15 Chapter 15: Return

05 march- 12 years AK

I was standing in the Hokage's office, my arms crossed behind my back and feet kept at shoulder width.

The afternoon sunlight was crashing in the room through the open window, which let in the quiet rumble of the hidden village awake and working.

The Sandaime was going over the reports of my missions under the direct orders of the Daimyō slowly, probably finding patterns and reading more among the lines than what I would ever be able to do.

But what in particular stood out, was the paper with 'rejected' stamped in red over it.

"I must say, nobody failed their indoctrination in Anbu quite so spectacularly in a long time." He commented.

He puffed thoughtfully from his pipe, adjusting his hat while looking alternatively between me and the reports on his desk.

He reached a decision and nodded thoughtfully.

"Welcome back, Tokubetsu Jonin Daiki." He said.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama." I bowed a bit, it felt necessary, before wearing the flat jacket over my armor, leaving it open. It had some interesting pockets, but I would keep the really important things on me.

I patted affectionately the big storage scroll that I had strapped to the base of my back.

The old man chuckled: "You still don't have a humble bone in your whole body, I had hoped that your stay with the Guardians would curb it out of you, or at least the casualty on your very first mission as a team leader. Or even your failure in Anbu."

His tone had become somber on his last two statements, and I was torn between bristling and flinching.

"I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with you, your recent failure with Anbu baffled many." he continued.

I tilted my head questioningly.

A light frown marred the face of the ancient shinobi, and I took the reprimand it brought with it with a blank expression.

"In my defense, I had raised my doubts about joining Anbu, Hokage-sama." I jabbed.

"Yes." He was condescending now "You proved your point, congratulations."

The old man tried to make me feel like I was some kind of Nara flunking his exams so that he could keep lazing around.

He would have probably succeeded in it too if it was anyone but me.

"Are you going to keep taking only B ranked missions, Daiki-kun?" He tiredly asked me.

"They have the best risk-pay-time balance, Hokage-sama." I answered with a wide smile.

"You are one of the most aggravating shinobi I ever had under my command." He barked back.

"I took the freedom of signing you in for the jōnin tournament, it's mostly used to keep our jonins from going stir crazy between long missions. So also Anbus participate in it." He took a deep drag from his pipe.

"I wasn't aware anything of the sort existed..." I started before mentally slapping myself.

"Ah, jōnin only, of course. It's a very secret thing I suppose?" My brain finally started working, finding reasons for such a thing to exist.

"Nidaime-sama's idea?" I asked.

The eyebrows if the Sandaime climbed into his forehead.

I was acutely aware that he had mastered his own facial expressions, and that him showing me 'surprise' was actually an order meaning 'explain'.

I shrugged: "He's the one who came up with the chunin exams. The chunins know enough to be dangerous and showcase what their village has to offer, while the jōnin can sharpen each other and... mingle? I guess it could be nice bonding over new ways to hurt people." I let the sarcasm tinge my voice on my last statement. It was payment for the attempted guilt trip the Sandaime had tried to throw me in.

Ah, it feels good no longer having to feel paranoid. And since he was smoking, I took the freedom of doing the same, lighting up a cigarette with a flare of chakra and taking a drag. I circulated a thin layer of wind natured chakra in my lungs, keeping them protected from the nocive smoke, and exhaling, I laced my chakra with the smoke, shaping the kanji for 'fire' like I had seen the Hokage do years before.

I saw his eyes narrowing, a flash of pain behind them gone before it could be properly seen.

My smugness vanished, and I let the shape of the smoke vanish.

"I learned more with him in three days that I had in the previous year, Hokage-sama." I said, trying to make him hear the honest sadness that I felt.

And somehow I managed it.

"Shinobi endure." was the only reply I got, and he dismissed me with a gesture of a hand.

I turned to leave when Naruto of all people barged in, telling something to his Hokage-Jiji with an outside voice that almost made the windows tremble.

He was shouting some bullshit about a prank that he clearly did pull.

