The Festival (VI)

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"I still say it's unfair!"

While Naruto ignored Chōji's outburst in favour of admiring his new short-sleeved haori and letting his hands wander over the red flame-like motifs on the edges of the white fabric, Shikamaru didn't.

"Just let it be," he said with a tired sigh. "What's done is done, no need to cry over it."

Chōji disagreed. "But I would have won! It's not fair that they didn't allow me to participate, not fair at all!"

"It would have been even more unfair if they allowed an Akimichi to take part in an eating contest."

Honestly, Naruto though. It's not as if they even had an haori in his size, so what is he crying about? Not that he would ever say that out loud, of course. His friend was rather sensitive about his weight and he didn't want to be chased through the village by an angry Chōji.

"I think we passed a strongman game just a few minutes ago," Sasuke spoke up, audibly annoyed by the other boy's whining. "I'm sure that some of the prizes must be sweets, so why don't we-"

"That's it!" Chōji exclaimed with fire in his eyes. "Strongman game, here I come!" He instantly turned around and rushed in the direction Sasuke had pointed at moments earlier, either trusting that they would follow him or just forgetting that they were there in the first place.

"Well done," Shikamaru said dryly with a pained expression on his face. "Now we have no other choice but to follow him. There is no stopping Chōji once he gets motivated."

Sasuke shrugged with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. "Still better than listening to his complaints. Besides, there was a shuriken stand close by that I wanted to test out, so it's not like it's a complete waste of time."

Seeing his lazy friend still looking like he would prefer to be literally anywhere else than here, he decided to say something that he was sure would brighten his mood. "Hey, wasn't that the one that had this fancy Shōgi set?"

While he tried to hide it, he knew Sasuke well enough to recognize the glint in his eyes as he realized his plan. "Yeah, you're right. But I think it was one of the rarest prizes, so you would need to score really high to get it."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "You will need to be more subtle when you try to manipulate someone. This was just painful to listen to." However, he started to walk in the direction Chōji had vanished without further complaints and with a straight back rather than his hunched posture from before, so Naruto counted it as a win.

"Hey, what did I miss?"

Turning around, he saw Kiba walking towards them, his arms filled with a wide variety of food while Akamaru followed closely on his heels. He was just about to open his mouth to reply when another voice from beside him made him flinch in surprise.

"Nothing much, just Chōji running off to play a game while Naruto and Sasuke tried to manipulate Shikamaru."

He shot a glare at the side of Shino's head, annoyed that the other boy had managed to make him jump like that and angry with himself that he had forgotten about his presence entirely. In his defense, it was easy to forget about him with how little he talked.

"You did what?" Kiba laughed, a wide grin spreading over his face. "You really tried to trick Shikamaru? Are you stupid?"

Akamaru barked in agreement.

"Well, it worked, didn't it?" Naruto crossed his arms. Why did they make fun of them when their plan clearly worked out just as intended?

"I guess," Kiba said with a shrug, though he still spotted a grin. "So they walked ahead, then?"

He blinked. "What do you mean? Aside from Chōji, all of us are-" He broke off in the middle of the sentence when he turned around and found everyone aside from him and Shino missing. "What?! Where did everyone go?"

"They went ahead to play the games."

He jumped around, pointing directly at Shino's face. "Without us? Why didn't you say anything?"

The other boy just looked at him, completely unbothered by his accusation. Or at least he thought he was unbothered; it was hard to say with how most of his body was covered up. "Why? Because I thought you knew and just wanted to wait for Kiba. I would have told you had I known you were this inattentive, of course."

He growled at that, but Kiba spoke up before he had the chance to explode into Shino's face. "Hey, Naruto, where did you get that haori?"

His bad mode evaporated almost immediately. "Hehe, it was the first prize in the eating contest I won." As if anyone could beat him in something like that when the food in question was ramen. Seriously, people were stupid sometimes. "Here, look what else I got!"

A second later, Kiba let out an amazed 'wow' as he saw the three-bladed kunai in his hand. "Damn, this one looks much cooler than all those cheap copies they sell at each corner."

He wasn't wrong. It wasn't surprising that there were so many stalls that sold stuff that was inspired by the Yondaime considering the entire festival was held in remembrance of his victory over the Nine-Tails, but most of it was rather bland and cheap. While countless children were running around in a white haori, with blonde wigs, or with kunai similar to the one in his hand, only a few of them could compete with his. He didn't even need a wig because he was already blond!

"So," Kiba continued while the three of them walked towards where their friends should be. "I guess you're not interested in even more noodles if you just came from an eating contest, so-"

Naruto pulled the aforementioned food out of his friend's hands, knowing that he was just teasing him. "In your dreams, idiot!"

Kiba took a step towards him, ready to insult him right back –they both found it fun to fight each other both verbally and physically and started trouble with each other all the time without any hard feelings being involved- but Shino seamlessly stepped between them. "We should hurry to catch up with the others. The play is starting soon and I don't want to miss it because you two started another fight."

He pouted a bit at that, but a quick glance at Kiba confirmed that he was just as unwilling to risk missing the play as he was, so they silently agreed to postpone their fight for now.

Besides, Shino was creepy.

He had no idea how he was able to make such a terrifying glare when you couldn't even see his eyes, but it was almost as creepy as Mikoto-oba-san's smile when she found out that he and Sasuke had accidentally burned down half of the kitchen when they wanted to bake a cake for his brother's birthday!

Yeah, no one liked to disagree with Shino. It just wasn't worth it.

It always amused him to watch this play.

