Chapter 33
Naruto glanced worriedly at Shisui. He hadn’t been feeling well the past few days as he’d caught some sort of bug that had been going around. And he had still been doing his duties within ANBU despite the high temperature he had.
He was still sick hence why when Shisui had been given the mission she had asked to go with him and she had requested he not do very much. He had protested but they had managed to come to an agreement. Naruto would do most of the teaching with Iruka and Shisui would add in pointers and take over the Q&A.
Iruka had left the room, leaving the couple alone for a bit. They got to see each other everyday thanks to work but that wasn’t the same as spending quality time together even if they were eating quietly at home, something they didn’t get around to thanks to Naruto’s busy schedule.
Sure, Shisui had a busy schedule as well between standard missions, ANBU missions, Guard Platoon duties and the UPF, he was all over the place but Naruto manages to get a bigger work load since she did some of Minato’s work and Jiraiya’s as peace maker and the spy network.
Another addition to her work load was council meetings which had somehow become mandatory for her to attend as the Namikaze heiress as Minato could not attend.
"Are you sure you're okay, anata?" She asked keeping her voice low so no one would be able to hear if they were spying which they weren't but still.
He gave her a smile and beckoned her to him with his finger in a 'come hither' motion. Naruto may be a proud independent woman but she still went to him without a missing a beat and with a smile on her face as he held her to him.
"I'm fine enough to handle a simple mission like this I don’t need you worrying about me and getting distracted." Her head was leaning against his collarbone so he gave her a kiss on her forehead as he inhaled his scent.
Ash and spices.
She squeezed him to her, loose enough for him to not feel pain but tight enough to get her message, 'I'm always going to worry whether you like it or not.'
He gave her a sigh and released her, pushing her gently before Iruka returned to the room and the two turned to face him.
Naruto gave Iruka a grin, "Went to see Anko? By the way, you’re gonna wanna hide the hickey ‘tebayo. Were gonna have kids in here."
Iruka’s cheeks reddened as he figured with the collar of his jacket in an attempt to hide his lovers love bites and they couldn't help but slugger before Shisui took pity on him and placed a subtle genjutsu on them and Iruka gave him a relieved look.
“I thought I’d catch up with Anko since… ya know.” he looked pointedly at Naruto who gave him a thumbs up and a wink however her happy go lucky attitude went away a moment later when Shisui began to cough violently and she turned to catch him before he could keel over.
“Iruka. I brought a bag- oh screw it.” She bit her finger enough to draw blood and forced it into his mouth when he stopped coughing and he looked at her with hooded eyes as he sucked out her blood till her wound closed.
She helped him up onto the teachers chair and Iruka left to get a glass and jug of water for him as she pumped some of her chakra into him, “Anata.”
He stopped her with a glare and she sighed, “Please.” She asked but he didn’t relent.
‘Even if he stays, it works out better for you doesn’t it? This way you can watch over him.’
‘Fair point, Kurama.’ She murmured in reply.
A moment later, Iruka returned with what he set out to get as well as some pain killers and Naruto gave him a sad smile, “He’s not allowed to take pain killers since he ingests my blood. It gives him a bad reaction.” She swallowed the small lump in her throat. It was her fault that he had this problem.
‘If you hadn’t, mother, you would have lost him years ago.’ Supplied Choumei but that little to ease her guilt as Iruka looked at the box and put it in his pocket.
“I’m fine, both of you. I’m a jonin and I won’t be done in by a cold.” Spoke Shisui only to be on the receiving end of a dubious look and a glare from Iruka and Naruto respectively.
They didn’t get a chance to carry on the topic as Arashi and Narumi entered the classroom a few minutes early and tackled the blonde with a hug, “Auntie!”
Most of her concern she had for Shisui had been pushed to the back of her mind as she leaned down and took a hold of both of them, sitting back on the desk and placed them on her lap as she held them, “How are my favourite niece and nephew?” she cooed to them and they giggled.
“I’m your only neice!” pouted Narumi.
“I get to rub it in Tatsumaki’s face!” yelled Arashi and Naruto rubbed her nose against his neck.