I watched him closely. He was the exact copy of the one Kishimoto would have drawn, complete of hideous orange jumpsuit. Well, it does the job of keeping people from focusing on his face.

I sneaked a peek at the file-photo of the yondaime hanging on the wall and compared it to Naruto, the baby fat fas still keeping the high cheekbones hidden, while the chin clearly was an Uzumaki trait, but the nose was very similar, and there was just no mistaking either the eyes or the hair. However, any idiot would have recognized it if they didn't already dismiss him as the Kyuubi container. Or more in general as the village idiot.

He sure fits the character. I thought when he pointed his finger at me shouting something else.

I blinked. "Sorry, did you say something?" I drawled, the temptation had been just too good to pass.

He was left spluttering while I bowed lightly in the Hokage. "You are no longer dismissed Daiki-kun."

I resumed my stand by position, hands crossed behind my back, feet at shoulder width and slightly raised chin.

I waited patiently while he found a way to send Naruto ahead at the ramen stall and let my eyes move around the room, stopping an instant more than necessary on every well-disguised Anbu. It was hilarious pointing out in such a discrete way that their hiding spots were bullshit.

"The boy nature is an S-ranked secret." The Sandaime told me when the kid finally left.

He clearly was trying to steer clear from the topic of his parentage, probably for the benefit of the anbus in the room.

I nodded in silence, I wasn't going to touch that topic with a ten-foot pole.

And since I didn't want to kill Naruto, leaving him to grow as he did in the storyline was the best line of development. At least there he didn't become a psycho holding the Kyuubi's power, which was something less to be worried about.

I left the Hokage Tower and ran for a while on the roofs, crossing Konoha a couple of times to familiarize myself with the few differences from my memories. A new condominium here, a new park where stood an abandoned house on the outskirts of the village.

I landed without a sound on a wooden post in the Uchiha compound and took in the sight of the greenhouse. The glass was clean and there was a visible trail on the grass that went from the greenhouse to the pond. I liked that even in a world with sink Sasuke had chosen to keep caring for the vegetables with a bucket and muscles.

I hopped down and walked where I had kept up my yurt for the six months between the chuunin exams and my three years-long contract with the capital.

I stretched a bit and took unlatched from my shoulders my big, favorite, beautiful, self-made storage scroll and forced myself to work.

A couple of hours later I was finishing the last seal on the inside of my trusted yurt when I sensed Sasuke enter the Uchiha' grounds.

I left the yurt and felt the seals click into place when I closed the door. Fuinjutsu is awesome. I had switched my storage scroll with a slender one, I didn't have to carry my house with me after all.

I heard him walking down the gravel path that lead to his house and saw him freeze when he recognized the yurt, and after a brief second during which his eyes darted around me.

"You're back." he flatly said.

"You've grown," I answered with a smirk. I saw him blush and glance at the wooden post.

"Thank you for taking care of the greenhouse." I offered. His answer was nodding stiffly.

Such an awkward kid. I thought. But from what I could tell, he looked less broody than he was in the manga, even if the seriousness couldn't be wiped out of his character.

I'll take an awkward emo angsty teen over the psycho every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I shrugged in my mind.

"Since you are about to graduate" And I saw him perk up at my words, was he surprised that I kept track?

Of course he is. I mentally smacked myself. Hell, he was eight or nine when I left, and likely no adult had actually offered him any semblance of guidance.

"How about a spar? So you can check on my progress." I asked him, knowingly tweaking the last statement and making the kid falter in his steps.

"With the intent to kill, Sasuke, I promise I can take it." I added, before tossing a pebble in the air.

He nodded quickly and in the moment the pebble hit the ground, two shurikens came flying at me, a third shadowing the second, and Sasuke started running in a clockwise circle around me, hoping to force me to split my attention on two fronts.

It was actually quite clever. I simply dodged to my left, letting the shurikens come between me and him.

He sharply changed direction, coming straight at me, his hands blurring through three very famous seals: Boar, Horse, Tiger.

