Author Note: Previous chapter was published in March 23, 2013. Current chapter is published in July 26, 2015. Ouch to my ego.

Enjoy.

Chapter 3: training and the first mission

Kurenai circled around the training ground, appraising the appearance of her Genin.

On Kushi, she could clearly see that either Ino had picked their outfit –as during her week-long appraisal she had come to think that all of their common sense was housed inside their blonde head—or that Sakura had waited for graduation before she would stop being childish. Their real outfit was a well-worn, full-body bandage covering them from their chest to just above their knees, but for the sake of tastefulness they had it under a minimalistic purple set of sleeveless crop top with a very wide turtleneck, and a utility belt with a couple of apron panels giving the first glance impression of a miniskirt. Kurenai would have been proud to wear that when younger, and it compared favourably as a younger version of her own battledresses.

Hinata was no surprise: her usual black catsuit under her usual tan parka. She guessed the girl had to have several copies of the same outfit, though: she seemed to wear the exact same outfit every single day since she started scouting her third member at the academy.

Naruto did confuse her, though: he was still wearing orange –she honestly wondered if he owned anything not orange, having clear memories of him running around town wearing all sorts of orange clothes—but he seemed to have tried to comply with her orders by rubbing charcoal on everything he was wearing, from his pants to the currently soot-covered bandanna covering his blond locks.

The Hokage's own insignia on it, was the only thing that didn't have a speck of dust on, though. And even from a distance she could see that the metal plate wasn't all that similar to modern forehead protectors: the proportions were the same, but it was noticeably thicker and the metal was much duller, but not from wear or lack of care. She could guess that the Hokage's insignia came from times far gone, when Fire Country didn't have such good trade relations and perhaps didn't even have the blacksmith arts needed for whiter, less polluted steel.

She witnessed the twins pull Hinata with them, approach their boyfriend and seemingly ask about the state of his clothing. He apparently replied humorously about not having clothing in other colours, but, for the eyes of a trained Jounin like her, she could see several undercurrents in his micro-expressions and on his body language: shame, frustration and resignation.

'Genin are trained to look underneath the obvious, but a Jounin is supposed to see a forty storey bunker on the same spot,' she couldn't help but thinking, as she saw the twins mostly settle down at his dismissal. She also saw how he fingered inside his jacket the spot where he carried that cute frog wallet of his, and from seeing it she could also see that it looked much more stuffed than usual, and how he radiated frustration the moment that he touched it. She wondered if the fact meant that the kid had tried to buy something else in a hurry but hadn't had enough money, or, considering how enough of the Leaf would see him as the 'Demon kid', if perhaps his money wasn't accepted by the merchants.

Kurenai wondered, and decided to not make a fuss about it right now, but insist at the end of today that he had to acquire some other clothing and then she would follow him and see how he was treated by the outfitters out there. If he were indeed mistreated, then she would have to 'incidentally' run into him and follow him into the next store and perhaps even 'encourage' the personnel into treating him fairly.

Food for later thought, though: Hinata wasn't being overt about it, but from her body language she could see that the girl was tracking her movements, yet was letting her remain hidden from her other teammates if she wished to.

In an exploratory manner, Kurenai waved at her in greeting and saw the girl finger the edges of her parka and crack a knee, as if in an extremely abbreviated curtsy.

'Clever girl', Kurenai couldn't help but think. She smiled at her and saw her stand a little taller. She was starting to guess that what it would take to make the Hyuuga girl into a usable ninja would simply be encouragement and to not let her dwell on her insecurities.

Not gaining more by remaining hidden, Kurenai circled to the path and 'walked' into the training ground like she was just arriving.

"Good morning, Naruto, Kushi, Hinata," she said, as she landed in front of them after the last of her leisurely hops between trees. They replied at her with 'mornings' and 'good mornings' and she continued, first moving the group closer to the embankment of the little stream that coursed through the middle of the clearing, then sitting down and gesturing for them to sit down in a circle in front of her. She then pulled out of her sleeve three sheets of paper. Without more preambles, she began going aloud through the first one.

