14

Chapter 14: thirteen: of codes and a red foxSummary:

In which character development is slow but steady.

Notes:

(I'm like a month late but) Happy New Year! May 2020 be as kind as possible to us, and may we make wise decisions. Here's to a year with (hopefully) more updates ╰(▔∀▔)╯

I do not own Naruto.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Becoming a Hokage 101

.

Section Three

.

Chapter Thirteen

.

My house is like a birdcage.

Father is both the hokage and the clan leader, and for some conservative, old ass reason, that explains why our house is the biggest one in the compound. It's an old but well-maintained house, clearly built for large families with lots of children.

The mindsets of war, apparently.

The house traps me at the same time it protects me, embedded in my parents' chakra both from many years of exposure and intentional chakra webbing. I feel safe but suffocated inside the wooden structure, and the effect is amplified when either my parents is home.

When both of them are here, it feels like I'm hanging on a thread.

"Peanut?"

Tooru is a perfect mix of our parents, appearance wise. He has pale skin like mother and I, but his eyes and hair are dark brown just like father and Asuma. He's very handsome, and as a 14 year old chunin, he's hit his growth spurt and loses clothes like nobody's business.

Sometimes I still remember him as an eight year old who used to carry me in his arms all the time, and I almost wish I could go back in time.

"Tooru-nii, are you going to cook dinner today?" I ask as I watch him twirl in mother's apron, the action immediately bringing a smile to my face.

"That's right. You and Asuma are gonna get to eat my awesome cooking today." A laugh bubbles out before I can stop it, and I hug him without really thinking. Tooru cooking means he's not only gonna stay home for a while but also that our parents will come home later (if at all), and my smile widens as I feel his hand messing up my hair.

The truth is that I miss my brothers a lot. Tooru has been sent out to the frontlines since the war began, as he was already a chunin when shit hit the fan, and although I know he's already a formidable shinobi with huge chakra reserves and many jutsu under his sleeves, he's still my silly oldest brother and I wish I could do more to keep him safe. Asuma, much like myself, has been going around the village with his team doing D ranks, but Konoha isn't really small and usually I only get to see him at night.

"Tooru-nii, let's have a pyjama party today." I state with cheeks slightly sore from smiling so much. My brother, bless his heart, only raises an eyebrow and grins, immediately agreeing with me.

"Of course, Peanut. Now off to the bath you go!" I giggle, the action somewhat foreign in all these weeks of worrying.

"Tooru-nii, I love you." The teen stills on his way back to the kitchen, and I nearly kick myself for ruining the lighthearted mood. The words, however, were just my true feelings and they stumbled out of my mouth before I even noticed.

'Maybe I should say it more often.'

The chunin turns back to me with an impossibly soft expression on his face, and something prickles at the corner of my eyes. He kneels down in front of me and gives the gentlest forehead kiss I've ever received, and it takes all of my willpower to not cry.

'...or maybe not, if it's gonna be this emotional mess every time.'

"I love you too, Chiyuki darling." He whispers, and I suddenly want to give him the world.

Dinner is a quieter affair than I'd expected. We had mostly listened to Asuma telling how his missions have been so far, and I'm relieved to hear it's been more or less the same I've been doing, minus The Kakashi Mess - which yes, it's still a work in progress, but I'm 80% confident I can do it properly.

In record time, the dishes are washed, dried and put back in their places. Asuma and I are wearing Tooru's hand me down pjs, which in mother's presence would be unthinkable, but the clothes smell just like him, something that reminds me of wet grass and firewood. Next to me, Asuma's weight is a comforting one, and cocooned in this nest of futons and pillows and comforting smells and familiar iron signatures, I feel home. Both my brothers' chakra wrap around me and cut off the heavy web of our parents, and I snuggle closer to the eight year old beside me.

Tooru lies down next to me and drapes his lanky teenage arm to cover me and Asuma. I sigh, feeling truly content and safe for the first time in what feels too long, and fall asleep.

.

.

"...and that means you don't need to limit yourself to iron cuffs. If you can mold iron on any piece of skin and throw it then it might be a good idea to start molding kunai and short blades."

I hum, mind going back to the iron club blueprint hidden in a seal on my drawer, courtesy of Kakashi.

'I'd kinda given up on the idea, but here's some food for thought.'

Honestly speaking, it wasn't like the idea of molding more than iron cuffs didn't go through my head. I'd dreamed of even molding katanas and the like, sprouting then from my skin as easily as I did the cuffs, but between The Kakashi Mess, the attack on the outpost, and finding out there's a traitor so close to home, I hadn't had neither the time nor the will to experiment on new techniques.

