Prelude

Of the many ways that Koga Chunin Nagase Kaede might have chosen to spend what should have been a pleasant weekend in October, fighting in what they were already calling the Fourth Shinobi World War, against a ridiculously large number of clones and the reincarnated forms of history's most powerful ninja, had to be right down there with having a root canal. Admittedly, since Kaede had never had a root canal, she had no real basis for comparison, but she was reasonably sure that it would be at least as horrific as what she'd gone through over the last two days. For one thing, Kaede believed that the odds were against one actually dying during a root canal.

She was honestly amazed that she was still alive. Kaede believed in rigorous self-honesty, and though she was quite talented for a thirteen year-old girl, she was not even close to being a peer of the very powerful ninja who were her supposed comrades in arms. She supposed that was the consequence of living only part of the time in the shadowy underworld of the ninja, and the rest of the time in the ordinary world of a middle school girl. (Even beyond the disparity in power levels, during the few moments of quiet she'd been able to find in this tumult, she'd realized that she had very little to talk about with her fellows; their life experiences were too different from hers for conversation to bridge the gap.) Yet she had survived the first day of battle, which had halved the Allied Forces, and gotten through the following night alive as well.

Either the world is more random and chaotic than I ever suspected, she'd thought as she accompanied the First Division in battle against the reincarnated forms of the Third Raikage and Second Mizukage, or I am being saved for something truly horrific. Which would be worse?

The strangest part, she decided a little while later, had to be the fact that the outside world would never learn of any of this. Battles beyond imagination were being waged out of sight of the citizens under the sun, and they would think of it as no more than some kids playing with fire crackers and making a lot of smoke and noise. Or rather, they would never learn of it if the Allied Forces won. If Akatsuki achieved its goals - whatever they were; Kaede had not really been briefed about such things, beyond the truly quite inspiring speech that she'd heard the Fifth Kazekage give the other day - then things would become truly very different for Japan and, quite plausibly, the rest of the world as well.

In her ordinary life, Kaede was the (somewhat) reluctant mentor to a pair of mildly psychopathic twin girls who had dreams of being a ninja like the ones they read about in stories. She found the thought of them being exposed to the harsh realities of that world to be a sufficient motivation to prevent it from ever happening.

So she fought on and on and on.

"Has it truly been only a single day and night?" she asked at one point.

"Yes, it has," the elder she was presently partnered with confirmed.

"It seems nigh impossible that it should be so, Hiashi-dono," she said wearily. "More like four years, surely."

The elder chuckled, amazingly. "No, only a single day and night, and now most of another day, Kaede-kun. But one can well understand your confusion in the matter." Hyuuga Hiashi sobered. "Shouldn't your parents be here, instead of you?"

Kaede flushed. "One's parents have ... well ... abandoned the way of the shinobi."

"Ah," he said. She thought (perhaps hoped) that the humiliating aspects of this conversation were at an end. Alas. He continued to disconcert her. "Perhaps when this is all over, my daughters will be able to live your sort of life. It has its advantages."

She had no idea what to say to that. She had no real idea how she was supposed to address a family head beyond the formality that her grandparents had drilled into her. Abruptly, she found herself wishing that they, dead these past three years and (thankfully) never of sufficient note to be reincarnated, were here to guide her. Not that it mattered, as a bunch of clones burst out of nowhere to attack them and there was no more time for talking.

Later ... much later, Kaede found herself regaining consciousness in the early morning light. "Is it over, yet?" she asked blearily.

"I think so," said her grandfather, staring off into the difference. "Those two boys from Konoha have finally stopped fighting."

"Good," she said, sitting up. "I am probably going to have to call in sick today."

"Tsk!" said her grandmother, preparing some tea beside her. "I can't approve of that, but, well, you're probably right."

"Thank you," said Kaede, accepting the cup. She paused. "There are aspects of this conversation which are rather disturbing," she added. "I shall have to reflect on them. Later."

All across the battle fields of the Fourth Shinobi World War, it was much the same, as people awakened from the dream world of Infinite Tsukuyomi to find themselves among their friends and family who had been lost in recent years, now miraculously and inexplicably restored to youth and health. One would have expected this to be a source of great joy, and it was. One would also, if one were a cynic, also expect the joy to be short lived, as it occurred to everyone that - given that very few shinobi ever died in bed - the foes which had been responsible for those deaths were also now alive once more. But the joy of peace kept such thoughts at bay.

For a whole week.

At this time, we must reveal that there will be no explanation for this mysterious resurrection and rejuvenation. There will be no complicated and contorted description of the mystical forces which caused it, no dramatic and terrifying reveals of the price tag attached to this miracle, no deep and profound explication of the nature of the soul and the beauty of its transience. It just happened. Deal with it.

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
Chapter One

A few months later, in the Welsh Republic

"Blah blah blah, blah blah, blah blah blah blah. Negi Springfield!" announced the Magus. The ten year old Negi, smiling as always, approached his mentor and accepted the magical diploma which would indicate his post-graduate assignment, with the appropriate humility of his station.

"Blah blah fortune telling!" announced his childhood friend Anya, who was never going to be all that important to the story, when she approached him after the end of the ceremony.

"What assignment did you receive, Negi?" asked his lovely older sister/cousin Nekane, who would also never be important, but was saying something about our protagonist and so should have greater attention paid to her.

Negi rolled open the diploma and watched as golden letters appeared proclaiming that he would be assigned to be a teacher at a girl's school in Japan.

"Objection!" objected Anya.

"Ohhhhhh!" declared Nekane, just before she, like fragile women should when subjected to shocks, fainted.

"What must be, must be," declared the Magus when these sentiments were expressed to him. "I, of course, have no power to direct the spirits of the graduation ceremony whatsoever," he explained as he stroked his long white beard, then let out a long, evil sounding cackle for no readily apparent reason.

Hoping that the Magus wasn't developing some sort of personal eccentricity, Negi cleared his throat. "I will fulfill the charge assigned to me by the diploma. I will become a teacher, and so demonstrate my worthiness to become a Magister Magi like my father!"

"Well spoken, Negi-kun!" said the Magus, while Nekane fainted again.

"Eh?" said Negi.

"Is something the matter, Negi-kun?" the white-bearded elder asked, stroking his beard again. "Can it be that you doubt that I have no power to direct the spirits of the graduation ceremony whatsoever?" And again, he let out a long, evil sounding cackle.

"No, no, I ... why are you calling me Negi-kun, though? We're in Wales. Why would you be using Japanese honorifics?"

"Perhaps it is bleedthrough from your memories of language instruction," speculated the Magus.

"But that hasn't happened ye- wait, then how do I -"

And then Negi woke up. "My goodness," he said, under the sound of the captain announcing that his airplane was beginning its descent towards Narita International Airport. "What a strange dream." It had been such an odd and distorted memory of the graduation ceremony, combined with his vague memory of having seen the Magus indulging in that newly-developed eccentricity shortly after their conversation. He wasn't sure what to make of any of it. It was probably best, though, to just treat it as nothing more than a dream.

After all, if you couldn't trust the authorities, who could you trust?

And then she woke up.

Well, to be perfectly accurate, then she was awakened when an obnoxiously nice person hooted into her ear. "Chisame-chan! Heeyyyyy, Chisame-chan! We're almost at school you know."

Conflicting impulses to (a) strangle the aforementioned obnoxiously nice person, (b) snap 'don't call me Chisame-chan' or (c) both of the above, simultaneously, briefly filled the soul of Hasegawa Chisame, age 15. All such impulses ran headlong into the impervious shield of utter fatigue which presently surrounded her brain, making her just yawn before she let her eyelids slide open.

"Are you still tired?" asked Shiina Sakurako, seated beside her on the train heading to Mahora.

The sarcastic 'No' which she might have given in response just turned into a grunt. "I've been having weird dreams lately," she said.

Rather than do anything sensible like ask how having weird dreams was supposed to result in fatigue, since you were still asleep when you were dreaming, after all, Sakurako nodded in understanding. "What kind of dreams?"

"Crappy ones," Chisame said, gaining a bit of animation after a moment of consideration. "And it always ends in such a stupid way, too! Things going to hell right after you discover proof that magic really is real!"

"Magic?" Sakurako said, making a vague attempt to join Chisame's conversation.

"I mean, not that I want magic to be real or anything, I'm not some kind of loser like that," Chisame continued.

"Oooookay," said Sakurako, sensing that her own immediate response ('What kind of a loser are you, then?') would not go over all that well.

