We were sitting around the dinner table. Kushina's apartment was really quite modern, especially in comparison with my childhood home back in Uzushio. It was furnished with a high table, and we sat around it on high-backed chairs.

Today was a day off from the Academy, and Kushina, Minato and Kakashi were all home. It was pretty special for all of us to be there at once, since the war effort often took Kushina and Minato away from the village for days at a time.

To celebrate the small blessing, Kushina wanted to cook us a homemade meal. I helped her as best as I could, but I have never had to cook before (and Heather has hated it once upon a time.) But it was our best effort, even if I saw Minato pull a face at his first sip of the broth, before he bravely swallowed. We made ramen, of course. Kushina had said that no other dish was really worth making at home. Konoha was really big on street food vendors.

"Any news from the front?" Minato asked; Kushina had only returned last night.

"Not that I am at liberty to say." She replied grimly.

Kakashi looked up sharply at that (I think he was happy for any excuse to turn away from the food.) He opened his mouth as if to speak, but Minato sent him a sharp look, and he closed it again with a snap.

Kushina looked up from her own bowl at that.

"But I heard that our treaty with Kusa is straining." Her face pulled in a sour expression. "They blame us for not coming to their aid against Iwa."

Konoha, abandoning its allies? Unthinkable.

"But how can we, since we are facing war on two fronts, Suna has not mobilised yet as it should according to our treaty, and Kiri is just waiting for us to get stretched thin enough to jump in as well!" Minato clearly knew something of the front news himself. He was also clearly loyal to Konoha. I elected to stay silent.

Kushina reached across the table to cover his hand with her own and squeeze gently. The gesture reminded me of my parents and I looked away.

"And how is the academy going, Himari-chan?" Kushina must've noticed my discomfort.

"It's fine. I won't have a problem passing my classes." It was miserable and I wanted out of there as soon as possible.

"I don't expect to be deployed again for at least three days. What do you say we spend some time sealing?"

My mood brightened at that. Sealing with Kushina was my favourite thing in Konoha. It reminded me of home, but not in the bleak way like the academy, or like when I saw a happy family. It was also painful, but it was hopeful as well. Sealing was always something my family took pride in, and I hoped to take pride in it as well. I improved my skill continuously, and though it hurt my parents would never see my progress, every time I learned a new seal, or improved my execution of an old one, I felt closer to reaching a goal.

And also, when Kushina had down time, she would sometimes let me skip academy to study with her, if I could show her I was not behind in my classes, and I never was.

The rest of the dinner passed in a slightly better atmosphere. Kakashi told us about the progress with his training; he had recently signed a summoning contract, and was now learning to use it properly. He was clearly having a better time training on his own than I had in the Academy.

But the oppressive feeling of something ominous approaching loomed over our heads during the meal and after. It was unshakable. It was the feeling of war.

"Hey, Kakashi, why d'ya wear that mask every time you go outside?"

He just came in through the window, with Pakkun at his heels.

Pakkun was wearing an adorable little vest and I felt a smile stretching my lips. So that's what Kakashi had been hastily putting away every time I entered our room in the past week!

I was grinning now.

"Why did you bother to hide it from me?!" I got up from the kotatsu where I've been practicing my calligraphy and squatted in front of the pug. "Hello Pakkun!"

"Mari-chan!" He was still learning to speak the human way, so it came out with a bit of a bite.

I really couldn't stop myself from petting the adorable puppy. I reached out to pat him on the head: he initially growled at me, but once my hand actually connected he gave a sound of pleasure and launched himself into my lap. I laughed.

"Don't worry, don't worry! There is enough pats to go around!" I lifted him up so we could be face to face, and he licked me right across the nose. I laughed harder and put him down in my lap to settle down for some more snuggles.

Then I looked up at Kakashi, who in the meantime managed to put away most of his outside gear, and was now in the process of getting some food going in the adjacent kitchen. He'd taken off his mask, so I could see his stoic expression. How did someone as quiet and composed as him end up with such a tactile summon like Pakkun I had no idea.

"Is anyone else home?"

I shook my head.

"Kushina-nee is due back tonight, but I don't know about Minato." He nodded.

"I'm on the patrol rotation this week. Don't wait up for me."

I gave a nod of assent, but I gritted my teeth. It seemed like everyone but me had a hand in the war effort. Kushina and Minato were of course fully fledged soldiers, but even Kakashi, who was barely a year older than me got to go on patrol around the village to free up more experienced shinobi to fight on the front. Everyone could get a piece of Kumo and Iwa, except for me. I stewed inside, thinking about the injustice of it all. I was the one who had a revenge to enact on Iwa and Kumo. My home has been destroyed. And yet while everyone got to go out and fight the bastards, I was stuck in the stifling little Academy, full of little insolent brats who were not my cousins, learning their little jutsu and listening to their oppressive propaganda.