Hearing a second opinion from someone like Minato is, at the very least, enlightening. He isn't a genius because he's mastered kage-level techniques when he was a teen, no. He's honestly the best for theorising jutsu and coming up with new stuff because he thinks outside the box. The future Yondaime looks at jutsu and sealing scrolls and thinks about how he can improve those, how he can accommodate them to his needs and chakra. He's already messing with complex jutsu like the fucking Hiraishin, mixing the Nidaime's original jutsu with his own original twist: applying seals on kunai, perhaps the most common weapon used by ninja.

Coming to ask him about suggestions for the Iron Release had been a good idea, even if I don't have fuinjutsu to back me up. His ideas are original enough that I can sit on them for weeks and still be able to come up with new things.

"But that's not all you came to talk about, is it?"

I take my time answering that and take a sip of the tea he's offered.

'This is good oolong tea. He's got good taste.'

The plate with snacks has already been filled up twice, and I'm honestly don't have enough energy to be embarrassed by my lack of stamina anymore. Notebooks and scrolls are an organized mess around the table, diagrams and equations a puzzle I thought I'd never see outside the academy.

'I'm sorry for thinking they were useless, academy sensei.'

It's not that I'm afraid of Minato or anything like that. I admit I'm a bit cautious of what kind of hokage he might become, but then again he's ultimately a product of his time: someone who grew up in the frontlines too young, too fast. When the war ended and he became Yondaime, he dealt with the aftermath in the only way he'd known how, even if he himself had realized it wasn't the best course of action.

Minato had earned the other villages' pseudo respect by instilling fear of his raw power, which in turn led to grudges that piled up on top of old wounds. It was no wonder father had struggled to maintain the fragile peace after the Kyuubi's attack.

(The monster tries to yell something at me, but it comes out muffled. There's something linked to the Sandaime's second reign that's important, but I can't make sense of it. It goes by ignored, as I've learnt to act around it.)

The funny thing is that the gurgling monster shows no sign of suspicion around Minato, and that actually says a lot. The boiling thing is a paranoid little shit, hissing at everything and everyone that raises the slightest bit of suspicion, but it's remained silent so far.

And this is why I'd come to Minato for this.

"Well, yes. I did want to talk about the Iron Release, but I also wanted to know if you know anything about coding."

He nods, still not buying the whole story, but going along with it for now. I get the urge to lick my lips, but stop myself - there are ANBU nearby, only two from the hum of their iron, but even though they're far enough it doesn't mean they don't have other means to watch and hear us. I can't afford to show any signs of nervousness, not when I don't know on whose order the ANBU are operating on.

'This is going to be trickier than I'd thought.'

"Your team is in cryptography now, hm? Came across something interesting yet?" The blonde man asks as I rest my cheek on my hand and grab a - seemingly - random paper to scribble on.

The truth is that I actually practiced this last night. Twice.

"Kind of. We're learning the standard Konoha code but we've also been told to come up with our own. Genma's been whining about it for the last week."

As I speak, I cautiously switch between circling words on the paper and tapping on it with the eraser on the tip. I wrote the words earlier in the conversation, back when we were still talking about the Iron Release, but this particular piece of text was something I'd written two days ago and have been memorizing since. At first glance, it blended in with the rest of the scattered notes well enough. Words like spy and code were written on it because it had been a conversation topic I'd brought up, but I couldn't risk writing all my suspicions on a piece of paper.

Minato's blue eyes sharpen the moment he recognizes I'm trying to pass an unspoken message. There's nothing in his outward appearance that says so, but being face to face with only a small table between us allow me to see the exact moment his gaze goes from hesitant-curious to sharp-focus. It's a subtle little thing that makes his pupil dilate the slightest bit, and I thank every deity out there that put this man on my path.

'It was the right decision.'

(And the monster keeps silent.)

Between the circled keywords and the tapping that had been a poor version of the standard Konoha code, Minato had - thankfully - already figured it out. He'd been there, during the attack on the outpost, so it was one less thing to try to fit into code.

'Possibility. Spy. Reason. Iron. Attempt. Approach. Possibility. Connection. Outpost.'

There was nothing to link one word to another, no concept of date, no names, and to any other person sans Kakashi it might have made zero sense, but Minato understood. He not only immediately focused on the words I was circling but also paid attention to the tapping pattern, mixing the two in his head and getting the result I'd wanted.