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!" He shouted, spitting a fireball at me.

I took a deep breath, lacing my saliva with chakra and spitting it at the incoming fire.

The mass of water that left my mouth easily put out the flames, drenching Sasuke in the process.

He didn't stop, and finally engaged me in taijutsu. He was fast for his age, as fast as I was after my first six months in team 10.

He opened with a sweeping kick, I stepped back, neatly avoiding it, he followed pushing himself up from the ground with a burst of chakra and keeping his momentum, a spinning kick directed towards my head.

I leaned back swiping at his leg and making him spin even faster.

He landed unsteadily after completing another couple of twirls on himself. I flicked his ear and when he rose sharply in my direction I flicked him again on the nose, before parring an enraged wide punch.

"Rage is useless." I stated calmly, slightly tapping his elbow to push another punch off course.

"You are not trained to control it, it makes you lose focus, you become predictable." I kept lecturing, walking in his guard and simply pushing him on the chest. He was already unbalanced, so he toppled over.

Seeing him moving to charge me again, with his teeth bared, I waited for him to get close to grab him in an unescapable hold, my right arm interlocked with both of his, and my weight keeping him pinned on the ground.

"Stop," I said when he tried to struggle.

"Calm down." I repeated, "Breath slowly. You can break out of this hold, but only if you use your head." I reprimanded him.

Ten seconds later, his breath had become even once again, and I could feel him testing different groups of muscles to find out which one he could actually move without.

After twenty seconds, he stopped holding our weight on his right leg and with a sharp tug of his left shoulder he had me slide over him, his arms immediately becoming free.

He was so surprised by the fact that he just stood there, looking at his hands.

I placed a hand on his shoulder and lightly shook him. "Rage is the weapon of the weak. And fear drives only those who do not think." I said with a Yoda worthy demeanor.

He looked at me with a startled expression on his face.

"Don't bottle away your emotions, and don't rely on their push to go on. Recognize them, understand where they come from, and work your way through them. When they become too much, breathe, and think." I said.

I was mostly making it up, but the point wasn't micromanaging his emotions for him, but trying to make him learn how to deal with them in his own. He was loads better than I thought he would be, but I couldn't spend too much time or effort on him, I had other things to deal with. It was cold, even ruthless, and I simply hoped it would be enough.

I had no idea where the jonin tournament was going to be held, so that evening I made my way into a pub where I had spotted several shinobi. Gathering information discretely wasn't fun, and overhearing other ninjas conversations wasn't exactly safe, but it couldn't be helped.

I only hoped to not encounter Shin. We really had nothing to talk about. We both realized it during the six months I had spent in Konoha after the chunin exams.

I has worked through my rage, so likely I wouldn't feel overwhelming hate towards Guy anymore, even if trusting him with anything not mission-related was off the table.

I wasn't hoping to hear exactly where to go, but at some point I would strike up a conversation and try to find out. There were always other methods, but the lack of details around the 'I've signed you up for a tournament that could not exist' meant that I was being tested. From my gathering info skills to my open combat ones, if the tournament actually existed.

If there was one thing that my economic ventures in the capital had granted me, it was a shitload of money. I eyeballed the Monopoly on one of the shelves in the left side of the room and gave a satisfied grunt in seeing a couple of chunins giving their all to win a nine-man' morris game while sipping their sake.

I purchased a warm cup of Honjozo-shu along with a pot of warm water. I had my personal blend of tea thank you very much. I sat at an empty table, distractedly checking for poisons. That kind of sake was made by adding brewer's alcohol and was not as potent as sake made without the addition of alcohol. This addition was responsible for giving the sake a light and smooth body and flavor. It also made the aroma of the drink distinct and easily identified.

I sipped it slowly, assigning a number to every other ninja in the pub.

When I had finished my cup, I carefully warmed up the water in the teapot with some fire natured chakra. It was nothing less than an advanced form of chakra control. The water must not boil but begin the evaporation process nonetheless.

"...Guy's little clone..." were some wonderful news to hear. It looked like he ended up with Rock Lee on his team.

