Chapter Text
" Another research mission?" Naruto groaned. "But we just got back from Tea!"
"And demonstrated excellent teamwork escorting Morino-kun," Sarutobi congratulated mildly, smoke curling from his pipe in gentle whorls. "Which makes you well-suited for this particular task."
Sakura studied the researcher – Matasui – with careful consideration. There was a slouch to his shoulders, deep purple circles around his eyes, probably from too many late nights studying. But there was something else, a subtle irregularity in his chakra that made her instincts prickle.
"The seals you discovered," Sakura said, cutting off whatever protest Naruto was about to launch. "They predate our standard transportation arrays?"
Matasui brightened immediately. "Yes! The patterns suggest a completely different approach to spatial manipulation. Instead of the typical anchor points-"
"They use resonance frequencies," Sakura finished, her mind already mapping the implications. The calculations he'd laid out on Sarutobi's desk were fascinating, but something about the energy distribution curves felt wrong.
Like watching cells die in reverse , she thought, frowning at one particular equation.
"Exactly!" Matasui's hands flew as he spoke, enthusiasm overriding his obvious fatigue. "The ancients apparently found a way to harmonize natural energy with-"
"With artificial chakra constructs," Sakura murmured. "But these ratios..."
Sasuke shifted beside her, his chakra carrying that particular note that meant he'd spotted something tactical. "The cave system you found them in. How stable is it?"
"Oh, perfectly safe!" Matasui waved away the concern. "I've been studying there for weeks without any issues."
That's what they all say , groused Inner Sakura. Right before everything explodes.
"Perhaps," Kakashi suggested, his visible eye curving slightly, "we should discuss containment protocols. Just in case."
"They're dormant seals," Matasui protested. "Completely inactive for centuries!"
"Like those 'dormant' explosive tags in Iron Country?" Naruto grinned. "The ones that almost took off Sasuke's–"
"Finish that sentence and die," Sasuke said flatly.
"Sakura-chan?" Sarutobi's voice held gentle inquiry as he drew another breath from his pipe. "What concerns you about these calculations?"
"The theoretical framework is sound," Sakura said carefully, still studying the equations. "But these energy conversion rates... something's not adding up."
"The calculations have been triple-checked," Matasui insisted. "By experts in-"
"In historical seal theory," Sakura finished. "Not in practical applications of natural energy manipulation."
"Which is why your team's unique perspectives will be valuable," Sarutobi said, his tone carrying decades of quiet authority. "Your combined experience may reveal what others have missed."
"Aw, that was real nice, Gramps," Naruto grinned. "Usually you just tell us not to break anything."
"The reminder still stands," Sarutobi's eyes crinkled slightly. "I believe the bathhouse incident proved that necessary."
"That was one time," Naruto protested.
"Three times," Sasuke corrected.
"The shrine incident doesn't count!"
"The shrine, the bridge, and the bathhouse," Sakura tallied, though her attention remained on the strange calculations. Something about the resonance patterns nagged at her. "Though technically the bathhouse was my fault."
"Consider it a 'tactical renovation.'" Kakashi said, one eye curving cheerfully.
Sarutobi tapped his pipe lightly. "You'll leave within the hour. Do try to keep the research site intact."
As they filed out, Sakura couldn't shake the feeling they were missing something important. The equations kept picking at her mind like a wound healing wrong, which was decidedly not a good sign.
If this turns into another bridge incident, said Inner Sakura, we’re charging extra.
The journey to the Valley of the End involved four wrong turns (Naruto), three squabbles over the map (Sasuke), and one extremely suspicious mushroom that had Kakashi yanking Naruto back by his collar. "But it's orange!" was not, as Sakura informed him, a valid reason to eat unknown fungi.
Between Naruto's "shortcuts" (that added hours), Sasuke's increasingly murderous glares, and Matasui's endless chatter about seal resonance patterns, she was ready to throw someone off a cliff. Possibly herself.
It was a full day before they reached the graveyard canyon and its barren skies. The only sound, eerily, was the crashing of the great waterfall.
“This way!” said Matasui cheerfully, and proceeded to sing a jolly tune while leading them down the rocky expanse, waving broadly ahead.
The cave mouth gaped like a wound in the mountainside, black with inky darkness. Matasui practically skipped toward it.
"Fascinating architecture," he burbled, waving his torch at weathered carvings. "Pre-dating the First War, possibly even the Clan Wars era-"
"You mentioned seals," Sasuke cut in flatly.
