle her too much.
They all breathe a sigh of relief when Uchiha finally opens the front door and crosses the threshold, then turns to help Hinata over the last of the wires so she’s inside as well.
He promptly turns and stalks off into the darkness of the house, leaving her to try to help Shino on her own.
She feels tired to her very bones by the time she finally gets to the door from trying to ignore the fire on her shoulder blades, and it’s a struggle not to sway on her feet as she carefully navigates the last few obstacles.
It’s a comfort to know Lee’s behind her, almost comically alert, when her foot buckles and he immediately grabs her to keep her from toppling.
Between him and Shino, she’s somehow manhandled the last few steps through the door, then hustling her down the corridor to the veranda where Hinata’s sitting with a bowl of steaming water, a bottle of antiseptic, several piles of torn up clothes and gauze, and Ino lying face down on an old, and now blood-stained towel.
Chouji’s pressing wads of gauze to her back as Sakura pulls the needles out with a pair of tweezers and deposits them to the side, face pale but determined. Hinata then carefully swabs the wound with steaming water and antiseptic, and presses more gauze down on it.
She thinks she remembers something from her past life saying you shouldn’t pull out things you’ve been stabbed with, but she doesn’t have enough confidence in it to interrupt the delicate operation here.
Despite all the small cries she’s emitting, Ino’s lying still as a statue, one of her hands gripping Shikamaru’s, who is also lying face-down on the floor for some reason.
Uchiha’s just standing in the garden, shoulders tense, resolutely not looking back at them.
She’s lead to another old towel, where Kiba’s waiting nervously with another bowl of steaming water.
Akamaru licks her cheek as she lies down on it, so she lifts a careful hand and scratches him behind the ears.
“So, uh.” Kiba says. “Now what?”
Hinata cranes her head as Sakura begins wrestling with the second to last needle. “U-um, it’d be best if you could get the c-cloth out of the way? So you can clean out the wounds?”
There’s spluttering above her. “B-but she’s a girl! I can’t take a girl’s clothes off! Do you know how bad my Ma would kill me?!”
Oh for the love of Chopper—
She rolls the top of the towel down so she has a little cylinder under her mouth that she can lean down and bite. If she tries to bite her lip for this, it’ll likely go through again, and she does not need that on top of everything else.
Then, as quickly as she can, she yanks the straps of her dress down her shoulders, groaning in pain when tentative scabs are ripped open by the material’s movement. She pulls her arms out of it, and pushes the dress down until it‘s scrunched up around the top of her obi.
Then she thunks her head back down the floor and lets herself go limp and just hurt.
“Don’ ma’e me do tha’ ag’n.” She threatens through the towel in her teeth.
There’s a beat and then Kiba squeaks a shaky “Okay.”
She listens as a cloth is dipped into the bowl of water, biting down harder on the towel and silently praying to Chopper for this to be over quickly as it begins swabbing her shoulders.
She drops into a muzzy semi-doze under the burn of the water and the sting of antiseptic and the stiff press of gauze.
Then Uchiha yelps in a mixture of fear and outrage.
She lifts her head.
“...Lee.” She says, letting the tooth-marked and spit-soaked towel drop from her mouth.
“Yes Mayu-chan?”
“Am I hallucinating from blood loss or is there a nudist on Uchiha’s roof?”
There’s the sound of the camera shutter. Then a whir as it spits out a photograph.
“You aren’t hallucinating Mayu-chan. See?” He helpfully holds the photo of the purple-haired woman wearing nothing but a trench coat and mesh tights in front of her face.
“Thanks Lee.”
The nudist snorts. “That’s not a very respectful way to address your seniors, bratlings. You should be honored that you’re in the presence of the great Anko-onee-sama.”
“We will be, if you put some clothes on.” She replies. Then she glances behind her. “Kiba, if your nosebleed gets on my bandages, I’m telling your mom you swore.”