"Just a really ... really ... depressing dream," Chisame concluded. Going through all that, sacrificing everything for something, doing that and not even getting a bit of happiness out of it ... what a wretched, terrible, awful ...

"Wow," said a faint, childlike voice, not too far away. "There really are a lot of people in Japan. "Lots of girls, too!"

Slowly, Chisame turned her head.

She couldn't see him. There were too many people in the way. All that she could see was the wrappings around the long, straight object which she knew, somehow, would be strapped to his back.

In the distance, she could hear unfamiliar voices talking. "What in the world is that kid doing on this train?"

"A foreigner! How cute!"

"Where are you going, little boy?"

"You do know that from here, it's the middle school, right?

Chisame's eyes stung, and she knew that yes, she was crying ... because apparently dreams could come true. And that perhaps there was a reward for giving everything up after all.

And then, with the sound of a great sneeze, a mighty wind filled the train car.

One fateful meeting later ...

"Headmaster," said Kagurazaka Asuna, dressed in a set of gym sweats and a mortification deeper than could be easily imagined. "Please, please tell me that this is all just a joke."

"... all right, it's all just a joke," said the elderly, bearded man with the strangely shaped head.

"Oh, thank good-"

"I mean, if you want me to lie to you, Asuna-kun, I can certainly do that."

"Ghglll."

"Well, Negi-kun, it seems that your assignment here has already begun to demonstrate the challenges which you will have to face," the Headmaster continued, turning his attention to the boy who stood before his desk. Then he chuckled a bit while stroking his long white beard.

"Uh ... yes," Negi said, a bit distracted by the way that this elder, too, was demonstrating the same eccentric behavior. Then again, he supposed that since the two of them were friends, it wasn't that odd for them to share a few habits. "I'm glad to be here."

"Yes, I'm sure that you are. Incidentally, should it happen that you don't yet have a girlfriend, my granddaughter, here, happens to be available and would be -" the Headmaster began to say.

"Oh, grandpa, don't be silly," said Konoe Konoka, standing beside him.

Negi decided that he must be more tired than he realized. There was no other reasonable explanation for the way that he'd just imagined Konoka-san producing a small hammer from nowhere and bringing it down on the head of the headmaster, causing him to quickly develop a bruise covered with a bandage. The bandage must simply have been there from the start, hidden by some trick of the light.

Certainly the fact that Asuna paid that episode no mind argued for its imaginary status. "Um, back to the whole issue of this little boy who's supposed to be our homeroom teacher and English instructor -"

"Indeed, let me just clarify something, Negi-kun," the headmaster said. "If you fail in this task, you will be sent home, and there will be no second chances."

"Wait, that's not what I was talking about -" said Asuna.

The headmaster ignored her. "Do you understand that, Negi-kun?"

"What about -"

"Yes, sir," Negi said, also ignoring her.

"Mrrrrgh!"

"Well, good," said the Headmaster, stoking his beard but not currently chuckling in an evil manner. "Now, for the matters involved in getting you settled in, I'm going to hand you over to my special executive assistant. Oh, Silverberg-san? Would you care to join us?"

The tall, obviously European woman with long golden blonde hair and a pair of glasses that seemed just a bit too large for her face who now entered the room did so in complete silence. She nodded in the headmaster's direction, but her eyes were firmly fixed on Negi, though she said nothing.

"This is Arika Silverberg, my executive assistant," the headmaster stated, maybe just a bit redundantly.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Negi said in English, somewhat reflexively, then shook his head quickly and added, in Japanese, "I'll be in your care."

"Yes," the woman said in that same language.

"Oh, and one more thing," the headmaster elaborated. "Konoka, Asuna-kun, would you be so kind as to let Negi-kun stay in your room for a while? We haven't yet worked out -"

"Ehhh?" Negi asked.

"Wait, what?" Asuna burst out.

"I'm good wif it," Konoka said cheerfully.

"No," said Arika.

"We haven't yet worked out his final rooming arrangements and - I'm sorry, what was that?" the headmaster said to his assistant.

"I said, no. We will not be doing that," Arika continued, shaking her head. "Kagurazaka, Konoe, would you young ladies please excuse us? I believe that the remainder of this discussion does not yet concern you."

"He's not staying with us?" Asuna asked, sounding hopeful for the first time in a while. "Then I'm happy to be on my way. Let's go, Konoka."

"Aww, come on, it'd be like having a little brother with us -" the other girl said as she was firmly led out of the office.

"What is the meaning of this?" the headmaster asked once the door closed.

"The meaning of this," she said as she reached up to remove her glasses, "is that I am done playing your little game." She turned then to look at Negi.

"My goodness," he said, startled. "What an odd coincidence, you having the same heterochromatic condition as Asuna-san."

"It is not a coincidence, Negi," she said, further startling him by employing no honorific while still speaking Japanese. "My name is Arika Anarchia Entheofushia ... and I am your mother."

"Oh," Negi said.

"Oh?" Arika repeated, a delicate eyebrow arching.

"Well ... I'm sorry, but I really have no idea how to react to this revelation. I've never ..." Negi's voice trailed off, and he started shaking his head, back and forth, slowly.

"Never wondered about your mother?" she concluded for him.

"I ... wouldn't say that I never ... but when I wondered about my father ... what happened when I did that ..." Now the boy was trembling as his head swung back and forth in an unceasing, pendulum like movement.

"Ah, yes," Arika said, nodding. "The attack on your village. Believe when I tell you, please, that I wanted nothing more than to go to your side when that occurred, and would have done so but for my continuing involvement in the schemes of wicked old men."

"I'm sitting right here, you know," the headmaster interjected. Neither of them seemed to pay him even a bit of attention, however, and he slumped back in his chair, visibly pouting.

"You're my mother," Negi said, his trembling now strong enough to disrupt his head shaking, so that he simply stared at her.

"You are the child who grew under my heart," Arika answered, with a simple nod.

Abruptly, any trace of the decorum drilled into him at the wizard academy and the university afterwards departed the young boy, and he ran at her, crying out, "Mommy, mommy!" as he flung himself into her open arms, to be crushed against her ample bosom as he descended into sobs.

Now, Arika turned her steely gaze on the headmaster. "He will stay with me," she said.

"I believe that we can at least temporarily accommodate that request," the old man said easily.

"That was not a request."

He ignored that. "Let us discuss the matter in greater detail this evening, after he has settled in at your cabin. I suppose, under the circumstances, that today will not be the day for him to begin his career as an educator, after all."

Arika gazed at the headmaster, clearly suspicious, yet for the nonce she simply nodded, rose up, still cradling her son to her, and turned to walk out of the room.

The old man stroked his beard with an annoyed expression, then reached out to the phone on his desk, dialing a certain number.

"Sarutobi-sama," he said after a moment. "A new difficulty in the plan has presented itself. Ah. Yes ... yes, that might work. Clever, clever. And it would be the last thing either of them would expect ... yes. Indeed, let us do so."

With that, he stroked his beard and let out a deliberately evil laugh, in synch with a faint yet similar sounding evil laugh coming from the phone.

Class 2-A was not only the class which routinely came in last place in test scores - this despite having some of the highest ranking individual students in the entire academy - they were also known for being the worst behaved. Teachers had not only quit teaching them due to stress or having other pressing duties, they had simply run off into the sunset, screaming madly, never to be seen nor heard from again. (And one or two had been fired for inappropriate behavior.)

So it was that the school's guidance counsellor, Minamoto Shizuna, approached the class door with a certain amount of apprehension. On the very edge of taking hold of the door's handle, she paused, took a step back, and reached out to push the portal open with a ruler she took out of her skirt pocket. She was rewarded for her carefulness by the sight of an eraser dropping down in front of her to hit the ground.

"Very amusing, girls," she announced. "Now, would someone be so kind as to disarm the rest of the traps set up to assail your new teacher? There's been some development on that front. I will generously close my eyes for a count of ten so that I don't see who does so."

She proceeded to close her eyes, count to ten in binary, and then open them.

"Ah, of course, it would be you, Fuuka and Fumika," she declared.

Fumika, of course, froze in mid-disarmament of a bucket trap, causing it to drop on her head. Her twin sister, Fuuka, had finished removing the trap she was working on a few seconds before that, and so was better positioned to turn to look at Shizuna-sensei with an appalled expression. "Sensei! You lied to us! What sort of example are you setting for us delicate flower-like girls by telling such blatant untruths as that! I weep for the future of Japan! I really, really weep!"