"Conclusions on the Midterm examination on Inoshishi Sakura Soma, pre-Genin of the Leaf:

"She is the overall top kunoichi of her generation, and is expected to maintain her current status until she graduates the academy. She maintains excellent grades in general and, while she cannot take optional courses due to the heavy training requirements of the Soma Bloodline, her House reports that her progress on her Bloodline Arts is 'exceeding expectations', with particular aptitude for Shielding.

"On combat practice, she demonstrates a good proficiency on combat at all ranges, but she isn't one who enjoys causing pain. Her blond head seems to especially demonstrate a liking of efficiency over style and also seems to employ professionalism over killer intent, which should prove relevant if she chooses a career relating to assassination.

"It is the opinion of this examiner that she is very well suited for either a defensive or offensive role on a Heavy Combat or Escort squad."

Kurenai then rolled the scroll and put it on the ground, to then calmly continue with Hinata's.

"Conclusions on the Midterm examination on Hinata Hyuuga, pre-Genin of the Leaf:

"She is the best student in all the female-specific courses and second best in academics. She is taking optional courses on Healing Arts and Herbolaire, both courses where she is labelled as 'gifted' by her instructors.

"On combat practice, her physical skills are top notch as is her defensive, but her general combat performance is hindered by her non-violent temperament.

"It is the opinion of this examiner that she should be routed through a medic's career path, starting by placing her on a combat-support role in her coming Genin squad."

Kurenai rolled the second scroll, to place it down too and then continue with Naruto's evaluation.

"Conclusions on the Midterm examination on Naruto Uzumaki, pre-Genin of the Leaf:

This student shows the least aptitude in this generation: dreadful ninjutsu, poor taijutsu and cares little for authority.

It is the opinion of this examiner that this student will not graduate."

She rolled it, and placed it on top of the two previous scrolls.

"These were the reports written about you guys by Mizuki, the recently discovered traitor."

She said, letting her eyes linger on each of her students. "As a counterpoint, Naruto," she said, turning to him. "Both the Hokage and most of the ANBU agree on the fact that you show 'great aptitude' at Infiltration and that you are already ahead of Chuunin level in the arts of Trapping and Evasion. And with such a counterpoint against reports written by a traitor..." she channelled a little fire jutsu through her palms, and set the scrolls on fire... "I will make my own impressions on you."

She then jumped to her feet and waited a moment for her students to follow suit. Then decided to check some odd blank on Naruto's profile.

"So; everybody knows what their primary elemental affinities are?"

Ino momentarily put her hand up and declared "We are Water, Kurenai-sensei."

"I'm Water too, sensei," Hinata put forward.

Naruto, on the other hand, just looked on confused. Kurenai outwardly remained impassive while she reached into her clothes for some chakra-testing paper, but she sighted inwards: every child in the academy was supposed to be tested yearly.

But she would take note of this blatant dereliction of duty and would report to the Hokage: the academy's nursing staff may find their time of employment come to an abrupt end.

She pulled two sheets from the booklet before returning it to her pocket, then put one on her outstretched palm and showed Naruto.

"This piece of paper has been treated to react to a ninja's natural chakra. Now watch what happens when I gather a little chakra on the palm of my hand."

She then carefully released chakra, causing the paper to wrinkle and slowly collapse into a tight wad.

"This means that I'm Yin-type, which means that I'm talented with mind jutsu. Now lets try yours, Naruto."

Naruto eagerly accepted his own sheet and did the exercise. And if Kurenai hadn't been watching him like a hawk, she would have thought that it had exploded into dust, rather than the fact that it shredded itself.

'That's one strong air affinity,' she couldn't help but think, but still handed him another piece of paper and told him to try again, using the least amount of chakra he could.

And he repeated the process, although the paper didn't quite explode into dust this time, not-so-rapidly shredding itself down to confetti.

"That would be air affinity, Naruto," she said, giving him an encouraging smile. "Rare enough here in Konoha, so our enemies won't expect it."

"But... will I have cool attacks and stuff?"

Kurenai extended her hand and ruffled his hair affectionately (and felt her heart die a little when he flinched at the contact), then gave him a simple caress on his cheek before pulling back her hand.