Kiba swears again, turning to the side and grabbing one of the spare clothes to stem the blood flow, accidentally-on-purpose kneeing her in the ribs in the process.
The nudist cackles, leaping down from the roof. “Well, aren’t you a pathetic bunch, huh? Guessing the big boom earlier was thanks to you brats fooling around?”
“You can’t be here!” Uchiha yells, little hands balled into fists. “This is Uchiha land! You’re trespassing!”
The nudist makes a show of gasping theatrically, hands pressed against her cheeks. “No, really? Well gee, guess I’ll have to—but what’s this?”
She pulls a piece of paper from a pocket of her coat with an unnecessary flourish. “Read it and weep, brat.”
Uchiha snatches the paper, eyes darting over it frantically. “A search warrant?!”
“Issued by Hokage-sama himself.” The nudist says smugly. “For disruption of the peace of Konohagakure.”
Then she straightens up. “Holy shit, is that baby Yamanaka?”
Ino makes an unintelligible sound of pain and suffering.
The nudist strides forward, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at Chouji’s attempts to shield Ino from view. To be fair, she doesn’t exactly need to do much to see over him due to her height advantage.
The nudist whistles. “Well, I knew the Uchiha clan would end with you, kiddo, but I didn’t know I’d witness it today.”
“W-what?” Uchiha’s voice has gone very high and soft. All the blood has drained from his face.
“Yeah, Inochin-chin is gonna kill you when he sees what you let happen to his precious wittle baby girl.” The nudist says blithely.
“But it wasn’t Uchiha-san!” Chouji bursts out. “I was the one who triggered the trap— if Inoichi-oji-san is gonna be mad at someone, it should be me!”
“Chouji, no—” She starts to argue.
She’s cut off by Ino making muffled noises of protest and disagreement from where she’s still face down on the towel.
The nudist raises her other eyebrow, then walks around and delivers a sharp kick to Shikamaru’s side.
He yelps, then curls around the attacked area, groaning. Ino finally pushes herself up with a muttered “oh thank Nami,” indents from the towel’s fibers embedded into her face.
“Maintaining a shadow possession jutsu even while asleep, huh?” The nudist says. “Not bad, baby Nara. You’ve probably burned your chakra pathways to shit, but not bad.”
“Daddy’s not gonna kill anyone!” Ino says staunchly. “Sasuke-kun set up those traps to defend against a traitor to Konoha, and me and Mayu-chan protected Chouji when one happened to go off. It was an accident, honest.”
“Oh sweetie.” The nudist coos. “Every accident has someone to blame for it if you look hard enough. Especially when something as important as the safety of clan heirs and the peace of the village is on the line.”
Uchiha’s gone so pale it looks like he might faint.
The nudist places her hands on her hips. “Now, as the official investigating jounin, I need to assess the threat level of this setup to the village.”
She glances around without moving an inch from where she stands. “It’s shit. It’s only a danger to genin who can’t get their heads out of their asses and civilians, and no one cares about them. Pay some chunin to dismantle it and learn how to make better traps.”
Uchiha doesn’t respond.
He’s just staring at the ground, little fists twisting the fabric of his shirt between them so hard it almost looks like it’ll rip.
“Well, not that this isn’t totally boring.” The nudist says, looking a little put out, “But Inochin-chin will have my head if I don’t get baby Yamanaka actual medical attention. Not that you haven’t been doing a good job, Hyuuga.” She gives Hinata a positively feral grin. “I’m tempted to congratulate Hiashi about his daughter’s skill as a medic nin.”
Hinata blanches, pale eyes wide. “A-ah, no, no than-thank you A-An-Anko-sama.”
The nudist snickers to herself. “Yeah, I figured as much.”
The woman bends down and hoists Ino up under one arm none-too-gently if the way she sucks air in through her teeth is any indication.
“Wait!” Sakura says. “What about Mayu-chan?”
The nudist stops and looks down at her. “What, little miss fashion disaster in the obi and leg warmers?”