"Yes, I'm sure that you do," Shizuna-sensei agreed as she walked into the class, avoiding the unset traps as she headed for the podium. "You can do so in detention, after school. Moving forward," she said over Fumika's groan. "As I'm sure you're all aware, you were supposed to be getting a new homeroom teacher today. However, there's been some ... delays, and so he won't be joining you until tomorrow. Probably," she admitted. "Likewise, your new English teacher is also delayed, so ... against my better judgement ... you may have that period as independent study, today. Please be good. Please, please, please, be good."

"What sort of delays are we talking about here?" asked Kakizaki Misa, twirling a few strands of purple hair around her finger tip with a curious expression.

"The sort of delays that aren't even remotely pertinent to you or your lives," Shizuna answered cheerfully.

This isn't how this was supposed to go, Chisame found herself thinking. He was supposed to come in, Kagurazaka was supposed to notice something weird about the way the eraser missed him ... I think ... and then ... this isn't how things were supposed to go.

"What's our new teacher like?" asked Sakurako, cheerfully.

"I didn't really get a chance to meet him, but from the sounds of things, he's a very dignified young man," Shizuna said, lying some more.

"You met him, didn't you, Asuna?" Misora started pressing.

"... you wouldn't believe me if I told you," Asuna replied, head down on her desk.

"Probably not," Konoka sounded her agreement.

"I wonder if he be strong man, like Takahata-sensei? What you think?" Ku Fei said to her usual sparring partner.

"I'm sure that he'll be a great influence, y'know!" replied the grinning red-head with the odd, fox like birthmarks on her cheeks. Soon, soon, thought Namikaze Shiori.

"Gweeeep," declared the girl who shared her seat with the tiny Evangeline A.K. McDowell, as steam began to escape from her head.

"She's having another episode," Evangeline declared wearily.

"Sorry, sorry," said Hakase Satomi as she got up to help out her creation. If only she'd had some help with some of the problems in constructing her gynoid.

Something seems ... off, Chisame thought. But what?

"This is your home?" Negi asked as he walked in through the front door of the cabin in the woods on the outskirts of Mahora, gazing up at the stairway at the end of its foyer. It was much larger than the house where he'd lived before moving into the dorms at Meridiana.

"It is where I live, and have done so for much of my time here," Arika replied in a way that was neither a confirmation nor a denial as she led him into a small dining room. "Please, have a seat," she said, sitting down on the other side of the table from him.

"Let me begin by answering the question which you have, quite manfully, struggled to avoid asking all this while," she said after a moment. "No, I do not know where your father is, nor even if -"

"He is alive," Negi interjected, speaking with quiet certainty. "I met him. He gave me this wand." His hand came up to gently carress the wooden length resting against his back.

"I believe you," Arika replied.

"Really?" Negi asked, no longer sounding quite so confident. "Whenever I told anyone about it, they -" He broke off, looking ashamed.

She held up a hand. "I suspect that when you did so - at least when you spoke of it to the Magus and to Nekane-san - you mistook confusion for disbelief, Negi. That wand is his, and they would have known it for what it was when they saw it. But they would have wondered why, if he was alive, he had not appeared to them. As do I," she admitted.

"... I don't know," the boy confessed, looking down.

"It is a mystery," she agreed. "However ... Negi, the road that your father walks is filled with perils beyond my ability to describe, and your ability to imagine. Even if he was alive then ... he may have been overcome in the years since."

Negi looked shocked ... perhaps even scandalized. "No! Who could possibly -"

"Beyond my ability to describe," Arika repeated.

"I won't believe it. Not until I know for sure."

"Good," she said. "Your proof will be worth much more than my speculation. But regardless, I know that you have sworn to become your father's equal. If he has fallen, then it falls to you to rise up and take on those burdens which he strove to bear. I am sure that you will be able to do so, however. In a completely unrelated matter," she said then, "when was the last time you had a bath?"

Arika's bath was larger than any in the students' apartments, but not by that much, so she was fairly close and tight to Negi as she stripped him down, once it became obvious he would be stalling and not actually getting himself naked as long as he had things his way. Which was a huge part of why he had been dreading this moment so much.

"No! No, please, I can do this myself!" the boy begged, trying to run free while his mother pulled his shirt off and over his head.

"Perhaps, but being able to and being willing to are radically different things," Arika said, taking a hold of his pants once his torso was bare. "Stop squirming so much, boy. It's a shame, and frankly, I expected better from you."

Negi quieted down after hearing that, as if a bucketful of icy water had just dropped on him. "A... shame? Uh, I think I understand what you're trying to convey, but... THIS IS EMBARRASSIIIIIING!" he squealed while his pants were yanked down around his ankles, exposing his Walt the Worker boxers.

"Oh, are you telling me that you aren't used to having at least one female seeing you naked? Did you always act like this whenever Nekane bathed you?"

He sniffled, his face bright pink. Actually, as of late, at least, yes, I do, he thought, but would not say. He never liked being bathed, but recently, his feelings on the topic had grown further complicated ever since the first time his body had... reacted strangely to Nekane's touch. It had terrified him, and he had tried his best to not only hide his body's treacherous and no doubt shameful reactions, but to altogether avoid the situations that provoked them. He was more or less sure Nekane had not come to suspect, much less actually realize, what had happened to him, but now there he was, again going through the very same kind of torture, and as Arika placed his underwear aside, all he could do was facing away from her, blocking his privates with his hands, and hoping for the best.

"Sit down on that stool," she said, gesturing towards the only small stool in the bathroom, next to the tub, and he obeyed silently, all the while keeping his hands on his crotch. He could listen to her undressing behind him, the soft rustling of her outer clothes, and even the tiny click of her bra upon being unfastened, and his heart only patted faster. He closed his eyes and suffered in silence. "Why are you so nervous?" she asked him, kneeling down behind her son.

"I'm not nervous!" he said, shaking his head.

She hummed, clearly disbelieving him but choosing not to push on the subject. Or so it seemed during the first few moments of washing him. "For someone who is not nervous, your muscles are awfully tense," she observed, rubbing down his shoulders.

"It was a long trip," he said, crossing his legs uncomfortably. "And I barely slept yesterday."

"Of course," she said, non-committally, as she kept cleaning him, taking the slight stench away. While that happened, Negi forced himself to think of other things. Several other things. As long as they took his mind away from what was happening right then and there.

"Now," Arika said softly, "There is also another subject I wanted to discussed with you now. I have just realized there's been a no doubt recent development with your body."

Oh, anything would have been better than this! "I... I think I know what are you talking about," he said, trying to pull back from her. "Couldn't we discuss it later?"

"What is the point of stalling? I worry about you, Negi. It's just obvious I'd want to address this situation as soon as possible." Much to his shock, she reached down and gently squeezed his private parts, making him yowl in surprise. Luckily she wasn't holding him tightly, or it'd have hurt. "Oh, I see that got the expected reaction, so I trust you do indeed know what I'm talking about."

"Wha-! Wha-! What are you -?!"

"Or perhaps not," she sighed, with two fingers on her forehead, seeing his freaked out reaction. "Very well, I will be as direct as I can. Haven't you been waking up with a new kind of hardness in what I just touched, especially when you are sleeping with Nekane?"

Negi froze on the spot.

"Negi, it is a perfectly normal development for most boys of your age," Arika explained patiently. "At least, among the magical branch of humanity, where adolescence often begins at, well, the age you are now. Nothing to get worried about."

"But... but..." Negi blabbered. "Really? I thought it was just, I don't know, some sort of stiffness. I mean, just like I often woke up with a numb arm or leg, after some exercise." (By this he meant what anyone else would probably call 'too much exercise'.) "Or when I slept on them for too long."

Arika's gaze became mildly accusing. "And you never dreamed of exotic situations involving your classmates or teachers before waking up to those sensations?"

"U-Ummm... well..." He twiddled his fingers adorably. "I don't think I can answer that question properly, since I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with most definitions of 'exotic'."

"I have noticed," she dryly observed. "That should be remedied. Lovable as your innocence is, your passage into manhood means you cannot hold on it any longer."

"Huh?" he replied cleverly.

She looked at his face and smiled. As clueless as his father, but despite that, she couldn't be mad at him. On an impulse, she gave him a small peck on the lips. He flinched slightly, but didn't protest. He had been kissed on the mouth by Nekane a few times when he was little, as a simple token of affection. So he smiled back, and she took that as a sign of encouragement to lean ahead and kiss him deeply now, closing her eyes as her tongue went into his mouth, and he stiffened in more than one sense. Her arms tightened him against her chest, and he could feel the hardened tips of her nipples against his skin.

