2/4

There was this pounding sensation throbbing behind her left eye, and Natsumi was starting to get fed up with all of this. Maybe she had been a little spoiled by going ANBU straight out of the academy and by being snatched by the Toad Sage as soon as the war ended, but she hadn't had to deal with two opposite personalities clashing while on mission before. There was no personality in ANBU, they sometimes didn't really even seem like humans behind the painted masks, and she already got along well with her own kouhai and his fellow blond.

"Look, I think we all know there's some kind of unresolved sexual tension going on between the two of you. But stow it, we're on mission right now."

Tsume's jaw hung open for a moment, mid-insult.

After a small start of shock on his end, Shibi turned that blank visage of his to her.

Natsumi glared at the both of them, Kuromaru panting doggy laughter as he sat next to her. "For fucks sake, you're acting worse than academy students. Yes, even you Shibi-san. So now if the two of you are done with the pissing match over who killed what bandit, I've got a birthday party that had better be happening to crash."

That verbal smack to the face done, the assassin grabbed her pack and tantō and leapt up into the trees, hightailing it back the way they came.

Screw the few days of observation, she knew exactly what was wrong.

\V/

"It's not a clan thing of hating another tracker on principle, Hokage-sama. It's a bit of an extreme personality clash."

"Thank you, Natsumi-chan, for going along with this." Sarutobi Hiruzen sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Tell me what you saw."

The assassin hummed and nodded, bouncing a little on her feet as she assembled the information she had in her head. There really hadn't been a way to say no to the order, but it was nice of the Sandaime to say that.

The mission hadn't been her mission but an analysis of how two C-ranked ninjas being considered for promotion got along during their mission.

Anyone being assigned a Yamanaka clan member for a quick mission were usually suspicious of being reviewed for mental health reasons unless said Yamanaka was needed to screw over a target's or witnesses' heads. Inoichi had told the Hokage that sometime during their meetings his wife still hosted for them every month even with Jiraiya out of the village, and suggested her to the older ninja in case of irritable or touchy shinobi who wouldn't ignore any doubts cast on their methods by the presence of one.

The assassin had been the one to give him a number of psychology tips from her past life, and knew how to do field assessments on soldiers already. Natsumi wasn't really sure why the Yamanaka clan heir had done it, but it resulted in her 'emergency' mission two days before her kouhai's birthday when someone got fed up with listening to Tsume try and find Shibi's breaking point.

Damn sneaky blonds. Damn sneaky kage too, for that matter. Using the meetings between younger shinobi as a way to sound out alternative means for troubleshooting the issues between your shinobi.

Tsk, tsk.

"Inuzuka Tsume is brash as most of her clan is, respecting only quality skills and forceful personalities. Aburame Shibi is a naturally quiet shinobi, and like the rest of his clan is either unwilling or uncaring about establishing dominance with someone he knows is a comrade, and ninja enough to like confusing her to hell and back in the meantime. Tsume-san keeps challenging Shibi-san as per her clan's normal habits of placing new people in the pack hierarchy, but he's not responding like she's expecting so she keeps doing it over again when he shows good shinobi traits she likes to see in the village's pack. The only reason she's getting irritated is because they're stuck like that. But since Kuromaru isn't against Shibi-san's presence, I can safely guess Tsume-san is only frustrated at herself for knowing there's a problem but not realizing what it is or how to fix it."

Inuzukas were interesting from a psychology standpoint. You didn't just deal with one Inuzuka, you dealt with an Inuzuka and however many littermates they had.

Each member of the clan, regardless if they turned out to be ninja or not later on, were raised with either a canine companion or companions whelped from one of the parents' ninken and the kennel dogs a few years after their own birth, as few as one and as many as five in a litter. Those dogs were seen as shinobi in their own rights within the clan and sometimes without as well; able to start training to fight alongside their human between the age of four and six as well as use their own chakra to speak to humans once they reached adult size at about ten to fifteen years of age. The ninken of the Inuzuka clan could live up to a grand total anywhere near thirty-five to forty-five years before succumbing to old age, about as long as a ninja could realistically work for before being retired from active duty, and would never be replaced if killed in battle or they died of natural causes.