“Hey!” She protests, cheeks flushing with embarrassment.
“Our leg warmers are most youthful and fashionable!” Lee argues, pulling up the leg of his trousers to show off the matching orange. “They are a valuable aid in our training as well!”
The nudist looks confused. Then her face slowly takes on an expression of fierce, unholy glee.
“Oh.” She crows with a terrifying amount of delight. “You’re Gai’s kids.”
She chokes on her own saliva. Lee goes even pinker than Sakura’s hair.
“What.” They squeak in unison.
The nudist throws back her head and cackles.
Then the woman scoops her up in a bruising grip that drives the air from her lungs and the sight of her friends goes fuzzy and tilted and warped through the film of swirling leaves.
The leaves stop swirling and they’re somehow outside the Uchiha compound.
Her head’s spinning and her body’s thrumming with the sense of wrong wrong wrong.
She promptly throws up on the nudist’s sandals.
The nudist shrieks like a banshee and flings her away to crash into the dirt, screeching about ungrateful bratlings and Gai paying for cleaning.
Her vision whites out from the pain for a few minutes.
When she can see again, a bigger Shikamaru with scars is looking down at her.
“Chakra is evil.” She tells him. “I hate it.”
He blinks. “Chakra is inherently neutral, regardless of who’s using it. Saying it’s evil is like saying your blood is evil—it doesn’t have a consciousness to comprehend things like that.”
“Yes it does.” She argues. “It just pretends not to. So it can eat the energy from our training and studying. ‘S a parasite. It’s not supposed to be there at all.”
The bigger Shikamaru snorts. “All beings need chakra to live. If you drain the chakra from, say, a tree, the tree dies. There’s nothing alive that doesn’t have chakra flowing through it, no matter how weak.”
She’s about to reply that her past life is proof of that being false, and that the tree dying might be like trying to adjust after having a lifetime of poison pumped into your veins cut off, when another man’s voice calls out, “Shikaku! Pick the poor girl up off the ground before you have a philosophical debate with her!”
The bigger Shikamaru rolls his eyes and mutters “Troublesome.” under his breath, before bending down and scooping her up to sit on his hip.
There’s a lot of adults outside the compound.
There’s Ino’s dad, who’s fussing over her a lot, and Chouji’s dad, who waves at her, and a guy with spiky hair and a white chevron on his nose who leaps down from the roofs with Kiba, Akamaru and Sakura under his arms, placing them down before leaping away again.
Bigger Shikamaru then makes a face and pulls the hand on her back away to reveal spots of blood. “What happened here?”
“A trap got set off.” She says. “It was gonna hurt Chouji, so me and Ino got in the way.”
Bigger Shikamaru glances at her suspiciously. “Right. And how did this trap get set off?”
She decides discretion is the better part of valor and shrugs, wincing at the movement. “Lots of tripwires. Hard to tell.”
Bigger Shikamaru gives a slow nod, like he doesn’t quite believe her. “Uh huh. And why were there so many tripwires?”
“Because Uchiha’s scared.” She says, looking the man dead in the eye. “He’s really, really scared of that man coming back to finish the job. And he has no one to look after him, so he’s trying to protect himself. And us. By fighting us to make us stronger, or something. He didn’t explain it well.”
Bigger Shikamaru appears inscrutable during her tirade, but he looks away when she keeps staring pointedly at him, with another muttered “Troublesome.”
The click of a camera shutter has her looking over to see Lee taking pictures of the spiky haired guy and another guy with floppy hair, who are posing dramatically for photos. Kiba’s attempting to photobomb them with little success as Shikamaru watches.
“Right.” Bigger Shikamaru hitches her higher on his hip, raising his voice. “Chouza, can you get the rest of them home? Inoichi and I need to get these two to the hospital.”
Lee insists on coming along with them.
