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Tsume rarely has time to grab her kid from school herself. Konoha’s a safe enough place for ninja kids, especially a clan kid, so Kiba can usually make his own way home by the time he’s eight. Sometimes, Hana picks him up. If Tsume needs to make sure he comes straight home instead of going off to play with his friends and slack off, Kuromaru can also act in her stead and fetch the brat.
(She adores her kid, but her kid bites.)
(Most Inuzuka do.)
Once in a while, though, she’s caught by a whim to pick him up herself, or she has to go to the school.
“So…” Tsume drawls, leaning back in her chair and eyeing Mizuki-sensei, unimpressed.
“Of course, it’s not just Kiba’s fault,” the man says, stiff as a fencepost. “He and Uzumaki worked together, and the demon kid is… conniving. Cunning, like the fox he holds.”
Tsume quirks up a brow. “They’re nine.”
“The Uzumaki brat—”
“They’re nine,” Tsume repeats. “How the hell did they manage to get you?”
Mizuki is, in fact, covered in orange paint. It’s not entirely dry yet. The stuff on his face is dry enough to crack when he frowns at her. “That’s besides the point.”
“They’re nine, and you’re a chuunin,” she says. “You should be better than this.”
“Irrelevant,” Mizuki says, still stiff. She hears the assistant, Umino, still shouting at the kids in the other room. She thinks he’s giving them both the same riot act, which means Kiba was definitely an enthusiastic participant, and not just in the room when Uzumaki set the prank off. “Uzumaki’s getting a week’s detention. Kiba—”
“Kiba’s getting the same,” Tsume says. “Keeps him out of my hair, sounds like he deserves it. Hana’ll get a laugh out of it.”
“Inuzuka-sama—”
“Good talk,” Tsume tells him, kicking away from the child-sized desk and leaving the room.
She goes to the next room, Kuromaru chuffing a low laugh once Mizuki can’t hear him, and knocks. The yelling from Umino ceases, and he opens the door. He’s a little red-faced and flustered from the yelling, but he’s not covered in paint like his supervisor.
“I hear there’s a troublemaker with my name on him,” she says. “Boys ready for release yet?”
Umino glares over his shoulder, and then turns to her and holds up a finger. “One minute.”
The door is closed again. He keeps yelling—he’s got a hell of a set of lungs on him—and then the door opens again.
Kiba and the Uzumaki kid come tumbling out.
Akamaru nearly falls out of Kiba’s hood. Tsume scoops him up and places him on Kuromaru. Kiba goes to grab his pup, and Tsume blocks him off.
“Uh-uh,” she says, and then drops a fist on his head. She’s gentle about it. He’s a ninja kid, he’ll be fine. “You got detention for a week, brat!”
“Gah!” Kiba stumbles back, clutching at his head. “Mom!”
“If you’re going to prank a teacher, be a ninja about it! Don’t get caught!” she scolds.
She turns to talk to Umino, and sees the Uzumaki kid. He’s watching her and Kiba, and turns away with a pout. Umino sees him do that, and then offers a helpless and uncomfortable smile to Tsume.
Kushina’s kid should not look that jealous of a kid getting scolded by his mom.
Fuck.
Tsume looks down at Kiba and knocks her foot into his ankle. “Hey. Brat.”
“Mooom,” Kiba whines. “I’m not a—”
“Yeah you are,” she dismisses. He is. She loves him for it, but he is. She barrels on ahead. “You friends with blondie? Pulling pranks and skipping school and all that crap usually means friends, doesn’t it?”
Kiba blinks at her, and then at Naruto. Naruto stares back, wide-eyed, and then crosses his arms and pouts to the side, refusing to watch the answer. Kiba looks back up at her, brow pinched in confusion. “Um, I mean—yeah? I guess?”
“Hm,” Tsume hums, and feels the tension ratchet up. Umino looks ready to say something, maybe undercut the rising discomfort with a deflection. Good instinct, if he’s trying to protect Naruto the way she thinks. “Fine. Uzumaki, you’re coming with us.”
