SO. This is a first. Summer came along and I realized I'd completely forgotten how fictional writing (y'know, that stuff people actually enjoy?) works. This first chapter is to sort of test the waters, so to speak. Please review and tell me how horribly my attempts at human emotion fall flat. ;D

Disclaimer: Sasuke would have died a tragic but permanent death (it would have probably improved his character anyway?) had I owned Naruto. Alas, woe is me.

Chapter One: In which Ramen is Important to Some People.

It starts in the rain, the patter of small foot steps running through a dark street, the exaltation following a challenge, the excitement of a child who knows he's done his father proud.

And it doesn't matter what the villagers say, or the graffiti on the gates to his family compound, because Dad is finally going to smile tonight.

"If your father knew the fucking shinobi rules we wouldn't be in this mess, 'those who break the rules are trash' kid."

"Your father's gonna get all of us killed."

"You'll turn out just like him, a piece of shit who betrays his village."

"Hope your next mission puts you out of your misery kid."

"Your dad killed my little brother you fucking brat."

"You should both just die."

He's finally good enough, he's proved he can take care of himself and there's no reason to worry about me dad.

The boy -six and two months old Dad!- has just reached the next rank of shinobi, he's a chuunin now, and that means maybe now he's strong, maybe Dad won't worry so much.

He's charging through the front door to a silent home. That's okay though it's normal now and he wasn't supposed to be here until tomorrow morning anyway, but he made Sensei rush home so he could surprise Dad.

He runs to his father's bedroom, it's where the man spent most of his hours now since that mission. It's okay tonight though, because he has a surprise and maybe tomorrow they can have meals like a family again to celebrate. Just for one day.

The room is silent as the boy turns the doorknob slowly, just in case Dad is sleeping, it's dark out and if the tired man is getting rest he supposes it would be alright to wait the few hours till sunrise to make the announcement of his promotion.

The room is empty. The bed is made and unslept in. As thunder cracks across the sky the child's instincts are suddenly in overdrive. It is no longer an excited son standing in the doorway but a mid-ranked shinobi with a year of experience under his belt, someone who just got back from a tournament promoting children to kill one another for their village's pride and promotion, for the entertainment of civilians and a complete bloodbath in the face of the broiling Third Shinobi War.

He reaches out with his senses, searching for the familiar white chakra he's known his entire life, the bloodline his father will teach him now that he's proven a successful shinobi.

Nothing.

The house is empty and something is wrong.

He doesn't know why he feels that way but all the same everything is screaming at him that his father should be there.

The man hasn't left the house in weeks, why isn't he there?

The shinobi trods silently to check the remaining ground floor rooms, turning up nothing, before heading upstairs, using his keen memory to avoid the purposefully squeaky steps -a warning system to catch the unwary- and he arrives upstairs with nary a whisper.

One by one he clears the rooms, his bedroom, the two guestrooms, and the library before coming to a stop in front of his father's study.

And that's when he realizes why his instincts have been so high strung. He had dismissed the smell under the belief it was emanating from his own clothing, but standing in front of the study, there is the undeniable aroma of copper and rust and why is there so much blood in there?

The boy, because for all his training there is blood in his father's study and he can't find his dad and who bled on the other side of that door?

With trepidation, he reaches toward the knob and pushes the door in. There, in the center of the room on the tatami mat is a slumped figure, blood surrounding and soaked through the floor.

He's frozen and can't quite process what he's seeing because this isn't what he wanted. It can't be and it isn't his dad, this isn't him nononono.

The denial almost works until mother nature steps in and a flash of lightning from the storm outside illuminates the room.

The full jounin uniform, a single white sleeve -red triangles adorning its rim-, a white pony tail.

A very distinctive tanto, belonging to only one S-ranked shinobi in the Elemental Nations, buried in the man's gut.

It's his father and there's no stopping the rush of thoughts.

Why?!

Am I not good enough? Was I never good enough?

You left me.

Why did you leave me.

I hate you.

He doesn't bother looking for a death poem, those who break the rules are trash.

Nonetheless, his sensei finds him standing in the same exact spot the next afternoon.

He doesn't go to the funeral.

The shinobi is seventeen and returning from a suicide mission. Well, did they count as a suicide missions if he never managed to get himself killed on them? Really, he tried. Whoever rated these missions was really letting him down because it's been years and all he's managed to do is get a promotion to ANBU captain and really, who was the moron who thought putting him even remotely in charge of someone else's life was going to end well?

First jounin mission - teammate dead, political backlash for obtained bloodline.

One year later, rescue mission - objective failed, because he killed her himself.

First year after ANBU admittance - the Kyuubi attack, fourth Hokage and his wife dead. And it's a miracle their son hasn't spontaneously kicked the bucket by simple association.

Why would anyone put themselves on a team with "friend-killer Kakashi?" Hound wasn't superstitious but really, even he can see there's a trend.

He supposes that the idio- er, Hokage's faith in him wasn't completely unfounded though, because strangely enough, leading Team Ro has been the only case in which the definitely-not-a-curse has ceased. Probably due to some weird balance with the naturally high death rates in ANBU.
Somehow Hound's team has become the elite of the elite and despite the great number of S-ranks undertaken, they have the highest survival rate. Those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.

Regardless, He's tired, bruised, and if Bear asked how he was doing one more fucking time.

"Ne. Hound-taichou! You sure you'll be alright? You hit that tree pretty hard and you haven't teased the rookie even once about fainting!"

"I'm fine Bear, let's just report to the hokage and go home, I'll make sure Cat regrets not informing me about his little cut before the poison kicks in at training tomorrow"

There was a chorus of groans from the team at the thought of actually getting up in the morning to do anything other than go back to sleep because there should really be a limit on how much one mission can fuck up. Though they really should have seen the warning signs when the pigs started showing up everywhere and that weird old man would not stop streaking past their target's property. Not to mention that somebody later was going to have to explain to Cat that no, those weren't dog toys in the client's bedroom.