"... Tsume's kid is in the class with the other clan heir..." I rolled my eyes, that was an old new.

I fished out from a breast pocket of my tokubetsu jonin jacket a paper bag of my favorite blend and let it fall into the teapot.

I kept overhearing snippets of stuff I lacked a context for, but I mostly confirmed that the timeline was roughly on track. Good enough.

When I deemed it ready, I poured myself some tea. I used the same cup I used for the sake, I didn't really care, worst-case scenario, my blend would have something wrong in it.

I was considering my next moves, staying in Konoha would have been the best until after the chunin exams, Orochimaru sure as hell should be kept away from the Sharingan, and many of the key players would converge to Konohagakure no Sato, if I were to believe to what I had managed to overhear in the Capital. I was deep in my thought when Mitarashi Anko, of all people, popped out of the blue on the empty seat in front of me.

Kunoichi #5 I associated my previous identification number to her face.

She was a fairly tall woman of a slender frame. She has light brown, pupil-less eyes. Her hair black with a blue tint in the manga was styled in a short, spiky, fanned-ponytail. Her infamous fitted mesh bodysuit covered her from her neck down to her thighs. Over this, she wore a tan overcoat with a purple in-seam and a pocket on each side, a dark orange mini-skirt, a dark blue belt, and pale grey shin guards. In addition to the forehead protector, she also wore a small pendant that looked like a snake fang.

I got why ninja tended to wear always the same combination of clothes, I did it too. During a fight one had to know where everything was stashed on one's own body. There was never the time to stop and think about where one had stashed the ninja wire, so everything had to be always the same. The same reasoning went for the colors a ninja wore. They heavily impacted one's ability to camouflage after all.

Still, her mesh bodysuit let me take a peek at the areolas of her nipples. And that rose every kind of alarm in my head.

"Well hello! I'm the sexy and single..."

"So." I interrupted her before she could get the ball rolling. "I don't think the Hokage issued the order to seduce me, he has figured me out enough that he can tell manipulations will backfire spectacularly."

She didn't blink or in anyway betray that she knew where I was coming from. But I frankly didn't care.

"You work for Ibiki, so either he is somehow spooked by me..." I tilted my head, letting my eyes take in her form shamelessly. She had leaned back on her chair.

"Or a disgruntled... Anbu with a recently broken nose asked for a favor hoping to get some dirt on me." I continued, finally figuring out the reason for her presence. Yugao had been the one in charge of my evaluation, and I had willingly broken her orders. And nose.

"Daiki-kun!" A most youthful voice exclaimed.

I smirked to the unreadable expression on Anko's face. "Embarrassing isn't it?" I sardonically asked before rising from my seat.

Guy hadn't changed. Not really, even if he did look more mature. He was 26 after all, even his youthfulness couldn't stop his growing up. But which were the chances that he wouldn't be running a C-rank on the day I came back? It did smell like a setup.

But maybe I was just paranoid.

"Guy-sensei." I replied with a smile. My relationship with him had remained civil after my chunin exams, even if understandably strained. But I had always known that it wasn't really anyone's fault. I doubted that I would ever again refer to him as sensei in the privacy of my thoughts, but alienating him would have meant losing a powerful ally.

"I heard that you got a taijutsu specialist. With a Hyuga and a kunoichi with a passion for every kind of weaponry." I started conversationally, abusing my knowledge of the future for all that it was worth. And it would also set up a precedent of me 'knowing stuff'.

I should have known that talking with Guy in a pub would have backfired spectacularly.

The following day

"I still don't know how I got roped into this." I muttered to myself.

The pebbles were embedding themselves into the palms of my hands and the sweat was rolling down my nose in thick drops, making me wish I could stop to scratch it.

I was running on my hands at Guy's side, it was our second lap around Konoha, and the sun hadn't completely left the horizon yet. I started missing the endless string of A ranked missions that my three years in the Capital had been.

