"Hey Toshio..." Itachi began carefully while he walked next to me. "Wh-"

"Yes Heichou?" I let him just start to speak before cutting him off sharply, on the opposite side of Itachi Sasuke poorly hid a snigger.

The older boy's mild expression cracked a little with a combination of annoyance and amusement. "Do you have to call me that?"

"Yes Heichou!" I barked. This time Sasuke laughed out loud glad to have a new way to pass the time, we had used tree-hopping to cover a fair amount of distance since leaving Konoha but 'heichou' had made us stop and walk for a bit to let me and Sasuke get our wind back.

Now looking slightly pained by my japes Itachi tried again. "Very well, why do you have to call me that?"

I'll admit it was a little cathartic to be able to mess with him like that, it was very unfair to him but it's like when you confront a former bully you lived in constant fear of years ago only to realise that they're a real person and have grown up to be relatively normal with a lower paying job, but without the vindictive joy of course.

"Well Heichou my dad said I'm to treat this like a proper mission and you as the team leader." I explained in a deliberately stiff tone of voice. "I use the title out of the greatest respect for you….Heichou."

"I'm sure." He replied dryly. "So in that case you are going to follow my orders?" He seemed to be hoping against hope that I might actually cooperate but I expertly brought him back to Earth(?) with a shit-eating grin snorted and managed to say 'selective hearing Heich-' before breaking down and catching the giggles from Sasuke.

Itachi tilted his head back for a moment in what seemed to be exasperation but the contented smile he wore told a different story.

Idly he planted a hand on my head and took his small piece of revenge for my teasing, along with this world's tendency to thumb it's nose at the laws of physics as I had known them there seemed to be a special law of attraction that drew anyone over a head taller than me to ruffle my hair, some like Itachi now and more often Shisui did it to irritate me, far too many said it was because I looked...ugh cute with my already wild locks in further disarray. Thinking about it I suppose I got a fair bit of that Before but then the list of people tall enough to do it had been pretty damn small by the time I hit my teens first time around let alone after that.

Annoyingly unaffected by my best death stare Itachi urged us forward. "You sound like you've rested more than enough, shall we move along?"

"Yeah!" Me and Sasuke chimed enthusiastically as we took off, we weren't in any real hurry to reach our destination but Itachi was still setting a slower pace than I would have liked if only because tree-hopping is actually the most fun ever and going at 'unreasonable' speed definitely makes it even better.

Pinging off of a branch I passed Sasuke and cheekily quipped at him. "On your left." Following close behind Sasuke made an incoherent angry noise and picked up the pace, while I laughed out loud I wasn't crazy enough to go any faster just to one-up this kid, unless he dared me of course.

The two of us continued to race through the trees without quite going into plaid while Itachi hung back. On a particularly long jump I took a quick glance back and saw him effortlessly pacing us, if he wanted to catch up he could do it in seconds but he was obviously content to let us run ahead.

Looking ahead I saw that the trees were thinning out before opening up into an empty plain, seeing the finish line was close the two of us put on even more speed. Problem was being a pair of competitive brats we were too focused on winning to pay attention to the fact that approaching the edge of the forest meant we were hopping off of younger trees with thinner branches, while my luck held out Sasuke's didn't.

Sasuke was trying to get ahead of me and was visible in the corner of my eye when a branch bent under his weight dropping his feet out from under him. Carried past him by my momentum I idiotically twisted to look and tripped sending me scrambling for footing. By now I was properly panicking, I was trying to focus on not wiping out and not on the fact that Sasuke might have just broken his neck over our dumb rivalry. Suddenly an arm grabbed me around the waist and everything blurred for a moment. When my brain caught up I found myself on the ground slung securely under Itachi's arm, twisting around I saw that I wasn't the only being carried like a sack of potatoes.

"Sasuke!" I cried out in relief and wriggled loose, running around Itachi I looked him over for any injuries and….the little shit was laughing his head off. "I guess this means you win Toshio." He said brightly still smiling like it was all a big joke until he noticed Itachi didn't look happy and that I was outright smouldering. "What? What is it?"

Itachi was just opening his mouth when I blew up. "You idiot! That wasn't funny! You could've been hurt even...even.." I stuttered and left the remainder of that sentence unsaid. "Itachi won't be there to catch you forever." I said in a lower tone and picked a direction to storm off in.

Getting myself a short distance away I stopped and stared at some random spot on the horizon trying to work out why I had just exploded on my friend like that. Something about the near spill had brought up things I was trying to ignore, maybe I'd died and ended up here for some similarly stupid reason and repressed the memory out of embarrassment. Death had been something I had managed to keep at arms length, even having the only two grandparents that survived long enough for me to form coherent memories of die didn't really affect me deeply and maybe I'd tried to get back to that place after having the reality of my own mortality waved in my face. In a lot of ways my new upbringing in this world reinforced that, death was obviously a part of the shinobi lifestyle even more than for the average person but while me and Sasuke had heard of the occasional clan member being killed we hadn't yet faced up to it properly.