Small bells still were ringing in his head when Arika pulled her head back, not bothering to wipe the bridge of drool linking their mouths. "Negi," she said, sounding only slightly hesitant. "What I have just given you is naught but a small fraction of the pleasures of the flesh and heart men and women can give each other. That road is one you should take eventually, but only you can decide when. I am offering you this choice now. You can reject my carnal company, and learn of this with another, at any other time you would like. Or you can lie with me, in a relationship most would spurn and condemn, and learn with the best lover either realm has produced," she added without a hint of false modesty. "I will love you regardless of your choice, but I must tell you, nothing would make me happier than becoming one with the one who is the combination of my being with that of the one I love the most. Well, Boy? What is it going to be? Yes, or no?"

Looking directly into her eyes, Negi managed to whimper a sound which not even she could take for an affirmative.

"Oh?" she said, genuinely surprised.

A few seconds provided him enough time to regain a minute fraction of his earlier poise - really a startling amount, considering the shocks he'd endured so far - and so his voice was almost steady when he continued to speak. "I ... do not think ... that I am ready ... for this yet," he said. Another pause, to swallow. "The time and place ... should be another."

"I see," she said, drawing back.

"Are, are, are you -"

"I am not angry at you," she said, patiently. "I said that I would love you regardless. And I do, and so I will respect your decision. I hope that when you choose to learn of these matters, you will choose the proper moment, and experience all the joy you so richly deserve." She smiled. "And now I will leave you to finish your bath in peace."

"Oh ... well, thank you."

"No thanks are necessary," she said as she arose from the floor. "But do be sure to clean off the soap before you enter the furo, and then enjoy a nice long soak." With those words, she walked calmly to the bathroom door, opened it, passed through the doorway, and closed it behind her.

Only when this was done did she allow the calm mask on her face to slip, to reveal a visage so utterly infuriated that it would have certainly stopped the heart of any who beheld it. She indulged herself in a few moments of contemplating the worth of wrath against all those who had kept her child from her all these years, instilling him with a false and contemptible morality more suiting serfs than one of royal birth ... then, as quickly as it had come, allowed that anger to subside.

It did not serve her purpose, now.

She performed a cantrip as she walked away from the door, inquiring as to the whereabouts of a number of persons in whom she maintained an interest. To her satisfaction, one of them was within a reasonable distance. From her pocket, she pulled a cell phone - wonderfully useful tool - and dialed the number of the cottage's land line. When the phone rang, she picked it up, made conversational noises for a few moments, then hung up.

"Negi," she said, raising her voice. "I just received a phone call of some urgency. I'm afraid that I have to go out, and may not be back until much later this evening. Will you be all right alone?"

"Yes, of course, I - unless you want me to come with you -"

"No, you should continue with your bath," she said. "It is an urgent matter, but an adult one as well. Take your time."

With that, she went and drew her long black coat out of the hallway closet, slid on her shoes and departed.

A few moments later, she was standing outside a hotel room doorway and rapping politely, having paid a trifling gratuity to the receptionist to be allowed entry unannounced. She heard a startled exclamation on the other side, indicating that she had been seen through the peephole, and the door opened slightly a moment later. "Arika-sama," said Rudolf Ushiromiya in a low, covert tone. "What a pleasant surprise."

She suspected that half of that was true, which was rather good, coming from him. "Good evening, Rudolf," she said. "I'll be coming in, now."

"Um ... this is not a good time," said the younger son of the One-Winged Eagle. "My-my wife is -"

"Kyrie is here?" Arika asked. "How interesting. Tell me, has she ever been with a woman?"

"Uh ... I ... don't think so."

"Then this evening will be as educational as I'd hoped it would be. I'll be coming in, now."

He opened the door the rest of the way a moment later. She entered. The door closed behind her.

Somewhat later, on the hotel suite's bed, Rudolf Ushiromiya was wide-eyed and gasping as he struggled to get his breath back. "Oh ... oh my god," said the man, who believed in nothing he could not see or touch.

On the other side of the bed, his platinum blonde wife Kyrie was likewise shaken. "That ... that was ..." she stammered.

"Adequate," supplied Arika, who was lying on the middle of the two of them and had, somehow, snaffled one of Rudolf's cigarettes and his lighter, and used them in the appropriate manner as she lay there, staring at the ceilling.

"A-adequate?" Kyrie squawked.

"I'm sorry, I don't believe in giving false praise," Arika apologized ... sort of. "While you are quite talented, as such things go, one's first experience is rarely the best for the other party. You are talented," she reiterated, "but unpracticed."

Kyrie stared at the golden-haired woman for a moment, before raising her gaze to meet her husband's eyes. "Who is she?" she repeated the question she'd been asking once the woman showed up in their hotel room, only to be ... distracted before Rudolf could give an answer.

"Um, she's the wife of an old friend of mine," he answered, somewhat hesitantly.

"And your daughter's future mother-in-law," Arika expanded.

Kyrie's eyes narrowed. "What."

"It's, it's kind of a complicated situation," Rudolf answered a bit lamely.

"It's not complicated at all. You required assistance when one of your schemes imperiled your life, Nagi - my husband," she added, for Kyrie's benefit, "- provided it, and I persuaded them both to agree to a betrothal contract as compensation for that assistance. Very simple, you see? No doubt unnecessarily complicated by your husband's unwarranted expectation that he would never have a daughter or that any future children I might bear would be female, and so he would be able to get out of it."

"I, I didn't think like that," he lied unconvincingly. Uncharacteristically unconvincingly, actually.

Clutching her bedsheet to her bosom in a rather pointless way, given how everyone in the room had seen what lay beneath it at very close range, Kyrie pulled back. "Okay, not only did I not know about this, I don't think I can approve of this," she said. "Angie, my daughter, is only eight years old and -"

"My son is only ten," Arika interjected.

"Then you realize, it's insane to talk about such things as betrothals and - anything could happen between now and -"

"Certainly," Arika agreed calmly. "I only mentioned it because it seemed unlikely that your husband would clarify that aspect of our relationship unprompted."

Kyrie looked at Rudolf. Rudolf looked away. Kyrie looked at Arika. "You have a point," she said.

"Thank you. Of course, among the 'anythings' that might happen between now and then which I hope you'll consider would be sending your daughter, when she's about thirteen or so, to me to be educated as a lover, so that my son is not disappointed in her. The girls of this nation are -" She started shaking her head, then stopped abruptly.

"And we are back to craziness, clearly," Kyrie began to say rather loudly.

"Kyrie, please calm down," Rudolf said.

"This is all your fault and -"

"Of course," Arika said, eyes wide. "Why didn't I think of it before? That ... that would solve both problems in one swell foop!"

"Huh?" Kyrie and Rudolf asked in chorus.

Plainly ignoring them, Arika threw back the sheets and rose up from the bed to walk, naked and unashamed over to the window which looked out on Tokyo's evening. "It's perfect. I can't do it alone, but I know a number of women who'll be more than able to assist me in the effort," she said.

"... I do hope you're not talking about me," said Kyrie.

"Of course not," Arika said, reminded of her company. "Setting aside your lack of skill, you are disqualified on the grounds of not having a son."

"Oh," Kyrie said flatly, and Rudolf felt the unfamiliar sensation men called guilt once again.

"But there are two whom I know who are skillful and have a son," she continued as she turned back to the window. "And I will visit them this evening."

"And you managed to get here from Tokyo in just a few hours?" asked Uzumaki Kushina, eyes wide as she sat beside her living room table in the apartment she shared with her only son. (It was a little bit better than the one where the boy had lived alone, but still rather cheap.)

Arika shrugged. "I am just that awesome."

"To a secret ninja village? Without any guides?" her host elaborated.

Arika smiled patiently. "I could repeat the statement about my awesomeness, but it would seem superfluous under the circumstances," she said. Anything to avoid saying the obvious - that the secret ninja village was about as effective at being secret as its ninja were effective at being shadowy warriors of the night. (Warriors, yes, 'shadowy' and 'of the night', not so much.) To further forestall the utterances of any unpleasant truths, she spoke up again. "What do you have to say to my proposal?"

Kushina leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. "It's tempting," she admitted. "Very, very tempting, as you knew perfectly well that I would find it. The urge to instruct Socchi in the ways of his mother's people is a strong one."

"Indeed, and - I'm sorry, Socchi?" Arika asked, blinking.

"That's what I call Socchi," Kushina 'explained'.

"You mean, your son," her guest realized.

"Yes, Socchi. Good grief, Arika-chan, we've been friends for twenty years, my odd dialect shouldn't be so strange, y'know!" she added, for no particular reason.