Really, it was a shitstorm start to finish, and Team Ro as a whole just wanted to go home and compartmentalize the entire thing.

It was such a damn shame that the universe had unilaterally decided to make Hound -Kakashi- it's permanent bitch.

"Okay but what if-"

"No that couldn't-"

"But how about-?"

"That will almost definitely explode in our faces."

"So let's change it to feedback here."

"Actually, that might-"

The chuunin members of Team Minato stood in silence, eyes glazed, as the three seal masters seated crosslegged in the middle of Training Ground Seven played around with the Hiraishin Seal, throwing ideas back and forth at such a pace that even the group's lauded prodigy ready to fall asleep.

The technique worked, why were they messing with it again?

"Eh?! There's no way that will work! You'll just blow up the whole shop and ruin the ramen trying that! It's waste! Blasphemous waste 'ttebane!"

Ah yes, that's right. It's been four hours of the chuunin standing there waiting for training because certain ramen-obsessed seal-masters wanted to teleport ramen from Ichiraku's directly to them while out in the field.

"Oi! Brats! We're using these seals to get supplies out there -not to feed your weird religion!"

And they managed to drag Jiraiya sama into it under the guise of helping the war effort. How. Why.

"Ah," Minato seemed chagrined, "of course, Jiraiya-sensei! We were just joking," for a grown man, he really did manage a good puppy dog look, but his team wasn't fooled, "we would never use such a complicated seal array for that kind of frivolous thing." Kushina nodded along, looking properly contrite.

"So sorry Jiraiya-sama! we won't joke around about teleporting ramen like that anymore dattebane~!" 'because there is no joking when it comes to Ramen!'

'LIERS.' Team Minato looked on as Jiraiya of the Sennin, Toad Sage, S-ranked ninja, veteran of the Second Shinobi War and all-round extremely powerful shinobi, glanced suspiciously at his student and his perfectly angelic looking girlfriend; and then nodded along, accepting the explanation as truth with no follow up interrogation to prevent what was definitely going to be a prodigious amount of power-abuse.

The members of Team Minato shared a glance and experienced a lifetime of bonding in a single moment due to the no-doubt large amounts of hardship that would soon be inflicted upon them by this new seal.

"What if we used it like a summoning seal?"

"If shinobi could just replicate a summoning seal to transport supplies it would have been done decades ago."

Team Minato sighed in long suffering. This would be a while.

Dusk had already fallen by the time Team Ro was dismissed from the Hokage's office.
"Everyone get some rest, I'll be seeing you all at 0700 tomorrow," Hound addressed the group, "go get some rest. Dismissed."

"Hai!" They tiredly saluted.

After his team dispersed, Hound set off across the rooftops toward the Memorial Stone, he'd let Obito and the rest of his family know he had made it back home in one piece, then maybe he would go back to his apartment to get some long-awaited rest.

"Aw heck, let's just shove some chakra in and see what happens."

The redhead aggressively placed her hand over the seal. Let's see what this puppy does.

"THERE'S NO TARGET FOR IT YET!"

Three startled chuunin, using every ounce of training they'd ever received, attempted to escape the mess of three S-ranked Jounin in the form of a familiar flash.

"KUSHINA DON-"

They never stood a chance.

Hound tiredly lifted himself from his crouched position in front of the memorial and sighed. Looking up at the sky, the moon had reached its zenith.

"Maa, Obito, I suppose I should be-"

Flash. Thump.

Minato snapped to awareness courtesy of a very pissed off chakra signature leaking killing intent that saturated the surrounding air. '-shit!'

Taking note of their position 'the Memorial Stone?' Minato worked to snap his own chakra outward to shield his poor bewildered students. Kushina and Jiraiya similarly jumped in front of the stunned chuunin and turned to face the threat.

Donned in the standard ANBU black cloak and porcelain animal mask, a lone Black Ops member was crouched before them, blade at the ready.

"Woah, we're on your side ANBU-san." Clearly this was a misunderstanding or the guy was confused because last he checked, ANBU did not randomly attack Konoha shinobi.

Minato spread his fingers and held his hands up in the universal 'surrender' position.

Jiraiya stepped in, "Listen, I don't know why you attacked but we're Konoha shinobi, same as you." It appeared the mysterious ANBU had communication problems because last Minato checked, one of the Sennin should be pretty recog-

"Shut up." Wow. Rude.

Before Jiraiya could get huffy, or Kushina came to her senses and realized that yes this dumbass was actually threatening three S-rank shinobi at once and had the gall to be rude about it, Minato stepped in.

"Ah, excuse me?" Okay well, even he's not immune to mind-numbingly bad decisions. Nobody's perfect.

"Who do you think you are, because if this is someone's idea of a joke, I will kill you.

"Eh?! You are super rude 'ttebane! Don't be stupid, can't you recognize The Yellow Flash and Jiraiya of the Sennin?!" There's Kushina, but as long as his student keep qui-

"-what kind of suicidal idiot challenges three S-ranked shinobi all at once anyway?"

"Oi! You should learn to respect people you jerk ANBU! We're innocent shinobi!"

"..Why exactly do you want to kill us?"

Well, as long as the whole gang pitched in.

The commentary and interrogative questions built in number and the clamour was at once silenced by a sharp bark of laughter from the mystery shinobi, the kind you hear from men who go into a battle already decided on death.

"Maa, I'll give you points for getting the personalities right," the man's stance changed, and the tension in the air spiked "but, the Yondaime has been dead for years, along with most of your little entourage." Wait. What?!