“Eh?!” the kid yells. “Wh-what for?”
He points aggressively in her face. “I’m not gonna take Kiba’s lecture for him, y’know!”
“I was thinking more that if my kid has friends, that they should probably have dinner at our house at some point, but sure, you can get lectured with him!”
“Hey! I said I’m not gonna—huh?”
Tsume’s already turned started walking by that point, Kuromaru at her side. She hears Kiba hissing at Naruto to stop yelling or he’s just gonna get lectured by Hana instead, and Hana’s lectures are worse than Mom’s, dummy. Naruto just sounds confused, and is getting very blustery about it.
Tsume ignores this. She has a feeling It’ll all work out much better if she doesn’t actually address this directly to clear up whatever confusion Naruto’s having. Better to just let Kiba handle it. Umino, maybe. Naruto’s got more reason to trust them than her.
“Hurry up!” she calls over her shoulder. “I’m making tonkatsu, brats! That takes time!”
Their sandals squeak as they rush to catch up. On Kuromaru’s back, Akamaru yips.
--
Naruto has no idea how to behave in someone else’s house. Tsume feels a little guilty for not urging Kiba to invite the kid before, but she quashes it. She’d have gotten called in, possibly arrested, if she’d reached out early enough for people to start connecting dots. This is the first time she’s had the excuse to not get half her family screwed over because of international intrigue.
Still, the kid’s socialization is painful. No manners, swinging from overconfident self-aggrandizing to confused, almost meek attempts to mimic Kiba when it comes to… well, almost everything.
“You two are being distracting,” she tells them. Kiba mugs at her. She mugs right back. “Go show him the kennels. Stay away from Kiiromaru, you know she just whelped. The bitch’ll bite anyone that comes too close to the pups.”
“I know, Mom!” Kiba yells back.
She waves them both off with a roll of her eyes. They scamper.
Kuromaru brushes against the back of her leg. “Want me to keep an eye on them?”
“I’m thinking some of the assholes that just hit chuunin might try to mess with them,” she muses. “Yeah, make sure nobody gives ‘em trouble.”
“On it,” Kuromaru rumbles, and sweeps out the door to follow the kids to the kennels. Gamaru’s pups are old enough that they’ll be safe to play with, and she expects that’s where Kuromaru will direct them, if Kiba ‘just so happens’ to get distracted and take them somewhere else.
Hana wanders in when Tsume’s almost done with the frying portion of the meal. She washes her hands and grabs three plates. She pauses, and does not close the cabinet door.
“Uzumaki’s here,” she says.
“He’s a friend of your brother’s.”
“They were roughhousing.”
“We all do that, Hana.”
“He eating with us?”
“I invited him to.”
“Uh-huh.”
With a light clinking noise, Hana sets out four plates. Tsume doesn’t ask what her feelings on this are. Tsume’s clan head, but she’s also Mom, and that means she’s in charge of things like ‘attitudes towards the jinchuuriki’ across the entire clan and for her kids in particular.
“Either of ‘em get bit?” Tsume asks. She’s heard a few rumors about animals responding poorly to Naruto, but she’s not sure how much of that was rumor, and what was a real, tangible effect of his tenant. Still, Kuromaru hadn’t said anything, so she imagines that even if it is something that happens, it won’t affect the ninken.
“How’d you invite him?” Hana asks.
“He and Kiba got in trouble for a prank,” Tsume says. “They teamed up to do it.”
“So you invited him to dinner?”
“Best excuse I’ve had yet.”
Hana had been six when the Kyuubi had rampaged across the village. She’d been just barely old enough to understand the rumors that had circled about the boy in their yard, before the military police had started cracking down on the new law before it could reach anyone outside. Just barely old enough to know, really know, what Naruto was.
Just barely old enough to remember Kushina, and the friendship Tsume had once had with her.