"My apologies," said Arika. Anything to avoid pointing out that Kushina had in fact been dead for fifteen of those years. "So you were saying?"

"The urge to instruct - ahem - him in the ways of the Uzumaki, the union of like to like, is a strong one, but I still feel somewhat guilty about having abandoned him all those years ago. Especially since it's led him to take my words to him about finding a girl like me in completely the wrong way and developing an obsession with that Haruno girl." Kushina made a disgusted face. "It's sickeningly ironic, y'know."

"Oh?" asked Arika, frowning. "I'm not sure that I follow you. I've only had a few interactions with Haruno-san since she and the other young kunoichi of your village were sent to Mahora to learn more about the outside world, but she seemed, well, quite nice, if rather temperamental." In short, very much like you.

"Oh, I have no real problems with her in and of herself," Kushina explained, waving her hand. "She's a little too placid and easy-going for my liking, but my problems are with her background."

"Not following," Arika admitted.

Kushina looked around, as if checking to see if anyone was listening in on their conversation. She then made a few hand signs to incapacitate those who were, and continued in a low voice. "Remember what I said about the joining of like to like?"

Arika abruptly saw all. "No!" she gasped, startled.

Kushina nodded, her eyes gone distant. "It's quite a tale, y'know," she said.

Early April, about sixteen years ago

"I don't believe you," a very pregnant Kushina said to her husband, glaring daggers at him. If she'd actually had any daggers to hand, they would have been perforating his clothes (which would have surrounded a log, while he was mysteriously elsewhere) at that very moment.

"Now, dear, let's be calm about this situation," Namikaze Minato said in a soothing manner.

"You cheated on me. While I'm pregnant," his wife started to say, getting louder with every stop.

"Technically it started before you were pregnant," he interjected, then tilted his head to the side to avoid the rather expensive tea cup she'd just thrown at him.

"Before I was pregnant. With Tsunade. And got her pregnant. And see fit to correct me. As I discuss your failings!" she concluded in a way that could only be described as a shriek.

"That was wrong of me," he said, nodding and bowing his head in shame.

"Which part?!"

"Correcting you, of cou- oh. Um, all of it, all of it, I mean," he said quickly as his wife's hair began to move.

"With Tsunade?" Kushina repeated herself, sounding less angry than bewildered and hurt. "She's old enough to be your mother, for Kami's sake, y'know!"

"No, she's much younger than my mom, but that's actually the point!" Minato explained in a hurry after (barely) dodging another tea cup. "I honestly thought that there was no way she could possibly have children at her age, and even if she did, she probably knew medical ninja techniques to prevent it from happening. I'm as startled by this as anybody. If you think about it, I'm the real victim here."

One more tea cup. This one he didn't dodge.

"All right," Kushina said, after a moment. "So what's your plan, now, oh brilliant strategist? Are you going to bring your bastard child to live with us, under the same roof as our son?" She picked up both of their remaining in tea cups, one in each hand, as she glared at him.

"Of course not," Minato said, brushing porcelain fragments off of his face. "Although I do feel compelled to point out that we don't know if it's a boy yet."

"Yes I do, and don't change the subject, and don't correct me again."

"Ahem. As it happens, I've convinced Tsunade to place the child with Haruno Kizashi, and -"

"That doof?"

"He's not a doof, he's a capable and worthy ninja, and if a handful of events in each of our lives had gone the other way, it is entirely plausible that he might have become Hokage instead of me. Could a doof become Hokage?" Minato asked.

Kushina stared at him for a long time.

"Well, could he?" the doof asked.

"Never mind," Kushina sighed. "I guess that will be all right, y'know. I'm sure that no child of Tsunade's will ever amount to anything anyway ... what was that?" she said, looking around.

About twenty-six years before that

"Ngggh!" Tsunade cried out as she was brought to sensual fulfilment just as her partner released his masculine juices into her. "Oh, Nawaki!"

"This is the best birthday ever!" her twelve year old brother announced gleefully. "Nothing could ruin the rest of my week!"

Twenty-four hours later

"Oh, Nawaki!" Tsunade cried out yet again, holding the necklace which Orochimaru had retrieved from the body. "At least you had a good time before you died ..."

Nine months later

"I think we'll name her Kushina," said the Uzumaki who was set to adopt the child whom her mother had refused to even look at.

"Whatever, can I get blitzed now?" Tsunade asked.

Now

"And it's the strangest thing, but there it is again," Kushina related to Arika. "As though something significant is now known to everyone but you. Did you feel it?"

"Not really," Arika had to admit.

"Why is it just me, then?" Kushina asked irritably.

"I couldn't guess. Maybe you're saying something terribly ironic without realizing it. In any event, let's move on to other matters which hopefully won't provoke such reactions in either of us. Talking of Minato ... where is he, anyway? Providing advice and counsel for Naruto?"

"Hah," said Kushina. "Hah hah."

"I'm going to guess I just said something terribly ironic without realizing it."

"Yeah-ah," Kushina replied agreeably. "Well, he actually tried, once he got up from where he'd fallen once Naruto punched him again for ... well, everything. He tried for a whole week, y'know. And then he went off on this rant about how the way of the ninja had become too safe and complacent, and so he was going to go off and become a pirate on the Grand Line."

Arika blinked in abject confusion. "On the what?" she asked.

"The Grand Line, and yes, you could hear the capitalization when he said it. Nobody had any idea what he was talking about ... except for Jiraiya, who just laughed his head off when someone asked him about it but wouldn't explain anything. I hate to say it, but this does seem like the sort of thing Nagi might have gotten him interested in."

Arika waved a hand. "Don't fret, I have no illusions about my husband either."

Off the coast of Somalia

This doesn't seem like what we talked about, Nagi, thought Minato as he stared skeptically at the unfamiliar projectile weapon that the senior member of the boat's crew had shoved into his hands, as they prepared to raid the freighter. Still, if this is what it takes to be a pirate in these days, I'll manage. Soon, we will see the dawn of romance!

At this stage we must confess - there will be no dawn of romance for Minato.

"Well, then, what's the plan?" Kushina asked, leaning forward, eyes suddenly eager. "Will we grab Socchi and drag him off to have our wicked ways with him?"

"Of course not!" Arika said, appalled. "What sort of -"

"It's how I got Minato," the red-haired habanero admitted.

"... and how did that work out?"

"... okay, I see where you're coming from, y'know."

"We must be subtle," said Arika, restraining the urge to complain that she was talking about subtlety to a ninja. "Ideally, it would be best if he thought it was his own idea. There should be a way -" Abrupt enlightenment. "Does the head of the Hyuuga family still pay that Koga ninja to spy on his eldest daughter while she's at the school?"

Kushina blinked, then a smile slowly spread across her face. "Yes, he does! And I do believe he's receiving her weekly report this very night, y'know!"

"Excellent. That would be a wonderful first step."

The red-haired woman looked around. "Should we?" she asked furtively.

"Oh, let's."

They laughed together in a synchronized sinister manner.

"Thus concludes this one's humble report," Kaede stated, head bowed low, left fist and right knee on the floor while her right fist rested against her belly and her left leg was crouched in a runner's starting position. She had never seriously envisioned giving such a report to a client in the old manner, as she was now doing, but all manner of things that she had never seriously envisioned had happened in recent months. What was one more?

"The choir club?" Hiashi asked after a few moments of quiet consideration. "Really?"

Her head bobbed once in a nod. "Indeed so, Hiashi-dono. While this one is of course no judge of vocal prowess, from the accounts of those who are, your daughter demonstrates considerable talent." She was underselling things a bit; Misa, who was regarded as a star in her own level of the school choir, was in outright awe of the kunoichi's voice.

"What wonders peace is bringing us," the elder mused, in a pleased sounding tone. "And she's not letting it get in the way of her school work?"

"Not at all, Hiashi-dono. While I imagine that she has struggled with the adjustment to the lesson plan, her academic test scores are respectable if not yet extraordinary." They were in fact considerably better than those of a certain spy, but that spy was not about to admit that fact.

"Good, good. I'm sure that they will continue to rise with time. Well done, Kaede-kun, and - oh, one more thing. Do you think she suspects that she's being observed."

Kaede sighed. "I think she might possibly suspect something of that nature," she admitted.

Earlier that week

"Greetings, Hyuuga Hinata-dono," said Kaede as she approached the blank-eyed girl as she had lunch with a pinkette and a blonde, listening to the blonde complain about the distressing lack of formality on the part of the flower arranging club. "I have been asked to spy upon you by your respected father."