Hearing movement next to me I saw that Itachi had sat down on the ground next to me leaving Sasuke shuffling his feet in the dirt just out of earshot, here I was contemplating my view of life and death and my murderer to be had to make a concentrated effort not to sneak up on me. How did I manage to keep from freaking out every time he was near me again?

"Toshio." He said simply, his expression unreadable. "What was that?" Itachi was someone I often found difficult to get a bead on, something about his demeanour made him seem slightly disconnected socially probably to do with his managing to cram years of training into just one and graduate alongside students significantly older than he was.

"I don't...it's not right, Sasuke could've been hurt, I could've broken my neck and he just thinks it's one big joke." Restlessly I paced a little. "But of course we're just children aren't we? It's supposed to be all sunshine and rainbows until we get thrown into the big wide world, we're not meant to pay attention to what you're actually doing whenever you or my brother are off "fulfilling your duty to the clan" but we're already being taught to kill aren't we?" My voice rose as the contradictions of this society piled on top of the intermingled layers I had built up around my own identity.

I kept trying to submerge myself in the role of the child ignorant of the world's true brutality with rationalisations that I was trying not to draw attention to myself and that it wasn't the right time to use my knowledge yet but no matter how much sense that made the man I had been kept prodding me and reminding me of what was to come while pointing at the ticking clock and all the while these two sides pulled in different directions I found my parents each egging their favoured side on. While my father pushed me towards learning to fight and mum wanted to keep me as far away as possible from the battlefields that had forced my brother to grow up so quickly.

Most of the time I could keep up my façade but incidents like this always kicked things off again and of course no matter how well intentioned the people I had come to call family were I couldn't tell them anything, the closest I could get to talking through my personal contradictions was by applying them to society as a whole.

Itachi looked into my eyes for a few moments then stared off into the distance. "You already know something of what you'll face as a ninja don't you?" He glanced at me as I sat beside him and nodded while hugging my knees. "I was even younger than you are now when my father showed me the reality of this way of life." His voice hardened with determination. "That was also when I decided I would change this world."

Lifting my head I stared at Itachi, I realised that I'd been so focused on the character of Itachi as the tragic martyr and my own potential murderer that I hadn't thought about his own hopes and dreams that he had given up or would give up to protect the village and to protect Sasuke.

It was humbling to think that while I with the benefit of an extra couple of decades of life experience was having a freak out while this child sitting beside me could not only come to terms with what he would have to do but had decided to find a way to help everyone else while he was at it. If he could go that far surely I could do what was necessary for the sake of myself and those I cared for. Closing my eyes I exhaled and looked back to Itachi feeling calmer now. "Well in that case I can't hold you up here." I got my feet under me and sprang upright. "Let's go."

Seeing that I had stopped moping Sasuke dropped a stick he had been scratching in the dirt with and came over with a hopeful look on his face. "Hey..." He said cautiously until I smiled back disarmingly. "Hey Sasuke...umm...I'm sorry for yelling and everything." I said while awkwardly fiddling with my ear. "Still thanks to Itachi I'm good to go again!"

Tilting his head curiously Sasuke looked between the two of us. "What did you talk about?" I simply exchanged a look with Itachi and smirked. "It's a secret!"

"Aww come on!" He protested and rounded on his brother instead. "Come on nii-san tell me." Itachi beckoned him to come closer as if to whisper in his ear and poked his forehead when he fell for it as he always did. "Sorry Sasuke, maybe some other time." Thankfully I'd caught on to what Itachi was doing and had time to suppress a wince at the familiar gesture while Sasuke pouted and rubbed his forehead.

Taking the lead Itachi took a quick look at the sky. "We should get going if we want to be there before it gets late, come on." He took off at a relatively relaxed run and after a moment Sasuke followed leaving me bringing up the rear, if Itachi couldn't be there to watch his back the whole time then I'd pick up the slack whenever I could.

Author Notes: Yeah so I'm still here and all that, I could make excuses for why this took so ruddy long but to be straight with you all I'm not what you would call a speedy writer even when I am feeling motivated. Even churning out a couple of paragraphs for a roleplaying post in a single evening is quite the achievement for me, still guess I'm the kind of nutjob that likes Sisyphean tasks even on top of feeling a little ashamed when over writers apologise for not updating in over a fortnight.

Anyway enough feeling sorry for myself so I'd like to apologise to everyone for not getting any cats in this chapter, things spiralled out of control again and at one point when I was psyching myself up for it my actual cat died which sucked though the little bastard had a good run and spent the entire time leaving white hair on my trousers.

Feel free to shower me with favs, follows and reviews, actually on the subject of critique I would like to ask people's opinion on the dialogue, see I've been deliberately trying to keep Toshio's speech relatively simple to reflect that he is not speaking English here and that I am a terrible mono-linguist (I'd say I might not be completely lost in German but honestly even saying that is probably more to make me feel a tiny bit better about myself) but I'm a little worried that it comes off as a bit dumbed down or something.

Anywho the final thing I'd like to say is thank you to everybody who faved, followed or reviewed, I appreciate all of them of course but that moment where a notification pops up even after I've been ghosting for months really puts a stupid smile on my face.

P.S. Caturday next time promise!