Inuzukas lived and worked so close to their dogs that they unconsciously adopted traits from their chakra using ninken to the point they seemed even more canine-like, in the pack-like way of viewing everyone, being able to understand the younger dogs unable to speak the human language aloud, and the mentality of defending the pack and obeying alpha. The pack being those living in Konoha and alpha being the clan head or the Hokage. The physical, almost canine traits could either have been selectively bred into them or old marks of the Wolf Summoning Contract still showing in later descendants.

Legend in that clan had it that the dogs they had now were reared from the wolves summoned and kept in this dimension long enough to have a litter of pups. That Contract, if it had ever existed, was missing now, but since the Dog Summoning Contract was held by the Hatake clan and the Inuzukas hadn't raised unholy hell about it, it was possible they did once hold the Wolf Contract.

Aburames were another curious clan.

There was little known publicly about the physical adaptations of those ninjas to the destruction beetles that marked their existence, but their mentality was also pulled from the insects they mainly used. Kikachu were hive minded, like bees and wasps. The queen produced the next generations, the workers kept the queen alive, and the soldiers kept the whole hive safe. Aburames considered Hokage-sama the queen, the civilians the workers, the shinobi corps the soldiers, and Konoha the hive.

Logical and rational thinking was prized to them and most were unconcerned for individual welfare compared to survival of the whole, they were the damn near perfect soldiers if not generally good leader material. Which was why a lot of civilians gave the clan members a wide berth, and even shinobi were careful around the clan.

Natsumi had to wonder if the fellow shinobi Sakumo had saved in lieu of completing his last mission had been an Aburame, as it would account for the initial backlash against her old captain if he went against the wishes of an unusually fanatical clan ninja and failed whatever objective they had in the process. Aburames were another of the noble founding clans of Konoha and they had a decent amount of political heft behind them.

The rise of the Third Great Shinobi War from the botched mission would account for the rest of the pressure that made her taicho take his own life, and he probably had done it only so his son didn't have to deal with most of it. The man was irritating when he got around to fussing about how others saw her small form in ANBU armor now that he could do it to her and not just in his head, and she could only dread how bad he was going to be about Kakashi's wellbeing.

Unlike an Inuzuka's frontal challenge to sort out dominance before working with another, an Aburame would just melt into view to complete a task and then fade away into the background content with their efforts.

Tsume and Shibi didn't really have a problem with each other, one was teasing the other without knowing it in the beginning and continuing to do so since he couldn't find a way out of the loop.

"It'll work out itself, once Tsume-san figures out that Shibi-san's not just going to conform to her expectations and she needs to place him without fighting him over everything to see where he dominates. Shibi-san can't do it because he honestly can't figure out how to do that or get the idea across to her even if he's been trying to. But until then they shouldn't be assigned anything you care about being traced back to Konoha, Hokage-sama."

The older man nodded, gesturing to the scroll she had wrote it all out on. "When you go see Minato-kun, take Inoichi-kun your analysis so it can be filed with his clan. I believe they are still holding your kouhai's birthday party in the Nara clan compound."

"Hai, Hokage-sama."

(ooo000ooo)

"Oh, Inoichi-kun!"

"Aa… Natsumi-sempai?"

"Hmm? Is there a problem, kouhai?"

Minato looked a little pale. "Put the tantō down, please."

Inoichi heard that and dove to the floor in the nick of time, warily eyeing the shaft of sharp metal embedded above his head and still humming from the force of the assassin's throw. "Is there a reason you just tried to kill me?"

"Oh please. If I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead." The still irritated teen-woman huffed, eyeing him in return for the ugly look he was giving her ANBU issued tantō. "And that's for the suggestion you gave Hokage-sama. Here, you file the damn report on it."

The scroll beamed the mind walker between the eyes, snapping his head back and knocking him out of his chair.

Shikaku cracked opened one of his eyes, peering over and barely blinking at the sword sprouting from the wall of his home because he was more interested in the abuse she was heaping on her old teammate and his current one. "And now for the rest of us who want to know why you almost killed someone in my kitchen?"