“Oh no! But then Tatasumaki will be upset with me!” she replied, eyes wide with fake fear but they bought it. “If I get you ice cream during lunch, will you two keep it a secret?” she whispered and the mischievous twins looked at each other and nodded their heads.
“We promise if you get us ice cream.” They chorused and Naruto nodded vigorously before turning to Shisui who had a small smile on his face before reaching up and ruffling their heads, messing their hair.
Naruto, Arashi and Narumi screamed and Naruto jumped back, clutching the children to her as the three pouted and glared a mock glare at the Uchiha.
Sighing, Naruto stood normally and gave them both kisses on both of their cheeks before setting them down and fixing their hair as much as they could. Whilst Arashi may have gotten Kushina’s hair colour, he got Minato’s spiky head which made the red hair go all over the place on a good day never mind when it was ruffled.
Right on time, the children all entered the room and Naruto sat on the desk as Iruka took the TA seat beside Shisui.
She looked at the class properly this time and saw who she would be teaching and felt a pang in her chest as guilt swarmed her, although she showed none of it.
The class consisted of 30 students who included, Lee, TenTen, Neji, Hinata, Kiba, Shino, Sakura, Satsuki, Narumi, Arashi, Shikamaru, Ino, Chouji, Torune Aburame, Karin who had been bought from Kusa as well as some of Nagato’s children.
“Right, before your break we mentioned what we were going to do, so does any-one know the names of any of the nation’s Special Forces?”
Narumi raised her hand a millisecond before Arashi so Naruto called her to answer, “Konoha has the Twelve Guardian Ninja!”
Naruto gave her a smile and wrote her answer on the board, “Well done, anyone else?”
This time she allowed Arashi to answer, “Kumo have the Kinkaku forces.” He didn’t yell t like his sister and Naruto still heard him. She smiled when she heard his answer, Minato and she had been teaching Arashi and the others about the country the Namikaze’s hailed from.
"Anyone else?" She asked and hesitantly TenTen raised her hand. "Yes TenTen?"
"K-kirigakure and their swordsmen?" She stuttered and Naruto wondered if that was something she had also messed up since TenTen was shy and Hinata was abrasive.
Her answer didn’t bother Naruto, her past experience with the swordsmen in this time were nothing in comparison to the camaraderie she had shared with Choujiro and her fondness over Zabuzas memory. There was also Kisame who kept Itachi company in Akatsuki and Suigetsu who travelled with Sasuke for some time. Something she was thankful for even if she was jealous of team Taka.
No, her reaction was nothing in comparison to Shisui and Iruka going horribly still so much so that even the students gave them a hesitant look. She gave the class a reassuring smile as she stood behind the boys, placing her hands on their shoulders and cloaking them in her chakra. With Iruka she only used enough to reassure him and not give him an addiction to her as well.
"Well done TenTen. Kirigakure has the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist. Also known as the seven Swordsmen in short since the original name was such a mouthful." She shook her head and tutted as she wrote that on the board as well.
"Anybody else?" She gave them a few seconds and when nobody replied she carried on, "Sunagakure has the Pupper Brigade and Iwagakure have the Explosion corps." She wrote those down and took a seat on the desk once again, placing her hands back enough for the boys to take a hold if which they did.
“Can anybody tell me or take a guess on what each one of these Special Forces specialize in?” she asked. Nobody answered, not even Narumi nor Arashi so she continued, “Let’s start with Suna and the Puppet Brigade. They specialise in puppets and poisons. They also have very good chakra control and have the potential, if not already, to become medics. Much like Lady Chiyo and Sasori of the Red Sand. Lady Chiyo was renowned for her poisons in the second war which our own Lady Tsunade counteracted much to her annoyance.” She had a mischievous grin on her face and the class smiled warmly.
“Next is Iwagakure and their Explosion Corps which specialise in bombs and anything that can go boom.” She made an explosion gesture with her hands and the class erupted in a fit of giggles before she continued, “I don’t know much since Iwa doesn’t like me very much thanks to aniue but I do know about Gari. A man with a kekkei genkai but I’ll get back to that later.