"Oh? Well, he does look the type to find such things troublesome. Have you guys come up with anything yet?"

'Meaning: have you found anything yet?'

"There have been attempts, yes, but they've mostly been in my head and I haven't talked to the boys about it."

'I have my suspicions, but my team doesn't know anything.'

"Mhmm, I see. Have you asked for help from anyone else? I might not be suited for codes, y'know."

'Did you talk to anyone else? Why did you come to me?'

I shrug, trying to keep the casual atmosphere. I grab a cracker to munch on, but don't actually feel the taste. Minato's body language tells teasing-curious, but his blue eyes still hold that intense look. I make sure to keep my body relaxed throughout the conversation.

"Honestly, you were the first one that popped into my head." I reply sincerely, and he looks taken back for a total of 0.5 seconds. "I don't know whether you actually know a lot about cryptography or not, but I know you're smart, and I like the way you think."

'You were my first choice from the start. I trust you.'

For a moment he regards me with the same face, probably trying to read my true intentions and whether I'm being serious or not. I haven't lied though, not about a single thing, and Minato is a smart cookie.

His young face breaks out into a grin, and although there's mostly pride and satisfaction in it, there's also the shadow of something inherently dangerous, a sharp edge to it that promises pain and suffering to the one behind it all.

'Hello, deities. It's me again, ya girl Chiyuki. I'd like to thank you once again for putting this man in my path. And on my side.'

"Now that you mention it, I do have a scroll somewhere that might be of help to you. Why don't you come by again in two days and we'll go from there?"

I smile, trying not to show the sheer relief I'm feeling, but it's hard. Minato was my first choice, yes, and I knew he'd most likely listen to what I had to say, but it was all a gamble in the end. I didn't know if he'd understand the odd - and frankly confusing - message, if he'd believe me, if he'd consider me a traitor, or a spy.

'Thank you, deities. Bless.'

"Sure, that sounds good. Are you sure you should be spending time with someone from another team? Obito's gonna get jealous."

I breathe easier. I grab another cracker and this time I do feel the saltiness and light taste of butter. Minato's grin shifts minutely, the vicious edge gone. He's back to the goofy blonde in his late teens who has fun teasing his students, and my smile widens.

"He's too busy doing work for the Genin Corps for that."

"Oh, so that's their rotation this month. When do you think Kakashi and Obito will tire of doing manual labor?"

"Rin's been keeping them in check, but I've seen her close to losing her temper a couple of times already. I'm giving them another two days before someone snaps."

I snort, reaching for another cracker when the biggest and most peculiar hum of iron enters my range. It's a bit like the Inuzuka's, but not quite; although this person's blood does flow a tad faster than average, rather than being born like this, it seems as if this person's was made to do so. The iron is so abundant it practically purrs the closer the person gets, which is strange, someone with high levels of iron could have some sort of blood-related disease or an abnormal offset mechanism-

I choke on my own breath and suddenly feel dizzy. I'm barely aware I'm somehow touching the floor, when I'd been sitting on a chair two seconds ago. The iron that had been purring now roars so loudly it rings in my ears, making a headache bloom in my head and bile to rise up my throat.

'Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.'

The headache won't go away no matter how much I force chakra into the seal in my forehead. The roaring only gets louder and hearing a frantic Minato is impossible.

'C'mon, you stupid thing. I feed so much food to you. You have to work. You gotta work. Please. Please.'

The person is now at the door and the roaring turns to thunder, a constant chaos of noise and yelling and my head hurts, please, please-

The door opens and a worried-looking Uzumaki Kushina bursts into the apartment.

The gurgling monster opens its arms, as if to hug me. It promises sweet, pain-free silence, and I fall into it.

.

.

Perhaps the only bright side about facing house arrest and strict orders to absolutely not mold chakra is that I had plenty of time to meditate and calm my mind before facing Kakashi.

The good news is that I was physically fine, and had only slept for one day. The bad news is that I was forbidden from leaving the house, and under no circumstances could I mold chakra. Apparently, I managed to fuck up the seal on my forehead, the one designed by my mother to keep my yin and yang chakra balanced. Cutting the explanation short, the Kyuubi has a lot of fucking everything - chakra, height, weight, raw power, blood - which, coupled with my unique way of sensing, made my chakra panic and my brain push more chakra into the seal.

It'd simply been a bad combination of even worse circumstances, in the end.

If I didn't have the Iron Release, if I hadn't panicked, if I weren't in Minato's apartment, if Kushina hadn't come, if, if, if.

