Chapter 7: In which Zuko meets a legend...

The Hokage had not been not impressed.

Well, he kind of was – with the technique at least – but not so much with Zuko himself. Even as Zuko spoke to him he could just see the headache building in the aged man's temples and felt rather guilty.

Zuko had had to wrangle a whole country full of uptight nobles and soldiers consisting of fire benders, chi-blockers and crazy weapons ladies, (he had never been foolish enough to say that to Mai's face) and he knew that it was migraine-inducing. While Konoha was certainly smaller and with less people, it was also full of people who could not only use fire and weapons but did so at the same time along with all the other elements and even more absurd feats.

In the days that followed Zuko's…. accident, various ninja of all ranks came up to him to express their opinions of the incident. One jounin in particular was extremely enthusiastic, wearing a blinding grin and radiating happiness, the green-clad shinobi had wept tears of joy at Zuko's 'Explosive Fires of Youth' that 'Eclipsed All Others in The Village'.

The capitals had been tangible.

Well, that was certainly one way to put it, and by far the kindest description Zuko had heard of the incident.

Might Gai was not the only one moved to tears by the incident; Shisui found the whole thing hilarious and laughed until he cried, no matter how hard Zuko hit him to make him stop.

The main opinion seemed to be that, Uchiha Itachi – while obviously brilliant and his genius could not be denied – was unfortunately not blessed with sanity included in the package. Zuko was rightfully offended. Azula had been insane. Fire Lord Ozai – or the 'Phoenix King' if you wanted to indulge him – had been insane.

Zuko was not, although only god knew how long that would last now that Zuko had yet another crazy ancestor – Madara – to add onto the long list of crazies he already had to contend with.

With his father and his sister's mental instability apparent, Zuko had been under intense scrutiny so that he didn't go the same way. Luckily, Mai – while a noble – hadn't come from one of the families that the royal line had intermarried with. Never had a non-bender intermarried into the royal line, in order to ensure the future princes and princesses would be fire benders themselves. But this, while keeping their abilities strong, had also weakened their mental state. The infusion of new blood was actually welcomed, and Mai and Zuko had faced much less opposition for their marriage than they had expected.

But Zuko's rumoured dubious mental state aside, the Hokage decided that he needed to learn discipline and self-control in addition to the lecture he gave him about reasonable restrictions of jutsu experiments.

Zuko's oh-so-helpful cousin was happy to provide the Hokage with what he felt was an excellent punishment. And… when he heard it, it honestly didn't sound that bad. Which of course meant he was missing something. Something whiffed here, and the fire bender was a hundred percent certain the catch would be coming soon enough.

Zuko was right. Oh how he wishes he wasn't but alas, it was not to be.

What in the name of Agni was wrong with that blasted cat?!

After one hellish afternoon spent tracking and chasing some sort of demon cat from hell, Zuko was ready to commit homicide. Shisui was looking like a very tempting target right about now.

Oh merciful Agni above.

Zuko had been right.

The Kyuubi really did come to Konoha for its spawn! The cat was even called the Demon Cat by the entire populace! Cats are related to foxes, right?

It was apparently a common D-rank mission in this crazy village in which gennin were sent to catch the bloody thing which seemed to have outrageous reflexes and senses, regularly out-running ninja. It was absurd. Too absurd - there was no way in hell that it was just an ordinary cat. So Zuko decided to, in proper ninja fashion, investigate.

Casual enquiries had revealed that the phenomenon of the nigh-uncatchable cat had plagued Konoha for decades now, although the exact date it appeared was uncertain. Apparently, it had been running from ninja a couple years after the founding of the village, and for some strange reason, no one else seemed to find this abnormal.

He had asked around the clan and with his new gennin sensei, and sure enough, every single generation of ninja could remember the blasted thing constantly being the bane of every gennins' existence.

It sent chills up his spine, because holy crap, there was an immortal demon cat just prancing about Konoha, and no one but him seemed to notice or care!

This… this called for more drastic measures.

Sometimes (often) Zuko felt like the whole universe conspired against him to make him a villain. It was like there was some higher power that delighted in making him dance to their tune and enjoyed making his life as problematic as humanly possible. This was yet another event which added to all the previous ones to confirm Zuko's hypothesis that he was fate's whipping boy.

Tora the Demon sat paralysed in a net of wires that Zuko had wound around the foul beast. The tiny creature looked terribly pitiful, with its wide-eyed mewling, but Zuko wasn't fooled in the slightest. He had spent years resisting Sasuke's attempts at charming him with his chubby, chubby cheeks and adorable little face, there was no way he would bow to this cat.

Unfortunately, one of his distant cousins – Izumi, he thought her name was – wasn't as worldly as him and had caught him in the act of casting a genjutsu on the beast and was now lecturing about animal cruelty while undoing all of his hours of hard work and untangling the wires.

"I can't believe you Itachi! You can't do this to an innocent-" "Innocent!?" "- animal; what has it ever done to you?"