“Kumo is next with the Kinkau forces… well… if memory serves correct the Nidaime Raikage labelled them criminals due to their actions in one of the wars. It caused severe damage to Kumo’s forced and the only ones anybody really remembers are Kinkaku and Ginkaku. Kinkaku being the one who led the twenty-ish men who all vanished off the face of the earth when the nidaime was killed.” She clicked her fingers, “That’s when they were labelled criminals, when the Kinkaku forces forced the hand of the Nidaime hokage who in turn named the sandaime. The day we gained the sandaime, we lost the nidaime.”
There was another thing about Kinkaku and Ginkaku which was important but they didn’t need to know that… yet.
“The next is…” she faltered before shifting in her seat, “Kirigakure and the Seven Swordsmen.” She felt Iruka and Shisui clench her hands and she clenched theirs as well. “This refers mostly to the swords so when someone is capable of mastering them… well, you’d better run. The swordsmen are relatively easy to notice since each of them has sharp teeth, each of them.” To this day, she didn’t get why they had shark like teeth but knew not to question it. “The seven swords were called; Hiramekarei, Kabutowari, Kiba, Kubikiribocho, Nuibari, Samehada and Shibuki. This pile here goes into detail on each of these swords.” She pulled out a pile of papers from her back pocket and placed it on the desk and she saw each of their eyes gleam.
“The last would be Konoha and the Twelve Guarding Ninja… we don’t really have a single thing to specialise in. Each person has something they specialise in like Asuma Sarutobi who excels in wind style ninjutsu implementing in into his close combat.” She shrugged, “Overall… in my own honest opinion, ours are just plain badass since we use ourselves and not something else to become famous. There is also the detail that our hidden village doesn’t house them. Most of the twelve remain in the capital with the daimyo.”
Naruto took a deep breath and heard Shisui muffle a cough and turned around to pour herself some water, taking a sip before cutting her finger slightly and dripped her blood into the cup and handed it to her lover, making sure no one would see her as she did so.
Naruto looked at the clock and then returned to the class, “Well, 35 minutes are over. You can all go for a 15 minute break and then we’ll take about kekkei-genkai.”
With this the class left and went their respective ways minus Shino, Arashi, Narumi and Satsuki.
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A few days later.
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Naruto sat in arguably the blandest room she had ever been in with the blandest of people. Minus Tsume and Nagato of course.
Everyone one civilian council seemed to have a stick up their arses and the shinobi council didn’t seem to give a fuck at present time. All in all, it pissed her off to no end.
She had been forced to attend this meeting as the Namikaze heiress and she had to take Nagato’s spot as Uzumaki head. There were perks and losses to belonging to two clans and this was one of them.
Naruto raised her hand and slammed it against the table. She was running on two hours of sleep she had gotten three days ago and was pissed off so sue her for her lack of patience.
“Itsuki-san. Your lack of customers is not something the council is here to fix. That’s a personal matter of your own. We are all here to discuss oddities or things that need addressing for the better of the village. Your tea shop is not as important as whatever Tsume-san or Fugaku-san have to say.”
There was sniggers heard around the dark room as Itsuki glared and pointed a finger at her, “You only care about what the shinobi have to say, Lady Namikaze, when you should be impartial.” He hissed her name as if it was poison and Naruto resisted the urge to yawn.
She was hardly afraid of a civilian who didn’t recall his place. He was also not alive in Naruto’s time which meant he had died either during the war or the night of her birth.
“They will not speak about shinobi business as the worst thing a shinobi ever does when at home is deface some training grounds or get extremely drunk. I looked at the statistics. 91% of cases brought up to the UPF now known as the KMPF are against civilians and the remaining 9% is shinobi.” She leaned back and took a swing at the sake bottle in front of her and mentally thanked whoever brought it to the table.
Itsuki kept quiet after that and the meeting progressed without much issue and when they left, Naruto was forced to go to the hokage office to report and then she had to go to Nagato and inform him of the meeting.
That task had been proven to be difficult as Minato had been part of another meeting with an entirely different council, a meeting Naruto had to attend as she was a jonin, ANBU, and a member of the guard platoon.