"Better still: while the Uchiha is out there making showy attacks and being a giant billboard asking the enemy to kill him, your own attacks will be invisible, so the enemy will not see them coming!"

Naruto visibly conflicted at this: while he had indeed reacted favourably to her ridiculing Uchiha Sasuke, she imagined that he couldn't quite accept that not being noticed could be a good thing. Kurenai watched him think for a minute until he seemed to deflate. She couldn't accept this: she kneeled down, grabbed his shoulders, picked up his face with one hand and looked into his eyes:

"Being showy might be cool, Naruto, but the best ninja is the one that gets things done and returns home alive. The Fourth Hokage himself was air-type, and they say that his super jutsu, The Yellow Flash, was air-based!"

"The Fourth was like me?!"

"You are the same element as the best ninja in our village, Naruto" she answered, grinning at her kid as she rubbed the fact as thickly as she could. "You better believe it," she added, making a point to use Naruto's catchphrase.

"Alright!" he replied, finally reacting as she wanted him to.

"Good!" She exclaimed, standing up again and stepping back, so she could address her three genin. "Now people, listen well: The usage of elemental chakra is not considered a proper Genin-level exercise, and in fact most people don't learn how to work it until they are seasoned Chuunin. I want to get you started now, though, as the older one is before learning this, the harder one has to work for proper results."

Kurenai was conscious about Iruka's advice, so she made a point of starting her lesson by Naruto.

"Now Naruto, I want you to execute this jutsu: it is called 'Gust' and produces a light breeze. Now it goes like this," she said, now squaring her feet and bringing her hands up. "Bird, snake, bird; then blow on your fingers on the tip of the final Bird sign and…" she executed the seal sequence, then she lightly blew on her fingers, blowing an invisible but easily felt cone of wind at Naruto's face, who had to cover his eyes with his hand.

He grinned at his leader, squared his feet and stretched his hands forward.

"I will give my best, Kurenai-sensei! Here you have…" Three hand signs, then Naruto breathed in, shouted "Gust!" and blew out into his last hand sign.

Kurenai could actually see a foot-wide distortion of light emanate from Naruto's hands. Caught completely flat-footed by this, she saw her life flash in front of her eyes as the distortion rapidly expanded into a meter-wide cone and impacted fully against her chest and stomach, picking her up like a rag doll and launching her away. She couldn't help but reel at the event, but then her well-honed Jounin instincts took over and she faced her trajectory and tried her best to prepare for the coming impact, whenever it would happen. An instant later, with no imminent impact, she couldn't help but blink at how fast and how high the attack had propelled her, putting her out of the training ground, separating her at least some thirty meters of the forest floor now on the apex of her trajectory, and would have her landing a good kilometre away.

Once her altitude degraded enough, Kurenai saw that she was directly headed to the trunk of a large conifer, surrounded by various trees. She rapidly pushed as much chakra onto her limbs as she could and tried to plan her first few bounces. She then stretched her arm and touched slightly a passing branch, correcting her trajectory just enough so she wouldn't impact frontally the first trunk. Sweating bullets, she landed her two feet on the trunk and rolled sideways, managing to just glance the first tree. She followed by curling up and painfully flew through the upper foliage of some deciduous tree and stretched her arms just enough to glance at another passing trunk and manage to direct her flight into the foliage of another big-headed tree. She wasn't so lucky with this other one, impacting fully some thick branch that almost stopped her fully before snapping and letting her painfully bounce down the branches; going almost all the way down before she snapped back into gear and could grab one and hang there.

A moment later she looked down, sighed, and let herself fall the last meter to the ground, crumpling in place and giving herself a minute... five minutes to bring back into control her heart rate. She was horrified at the knowledge that she had been moving several orders of magnitude faster than she had ever moved in her life, elated at having survived the most terrifying landing of her life, and was thanking the Six Paths for that first branch, which had not only allowed her to correct enough to not splatter against that first tree, but even enough to not break both her legs as she attempted her most difficult rolling landing ever.