Once they realize what’s going on, Sakura and Chouji beg to come along too. It sort of snowballs from there, so they end up with a gaggle of children and Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji’s dads causing a bit of a stir when they all enter the hospital’s reception area.
She sees the same nice doctor from when she bit her lip last time, with the blond hair and pink eyes.
The nurse is nowhere to be seen.
She tells the nice doctor she didn’t bite her lip at all, even when it really hurt, while he’s doing something with the green glow to her shoulders that makes them stop hurting.
He pats her head and gives her a lollipop, and then gives extra ones to Kiba, Hinata, Shino, and Sakura with a wink and vague compliments to the mysterious medical experts for their good work.
Kiba doesn’t stop grinning for the rest of the afternoon, Shino’s insects buzz gently which she thinks means he’s happy, and even Hinata seems quietly pleased.
Chouji’s dad walks her, Lee and Sakura home after they get the confirmation that Ino’s going to be fine, while Shikamaru’s dad takes Hinata, Kiba, Shino, and Uchiha.
Sakura’s quiet and subdued the whole way home, lollipop in her cheek, rubbing her fingers together every so often. She gives a weak little “bye” when they drop her off at her house.
Okaa-san looks particularly harried when she opens the door and takes note of the newly-healed marks on her back and the state of her blood-stained and dusty dress.
Her mother sends her upstairs to have a wash and get changed while Chouji’s dad has a talk with her and Otou-san.
By the time she comes back down, Chouji’s dad has gone home and her parents are sitting around the dinner table as Lee shows them his photos.
“Mayu-chan.” Otou-san says, holding up a picture of her and Ino crouched over Chouji with silver streaks soaring past them like deadly shooting stars. “Not that we aren’t proud of you for looking after your friends, but could you work a little harder to avoid getting hurt too please?”
“I’ll try, Otou-san.” She choruses guiltily.
It seems like what happened has become the talk of the village by dinner time.
Though she could be biased because that happens to be the time Gai-sensei bursts in, babbling on about explosions and grievous wounds and youth and her being sick on Anko’s shoes.
This earns her another week-long cooking ban, on the grounds that it might be a bug and not evil chakra that made her throw up.
Even Iruka-sensei brings it up at Ichiraku’s the following night.
“I heard you had an eventful day yesterday.” He says politely while they’re waiting for their noodles. He seems a bit more at ease now Naruto and Lee aren’t there.
“Yeah.” She sighs, tracing the woodgrain with her finger. “It’s just—ugh.”
Iruka-sensei is nice, so he doesn’t chuckle at her little exclamation of disgust and waits for her to explain herself.
“It’s just—” She throws her hands up at not knowing what it “just” is and decides to start over from what she does know. “Uchiha is not a bad person. He’s dumb and awkward and— whatever, but he’s not bad. He’s just scared. And alone. And everyone thinks he knows what he’s doing because the teacher keeps saying he’s a prodigy and that he’s the best at everything—but he has no shi–blooming clue.”
Iruka-sensei nods seriously, brows furrowing, so she continues. “But he doesn’t know that he doesn’t—or he thinks that since everyone’s calling him a prodigy that he’s supposed to. So when he got scared about the man who murdered his clan coming back because of the thieves, he tried to protect himself with the wires and traps, because there’s no adults who’ll defend him. And then he tried to have everyone over to defend us too, because he’s not a bad person, he’s just kinda dumb and paranoid, y’know?”
“I...think I do know, yes.” Iruka-sensei says slowly, like he’s realizing something.
“Yeah—and before me and Naruto went over and cleaned his kitchen, his kitchen was a tip, because he had no idea what to do with all this food people were giving him!” She turns to Teuchi-sama. “I mean, he was just eating white rice and uncooked tomatoes everyday! It was like when I met Naruto, except he had all this food when Naruto had nothing, but he didn’t know what to do with it, so it was all rotting and going to waste!”
Teuchi-sama winces.
“That must’ve stunk something awful!” Ayame-sama chirps.