"Eh?" Hinata said in a suspicious tone, certainly not sounding bewildered or startled.

"Excellent!" Hiashi enthused. "I hoped that she might. The girl is starting to develop the instincts of a great ninja, even as she immerses herself in the modern world, as you have, Kaede-kun. Great things are in the offing for our family, our village and the world as a whole. Thank you, Kaede-kun, you have done an admirable job."

"You bestow praise far too greatly for this one's unworthy self," Kaede said, genuinely embarrassed.

"Not at all, not at all. And remember that we are comrades, Kaede-kun, there is no need for such formality. Will you not at least take some refreshment?"

"The offer is far too generous, Hiashi-dono, and I must decline," she said as she unbent to stand before him. "I have a great distance to cover, to return to campus and attend classes tomorrow."

"Ah, indeed," the elder said, seeming genuinely regretful as he began to guide her to the exit from the family's manor. "Well, you must at least permit me to escort you to our village's borders, to speed your journey as best I may."

"Also very generous, but an offer which one will be pleased to accept," Kaede agreed, walking with him and pleased that he hadn't gone to the lengths of offering her an armed escort back to Mahora. Getting rid of armed escorts before the actual police caught them carrying assorted lethal weapons was not an easy task, even with her skills.

They were out in the streets, when a boyish sounding voice called out behind them. "Oy, good even to ye, Hiashi-sama!"

Kaede matched Hiashi's quarter turn, and experienced the unusual sensation of instantly recognizing someone she'd never actually met. But the tales had clearly described the young man's spiky blond hair, bright blue eyes and the odd birthmarks on his cheeks that looked like whiskers. (For a moment, something seemed oddly familiar about those 'whiskers', but she dismissed that strange thought which couldn't have any meaning or relevance.) It was unquestionably the boy everyone was calling the Shinobi Messiah, Uzumaki Naruto.

"Good even to you as well, Vice-Hokage," Hiashi replied, just a bit more formally.

"Geh," said the boy, making a face. "Still can't believe that we're going with that, y'know? Ah well. And this is ... okay, I got no clue who this is," he admitted after a moment.

"Koga Chunin, Nagase Kaede," Kaede repeated her title - something she was getting called upon to do very frequently in these strange days - and bowed deeply. "Currently in Hiashi-dono's service."

"Dono?" Naruto repeated, eyebrows raised. "Don- oh! You're the ninja he's got spying on Sakura-chan an' all of 'em at that school, right?"

"I wouldn't say that she's spying," Hiashi said mildly.

The two young people started staring at him.

"It's accurate, I just wouldn't say it."

Kaede nodded in acceptance of this sage wisdom while Naruto made another face.

Abruptly, an expression of shock rippled across Hiashi's face. "Oh!" he said. "Oh dear! I have just now remembered a crucial errand I promised to perform for my lady wife, which I will be remiss in performing should I fulfill my promise to escort Kaede-kun to the borders of the village. How foolish of me! Vice-Hokage, would you do me the great and noble favor of performing that escort on my behalf?"

"Oh, absolutely!" Naruto answered, giving a thumbs up gesture.

"Thank you so much," said Hiashi, and then disappeared in a cloud of purplish smoke. Being the dignified gentleman that he was, he didn't begin laughing in a sinister appreciation of his own cleverness until he was quite some distance away.

"So, how are they all doing, over at that school of yours?" Naruto asked as he led - well, inasmuch as someone could be said to be leading while walking backwards, the better to face the person to whom he was speaking - Kaede through the streets of Konoha.

"They seem well-adjusted and happy," Kaede answered politely, doing her level best to avoid appearing stunned that she was talking to the Shinobi Messiah.

"So Sakura-chan is happy!" Naruto said, grinning. "Ah, and all the rest, too. I bet you hang out a lot."

Kaede blinked. "Uh, no, not really," she said. "After all, as a spy I'm supposed to maintain a certain distance, and - well, of course, it's difficult, since I'm so much younger than they are. Perhaps when Hinata-dono's younger sister -" she started to say.

"Ehhhhh?" Naruto said, expressing utter shock. "But, but, but you're so, so, so ..." He trailed off, rather blatantly staring at her chest.

"I'm up here," she said nicely.

"- so tall!" he concluded after darting a look up at her face.

"And yet it's quite true. I am only concluding my second year of middle school, where they are near to the end of their first year of high school," she confirmed.

"Wow," he said, then nodded forcefully. "I should go too! There's so much stuff that someone who's going to be Hokage needs to know! I should go there so I can hang out with Sakura-chan. And all the rest."

"Ah, it is a girl's school," Kaede observed helpfully.

"No prob!" he said, then quickly performed Shin Oroike no Jutsu.

"Geh," Kaede said after a moment. (And, once again, found something oddly familiar about the whisker marks on the face of the rather pneumatic blonde in a bikini with whom she was presently confronted. But she dismissed that strange thought which couldn't have any meaning or relevance.)

"So ... girls would get mad if I did that?" Naruto asked a few moments later, in a hesitant manner, as though he was confronting a notion heretofore utterly alien to him.

"Yes, all of the girls would get mad if Naruto-dono did that," Kaede confirmed politely.

"I know that they get mad when I do that in front of them, but I thought that maybe if I did it in private and then went out in public -"

"All of the girls would get mad at you."

"I mean I'd probably get her dressed up in something nicer - I've actually been working on something I call Seifuku Oroike no Jutsu -"

"All of the girls would get mad at you."

"... do they just not like blondes or something?" he asked, mystified.

Kaede made several false starts at an explanation, before she gave up, sighed, and used the last resort. "It involves issues of feminine hygiene, Naruto-dono."

"Okay, then!" he said rather loudly, since he might be stupid but no one on Earth was that stupid. "Glad we worked that out! I might visit, but not like that."

"Very wise, Naruto-dono."

"What is that dono thing any-"

Before Naruto could ask that, a bright pinkish glow abruptly suffused the woodland area through which they were walking. "Mwah hah hah hah!" said a feminine voice. "How easily you are fooled, boy!"

Kaede, who had gone into a defensive stance as soon as she heard the laughter, found herself amazed at the realization that Naruto had entered one even more quickly - perhaps as soon as he'd noticed the glow, if not possibly a moment before that. But now was not the time to worry about such things, now was the time for -

Abruptly, a red-haired and red-eyed woman in a fox-skin bikini with whiskers drawn on her cheeks dropped down from above, landing not far from the two of them. "I begin to think you might not be worthy of my help after all!" the woman concluded in the same voice as before.

Naruto and Kaede stared at her. She stared back.

"Um," Naruto said after a moment. "Who are you supposed to be?"

"Can it be that you do not know me, boy? I am the proud Nine-Tailed Beast, manifested in feminine form before you!" the woman declared.

"Riiight," Naruto said. Oy, Kurama. You still in there? he thought.

Where the hell else would I be? And before you ask, no, I have no clue what your mom is doing, but I think it's hilarious! Go along with it, see what happens!

"So ... what do you want, oh ... proud ... Nine-Tailed Beast?" Naruto asked, keeping himself from snickering.

"I want an apology!" Kushina - for indeed it was she, in case anyone doubted it - demanded, fully expecting resistance.

"Okay, I'm sorry," Naruto said promptly.

Kushina's jaw hung a little loosely. "You don't even know what you're apologizing for!" she protested after a moment.

Naruto shrugged. "I'm guessing you'll tell me?"

"It might have been better to wait for that," Kaede counselled. She had no idea what was going on, but if Naruto seemed unconcerned, she was reasonably confident that the situation wasn't all that dangerous.

"Ya think so?" he asked.

Reasonably confident. So she nodded, hesitantly.

"Ahem," the fake Kyuubi said. "You are apologizing for taking my power - drawing on it - and yet passing up the chance to use that power to work mischief on the unsuspecting girls of that girl's school! For we all know I love nothing more than mischief!"

... okay, I still have no clue what's going on here, but I seriously wanna know how someone who spent so long in close contact with me could think that I like mischief instead of destruction. Is she maybe thinking of those stupid kitsune things that look vaguely like me?

"Well, you see, I've been told that the girls would get mad at me, and Sakura-chan has kinda gotten scary when she's mad at me, so I didn't wanna go and do that -" Naruto started explaining.

"Foolish socchi! How can -"

"... socchi?" chorused Kaede and Naruto.

This was a terrible plan, Arika thought wearily as she watched from a branch of a tree some distance away.

"I mean, um, foolish boya!" Kushina rallied after a moment of confusion. "How can you be so blind, to not see the ulterior motives of the one who told you this!"