"It exists." Zuko hissed, eyeing the fiend warily as it poked its smug face out from where it was cradled between Izumi's arms. The little monster smirked at him, mocking him for his wasted efforts as it snuggled further into his hapless cousin's embrace.

Izumi frowned disapprovingly at him, even as she made to move out of the forest Zuko had lured the creature into, and started walking in the direction of the Hokage's tower.

"I've heard about your punishment, you're supposed to be catching Madame Shijimi's cat, not torturing the poor thing! I'm telling Fugaku-sama."

Zuko sniffed, unimpressed. "You do that."

The academy student eyed him. "And Mikoto-sama."

Well. Crap.

Sarutobi Hiruzen looked to be entirely done with this shit.

Zuko felt the same, only he rather thought it was for different reasons than the Hokage.

As he stood next to his distant cousin who had finally stopped lecturing him in order to deposit the cat into the Fire Daimyo's wife's arms, Zuko fumed silently.

Zuko was not the one in the wrong here! He was only trying to ascertain the true threat the beast posed to the inhabitants of Konoha. The genjutsu wouldn't have done any permanent harm to the cat!

The Hokage was not convinced by his (perfectly sensible) explanations. Neither was Fugaku when they dragged him in to (try) to discipline him. Shisui followed, completely unasked for and entirely unwelcome, grinning from ear to ear – and oh, this – this is what Shisui knew was in store for him, he is so, so dead.

"I am the Head of the Uchiha Clan and – " Fugaku started his lecture, only to be interrupted by his son's spiteful mutter of "that's what Okaa-sama wants you to think", before Zuko promptly bit his tongue.

Hey, Uchiha Mikoto is a serious badass – don't think that Zuko hasn't seen her bingo book page! Zuko was a proud son of badass women in both lifetimes – he's overjoyed that he takes more after his mother.

Fugaku looked like he was going to have an aneurism. Shisui had started crying, shoulders shaking so violently as he tried (unsuccessfully) to supress his laughter, that he looked like he was having an epileptic fit. Several wounded animal sounds escaped from his throat.

The Sandaime Hokage covered his mouth with his hand even as the wrinkles around his eyes crinkled in an obvious tell that he was smiling.

Fugaku's fingers dug into his shoulder as they left the tower and headed for the clan compound.

"Itachi." Wow, he sounded pretty pissed, in that constipated way Fugaku excelled at. "You're falling behind on the clan's history." Which was such a blatant lie, Zuko knew he's way ahead of where a normal kid his age would be, but behind where he could be if he put more effort into it; he just hated learning about it.

The Uchiha clan history was long, bloody, gruesome and a brief summary of his lessons could be 'don't worry, our bloodline not only carries a high chance of insanity, but it also actually predisposes us to losing our minds. Come and learn about even more crazy relatives that you have.'

As if Zuko didn't have enough of those in the last life.

Funnily enough, Zuko stumbled upon the truth when procrastinating from his punishment and digging through the clan's archives. One of the Uchiha Elders during the time of Konoha's founding had kept extensive records of their discussions, and in between a lot of dull and dry politics and plots to spy on the other clans that were their new neighbours, someone had apparently had the bright idea to send a spy to see how the Daimyo was taking the revelation that the ninja clans in his country were uniting.

Zuko looked closer at the text and promptly choked on his spit.

Written in Uchiha Tezu's neat handwriting was the condemning paragraph:

While Lord Madara's idea to send one of our nin-cats was a brilliant move when it came to conserving our members for higher-priority missions, we perhaps should have been more circumspect when choosing the nin-cat that we sent. While the Cats have always been well-trained, it seems that they don't train their members to undertake year-long undercover missions, and we have found out that one of the cats we sent had … reverted to baser instincts. Luckily, the litter's heritage is diluted, and while they have the reflexes of their sire, they are not truly sentient in the way the Cats are. Their instincts do, however, keep trying to return them to the Cat Clan home even if they don't appear to understand why they keep seeking it out.

The Uchiha stared blankly at the scroll in his hands. There are just… no words. He's speechless.

Once again, Zuko's insane family member has deigned to ruin his life.

Zuko set down the scroll and took deep breaths in an attempt to stop a himself from screaming. And even worse, due to his punishment, he would be stuck doing these ridiculous D-rank missions for however long it took to repair the damages he did to the training grounds and wall.

Zuko swore loudly.

"I was a good person! I didn't do anything in my past life to deserve this suffering!"

Uchiha Madara. Zuko fumed. I hope you were reincarnated as a slug so that one day I can step on you and squash you. Then pour salt on your corpse.

Later, he will meet a man in an orange mask who introduces himself as 'Madara', and it will take everything in him not to burn him on sight.

Hello all, I'm so sorry for the enormous delay! I have finally broken though the dreaded writer's block, and managed to get this chapter finished. Thank you so much for your patience and for sticking with this story even with my terrible update schedule!