And as she slowly managed to control her breathing, she promised herself two things: she would put Naruto to do chakra control exercises until he was thirty, and she would never, ever, stand in front of him again while he tried a new jutsu!

Thinking so, she let her eyes close just for a minute...

She slowly came awake at a sensation of almost-painful warmth on her abdomen. She didn't react negatively, though, as any seasoned ninja knows the feeling of waking up under the ministrations of a medic nin.

Opening her eyes filled her with embarrassment, though: instead of some medic, she was being tended by two of her own genin, still on their first day as a team!

Or perhaps more accurately, one and a half, as in one side she had Hinata, and on the other she had blonde-Kushi.

'Blonde head=Ino!' She had to remind herself, as she gently took her students' hands to stop them from wasting chakra on healing minor bruises. She then gestured for them to help her to sit up, and then to stand up.

She took a look around herself and verified that only Ino and Hinata were with her. This clearly meant that Naruto wasn't in condition to be left alone, yet her genin had been more preoccupied with assisting her, thus resulting that Naruto wasn't seriously injured. She still wanted to voice the question, though:

"Is Naruto alright?"

"He hit a tree pretty hard," replied Ino. "...But Hinata says he just knocked himself out."

Hinata just nodded at that.

"Good," replied Kurenai. "Now let's go back to the training ground and see if we can salvage some of this day."

And so, Kurenai began to lead her girls back at a relatively leisurely pace, just slow enough to not leave behind genin who had yet to learn how to forestwalk.

A few minutes later she entered the training ground and found that, along launching her, Naruto had carved out a perfect cone out of the branches of the trees that had been behind her. And, in the opposite direction, she saw a hole in the bushes, a handful of broken saplings and, a little further away, Naruto and Sakura, on Naruto's body, shambling back through the line of holes in the underbush.

Kurenai sat down on the dirt and gestured for her one and a half genins to sit down with her. About a minute later, her other one and a half had arrived and extended a hand at Ino, then Sakura had migrated back to her own body and Naruto had then sat down.

Kurenai noted how casually could the Soma use their unique jutsu: Ino and Naruto had held hands for just a couple of heartbits, during which Sakura's head had shrunk down on the boy's shoulders, his body deflated and, while Ino's body inflated, Sakura's head had rapidly grown from their shoulders. And all of it without any fanfare whatsoever.

But that was food for later thought. Kurenai addressed Naruto:

"What did you learn from your mistake, Naruto?"

The boy winced.

"That I need to work harder, sensei," he said, looking down.

"And that would be very much incorrect, Naruto," replied Kurenai, shocking the kid. "The issue with you jutsu was that you put far too much chakra into it. Now lay down in the dirt and shoot at the trees above."

And as Naruto laid down, Kurenai subtly gestured the girls to back away.

It took almost an hour, but Naruto eventually managed to clamp down his chakra enough for his Gust to actually count as a Gust. Surprisingly enough, he even got it down to executing the jutsu with only a single Bird sign. So once he executed the jutsu three times in a row without overpowering it, she made him stand up.

"Now Naruto, I want you to keep practicing this jutsu until you have perfect control over it." She then gestured at the area around them. "So please, I want you to use Gust to sweep the leaves around us in a neat pile. Meanwhile, I'll be training the girls."

She was expecting him to groan at the chore, but he rather gave her a grin and skipped away to start his task. Kurenai could thus gesture to the girls to follow her to the stream so she could show them their own task:

"Your jutsu to practice, girls, will be the following: Monkey, Dog, Boar, then open your hands at the water and levitate out a glob of water" she said, as she squatted down, picked up an perfect orb the size of a cantaloupe and stood up again with the orb levitating between her hands.

Being from big clans, Kurenai wasn't surprised that the girls got the basic jutsu after just a couple tries. Their orbs weren't as large, or as solid, but they had the basics.

"Good! Now let them go, and keeping your palms down, I want each of you to pick up a glob as large as you can comfortably keep properly shaped with a single hand." However, Kurenai had to quickly amend her instructions upon seeing the twins exchanging a look: "And Ino and Sakura: each of you produce a me a glob."