"Ulterior motives?" Naruto asked, glancing skeptically at Kaede.

"... if one had them, one would of course not admit to them," she said. "But -"

"She even admits it!" Kushina interrupted. "But she is no match for my astuteness! She desires to have you all to herself!"

"Ehhh?" gasped Naruto.

Kaede blushed girlishly. "Well," she said. "He is rather handsome, and charismatic, and certainly a person of renown and ability, such that one would certainly not cast him from one's bed for the consumption of crackers there, but -"

"See!"

"Wow!" said Naruto, wide-eyed.

It's working? thought Arika, amazed.

"So ... what happens now?" a mystified Naruto asked, looking from Kaede's slightly flushed cheeks to the grinning face of Kushina-pretending-to-be-the-Kyuubi.

"Well, generally, the girl smacks the boy over the head and drags him off somewhere to have her wicked way with him," Kushina-pretending-to-be-the-Kyuubi replied.

The sound of someone's head slamming against the trunk of a tree could be heard in the distance. Repeatedly.

Naruto made a face. "That sounds kind of ..." He found himself struggling to find the right word as he continued looking from Kaede to Kushina-pretending-to okay let's just stop that.

You should've seen what it was like when it was the boys smacking the girls over the head and -

Too much information, Kurama! he thought as his grimace got worse.

"I think it unlikely that I could or would do that," Kaede finally spoke up again. "Quite apart from the difficulties of ambushing Naruto-dono -"

"Oh, that's easy," Kushina assured her with a huge grin, limbering up a clenched fist.

It must be said that Kaede, who had never seen Kushina before this, had no clue that she was not actually confronting the honest-to-whatever Nine-Tailed Beast, beyond the vague notion that said creature was sealed inside Naruto and would not normally go out for an evening constitutional without its host's awareness. So this situation was much more confusing to her than it was to Naruto, and even more confusing than it would be to someone too stupid to figure out who's saying what from context without a lengthy explanation as to what combination of type and punctuation marks indicates the speaker's identity. Confusing, yes, and a bit terrifying.

"I see. Thank you ... Nine-Tailed-Beast-dono," she said, in as polite a manner as she could manage.

"Seriously, what is up with that -" Naruto started to ask.

"However, quite apart from such concerns," Kaede pressed on, raising her voice just a bit, "there is also the difficulty of ... I have no idea what someone would do when they were having their wicked way with someone," she admitted in a rush. "And -"

"Yeah, she says that's a real problem lately," Kushina agreed with a sigh.

"She?" asked Naruto, distracted.

"And -" Kaede continued to press on, despite a vague notion that nobody was really listening to her, "doing so is not really consonant with my task for Hiashi-dono, whose hospitality has allowed me to visit this hidden village in the first place."

"Huh?" asked Naruto, distracted yet again. "What's keeping an eye on Hinata got to do with dragging me off to - bah, can't even say it with a straight face," he broke off, mid-way through, and chuckling helplessly.

"Eh? Then you are unaware of Hinata-dono's romantic hopes in your direction?"

"No, no, the 'dragging off' and 'wicked way' business, it's just too silly to - wait, Hinata likes me? Like, likes me likes me?" he choked out.

"One is genuinely surprised that you did not already know this," Kaede replied, eyes nearly open.

"Well, I mean, I knew that she liked me," Naruto replied, a bit freaked out by the way both these women were staring at him in disbelief, especially combined with Kurama's laughter which none but he could hear. "And, uh, well, after she slapped me that one time, I kinda got the sense that she might maybe like me as in liking me ... but then Neji came back to life and she was all crying and happy over him and so I kind of figured that I must be wrong because she actually liked her cousin and ... and ..." He trailed off as they kept right on staring at him.

"Sibling," Kaede corrected gently, her eyes once more closed.

"Oh, like that would stop anything with that bunch," Kushina said, rolling her eyes.

"Sorry?" Naruto and Kaede asked in synch.

"That's not important right now!" the fake Kyuubi lied. "Oh, Soc - cough - Naruto, how sad it is that you have been taught by Tsunade and the Haruno girl to associate affection with physical abuse! I only hope that you don't get hurt too badly as I beat that idea out of you!"

"Uhhhh," said Naruto.

"There would seem to be a paradox in that statement, oh Nine-Tailed Beast-don-"

Naruto turned to finally demand an explanation for the weird honorific. An opening ensued, and Kushina slammed him over the head with one of the rather large clubs she was carrying.

"I knew it was going to come to this," she grumbled as she examined her son's recumbent form. "Well, what are you waiting for?" she snapped at Kaede. "Pick him up, let's go, let's go!"

Kaede, obedient to authority, paused a moment, and then followed the instructions she'd just been given.

Most people, upon awakening from a knock-out blow to the head, find that their thoughts are somewhat disorganized, as though they are struggling to resume the thoughts interrupted by the interruption of their consciousness.

Most people aren't Naruto.

- and really, he thought as he awakened, if I'm so dang super-powered, how come I can still get knocked out so easily? It makes no sense! Oh, well, it happened. Now I guess I better see what the situation is and who I'm gonna have to punch in order to get out of it. I wonder why I feel so good right now?

And with that his eyes opened a bit.

And with that his eyes opened a lot.

"Nguhhh?" he said (very approximately) as he gazed down at the red haired, fake-fox-eared head that was bobbing back and forth on his thing, which was surprisingly warm and wet at the moment.

The head pulled all the way back, leaving his thing in the quite chilly air as she looked up at him, bright blue eyes twinkling at him. "Oh, good," she said. "I was starting to get worried I might have done you some real injury!"

"Muh-muh-muh-mother?" Naruto gasped.

She gasped too, breathing warmly on his thing. "How long have you known?!"

"The, the whole freaking time!" he cried out, looking around wildly. They seemed to be in a hut of some sort, with a low ceiling and light coming from a lantern in the corner - beside which Kaede was sitting in seiza position, watching with semi-closed eyes and a visible blush on her cheeks. "The heck?" he cried out some more. "Why'd you go along with this?"

"It seemed ill-advised to go against the instructions of the Nine-Tailed Beast," she replied faintly.

"It's not the Nine-Tailed Squat! It's my mother -"

"Then it seemed ill-advised to go against the instructions of your mother," Kaede replied, still faintly.

"You knew the whole time?" Kushina asked, amazed.

"Yes, I mean come on, that's the worst costume -"

"You thought I might be the Kyuubi without any costume before," she said, sounding a little insulted.

That's true, you did.

"Agggh!" Naruto growled, covering his eyes with his hands.

"But never mind that now," Kushina said, pique abruptly banished as determined warmth filled her tone and she sat up, exposing her naked chest to Naruto's boggling eyes. "I suppose that it is good that you know the truth, for now is the time when you will, at last - at long last! - be educated in the way of the Uzumaki, the joining of like to like!"

"Please put some clothes on!" Naruto managed to say.

"That would be not simply pointless, but actively contrary to my designs!" she said with a shake of her head. "Really, socchi, you should just be quiet for a while and listen to me reveal hitherto unimagined secrets, y'know!" Her hand wrapped tightly around his thing, warming it considerably but also demonstrating sufficient gripping strength to present an unvoiced threat.

"Got it," he croaked.

"As I was saying, this is the time when you will be educated in the way of the Uzumaki, the joining of like to like! Among your mother's people, it is known that a boy cannot be truly said to be a man unless the boy's mother - or aunt, or elder sister - has taken him in hand - not literally, as I have now done to you, but figuratively - and educated him in the ways of pleasuring a woman. Likewise, a girl cannot become a woman without the help of her father, brother or uncle," she added. "As it happens, I was denied that when the village of the Uzumaki was devastated in my childhood, and so I have only ever been with your father -" Here, for no readily apparent reason, Kushina briefly descended into a fit of coughing. It went on for quite some time, long enough to - entirely hypothetically - cover up a very brisk recital of a few dozen other names. Once it passed, she resumed her exposition. "- and my death on the day of your birth made me dread that I would never be able to educate you as is proper. Yet, thanks to the strange workings of fate, the way of the Uzumaki, the joining of like to like, will once more take place! Possibly many times!"

"Ah!" said Kaede, tapping a fist down on her other hand's palm. "I understand now. Uzumaki!" she continued, in a tone of much enlightenment.

"Huuuuh?" Naruto asked, terrified.

"If you write the name with slightly different kanji, it doesn't mean 'spiral'," she explained. "It means 'degenerate perverts'."

"Indeed!" Kushina agreed.