Pakkun licked my palm. I looked down on him. He was panting and his tongue was lolling. As I was watching he rolled over, showing his tummy, and wiggled in my lap.

"Belly scratches?"

He wiggled enthusiastically some more.

I indulged him.

Kakashi let out a long sigh from the kitchen.

"This is so undignified, Pakkun." Pakkun didn't seem to hear him.

Kakashi brought over two bowls of miso soup, and another bowl of food for Pakkun, and placed all three of them on the kotatsu, being careful not to spill anything on my calligraphy practice. We ate in companionable silence, broken only by the sounds of Pakkun trying to learn table manners.

"Duck!"

"Where?!" I ducked and shouted. It really pissed Kakashi off when I didn't seem to take sparring seriously.

"You brat!" He was a little winded, and since that shout came from the opposite side of the field, I knew he used an illusion to move his voice previously.

I rolled over my shoulder to avoid an attack that was sure to be coming, and sent a barrage of knives flying in Kakashi's general direction. Still crouching, I opened my scroll with a flourish.

I was just about to release the smoke bomb, so that I could transform into a duck, when Minato appeared right in front of me.

He caught the knife I've instinctively thrown at him before it could even nick him.

"Good reflexes, Himari-chan." He reached over and patted my head like I was a puppy. "Pack up, we're going home."

"But Minato-sensei, we were just getting started!" You could hear the whine in Kakashi's voice, even though he tried to cover it with his usual I-am-an-adult demeanor.

He was lying anyway. When I stood up to dust myself off, I could feel the fatigue set in, now that I wasn't in a combat situation any longer. My legs were shaking ever so slightly, and I was covered in dust from rolling around on the ground and ducking. We must've been at it for an hour at the least, since Kakashi picked me up for sparring straight from the academy, and now the sun was low in the sky.

Then the village alarm started and Minato tensed.

I felt fresh adrenaline course through my veins. My hands shook as I rolled up my scroll.

"Get a move on, kids!" Minato was agitated, but not surprised. Clearly he knew what the alarm was for, and if I knew him, it was also the reason he came to collect us from the training fields.

We made it home in good time. Kushina was there already, pacing and looking tense. When we burst through the door, she whipped around.

She looked awful. I've never seen her look quite so bad before. She had clearly come straight from the front. I've never realised this before, but in the past, she must have only come home after having cleaned up somewhere else. Now there was dirt on her face and white armour, and her hair, which was tightly bound, had twigs in it. There was dried blood on her hand, and I realised she was injured: a long shallow cut on her arm.

"Kushina! What are you doing here?!" Minato clearly also thought this was unusual.

"I had to make sure you were all alright." She seemed slightly crazed and more than a little out of it, as she said that.

She turned to me.

"Himari." I wasn't sure if her knees buckled, or if she decided to kneel down in front of me. "You're fine." She cradled my face in her hands. "I promise you, you're fine."

I didn't know what to say. My shaking had stopped. I realised I trusted her, despite how ridiculous her promise was. This was too much like the last time I had seen Uzushio, but Kushina assuring me that I would be fine put me at ease.

Maybe it was because she was the best sealmaster in the world and her iron will could literally contain the largest sentient chakra creature in the world. If she wanted to protect someone, they would stay alive, I knew.

"What happened?" Kakashi's voice broke through my reverie, and I looked away from Kushina's face.

"Kiri has joined the war. A new front has emerged." Minato was grim. His face seemed somehow overshadowed, and I could see the soldier in him clearly.

"It seems that they have joined as a new player, not as Kumo and Iwa's ally, though." Kushina straightened up, finally seeming to snap out of it. She looked around, as though she just realised where she was, and looked down at herself. Her head snapped up and she looked me straight in the eye, though it felt much more piercing, as though she was looking through me and inside my soul.

A/N: Sorry about the wait guys! Life's been busy, y'know, and I've the attention span of a goldfish. Don't worry though! I keep circling back to the Naruto fandom again and again, so I will finish this story! ...at some point. Also, I read something that really spoke to me the other day: about how if you worry too much about making your craft perfect, you will never practice enough to actually improve. So I decided to worry less about making this story perfect, since that's unlikely to succeed anyway and results in a year long wait between chapters... And instead I decided to just share what I've got with you and hopefully my next story will be better for it!

Oh, and also, I have a tumblr now, if you wanna chat or something. Honestly, I would love to hear from you!