The twins each gave her a nod, then squatted down and worked on the exercise. They first did it like before, but were producing a single orb and rapidly let go. They then tried to separate their hands, but found themselves picking up sausages of water. Kurenai was about to call it off when she noted the twins communicating (inside a second, Sakura bumped her cheek with Ino's, then they shared a look and Ino gave Sakura a little nod), then Sakura pulled back her own hand and Ino tried the jutsu with one-handled hand-seals and did it. Sakura followed a moment later, and soon the two-headed girl had her two globs.

Kurenai gave a critical look to the three orbs she was seeing. Hinata and Sakura had orbs the size of grapefruits, while Ino had and orange. But still, Hinata and Ino's orbs weren't quite firm, and Sakura's was barely holding together.

"Let go some water, girls: I want those orbs perfect!"

And they let the orbs drip slowly, coming down to a largish orange with Hinata and two peaches with Kushi before the orbs stopped wobbling altogether. Hinata's was the size that it was supposed to be under her rated chakra capacity and control, but Kushi's orbs seemed to be halfway there!

So Kurenai wondered...

"So Kushi, would you be able to hold a larger one if I asked both of you to concentrate on a single orb?"

"Yes, sensei," replied Ino, as they communicated again and brought their hand together and merged their orbs, for Sakura to then drop her hand and both of them to stare at the orb under their left hand, which was just a tad smaller than Hinata's. They then squatted down again and picked up a little more water, but once they let it drip down again, it ended being about the same as it was before. So the two conclusions were that Ino and Sakura obviously worked better as one, and that Hinata's larger chakra capacity had her at a slight advantage from Kushi's better chakra control.

So now for the next part of the exercise: "Hinata, you can drop your glob; and Kushi, please give Hinata yours."

Three sets of eyes glanced at her in confusion, but they went along with it and Kushi's left hand extended at Hinata, who tried to take the orb, but rather had it fall apart. Three faces looked at her, saw her slight smirk, and finally understood the difficulty of the exercise. The girls then squatted down and stayed down as they pulled up water and tried the exercise again and again. It was first firmly established that Ino and Sakura had no trouble whatsoever passing the orb (not that Kurenai expected them to have it), so the exercise soon became between Kushi and Hinata.

"You keep at it, girls, while I go and check if Naruto needs some help".

The girls gave her a firm nod and she could turn away, to find that Naruto was slowly but surely getting the job done. But training exercises were about exercise, so she had to test something else about Naruto's control: she thus jumped to a three branch above him, then timed herself and jumped down to last noisily just as he was about to expel his next Gust. Unsurprisingly, he was startled, lost control of the expulsion and had it come out far stronger than he wanted. But nowhere as strong at it could have been, thankfully, so Kurenai could stop him as he impacted her.

He immediately became whinny, but Kurenai got him to shut up by poking his chest sharply.

"Now Naruto, a ninja is supposed to both be aware of their surroundings, and to be able to perform his attacks without distraction. Or do you expect the enemy to just stand there quietly and let you attack?"

He frowned, but gave her a nod in understanding and turned back at his task. Kurenai looked too and winced internally: that last overpowered Gust had scattered leaves a good thirty meters away! She sighed and called at the boy: "And Naruto, just do the leaves up that tree," she said, pointing at one some twenty meters away, "and, to get the job done faster, better walk in a circle and blow them inward."

Naruto gave her another nod and went back to his task.

Satisfied for the moment, Kurenai jumped up and found herself a nice branch where she could monitor both the girls and the boy.

Idly, she got out her booklet of chakra testing paper, tore out four pages and did her own homework, getting them to burn, crumble, condense air humidity and cut themselves. She did little for the next half hour except for trying to startle Naruto a few more times, getting a smaller reaction each time.

But he did eventually finish his exercise, despite the fact that, once he was actually pilling up the leaves, he had to tapper the Gust really far down. And it was about that time when the girls were all making progress, getting their transfers almost fast enough to play 'hot potato' with the glob of water.

Clearly they were at the end of this particular exercise's value, so she went to them and gestured them to stop.