"Wow, this has been a very educational excursion, in many ways that this one truly did not expect," Kaede said, starting to get up. "One must quickly return to one's home to reflect on these -"

"Sit."

"- or perhaps sit back down," Kaede continued, sitting back down.

"My name means 'degenerate pervert'?" Naruto wailed. He was, still, a little bit slow on the uptake.

"Not only do you incorrectly associate affection with physical cruelty, you fail to understand how those are complimentary terms, used as insults only by those jealous of our family's supreme ability to get jiggy with any and every creature under the sun, the moon, and the stars, a blessing bestowed on your ancestor, the first among the Uzumaki, by his mother, the Shinigami herself!" Kushina cried out, shaking her head in dismay as she began rubbing Naruto's thing rather vigorously.

"... the Shinigami?" Kaede repeated.

"Yes, the Shinigami!" the Red Hot-Blooded Habanero confirmed without glancing back at her. "No doubt you are surprised to be told our clan's deepest secret!"

"Well, yes, that is surprising, yet not nearly as surprising as it was to learn that the Shinigami is a singular entity of the female gender rather than a collective group of sexless entities."

Now she did turn and now she glared. "And I suppose you think that there is no such singular entity as Kami-sama, either. Modernists!" she said scathingly.

"I have not given it much thought," Kaede said a bit weakly.

"Hmph!" Kushina returned her gaze to Naruto's somewhat horrified face, and once more assumed her loving expression. "Such is the quality of the girls of this world, from whom you will assemble your harem, my son."

"H-h-harem?" Naruto squeaked.

"Yes, the harem who will love you and cosset you and heal the wounds of your wretched childhood!"

"W-w-wounds?"

"It will all be yours! Well, perhaps not all. There are those with whom you will have to learn to share, who will be your peers in this exciting world to come," Kushina said, in a tone of some reluctance. "But never mind that for now. For now, all that you must do is learn the lessons of pleasing a woman from me. And so, let us begin your studies!"

"St-st-studiiiiiiiiiiii!" Naruto started to stammer, only to be distracted as Kushina released her hand hold on his thing and then, within the blink of an eye, threw one of her hips across his waist and lowered herself to take it up into herself.

"Yes!" she shrieked out, hands streaking out to grab her son's hands by the wrist and pull them up to place their palms against her firm motherly breasts. "Fuck me! Fuck me, you motherfucker, fuck your mother, fuck me fuck me fuck meeeeeeeeeehhh?" she concluded questioningly.

For a moment, she sat there in silence as Naruto quivered beneath her.

"That quickly?" she asked, clearly startled.

"Ngah-ngah-ngah," Naruto replied.

Kushina's face took on an expression which could really only be considered a pout. "Well, that's all right, socchi. I'm sure that you can go again, and this time it will be ... wait ... why are you going soft inside me?"

"Ngah-ngah-ngah."

"Oh really. We'll just see about that!" she proclaimed, disentangling herself from him and then promptly sliding down so that the softening member had her full and immediate attention. And then she went to work. She sucked, rubbed, jerked, licked, and paizuri'd her son's flagging cock ... all to no avail.

"I don't understand it," she murmured a few moments later, more to herself than to Naruto. "He's a healthy teenage boy. He should have little or no refractory period. What is going on here?" Then she blinked. "Ah-hah!" Kushina said more loudly. "I know what the problem is!"

Somethin' tells me that her answer ain't gonna be 'he's traumatized from being sexually assaulted by his mom', mused Kurama.

Ngah, thought Naruto.

She promptly whirled around to see that Kaede, who had been slowly and subtly trying to move towards the exit from the hut while Kushina's attention was elsewhere, had not yet achieved her destination. "The problem is his shyness!" she declared. "He needs reassurance that the girl who's watching him isn't judging him! So I'll just show him that you, like everyone else, just wants to get it on!"

Kaede opened her mouth to open a gentle demurral. It was interrupted when Kushina pounced on her and brought her to the ground to start kissing her frantically.

... called it!

To Naruto's shame, the sight of this sapphic foreplay did in fact restore his flagging interest, which started the second portion of the night's festivities once Kushina noticed. And from there, it went on and on. And on ...

"Well," Arika said, a short while later and back in Naruto and Kushina's apartment. "That went about as well as I expected."

"Yeah!" Kushina replied cheerfully. "Isn't it great?"

Arika glanced over at where Naruto lay on his side, facing the wall and silently weeping for his lost innocence, and quietly rued the fact that Kushina was deaf to subtext. "Yes, quite," she said. "So then, you're agreed to the plan?"

"Believe it!" her friend crowed. Then her face grew solemn. "But I must ask, do you really think that the two of us will be enough for this?"

"No," Arika said.

"But you see, I - no?"

Arika silently shook her head. "But I already have someone in mind who will be an excellent third partner in our scheme. I'll be heading back to Tokyo to contact her as soon as I'm done here."

Kushina frowned. "Eh? But if she's in Tokyo, why didn't you contact her first, before coming here?"

"I wanted to be sure of reaching her, so I chose to wait until I could be absolutely sure that she'd be in her office," the former Queen replied.

"At this hour?"

"Manga editors keep very odd hours."

"What a great idea!" enthused Hinata Aki. "Can I make one little suggestion to improve it?"

"Certainly!" Arika replied.

Today, Shizuna-sensei was quietly rubbing the narrow space between her eyebrows and muttering to herself in a tone too low for any of the class, even Asuna, to make out. Eventually, she started to wave her other hand as though emphasizing her words, but they could still not be heard. The class watched the Dean's Assistant have a nervous breakdown with mild concern. Were people going to blame this on them?

"Okay. First of all, Makie, you're being transferred, " Shizuna said.

"Eh?" Makie gasped. "But why?"

"Because you're a Butt Monkey."

"I don't even know what that means!" Makie protested, but nonetheless gathered her books and went out, tearily bidding fairwell to her friends.

"Next, to keep the class numbers balanced, you're getting a new classmate," Shizuna continued brusquely. "Come in, dear."

Everyone blinked. Except for her hair done up in a pair of short twin tails, the girl who'd just entered could have been Makie's twin. "Uh, should I make with the chalk and -" she started to ask.

"No, time, Natsumi-san -

"Eh?" said Natsumi where she was sitting with Chizuru.

Shizuna sighed. "That's probably going to cause problems later on, but that's just how it goes." Deeep breath. "Now, we are going to be giving you three new teachers, all of whom have experience with children such as yourselves. So there shouldn't be any problems." Now she was glaring. "Please come in, three new teachers."

The first new teacher was a rather good-looking woman with bright red hair, wearing a very odd metal headband and an orange jumpsuit. Kaede let out a low gasp and started to surreptitiously slide out of her seat.

"Is something the matter, Kaede-chan?" the first new teacher asked sweetly.

Kaede froze, swallowed, and said, "Indeed, no, Kushina-dono, all is well." I am so f-ed, is what she thought.

"Good morning, class, I am Uzumaki Kushina, and I'll be teaching you Physical Education and Sabotage, as well as a third class with my two fellow teachers. Any questions so far?"

"Why's Kaede-neechan so scared of you?" Fuuka asked brightly.

"Because she knows both me and my son, " Kushina said, then laughed a little too loudly. Only Misora got the joke, and she started to consider ways of getting out of the class quickly too.

The next lady to enter the room was tall with blue-black hair and a pair of tiny glasses perched on her nose, and a faintly impish grin. "Good afternoon, class, I'm Hinata Aki, and I'll be giving classes on Art and Manga Editing, as well as the shared class."

"AHHH!" Haruna shrieked, dashing towards her and beginning to genuflect. "Guru! Guuuuuruuuu!"

"Oh, geez, mommmm," said the new student, covering her eyes and groaning.

And then the final teacher entered the room, a lady with long golden hair — yep, Blonde, Brunette, Redhead — who made everyone gasp when they saw her eyes.

"Asuna!" said Konoka. "Her eyes!"

"It's probably just a coincidence, " Asuna stammered. "She couldn't possibly be my mom."

"Yes, it's much more likely that you're the daughter of my remote ancestor, kept young through suspended animation for centuries if not millenia," the lady agreed.

"Yes, that's way more plausible!" Asuna said with relief. Wait, no, that makes no sense whatsoever!

"Be that as it may, my name is Arika Springfield, and I will be teaching you Homeroom as well as the same class as my two colleagues, with the help of our respective sons."

"What class is that?"

And then the three teachers smiled, decadently. "Practical Sex Ed, " they chorused.

TO BE CONTINUED!