The content itself wasn't funny, of course, with it being a recollection of the night eight years ago that almost destroyed the village and ended with the death of the Yondaime and his wife. It was a sombre affair, one that brought more than just one person in attendance to tears. After all, everyone had lost somebody that day.

However, he still found amusement in the fact that over a dozen shinobis, professional killers that didn't hesitate to commit grievous crimes in the name of their village, used their skills for something banal as this; whether it was a fire technique that sent tightly controlled flames over the heads of the audience, a water technique to create mist for a gloomier atmosphere, or the transformation technique that created an imitation of the Nine-Tails that could have been mistaken for the real deal if it weren't for its smaller size, the shinobi used everything in their arsenal to give the people a good show.

Still, for all that it amused him, he also found happiness in the fact that techniques that usually brought nothing but death and destruction were used in such a harmless way. It gave him hope that shinobi might one day become more than just simple killing machines.

However, in his opinion, it would have been much easier to simply use a Genjutsu to create all of this. However, from what he had heard from his mother, his father had been soundly shut down when he proposed just that a few years before Itachi had even been born. There were quite a lot of shinobi who enjoyed using their abilities for something more harmless than murder, apparently, and they didn't want that taken from them.

He could understand that sentiment. Besides, it was probably better to do it this way; there was no way many shinobi would be comfortable with letting themselves caught in an illusion like that, even if they knew that it was ultimately harmless. Not being able to notice what was going on around them for a prolonged amount of time while in public just wasn't something people in their profession liked to experience.

Again, he could understand that sentiment.

"Funny, isn't it?" Izumi whispered from beside him. "If you weren't there on that day and just watched this play, you would have no idea how terrible it actually was."

Itachi wasn't sure if she was talking to him or just to herself like the absent look in her eyes hinted at, but he decided to reply nonetheless. "They can hardly show how people got killed in masses, now can they? That wouldn't get over very well." The most gruesome scenes, if they could even be called that, were the ones where some attack from the 'Nine-Tails' swept a number of actors out of sight, probably in an effort to make the show more child-friendly.

She snorted and gave him a small smile before turning around once again to watch the play. "No, probably not."

He kept looking at her for several more seconds before he nodded to himself and did the same.

Itachi had been a bit worried when she had proposed to come here since she had always avoided it the previous years. Not that he could blame her; she had watched her own father die during the Nine-Tails' attack and had consequently little interest in watching a play about that day. However, she seemed fine now, which he accepted as the positive sign it was.

They applauded together with the audience when the actor that played the Yondaime 'killed' the Nine-Tails by thrusting a kunai through its head –barely anyone knew how exactly he had beaten the Bijū, so the actors let him win differently every single year, making it the most interesting scene by far- and kept their silence when the play ended with the Yondaime's death.

There was absolute silence as the body crumbled to the floor before vanishing underground by clever usage of the Hiding Like a Mole Technique. Everyone stood like that for a minute, paying their respect to the fallen hero and everyone else that had died in that tragic night with lowered heads, only the occasional sob cutting through the silence.

Then the firework started, signalling the end of the mourning minute.

The change in the mood of the people around him was impossible to miss; there were 'oohs' and 'aahs' left and right, laughter from every direction, and cheerful calls as people joked with their friends and families. It was easy to notice that many were still sad and downcast, but everyone did their best to brighten the mood. They celebrated because they were still alive and because it would be rude to the dead to fall into depression when they had given their lives for them.

They celebrated because looking forward was the only thing they could do to repay this debt, and because they owned it to the fallen that they went on with their lives and didn't lose themselves in grief.

It was truly beautiful.

Once the firework was over, their group, consisting of him, Izumi, Shisui, and Hana, moved on. They simply walked through the streets with no clear goal in mind, the latter three going ahead while he was a few steps behind. While that didn't let him avoid teasing comments from Hana –"Gosh, Itachi, how do you manage to look prettier in a kimono than Izumi and I?"- entirely, it at least saved him from being pulled into participating in games by Shisui.

He had honestly no idea what he and Izumi enjoyed about goldfish scooping. With their skills, there shouldn't be any challenge in that. Relaxing and enjoying the simpler things in life was one thing, but this must surely be boring?

At least Izumi had the common sense to give the fishes she won to a small child rather than keeping them. Kokuban might not be a common crow and would understand her if she told him not to eat them, but he might just as well decided to do it anyway.

However, Itachi conceded that he enjoyed watching the others play silly games while he stood at the side, enjoying whatever sweets had caught his eyes. He didn't allow himself to eat too much unhealthy food aside from the semi-occasional dango, but this night was an exception.

A team effort from all his companions ultimately forced him to participate in a simple game that was targeted at shinobi and required the participants to create certain images with their shuriken. Now, had he played against other children, he might have held back to keep things fair. However, as the only other participants were Hana and Izumi, he paid them back for making him play it in the first place by getting the first place.

He had no regrets.

Itachi had unfortunately no use of the pink necklace he got as his prize as he already wore Izumi's present for his promotion around his neck, so he gave it to Shisui instead who then wore it with pride in full sight over his blue kimono.

It was not too long after midnight when he finally proposed to find his and Hana's younger siblings and their friends. They would doubtlessly try to stay out as long as they could no matter how tired they might be, so it was better for them to bring them home rather than risk them falling asleep in some abandoned alley.

Also, there was something else he needed to do before the night was over that he needed one of his brother's friends for. The appointed time was still a bit away, but it would be bad if he couldn't meet the deadline because they needed to search for them for too long.

This worry was fortunately discarded when he heard a voice from behind him. "Nii-san?"