As bitter as I am, even I know there were too many things outside of my control in that situation.

"You look as if you've eaten a lemon." Is how Kakashi unceremoniously announces his presence, quietly coming into my room and closing the door after him.

He looks a lot better. He's not quite all the way there, but he's getting close, and I'm proud of us both for listening to the advice Mayu had to offer, no matter how uncomfortable that made us.

"Hey, if life gives you lemons, make a lemonade and all that." I say while I scoot over on the bed, giving him enough space to climb in after me. Kakashi has never been a touchy-feely person, but Mayu and Haruki had been very clear when they'd told me words don't matter as much in canine dynamics. Body language, smell, nudges and touches are most commonly used to communicate, which is why I was glad I'd the time to meditate.

The boy gives me a very unimpressed stare and nimbly sits beside me on the bed, close enough for our arms to touch. Neither the thick material of my hoodie nor the special cotton of his shirt are hindrances to the way our chakras naturally call out to each other, talking and soothing one another in a wordless language completely unique to this world.

I only recently learned about this. Apparently, chakras caressing one another is a thing between shinobi who are close. Tooru does this all the time when he's home, as do my parents and my aunt. Asuma's just learned about this as well, and boy, now all this chakra embedded in my house makes sense. It's just that my brothers' is so much comforting than my parents'.

"How long until they fix it?" He asks, lightning chakra stroking my own odd one in a surprisingly smooth way, the result of many years of unconscious chakra blanketing. It's a sensation I can't quite put into words - very pleasant and calming, yes, but difficult to explain. It's as if someone projects their chakra into a bubble around themselves, and when it touches someone else's bubbles, they sluggishly blend into each other, like waters from different rivers mixing.

"Mother thinks they'll get it done by tomorrow evening, but Minato-sensei isn't that optimistic. They're having trouble mixing Kushina-san's sealing with mother's. I'd give it another three days or so." Kakashi's lightning chakra touches my own in an almost-tickle, buzzing and droning in a song of its own. I'd asked him what my chakra felt like, but he had only shrugged and said it felt like a cozy blanket.

"Mhmm." I rest my head on his bony shoulder and the boy shifts minutely so we can both fit better against each other. He lays his head on top of mine and I relax further. I take his hum as the cue to keep on talking it is.

"Mother's and Kushina-san's seals are both ready, but they don't know how to blend the stabilizing part and the pet alarm one." Kakashi chortles out a snort, surprised by my choice of words, but it comes out as a wheezing cough. I brush my chakra a tad slower against his.

The truth is that the three of them - Minato, Kushina, and mother - had been at it since this morning. I had rendered my seal nearly useless, so it was time to design a new one, but they also have to consider the bijuu now that I have such a sensitive sensing technique. It's tricky work; mother'd had to design a new seal from scratch, taking into account how I might rely on it again in a pinch against tailed beasts. Kushina had helpfully designed a seal that would tune down bijuu chakra as much as possible, but blending the two into one smooth seal was hard work, even with Minato helping. If Jiraya were here, it might have gone a bit quicker, but I wasn't really looking forward to getting a new tattoo forehead.

"They're gonna have to take out the one you have on." The boy states, and I let myself feel hesitant for a second before his chakra is brushing against mine, whirring and buzzing a different song than before.

"Yeah. I'm not too excited about that." The seal my mother'd designed when I was a baby was still keeping my yin and yang chakra balanced, and I wasn't even upset that all my hard work throughout these years was basically going to disappear. I had managed to slowly put in chakra in the seal so that the yin and yang parts were nearly balanced, but even though it was snail-like work, it had only been difficult in the beginning, when I didn't know what the correct influx of chakra was or the speed.

A new seal meant relearning that process all over again. It also meant that I'd be seal-less for a while, no matter how short, and there was no doubt the headaches would come back full force. I didn't even know if the raging monster would have enough strength to push through the fog without a seal to stop it. There was also my stamina, and how long I'd be able to last without something to filter how fast the food I consume gets processed and if my chakra would start to tickle to a seal that no longer exists to fill the gap once there's no energy to borrow from body fat or protein muscles.

Kakashi's chakra starts to buzz in a fucking symphony, and my head shuts up.

'There's no use in worrying about that now, is there?'

"It's going to be fine." He intertwines his pinky with mine, and the action is so sweet I feel like squealing. The silver-haired boy says nothing else after that, but the way his chakra thrums all around me speaks volumes. He's worried, yes; but he truly believes it'll be alright, and I believe him.