"Kushi, dear; could you hop to the other side of the stream and walk a few meters upstream? Hinata, could you move a few meters downstream?" ... "Now girls; I want you to play catch with the water, but just don't forget to have fun as well!"

And they did. If wasn't five minutes before their earnest throws and catches devolved into trying to get the other wet, and into the tenth minute Kushi intentionally sent a handful of water at Naruto, who retaliated by sending a Gust into the water and spraying Kushi back.

By then Kurenai had made herself scarce and had fun watching her training genin devolve into playing children. She had made quite a right choice with her choice for their third teammate.

But still, after a while she noted that Hinata wasn't lobbing any attacks at Naruto, despite him having openly turned his back at her. Kurenai easily guessed that she didn't trust enough her friendship with Naruto to get him wet.

Kurenai could thankfully count a Soma in her team, though, which opened quite a few unconventional possibilities...

"Two-on-one, Naruto, Hinata? Won't you better fight each other? And wouldn't you prefer all combatants to have two heads, Kushi?"

"We would!" Ino and Sakura replied, quite enthusiastically jumping on Naruto and leaving Ino's head on his shoulders, leaving Sakura to jump at Hinata and absorb her, leaving Hinata's empty clothes to flop down to the floor.

And just as she had imagined, the twins were everything but reluctant to fight each other, resulting in... Ino overpowering the jutsu, picking up a good cubic meter of water and drenching herself and Naruto when she foolishly let go of the jutsu when the monstrous blob was overhead.

Kurenai almost fell from her branch after watching that, as her Tree Walk was nearly disrupted from how hard it was to keep herself from laughing.

She did laugh some when Ino repeated the jutsu and lobbed the cubic meter at her laughing sister and the shyly giggling Hinata. And the twins then launched at each other and began wrestling, getting more laughs from Naruto and more blushes from Hinata.

Yeah, Kurenai thought it was 'completely accidental' how often the twins manouvrered Hinata and Naruto to be almost kissing.

And so, Kurenai let the kids tire themselves out, then came to the mere formality of the bell test:

"Now guys, before I give you the rest of the day for yourselves, I wish to give you something:" She handed them the two bells and sought theirs eyes before she kept speaking. "Two bells for a three-man squad. Keep them safe, and consider that they represent your partnership. As ninja, you'll often find yourselves going into missions with less than adequate resources. Or losing your resources as you go. Or having to abort a mission because one of you became injured. Or, if a mission is really prioritary, you may then need to leave your injured behind, even to be captured. So kids, take these two bells, and keep them safe."

She then pulled the kids and kissed their four foreheads.

"And meet me tomorrow 9 AM outside the Hokage Tower! We are going on your first mission!"

Three yays and a worried glance were her replies. But Kurenai knew Hinata would grow confident, eventually. So she turned and began walking away.

But then she remembered something, so she turned and shouted:

"And Naruto, wear whatever! We'll go and see my tailor after the mission!"

"Okay, sensei!" he shouted back.

And Kurenai was off to face the greatest enemy of all ninja: paperwork.

Bright and early the next day, Kurenai met her team and, after a quick exchange of greetings, led them away first to a store to exchange the attached chit for a couple of buckets of paint, then led them to the outside of a warehouse in the industrial district.

It was far from surprising that, once she explained it, Naruto took off at the indignity of the mission; but Kurenai immediately put a cap on that.

"Naruto, do you think that we send genin fresh out of the academy out on dangerous missions? Of course we don't! D-rank missions are meant to train genin in a safe environment, while they do useful work for the village."

"But how are getting any training from painting a bloody wall!"

"Language!" she exclaimed, as she poked him quite painfully on the chest. She then continued: "And didn't the girls learn to pick up paint so you could blow a Gust at it and spray it?"

That seemed to sufficiently chastise the boy, who nodded at that.

"However, that only works on the open spaces on the wall," she said, waving at it. She then pointed at the doors and at the edges and continued: "...but you will need to exchange roles once you get close to the door, and the upper and lower edges of the wall: there, you Kushi and Hinata will have to rub the paint directly onto the wall, and you Naruto will then blow at it to help it dry without running. Any questions?"