Natsumi gave him a dirty look of his own, stripping off her mission pack and letting it fall to the floor before yanking her short sword out of the living room wall so she could put that away in the scroll Minato had given her for her last birthday and she used for her ANBU kit. "Inoichi-kun gave Sarutobi-sama my name if he needed some ninjas evaluated for how well they work with others, since I'm not a Yamanaka by clan or name but I do work with him on some of his projects and wouldn't be immediately suspected of doing that kind of evaluation right off the bat. That's why I almost missed my kouhai's birthday."

Kushina shoved a plate in front of her face. "Cake?"

Derailed, the assassin blinked at the offering. "If can't kill it, hime, why would I want cake?"

"Chouza-kun's okaa-san made it."

"Mmm… kay." Plate in hand, Natsumi fitted herself in between Shikaku and Hizashi and across from Minato, Inoichi, and Chouza.

Mikoto snickered at her, and all the ANBU did in return was a rude gesture since her mouth was full. Hey, Akimichi cooking was really good.

"At least it had to be important, right?" Inoichi accepted the Akimichi heir's offer of a hand up, rubbing the mark on his forehead as he reclaimed his seat and took the scroll back from Fugaku. "If they called you out with so little time to prepare?"

"It was a pissing match between an Inuzuka and an Aburame going around in left hand circles. All they need to do is get over themselves and screw each other. Problem solved."

Natsumi decided the various spit takes were the second best part of her day so far, next to making it back in time for her kouhai's birthday. Hiashi really did have a great pair of lungs on him given how far that milk went.

Wait… who had been Hana's father?

\V/

Mesuji Natsumi was an odd woman trapped in a teen's body.

Kushina had known that she was since her home country was destroyed, when the mismatched eyed girl had silently sat by her and let her grieve for her missing home on her shoulder. She hadn't know just how odd until she was rescued from being kidnapped by Kumo nins and been fully informed as to what was behind those ghost eyes of the girl's had been another strange turn.

It hadn't been until Mito-baa-sama died that Kushina began to appreciate just how lonely the other kunoichi had to have been before, Natsumi had eight years to grieve about people and places long dust before Minato pulled her out of it and she started to claw her way out of that depression. Admittedly when the older Uzumaki had died the redhead hadn't been in the best state to understand that thought, and gave the assassin a few sharp words about loss.

Then Natsumi told her what she had lost compared to the lone Uzumaki, and Kushina felt some kinship with her after the horrible embarrassment of grating open the other girl-woman's hidden scars about her old life.

There were times when the assassin was more there than here, the commanding, war hardened soldier that had come before rather than the quirky, mischievous kunoichi she was now. You could tell when Natsumi just stopped, going silent, serious, poised, and her eyes grew colder than how they looked framed by a bone white and black streaked mask.

Those incidents were getting farther and farther between, and Inoichi told them it was perfectly normal, kind of like how Kushina would never get over losing Uzugakure but would finally adapt to that loss, but it was still creepy to see happen to someone you half expected to tell you to get laid so they didn't have to deal with your grouchy attitude anymore.

Talking to her when she was like this was another thing entirely. Only Minato had complete success at it, Inoichi and Shikaku had some successes of their own… but she would also respond to Kushina as much as the boy-turned-teenager that saved her from her own mind.

When no one could find her within the village, either she or Minato were sent up to the Hokage's Monument to fetch her.

"Natsumi-chan?"

"You don't have to keep coming out here if you don't want to, hime."

"Aa… I have a question." The icy cold eyes turned to her, warming only a little when she didn't flinch back. "Do you know…?" The redheaded teen placed her hand over her stomach.

"Honorable Mito-sama was the last one, its common knowledge in ANBU if you have the rank for it. You were taught exclusively by her. Yes, Kushina-hime. I put it together." The assassin sat down over the edge of the cliff, gesturing her to sit as well. "Why ask?"

Kushina sat next to Natsumi, carefully thinking of how she wanted to address her concerns. She had suspected the misplaced soldier had known, and the confirmation was just setting her more on edge. "Do you think any of the others will catch on?"

"Unless they join ANBU as well, I highly doubt it. Most of Konoha think he was sealed into something else, like how Suna has the one-tail contained in a teapot. Saa, a few of our little group of friends will be told, of course. I'm mostly sure someone's told Hiashi-san and Fugaku-sama already." The red head lost all the color in her face, and the ANBU turned to her and placed her hand on her shoulder. "Hey. Do they treat you any differently than me? I highly doubt they care beyond being thankful someone's keeping track of his royal furriness."

