Blood in the Water

Wolf is not currently on duty, because his completely justified crippling of the elder who tried to commit bloodline theft against his subordinate –who had committed bloodline theft already against his subordinate's clan, against Obito's clan– had led the Sandaime to decide he should take a little downtime.

Wolf had justified his complete lack of hesitance in carrying out said crippling –repeated crippling– by claiming that he'd assumed the elder was an imposter. After all a truly loyal elder of Konohagakure would never even dream of committing such a heinous crime. Would they, Sandaime-sama.

Sandaime-sama had eyeballed him tiredly over his pipe when Wolf said that, but Wolf had survived his insubordination and so had his entire squad, which was what mattered. The entire squad is currently off-duty, but that isn't really a problem for those Anbu who are not Wolf; some of them have lives outside Headquarters. Hawk had left almost immediately, presumably to check up on his cousin and said cousin's surprising new fiancée, Cat had wandered off to commune with nature and Ocelot has a lover so is likely spending time with them.

Ocelot is unlikely to be with the squad for much longer and Hawk is a recent addition, picked up shortly after Robin was removed from Red Team by Danzō and swallowed up by Root. With how things are likely to change in the village, Wolf suspects Hawk may not be Anbu for much longer. Robin… maybe, maybe not. Depends how his marriage goes down; he's more likely to take leave and then come back for a few rotations. There's a number of Anbu who do two on, two off, rotating back into the general forces.

Wolf hasn't left Anbu since joining. He's not planning on changing that any time soon.

He should probably be wearing civvies, but it's been long enough since he had any significant amount of compulsory downtime that Hatake Kakashi only has two outfits that vaguely fit. Which is something he should probably rectify, but he doesn't want to wear either of those outfits right now so here he is, on a rooftop in his Anbu uniform, completely hidden from view and idly watching people pass on the streets laid out below.

Uchiha Shisui's blushing blue bride-to-be is not particularly subtle; Kiri shinobi come in exactly two flavours, quiet and squirrelly as fuck or loudly brash covering up cunning. Hoshigaki Aozame is the latter type: solid, powerful and playing up both to cover up shrewd self-interest. Wolf would be more worried about that if it weren't for the fact that the seven-foot kunoichi has set her sights on being Mrs Uchiha Shisui, as his kohai is fully on board with her ambitions there. Utterly, delightedly and recklessly committed, in fact.

It's vaguely cute in a hair-raising way. As is said kunoichi carrying both of Wolf's Uchiha kohai plus teeny-tiny Hawk-chibi around on her shoulders as she trots this way and that along Konoha's streets, the crowds giving the party a wide berth. Wolf can see Shisui seesawing between pride in his village and frantic lust at his fiancée's brute strength every other minute, which is hilarious.

How did Wolf end up with the only two Uchiha in Anbu as his kohai, when he's pretty sure the entire rest of the clan hate his guts? Truly one of life's mysteries.

Then an orange-and-blond blur collides with Hoshigaki Aozame's knee and Wolf focuses more intensely on the situation unfolding below.

Shisui pauses in his description of local landmarks as a small child collides with his glorious goddess's shin, bounces back and is caught by the scruff of the neck.

"Watch your step," his magnificent sea nymph says with a sharp-toothed smile.

"Hey whaddayou –hey you're blue," the grubby-faced, squinty-eyed blond with unfortunately familiar facial markings says accusingly. "Is there a jutsu that makes people blue?"

"I was born blue, Fox-Face," Aozame says, sounding more amused than offended; her smile widens slightly.

Uzumaki Naruto's eyes open wide, revealing brilliant azure irises. "My name's not Fox-Face, it's Uzumaki Naruto! Oh wow your teeth are super-pointy! Sharper than Kiba's, even! And you're carrying a buncha people around! You're so cool! Are you a shinobi?" His sandals are dangling a good two feet of the ground, but he doesn't seem to care; Shisui supposes he can forgive the volume in light of the demonstrated good taste. "I'm gonna be a shinobi! I'm gonna be Hokage, dattebyo!"

His beautiful blue-skinned fiancée pauses, eyeing the blond brat dangling from her hand. "Uzumaki, huh?"

Shisui abruptly remembers that Uzushio was destroyed by Kiri during the Second War and tenses.

"Yeah!" the brat's all wary defiance, like he's expecting to be dropped now Aozame knows who she is.

"Who're your parents, Uzu-chibi?"

The blond grins, all teeth and no joy. "I'm an orphan, dattebyo!"