“Sanji as my witness it did.” She groans, covering her face while Otou-san carefully pats her back.
“Nobody was feeding Naruto?” Iruka-sensei interrupts, brows drawn down.
“Not from what we could see.” Okaa-san replies, daintily sipping at her water. “He’d be chased out of the market. I think Ichiraku’s was the only place he could get a square meal, until Mayu-chan started feeding him.”
Teuchi-sama nods. “He was our favorite customer. Still is, in fact.”
“Mayu with her little lunchboxes.” Otou-sama smiles nostalgically. “Up at the crack of dawn, carrying around those sheets of paper with what he liked and didn’t like on them.”
She squirms, cheeks heating up. “I didn’t know him then.” She complains. “But he was hungry. I couldn’t leave him hungry.”
Teuchi-sama nods approvingly as he slides a bowl of miso ramen in front of her.
Iruka-sensei is quiet while he eats.
“What did you tell him.” Uchiha growls at lunch on Monday.
She blinks in confusion, about to bite into her onigiri. “What did I tell who?”
Uchiha looks pained, his grilled sandwich leaking tomato juice and pesto in his grip.
“The Hokage,” He grits out. “Has determined that I am not suited to living on my own because of something one of you said. So I now have this chunin living in my house and leaving his stupid porn everywhere.”
She winces. “But I haven’t seen the Hokage all weekend. He was with Naruto, and Naruto wasn’t with us.”
“We did hear the explosion.” Naruto pipes up unhelpfully. “It really freaked his mask guys out—we thought the village was under attack or something when we heard it, believe it!”
Sasuke glares at them all, taking a mutinous bite of his sandwich.
“Mayu.” Shikamaru says. “Do you know what my dad does?”
She frowns as she swallows and takes another bite. “Tactician?”
Shikamaru’s smile is slow and spiteful. “He’s the Jounin Squad Leader of Konoha. Second only to the Hokage himself.”
She stops chewing.
Oh. Oh.
Whoops.
Uchiha looks between the two of them, growing redder and redder with each passing second.
“TRAITORS!!!” He howls finally, and flings himself across the table at Shikamaru.
They all get detention again.
She’s really not sure how long the teacher expects to keep justifying things with “you’re friends and supposed to control each other” when he’s the authority figure here.
Though maybe her telling him this wasn’t the best idea.
“Well, you weren’t wrong.” Chouji says loyally.
“Thank you Chouji.” She replies.
“Still a dumb thing to say.” Naruto adds.
She places her hand over his mouth. “Sssh.”
He licks it again.
While they’re wrestling, she hears Sakura ask Uchiha, “Are you gonna be okay, Sasuke-kun?”
Uchiha snorts. “I’ll be fine. I just have to convince the Hokage that I’m strong enough to live on my own. And to do that, I need to get rid of the trespasser in my home.”
“...How are you gonna do that?” Ino asks, sounding a lot more wary than she has in previous Uchiha conversations.
He grunts in a way that conveys indecision, or maybe constipation.
“What if you pranked him?” Naruto suggests from where she’s almost managed to force her spit-contaminated arm to touch his cheek. “I know some pretty good ones that the jerks in the market never saw coming!”
Uchiha pauses.
His lips curl into a slow, cruel smirk.
She’s not privy to all the details, because Naruto is sworn to solemn secrecy by the prankster’s code.
What she does know is that the chunin who leaves his porn everywhere is subjected to potent itching powder in every fabric item he attempts to use, and somehow becomes convinced that the ghosts of the Uchiha clan would curse his family with pimply skin for every generation thereafter if he did not vacate the premises immediately.
Sasuke’s victorious mood is dampened when the Hokage apparently sends a new chunin to live with him the very next day.
This chunin apparently has a bad habit of talking down to children, no matter whether they’re the last remnants of their clan or not, and abusing his new position to bring home “friends”.
Uchiha takes this as a declaration of war.