Shock at the slight against the nine-tails made the Uzumaki snort a laugh out even if she was scared half to death from the subject matter. "I'll have to remember that one."

The assassin hummed, dropping her hand and turning back to the view of the village from the Hokage's Monument. "You want to know if you should tell the others yourself?"

"Well… yeah, you know."

"From a security standpoint, no. The more people who know the more likely it will get out." Before Kushina could stammer out a thanks and scramble to leave, Natsumi continued. "From a psychology one? Yeah I think you should. There was this little pithy saying once upon a time, a burden shared is a burden halved. Stupid sounding, but it got me out of one hell of a rut back in the academy."

The jinchūriki absorbed that as the teen-woman next to her came to life a bit, swinging her feet. "I know it's a bit rude to ask, but was there anything like me back then?"

"Nukes, maybe. But that was more instant obliteration in a large area than a force of chakra made real through someone else's will that could stomp Konoha flat in a few minutes."

Not having expected a readied answer for her question, Kushina looked directly at Natsumi. "Where they ever used?"

"Yep." The smile the assassin wore was lopsided and grim. "Twice as far as I knew, and another whole war was fought over who could possibly maybe kill who first with them."

"D-do you think I'll be used like that-t?"

Yes, but Natsumi didn't think that would go over well with the unsettled Uzumaki teen right at that moment. The assassin sighed and tugged at her loose and long hair, something she had never gotten around to cutting before it became a sort of signal her body recognized to mean off-duty and relaxation time. There had to be a way to get Kushina willing to use Kurama's hate in defense of the village sometime soon, because it had happened before.

"You have to understand, Kushina-hime, the village is only about forty or so years old right now and what I can recall had been in place and squabbling for centuries. I know it doesn't seem like it because we were raised here, but Sandaime-sama is actually older than Konoha is as a village. If I recall our history lessons right he was around five to ten-ish when the first buildings were built, and our village was the first one founded as a permanent shinobi stronghold for several ninja clans. Our world right now is trying to figure out how this method of dividing and hording power is working for or against them, and we're nowhere near close to figuring that out. My last life had some defined lines where world powers were concerned, and even that wasn't conflict free. I can estimate another war on the horizon before any kind of uneasy peace breaks out for however long, and even that will be continually tested because no one likes being second or even third best."

I can guess because I already know it's going to happen, I just can't tell you that yet.

The jinchūriki stared hard at her. "Why not? Konoha has come out on top in the last two wars. Wouldn't the other Hidden Villages respect that?"

"But we lost a Hokage per war. This last war only proved that they were right to found Konoha for the next generations, the sannin beat that into everyone's heads to the point that no one argued. When this next was comes to be if we can keep up the reputation the Densetsu no Sannin started and hold onto Sandaime-sama to prove the method will hold true for later generations and we can make it a decisive victory without losing a major pillar of Konoha, then some kind of respect will be offered anything with the Leaf symbol on it and the mass majority of the fighting will have been done and over with."

It's what Namikaze Minato had done almost on his own merit, becoming the Yellow Flash and hammering Iwa almost into bloody dust by himself. It was what Uzumaki Kushina helped to do becoming the Red-Hot Bloody Habanero, a mix of Kurama's rage and her own protective nature for those closest to her aimed at ripping apart Konoha's enemies. It was why the Shika-Ino-Chou team-up became famous enough that the next generation was sorted that way from the very start. They had done that to show the rest of the shinobi world that Konohagakure was not a village to mess with unless they wanted to lose badly.

It was why Konoha was targeted first by Uchiha Madara even if the nine-tails was the last bijuu he needed for the Moon-Eye Plan; to test the method of extraction, bring down the best of the villages, as well as take revenge for honorable Hashirama-sama kicking him out. Even if had meant he would lose sight of the nine-tailed fox while he gathered the rest of the nine bijuu.

It also made the division of power unstable, taking out two of the key fighters of the Third War and new kage of Konohagakure, making the other villages think they could grab that title of the Strongest Hidden Village of the Five Great Shinobi Nations if they only struck hard enough to make a fracture someone could take advantage of.