“This gonna be a regular thing?” Hana asks.
“If Kiba stays friends with him,” Tsume says. “Go call them in for dinner, I’ve just got the miso left to pour.”
Hana ducks out, and two of the Haimaru triplets follow her. The third flops down in one of the dog beds, whining lowly when Tsume pops a brow at her.
Right, that one’s got a bum hip this week. Best stay off it.
The door slams open, and the boys come tumbling in. Hana follows them after Akamaru slides in, yipping and trying to tug Naruto off despite still only having his milk teeth. Tsume leans against the counter and crosses her arms. The boys are covered in dirt, and rolling about on the floor in a squabble sure ain’t helping.
“Up, up,” she orders, and then reaches down and scruffs ‘em both when they don’t stop on their own. “Go wash up. Hana, make sure they do.”
“Mom, they’re old enough to know how to wash up,” Hana says.
“I don’t trust your brother to actually do it, whether he knows how or not,” Tsume tells her. “Scrub his face if there’s still dirt on it, too.”
“Mom—”
“Get to it!” Tsume barks out the order, not quite as literally as Kuromaru might have, and Hana grimaces. She follows the boys, one of the Haimaru triplets whining after her. The other two stay on the beds,
Kuromaru butts up his weight against her leg, and Tsume digs her hand into the fur on his head. He chuffs.
“What?” Tsume asks him.
“Kiba might know how to wash up, but the blonde kid?”
Tsume shrugs. “That’s why I sent Hana.”
Kuromaru laughs, rough and low. She snaps a dish towel at him, nowhere near close to hitting, and he dances away, cackling as only a giant wolfdog can.
“You’re as much of a brat as the kids,” she accuses.
The kids in question come scrambling back into the kitchen, Akamaru yipping at their heels. Hana’s slower, but looks mostly amused.
“Should I ask?” Tsume prompts.
“Uzumaki’s got some interesting ideas on how to prank the school toilets,” Hana reports, and Naruto squawks in betrayal.
“So long as they don’t happen in this house and I don’t get stuck footing the bill, I don’t care,” Tsume says. “You’re ninja. Don’t get caught.”
“Don’t prank your teachers,” Hana says.
Tsume shrugs. “If they get hit by a prank designed by an academy student and don’t catch the perpetrator, then they deserved it.”
Hana groans into her hand. She looks ready to say something, but then Naruto’s interrupting.
“There’s cheese in here!”
“Yeah,” Tsume says. “You’re not lactose intolerant, are you?”
“Uh… I don’t think so?” Naruto says. He pokes at the sliced tonkatsu with his chopsticks, looking fascinated. Tsume doesn’t ask why; she doubts he can afford tonkatsu often, especially anything more complicated than the most basic kind. She’s also more than aware of the kid’s ramen obsession, which she’s pretty sure was inherited from Kushina and then amplified. He takes a bite, and his eyes fly open. “This is really good!”
“Duh,” Kiba scoffs, “my mom’s cooking is the best.”
Naruto elbows him. “Not as good as ramen, but—”
“Hey! Don’t be rude to my mom!”
Naruto sticks out his tongue, mocking, and then starts scarfing down the food.
“Hey, hey!” Tsume says, leaning over to snap her fingers under his nose and get his attention when words alone don’t work. He leans back, suddenly scared. Damn. “Slow down, you’ll choke.”
“But it’s good—”
“And it’s polite,” Tsume adds. She can’t be the first person to have told him this, since he regularly meets with the Sandaime, but maybe she can make it stick. “Now eat before it goes cold.”
Naruto does, pouting a little, but he’s distracted by the food quickly enough.
Hana meets her eyes from further down the table, and field-signs in a way the boys can’t know yet. Recurring event, question.
Seven day yes maybe, Tsume signs back.
Yeah, she couldn’t be there for Kushina’s kid from the start, but she’ll be damned if she lets it stay that way now that she’s got an in.