We stopped to pick up Lee, and I fully realized how lucky I had been in not becoming a copy of Might Guy.

I avoided being hugged by an over-excited kid in green spandex who kept screaming "Senpai!" only thanks to hand standing. And once more I thanked Guy's crazy training regime.

20 march- year 12 AK

Turns out the Hokage monument kept hidden a vast underground arena.

Which was all the more impressive if one thought that there was also a system of caves designated for emergency evacuation of Konohagakure's civilians.

I entered walking at the side of Guy, and we both pretended that I didn't follow him there because I didn't know the way.

"Ne, Guy-sensei, I haven't sparred in a while, is there a set of rules or something that would be... impolite, to do?"

The man shouted something about the joy he felt in having such a tactful student before answering me: "The tournament is more like a series of spars, Daiki-kun. So nothing that is immediately lethal unless you can stop it at any given moment."

I nodded thoughtfully, I would need to play it as a finesse fighter. It would be a good training, and to be perfectly honest, I had been getting restless during the last month. Not enough to take an A rank with a team, that would not happen if I had a saying of any kind.

"Oh fuck me." I groaned when I read the tournament' brackets. What were the odds that my first opponent would be Kakashi of all people?

I was about to ask Guy if the Hokage would be watching when I spotted the Man with the Hat in the gallery above the arena.

It was a circular, barren fighting pit with a twenty meters radius, with seals on the walls. At least it wouldn't fall on our heads. However the Hokage wanted to know what I was capable of, he could have asked.

The end result will be the same. I thought. I unlatched the scroll until I uncovered an empty storage seal, in which I dropped my weights and armor.

My dressing code had remained roughly the same during the last years. Sandals with dark cargo pants held on my calves by tightly wrapped bandages, a couple of pouches on my left tight. My grey-ish hoodied form-fitting shirt had long sleeves, my armguards were dyed of a dull black which helped to break the uniformity of my torso, along with the straps that held in place my big ass storage seal.

There were a lot of contestants, many that I had never seen before, and several that I had expected to see were not there.

Likely on missions. I reasoned. It was a pity, I had wanted to see what Kurenai or Gekko were capable of.

But eyeing the absolute blank face of Yugao, I smiled and waved cheekily in her direction, doing my best impression of a lecherous grin.

I hopped down into the arena jumping lightly on my feet to get used to the absence of the weights.

I even zipped up my Tokubetsu Jonin jacket and sat down, waiting for Kakashi to arrive.

"Doesn't he surrender if he fails to be here on time?" I asked for the general amusement of the peanut gallery.

Kakashi chose that moment to lazily walk in the underground arena.

Well at least he did me the courtesy of not reading his smut. I considered raising from my position.

This is going to hurt.

15 July- 12 years AK

I entered the Hokage's office without hiding my curiosity at being summoned, by an Anbu, no less.

In the room, there was not only the Hokage but also a very famous kunoichi.

Kurenai was a fair-skinned woman of slender build like many kunoichis were. She had long black untamed hair reaching her upper back and very unique eyes that are red in color, with an additional ring in them. They were enthralling, and I wondered if she had so.e kind of lenses on them. She wore make-up consisting of red lipstick and purple eye shadow. She wore a red mesh armor blouse with only the right sleeve visible. She was wrapped loosely in a broad material that resembled bandages with a pattern on it similar to those of rose thorns. Her hands and upper thighs were also wrapped in bandages and she wore the Konoha forehead protector and regular shinobi sandals. All in all, she was a knockout.

"Sorry, I'm late, there was this old lady, you see..." a familiar voice drawled behind me, introducing the entrance of Kakashi no Sharingan himself. The lazy bastard.

"It's of no consequence Kakashi-kun, since I convocated you three hours ago on purpose." The Sandaime replied merrily, waiving lazily his pipe through the smoke he had just exhaled.

Then I put together the presence of both Kakashi and Kurenai with mine. No, it couldn't be.

Nonononono... I started chanting.

"You are here because I'm giving you a genin team."

Fuck you old man.