By the time Naruto was done with the day it was 10 in the evening and she finally recalled she couldn’t go home. She had managed to persuade the landlord to give her the whole floor as she was working on several things and she had been given the permission to do so as long as she had permission from the tenant beneath.
She groaned as she recalled the construction which had been going on and wasn’t finished meaning she had to go find somewhere else to sleep. Another reason she hadn’t gotten any sleep lately but mostly because she just forgot she needed to sleep.
She massaged her scalp before going off to the Uchiha district. She wasn’t going to bug Nagato since the kids would all wake up the same with Kushina and Minato. She couldn’t ask Kakashi since he’d get the wrong idea and Iruka was sharing an apartment with Anko, or was it the other way round?
The only other option was her boyfriend’s house but she wasn’t too sure. He didn’t seem to like her around his father very much which made no sense to her but she didn’t want to upset him and complied as much as she was able to.
Never the less, she made her way over to Shisui’s home and once she arrived, she knocked on the door which Kagami answered, “Hi Kagami. Sorry for coming here so late but I need a place to stay for a few nights. Can I stay here?” she asked and smiled when he agreed, opening the door for her to enter.
“I’m afraid I won’t be a very good host as I’m on night duty, patrolling the village.”
Naruto gave him a smile, “I saw the roster, don’t worry. I’ve been around you house enough to keep myself busy. I know where the toilet, bath and bedrooms are as well as the kitchen. There’s no need to worry about being a host and please carry on as if I’m not here.”
Kagami gave her a relieved look and carried on getting ready for his patrol and ten minutes later was out of the door.
Naruto sighed and began to tidy up the house. It wasn’t very messy, but after spending time with Kushina and Shisui she had developed some form of OCD so even a slight mess in four walls bugged her.
When she had finished cleaning the tables and was about to dust the bookshelf two hand wrapped around her torso and she found herself being pulled into a very familiar chest.
Shisui loanee down to her neck and inhaled her scent, the tension in his shoulders leaving him in an instant, "Forgot cleaning. Come to bed." Her murmured and took her hand, leading her to his room and began to undress her and redressed her in one of his shirts and he gained a gleam in them.
Naruto rolled her eyes at the evident smugness in his eyes. Past Sasuke and current Kakshi had also been proud whenever they saw her wearing their clothes so she made it a point not to wear the guys clothes last they get the wrong opinion and leas them on.
It didnt take long for Naruto to sleep, being held by Shisui and enveloped in his scent, sleep came to her easily.
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"We should help each other." Said the man with a bandaged eye. To the Uchiha, he looked like a half mummy wrapped up in bandages like that.
"How so?" He asked wearily. He had met this man a few times but usually someone came before he could strike a conversation with him.
The mans eyes shined with an emotion he recognised but couldn't place, "The Uchiha clan have grown greedy and wish for more within the village despite all the yondaime has given them. This greed of theirs has led to them planning a coup deteat against the village. Should they be allowed to go forth with this treachery then the village will be weakened which we cannot afford." The man noticed his words were not reaching the teenage boy and tried again, "There will be many casualties and there is no doubt in my mind that the Uchiha will attack our most required shinobi- our medics."
At the word medic the boy snarled before calming down and looked to the corner of the room, "I'm not sure about this.... you have to talk to Zetsu." He pointed to the corner and from the ground emerges the black and white figure shrouded in his plant.
Once he had risen to full height he didn't say a word, simply walked over to the man and the black side grinned, "You have a deal just as long as the blame does not fall on this boy."
"Yes. The boy only wants for the better of the world." Added the white half and the dark haired boy smiled, Zetsu understood him even if others didn't.
"Very well, that can be easily arranged." The man inclined his head at the Uchiha bowed as he left the room.
"Things are becoming very interesting as of late." Spoke white Zetsu.
"Indeed. Ashuras reincarnation sure is making things interesting, especially given how close she is to Indaras reincarnation." Replied the black half as they went through the ground to hide once again.
White Zetsu furrowed his brow, "Shouldn't we do something about that? It could cause lots of problems for us in the future."
"Doubtful. The boy has no knowledge of this and neither does that pesky girl. If they become a nuisance in the future we have our little pet up there who can help."
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