The chunin ends up mobbed by every cat from here to Kusagakure thanks to a potent mixture of valerian, catnip, and a secret ingredient that Uchiha refuses to divulge which was mixed into his shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in small enough increments to be unnoticeable until it was too late.
The Hokage sends a jounin.
Kiba ends up recruited to the cause.
The jounin somehow ends up ingesting enough laxatives to put a small monkey out of commission, and then has his all-black ensemble and glasses forcibly dyed many colors thanks to the liberal application of industrial-strength paint.
The Hokage sends Anko.
The ensuing carnage results in the statue of the Niidaime losing its nose and has Uchiha lying low for three weeks, alternating between hiding in her and Sakura’s houses and Naruto’s apartment.
A few days before their finals, Uchiha comes in looking oddly...defeated.
“The Hokage and the Council say that unless I accept the next caretaker they provide for me, I’m going to go into the Orphanage and the Uchiha lands will be forfeit.”
Hinata covers her mouth with her hands. Ino and Kiba sit there, silent and slack-jawed. Chouji pushes away his food and Shikamaru actually sits up. Shino’s insects stop buzzing altogether.
“They can’t do that, can they?” Naruto says, looking around for confirmation. “I mean, that’s your home, right? It’s yours.”
“But Sasuke-kun’s technically a ward of state and has to do what they say.” Sakura says slowly. “Until he becomes a genin or comes of age as a civilian.”
“And that’s eighteen or something, right?” She adds with a heavy heart.
Uchiha puts his head down on the table.
“Hey, that’s rough man.” Kiba says, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Akamaru strides down the table and settles himself next to Uchiha’s head, gently licking his cheek until the boy turns and buries his hand in the puppy’s soft fur.
“Did they say who it’ll be?” She asks gently, pushing her BLT over to him.
He shakes his head slowly, lifting the sandwich and taking a bite. “The Hokage only said they’ll be there to greet me after school.”
“Well, whoever they are, they can’t be worse than Anko, right?” Ino says, trying to be upbeat.
Everybody at the table shudders.
They stand with him in solidarity at the end of the Academy day.
The other parents and children look at them strangely, a group of clan kids and a few civilians bunched together around the last Uchiha like a protective barrier, but no one comes forward to try and take him.
It isn’t until the last of them are leaving that someone arrives.
Iruka-sensei comes out of the Academy building, carrying a suitcase.
“Ah, Ketsugi-chan, Lee-kun, Uzumaki-kun!” He says, smiling brightly. “How are you doing?”
“We are well, thank you Iruka-sensei!” Lee says. “We are waiting with Uchiha-kun for his new guardian!”
Iruka-sensei’s eyes soften and he kneels down. “So you’re Sasuke-kun, huh? My name is Umino Iruka. It’s nice to meet you.”
Uchiha averts his eyes and stares stubbornly at the floor.
“I don’t want you in my house.” He says. “But the Hokage says if I don’t I have to go to the Orphanage.”
Iruka-sensei winces. “I heard about that. Do you want me to stay in one of the branch houses then? I just cancelled my apartment contract with my landlord, but I’m sure if I begged hard enough, she’d let me stay there for longer until we sort out what you’re comfortable with.”
Uchiha peers at him suspiciously. “...Okay. Do that.”
Suddenly Iruka-sensei’s stomach gurgles.
He blushes. “Ah, do you mind if we get some food first? There’s a pretty good ramen place I know.”
“Ichiraku’s?” Naruto bursts in eagerly.
“We’re not feeding you.” Uchiha says dismissively, ignoring Naruto’s cry of betrayal.
He begins to stride off down the path, only to turn when the teacher doesn’t follow. “Well? It’s annoying if you’re hungry.”
Iruka-sensei’s mouth quirks into a smile.
Somehow, she thinks as the teacher and boy disappear down the path, discussing one of the pranks that befell his hapless predecessor, this might turn out alright.
It’ll certainly be better than Anko.