There were none, so the genin opened the first bucket of paint and started their work.

Omake: Why is our Kuchi finding girlfriends to her boyfriend?

Soma clan residence, Nursery, a week after the latest genin promotion, 3:00AM (aprox.)

Minako Soma (nee Yamanaka) drifted awake to a very common situation: she was sitting up inside the nursery, topless, and her arms were holding little Koenma against her bosom. To not surprise whatsoever, glancing left she found Ukon's head sharing her shoulders, and she didn't even need to check right to know that Sakon was most likely still asleep, back in the masters' bedroom.

Well, she could guiltily admit to herself that, while Sakon was a tiger in the sack and really a great friend in the first place, Ukon was the one she felt she could rely upon. An opinion that she knew her kids shared, as Sakon played with them, but they called Ukon to tend to their bleeding knees.

And as her dear Ucchan ministered to feeding their baby, she thought of the thing that hadn't been letting her sleep well these last few days.

Once Ucchan laid Koenma back in his cradle, Minako nudged his cheek, then took control and sprawled them face-up to the couch.

Not being as dense as his other head, Ukon guessed on the first try:

"Is it about Kushi, dear?"

She nodded, leaned her cheek on his and spoke:

"What did we do wrong with Kushi, Ucchan? It isn't normal for a girl to be finding other girls for her boyfriend!"

Ucchan brought up his hand and caressed her other cheek.

"I actually kind of proud of our girl."

Minako started at that, but let her husband finish his thought.

"This isn't about them or about Naruto, but about Hinata. Now, do you remember the sociological profile on the Hyuuga clan? And what a mousy wallflower her mother was?"

It took Minako a moment, but she did remember that shy creature that was forced to marry with Hiashi Hyuuga. The girl had been a whirlwind in the battlefield, but socially could barely look at a boy without passing out. Now, with how cold and imposing was the Hyuuga main branch... Minako could only wince at the obvious implication of what a life had that girl led up to this point!

And Minako could indeed feel a little pride at her girl... but still...

"But why a girlfriend, anyway? Why not just best friends or something?"

Her husband shrugged, then stretched their arms up, and crossed them under their heads. "I guess Kushi found out that Hinata has a crush or something on Naruto, and couldn't deny her." Then her husband produced an extra arm out of their chest, scratched his nose and reabsorbed the arm. "And I wouldn't be concerned, anyway: Naruto is their first boyfriend, and neither we were your first boyfriend, or you were ours."

And now Minako felt his facial muscles pull into a massive smile: "And even if Kushi did marry the boy, I think I'm glad for this development: considering that his rated stamina is off the charts, I would worry that Kushi alone wouldn't survive the wedding night."

"Ucchan!" she replied, in mock indignation. "Don't start thinking about our twelve year old having sex with anybody!" And she then produced her own third arm and playfully bonked her half-husband.

"Then I think I need to have those thoughts about somebody else..." he said, as he produced a hand between their breasts and began caressing one.

She let out a giggle, then grew their shoulders just enough to be able to turn their heads and kiss.

Soma clan residence, Master bedroom, a week after the latest genin promotion, 3:20AM (aprox.)

Sakon was violently shock awake by his bro and wife, and Ukon hastily reintegrated with him, and both Ukon and Minako began to hastily pull each other's clothes off.

Sakon was still far from fully awake, but certainly appreciated his bro and wife not leaving him aside, even when they were feeling like having spontaneous, 3AM sex. He wasn't feeling like it, though, so he paused them for a second, then gave Minako a little peck on the lips, gave his bro the thumbs up, and migrated his head to his bro's back.

When he eventually woke up in the morning, he found his manly bits aching quite a bit, Minako drooling on their chest while she still straddled their body, and a veritable mess on the sheets. Sakon could only feel pride at his brother finally becoming a proper lover to their wife!

But still, it certainly was a sticky mess, so he separated, had a quick shower and went to the kitchen to prepare a breakfast for champions. He would later come back and have a laugh at them, and with them.