Notes: Crack-fic follow-up to Lullaby.

Hiashi was trying to decide the wittiest way to tell Tsume that a pack of her clan had knocked down his wall - he was leaning towards drawling something insulting about their ability to hold alcohol - when he heard the sounds of two of his clanmates fighting.

The thing was, the two Hyuugas were below five years of age.

Hiashi rose from his desk and strode quickly to the window, which overlooked one of the Hyuuga rock gardens. Two small children wrestled near one of the reclining rocks, none of the Jyuuken grace in their movements.

"Tenten-nee gonna pway wif me!" wailed the smaller one - Heiji, Hiashi recalled, son of his cousin Heichi - as he struggled under his one-year-older adversary.

"Nuh-uh!" taunted the little girl. "She's gonna play tea party wi' me!"

Hiashi coughed, quietly. Immediately the two children froze, their silver eyes flicking to him. They scrambled to their feet, bobbing uncertainly in deep bows.

"Hiashi-sama!" they chorused.

"Heiji, Hiori," he said. "I'm afraid Tenten has left with Neji for a mission. So she cannot play with either of you."

Two little bottom lips stuck out and wibbled. Two sets of silver eyes welled with tears. And then, two tiny voices lifted in heartbroken wailing, and Hiashi fled the vicinity, shamelessly leaving the two toddlers to better-equipped minders.

"I'm her favowite!" lisped Heiji angrily, glaring angrily at his older cousins. His glare, noted some of the adult Hyuugas around him, showed early promise, and they nodded in approval.

"Are not!" retorted spiky-haired Hyuuga Toru, who had decided dragons were his favoritest animal ever after one of Tenten's stories.

"Am so!" howled Heiji. "She said I was her sunshine!"

"She said it to all of us!" Toru argued back. "She was singin' to all of us."

"But she was holdin' me, and she said I was her ONLY sunshine," Heiji said, crossing his arms stubbornly.

"No she didn't! An' she was only holdin' you because you went to her lap and you're the baby!"

"NOT A BABY!" Heiji yelled, with the air of an oft-repeated and never-minded claim being made.

Suddenly everyone - adult and child - in the area froze, as the clan head came up silent and deadly, like the good ninja that he was.

Hiashi looked on them all with a benevolent eye. He was in a good mood. The kitchens had just received a shipment of the gyokuro green tea he liked best. And he'd been able to make Tsume apologize for her clanmates' behavior - fangs showing as she gritted her teeth, and wild eyes narrowed, but she had forced her voice to a semblance of politeness. The triumphant glow that had caused was still smugly warm inside his chest. And tomorrow she'd be forced to come to his compound - his territory - to assess the damage and negotiate reparations.

So Hiashi merely smiled at the gathered Hyuugas and noted, in a confrontation-killing tone of gentle goodwill, "We are all Hyuugas. We are all sunshine."

There was a pause, as the clan collectively mindboggled at being called "sunshine" by Hyuuga Hiashi.

"Yes, Hiashi-sama," quavered the children.