Kumo tried for it once, snatching the Hyūga heiress under the guise of a non-aggression treaty. Then Hiashi had beaten the shit out of the kidnappers before killing the abductors of his daughter and Sandaime-sama had to offer him up to keep the conflicts of the Third Great War from rising again, but it proved that Konoha might have been weakened but not down by a long shot when Hizashi took his twin's place and war didn't break out again.

"If there was an opportunity to ensure any children you or I may have would never see any kind of war until their own twenties, what would you do to see it happen?"

"Oh… I would do a lot."

The two of them sat there, each contemplating exactly what they would do for that prospect becoming reality. Natsumi finally nudged the jinchūriki, curious as to why she had been sought out. "What's up, anyways? It's my day off from training."

"Sakumo-sama is pissed at you for telling Tsunade-sama about his girlfriend. She demanded to be the medic consulted for the pregnancy and whacked him a good one for not telling her himself."

"Aa… I think I'm going to stay up here for now. Tell Minato-kun to fetch me when taicho gets over it."

Well, Natsumi never did find out what happened to Kakashi's mom. Better safe than sorry, and Eri was a nice lady.

\V/

She was going to kill Inoichi.

Not happy had been how she felt when her last 'emergency' mission rose up, and 'pissed' was starting to describe how she felt now with a long term mission about the same subject matter staring her in the face.

However… the Hokage ordered her to do it, so she'd do it.

Kami-sama help them all if she missed taicho's son being born, though.

Natsumi sighed in defeat and looked up from the mission scroll in her hands to the office ninja. "Targets?" She accepted the second scroll filled with D or C-rank assassination targets to take care of while they were gone, gesturing for the two other chūnin to follow her out of the Hokage's Tower.

Tsume and Shibi were staring at her back as they hit the courtyard outside and Kuromaru joined them, and she could sort of see why if she wasn't in the mood to appreciate the whys of it. Being told that younger ninja you ran a mission with was actually an assassin specialist benched from ANBU for the length of her kenjutsu apprenticeship was a little jarring, about as much as being told she had been tasked with finding a way to solve the problems between them while they played backup for her mission of a string of minor assassinations for ANBU.

An assassin training in the ninja ways of the sword moonlighting as a shinobi psychologist… hey, she was creepier than she thought she was!

Cheered up enough by that realization to be somewhat sociable, Natsumi turned back to the two plus dog behind her. "Come on, we got a place to be first before we grab mission kits and leave."

"Breaking the news to your friends?" Tsume asked warily, not sounding too sure about the reason the ghost eyed teen had.

"That… or attempted homicide. I'm not picky."

(ooo000ooo)

Inoichi spotted her coming this time, blanching white and scrambling up to run for dear life.

Natsumi stopped in the middle of the Senju clan compound's front yard, watching the mind walker disappear into the forests within the compound. "Damn. Someone warned him."

"I did, Natsumi-chan." Sakumo's hand hit her upside the head. "No harming your friends. Do we need to have this conversation again?"

"Hey! I intentionally missed last time." The assassin gritted out, one had going to reset the bun her hair was in. "And no, taicho. We don't need to have that conversation again, they don't have visible scars."

As the stare down between master and apprentice was going on, Minato turned to the two other chūnin he didn't recognize. "Why are you two here? Does sempai have a mission again?"

"Err… yeah. We've got a… um." Tsume floundered mid-sentence as she watched, vastly confused by what was going on and how much she could tell someone else about the teen dancing around the older Hatake's reach. And was that the young Hyūga clan head and his brother over there with the heir to the Uchihas and his intended bride? When the hell has she been hit with a genjutsu?

"Assassinations, kouhai." Natsumi pulled a face at her taicho, getting bopped on the head again. "We're going to kill a few people, solve the issues between those two, and hopefully come back in time for Eri-san to have taicho's kid. If not, I make no promises that I'll still have two teammates coming back. The dog will be fine, either way."

She ducked the third swipe at her head, hiding behind the amused Chouza and sticking her tongue out at the silver haired man.

Shikaku pushed himself upright enough to look at the two newcomers and the dog. "They're the two 'going around in left hand circles'?"

The Inuzuka and ninken both looked slightly incredulous about everything going on, and the Aburame's eyebrows were visible over his dark glasses. The Nara heir felt for them, really. Sometimes he didn't know how he had been pulled into this circus either.