After a while he shifts in his position, and I lift my head to look at him. There's a bit of a nervous energy to him, something excited yet anxious, but I don't say anything and let him choose when he wants to speak.

Mayu had said I needed to stop being his alpha. It wasn't healthy in the long run, and there was the fact that I was very obviously not part of canine dynamics. Kakashi and I wouldn't get married, we'd both been very clear on that, so I had no reason to play a role I was not fit for. It was a slow process, and the key to it was just letting Kakashi live through his own pace instead of steamrolling it like I'd been doing. He needed to let me go while searching for a pack of his own, and when Haruki had mentioned some stray puppies, my mind had immediately gone to his dogs from Before. Would they be the same? Had he gotten them this early on? Would it change anything?

"I brought something that might cheer you up." He begins quietly, chakra brushing almost submissively against mine, looking for permission. I don't change the way mine touches his, neither approving nor disapproving, and after a while he speaks again, chakra going back to the soothing buzz it was. "Don't tell your mother."

"I won't." I promise, and he takes a scroll out of his pocket. A stab of jealousy hits me in the chest, because Kakashi is already so much better at fuinjutsu than I'll ever be, but I viciously crush it down.

'We can't all win all the time, Sarutobi. It doesn't work like that. Besides, Kakashi is a true genius. We just have some cheats.'

He pauses, clearly wondering what was with that, but my chakra washes over his in what I hope is a warm, spring day. He does what is the chakra equivalent of a shrug, the buzzing wobbling for a second, before he pulls his mask down and bites on his thumb. Swiftly he brushes the blood over the scribbles, and then smoke fills the room for a moment, then-

"Hey, boss."

There are eight puppies in my bed, ranging from ridiculously small to exasperatedly large, in all colors and shapes. They're all looking between me and Kakashi, tails wagging excitedly.

'I'm in heaven. Deities, thank you.'

I barely restrain myself from crushing the closest one in a hug, my mind going to the gutter for one second because there are eight fucking puppies in my bed and I'm gonna steal all of them-

Kakashi flicks me with his chakra, a quick zap of lightning that barely pinches me, but it's enough to bring me back to the present and to the very curious gaze of the ninken.

'What does that tell about you, Sarutobi? You just got distracted over dogs and you're not even ashamed.'

"Guys, this is Chiyuki." The boy speaks after a second of silence, and I feel the dogs judging me. "She's my sister."

My chest swells with so many emotions it's hard to not throw myself on him. There's joy, relief, hope, love, all in one bundle of intense feelings for a single word. Kakashi had just introduced me to his ninken as his sister. I feel like crying. It's basically 'I love you' in Kakashi language and I'm just a bit overwhelmed, nuzzling and caressing his chakra with renewed vigor.

'Boy, oh boy. We sure have been in a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, huh.'

"Chiyuki, these are Pakkun, Bull, Shiba, Urushi, Bisuke, Akino, Uhei and Guruko. My pack."

I'm smiling so wide my cheeks hurt. There's a warm feeling in my chest that refuses to go away, and I bask in this feeling of pure and unadulterated happiness.

"Hi. Nice to meet you guys. Please treat me well."

They all take turns sniffing and licking me, and even Bull who's already huge for a puppy is very gentle with me. Pakkun is the only one who speaks and seems content to lie on my chest while I clean the folds in his face with a tissue and babble sweet nothings to the ninken. Urushi and Shiba make themselves comfortable at the end of the bed, while Bull likes to think he's a lap dog and sprawls over Kakashi's chest. Bisuke decides that his boss' head is a nice place for a nap, funnily enough, and Akino lies down touching my right leg. Uhei goes to sleep with his head on my stomach, and Guruko manages to find a cozy spot between Kakashi's legs.

I'm not sure how long we stay like that. We might all have taken a nap. By the time I'm conscious again, there's a hum of iron followed by two others that make me smile and my chest to feel even warmer. Quickly finding their way into the compound, Minato, Rin, and Obito find us like that, half-asleep and buried under dogs.

"Ah! Kakashi, you bastard! How come you already got summons?!"

"Obito, please, not so loud, we're in Hokage-sama's house."

"Hey there, kids! I'm glad you're doing well."

Kakashi's chakra hisses quietly, but Pakkun grumbles something under his breath and the boy relaxes once again. I feel the ninkens' chakra gliding easily over his, and they all seem to inch closer, if that's even possible. I grin at the newcomers, feeling utterly content in the warm glow of safety and comfort.

'Yeah. Me too.'

.

.