Aozame nods understandingly. "Anybody taught you your heritage yet?"

Shisui's eyes widen in alarm.

"What's a heritage, Blue-nee?"

"It's who you are and who your clan is, Uzu-chibi. You're an Uzumaki, and they were from Uzushio and had a bunch of neat jutsu," Aozame rumbles conversationally, like this isn't letting three different cats out of their bags and standing back to enjoy the subsequent fight.

Sure enough, Uzumaki Naruto latches on to the key word with all the force of a rabid mole. "Jutsu? What jutsu Blue-nee? I wanna know! I'm gonna be Hokage I gotta know all the cool jutsu!"

"The Uzumaki are a clan?" Sasuke asks.

"Were a clan, Sasuke-kun," Shisui's lovely fiancée corrects absently, hefting the Kyūbi jinchūriki so he's tucked under one arm, wriggling like an excited puppy. "Got wiped out by Kirigakure oh, about thirty years back." She grins toothily as she starts walking again. "A bunch of my clan were there; good fighters, the Uzumaki. Challenging. A shame they're not around anymore, really."

Uzumaki Naruto stops wriggling. "Your clan killed my clan?"

"My village killed your clan, on orders from our Kage," Aozame corrects calmly. "My clan liked fighting yours, but orders are orders." She smiles down at him, toothy but mischievous. "Maybe you'll be fun to fight once you're not knee-high anymore."

Naruto perks up instantly. "I'm gonna be awesome, Blue-nee, just you wait, dattebyo!"

Shisui finds his voice. "You've got to eat properly if you want to be tall, Naruto-kun," he manages. "Are you eating your vegetables?"

The blond makes a face. "Vegetables are yucky!"

"Then you're going to be a squirt all your life," Shisui retorts cheerfully, acutely aware of their newly-acquired Anbu shadow. Is that Crow-taicho? He's not hiding very hard.

It's definitely on purpose.

But, but vegetables!"

"I ate my vegetables," His glorious sea-goddess says mildly, turning a corner. Naruto pauses, taking in how very tall she is and the three Uchiha perched on her shoulders.

"But they taste yucky," he grumbles.

"Then they're not being cooked right." Shisui has to agree there; there's more than one way of preparing vegetables and some of them taste much better than others.

Naruto blinks. "There's more 'an one way to cook vegetables?"

"There really is," Shisui promises. "And with some of them you can't even tell you're eating vegetables at all."

"But, but how?" The poor squirt looks caught between bafflement and awe.

"Later, Uzu-chibi." Aozame sets the brat down in the empty training ground they'd walked past earlier, then twitches her shoulders; Shisui and Itachi both leap down, Itachi promptly setting Sasuke on his feet.

"Oh hey, you're at the Academy!" Naruto says, actually noticing Sasuke for the first time. "You're in my class! What's your name?"

Sasuke sighs. "I'm Uchiha Sasuke, pleased to meet you," he says politely, even managing a small smile.

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto! I'm gonna be Hokage dattebyo!"

"Are you going to kill the current Hokage?" Aozame asks curiously.

Naruto spins around to stare up at her in shock. "No! I'm not gonna kill Jiji!"

"How are you going to become Hokage without killing the current one?" Shisui is sure his statuesque sea-nymph is teasing the shrimpy blond, but she's doing a very good job of keeping a straight face.

"He's gonna retire! He said so! Why would anyone want to kill Jiji?" The poor brat looks distressed.

Aozame shrugs. "Killing's how we change Kage in Kiri; well, outright murder or else death on the battlefield. That's why the Kage tries to keep the rest of the village's top jōnin at arm's length." And, goes unsaid, occasionally arranges suicide missions. "You going to show me what you got, Uzu-chibi?"

Naruto instantly brightens. "Yeah!"

Shisui can't see this going any way but badly, but at least there's three Anbu witnesses in the trees to assure the Sandaime that no, the Uchiha aren't trying to murder the Kyūbi jinchūriki today.

"Can I join in, Aniki?" Sasuke asks, eyes bright and hopeful. Itachi crumples like wet rice paper.

"I'm sure Aozame won't mind, otōto." Seeing as Aozame is now tossing Uzumaki Naruto around with all the amused gentleness of a very large cat humouring a runty kitten, Shisui has to agree there.

Watching Aozame effortlessly tangle the two boys up in each-other and tumble them across the grass, Shisui is suddenly and violently seized by the realisation that one day soon she'll be doing this with their baby.

He has to sit down.