"It's not really their fault, which is why I've been tasked to solve it for them. It's just a matter of how they view the world."

Then a saving a life thing that I need to work out how to do if I'm the only one supposed to see any combat on this mission.

"Sucks to be you, then."

"I'm hurt, Kushina-hime. I thought you liked me."

"Shut up, Natsumi-chan."

\V/

There were many small clinics in the village that took both ninjas and civilians as patients, but the main hospital in Konoha was segregated. It had to be, because then no shinobi would feel alright about dropping one's guard enough for a iryou-nin to check them over if just anyone could get into their part of the hospital wings when they couldn't defend themselves at an instant's notice.

The clinics were treated more like stationary first-aid stations by the ninja ranks, used as stepping stones until they were stable enough to either leave for home or make it to the hospital, rather than mini-hospitals that the civilians saw them as.

There were times when the shinobi side and the civilian wings mixed, when there were more injured ninjas than chakra using medics and when ninjas had civilian significant others and they became injured or ill and said shinobi didn't recall in time that they had their own side of the hospital when rushing them there.

Like when Hatake Sakumo panicked about Yamamoto Eri's contractions and took her to the kunoichi medical wing. Senju Tsunade would have knocked the frantic would-be-father through a wall or two if the situation hadn't been so dire. Instead, she tasked the group of friends showing up in the waiting room with sitting on one of their fellow's master until she could deal with him later.

Minato sighed, a bouncing foot up and down giving away his nervousness. "Sempai's late."

The Akimichi doing the actual sitting on Sakumo, his legs to pin the older shinobi in place, looked up to the darkening sky outside the hallway window. "The baby's early, Minato-kun. It's not her fault."

"She's still going to be pissed with those two if she doesn't make it." At the low whimper from the man on the floor, Shikaku slapped his own face with his hand before the glaring Inoichi could do it for him. "Bad word choice, sorry Sakumo-sama."

Eri's water had broken, but she was also bleeding heavily and in more pain that she should be. Tsunade had sent for Biwako by sending Hizashi out to summon the older kunoichi, but the two of them hadn't arrived there yet. Kushina and Mikoto were in with the civilian woman, claiming teammate rights to stand in for Natsumi and her master in the delivery room.

"Why are you sitting on my taicho, Chouza-kun?" A female in a Panther ANBU mask slid through the window the Akimichi heir had just looked through, slinking over to where the silver head on the floor was as she pushed her mask up so everyone could see her ghost pale, mismatched eyes. "Biwako-sama is in there now. She came through the other window."

Thank kami for retired kunoichi midwives.

Sakumo surged upright, actually knocking Chouza off his legs. "Let's go… but, aa… you might want to change first."

(ooo000ooo)

Natsumi had made it back in time to see Kakashi born, a month premature but healthy, and ew. Also ow.

Did she really want to go through that sometime in the future?

Eri would be fine, seeing as Tsunade had been fetched before anything really bad could happen. Biwako had taken care of delivering the baby while the Slug Princess handled the damage an active chakra network in a newborn could cause before it harmed the mother too badly.

Apparently Kakashi wasn't just happy being labeled a child prodigy at three or five or whenever, he wanted it sooner.

Brat.

Natsumi did manage to get why Kushina and Mikoto had been in with the new mother, and learned a bit about how shinobi viewed each other that she hadn't had a reason to find out yet.

Next of kin for shinobi were backwards seeming, to say the least. Usually, when a genin ninja was orphaned guardianship went to either the master or jōnin sensei, not their closest blood relative. It was partly to keep a newly orphaned shinobi from having to deal with a new home situation while in training or handling missions, and partly to keep that ninja within the village as a Konoha shinobi if the only blood relations where outside the walls.

Teammate rights were similar to sibling rights, you would have the power to step in like a family member since a ninja spent most of their time with their teams after a certain amount of time on one. It inevitably evolved for ninjas to consider their cell their family, and make their plans for the worse to involve them.

After you reached chūnin rank you didn't even have to have run a mission with a shinobi to claim being a teammate, you just had to know one well enough that the rest of the ninjas that had ran missions with said shinobi wouldn't protest it.