"Oh yes! Just wait until you see them! The resonance patterns are absolutely revolutionary-"
"How far in?" Kakashi's eye curved pleasantly. His chakra did not.
"Just a bit further! The main chamber has the most remarkable-"
Their shadows stretched along dark stone walls as they descended. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, each drop echoing like a warning bell. Sakura glanced around – old stone, older chakra, and something else that made her skin crawl. Well, that wasn’t ominous at all.
"The integration of natural energy into the base matrix is particularly fascinating," Matasui continued, apparently immune to the growing weight of ancient chakra pressing down on them. "The way they managed to stabilize the conversion rates–"
"Those aren't standard rates," Sakura interrupted, tracking familiar-yet-wrong patterns in the stone. "The energy distribution is inverted."
"Exactly!" Matasui beamed. "Brilliant, isn't it? No one's ever seen anything quite like–"
"Because they're dead," Sasuke muttered.
"Details, details!" Matasui waved dismissively. "Now, about the subsidiary arrays–"
Naruto sidled closer to Sakura. "Ne, Sakura-chan, is it supposed to be glowing like that?"
The faint lines etched into the walls had begun to pulse with sickly light. Sakura's stomach lurched as she recognized the pattern – like chakra flowing backward through time, like the cosmos unwinding–
"Matasui, don't—"
But he was already reaching for the central seal, chakra surging with childlike wonder. In the hollow blackness, the glowing tendrils of his chakra surged like a flood through webs of flowing lines — ancient verse that was inked into the stone and flaring in rivulets racing up the walls, the ceiling. The scrawl seared to life, Matasui at its centre.
“Oh. Fuck.” He said, stupidly. The seal pulsed in reply; the mountain floor trembled.
Naruto lunged for Matasui. Sasuke grabbed for Naruto. Sakura leapt for Sasuke’s collar. Kakashi reached for all of them. The seal's light turned blinding, and Sakura felt reality twist like a kunai in her gut.
“Shit, ” she said, mid-jump. Naruto's fingers brushed the hair on Matasui’s head and missed. Sasuke's curse rang out ahead of her. Kakashi's Sharingan spun uselessly as they were dragged into nothingness. Matasui's terrified yelp cut off midway as reality tore them apart.
Plummeting to death did not rank highly on Haruno Sakura’s bucket list.
Fucking reverse-summoning seals! And that idiot Matasui! When I get back I’ll kick his ass to fucking Suna! Fuck!
Sakura was still falling like deadweight — much too fast, the wind roaring and her unable to get a fucking grip. Her legs were flailing like bloody rag dolls and her body was flipping head over heels with the world spinning — all the while, the ground getting closer and the prospect of a shattered skeleton increasingly inevitable.
Shitshitshitshitshit! She needed to stabilise her fall; she needed to increase her surface area to slow her fall — fuck . If she couldn’t distribute her weight properly she’d be cartwheeling into the earth at terminal velocity. And in this body, that was Not Good. She pulled her limbs together, straining all her muscles taut to get them under some fucking control before flinging them out desperately, which stopped the flailing but didn’t stop her from dropping like a kunai thrown to earth. It took her precious seconds to realise that she was angled far too greatly downwards and needed to level out. She got her body as flat as humanly possible and that was good, great, excellent — and she just might live if she could figure out how to slow her fall even further.
Ideally, Sakura should have had something beneath her to take the brunt of the impact, but she had exactly — nothing. It would take too much out of her, which she simply couldn’t afford considering she’d need to heal the bones she was sure to break. If she landed in those trees (which were getting alarmingly close) she’d risk getting severely stabbed unless she coated herself with chakra — ensuring that at worst she’d only be moderately-severely impaled, which was by far the most attractive option at present. There was a building nearby that she could demolish with a chakra-filled boot to the roof and this was equally likely to both slow her fall and murder hundreds.
She aimed for the trees.
She was counting the scarce seconds, facing down the canopy surging to meet her. In a fraction of a moment she somersaulted and straightened her legs beneath her, her bones infused with chakra, her arms shielding her head. Upon barest contact she released the finest, finest thread of chakra.
The tree shattered like glass.
This was the fault of momentum. She was plunging toward the earth feet-first, wood crumbling below her in clouds of spraying splinters. With a kick, Sakura launched herself off, driving the remnants of the tree into the ground and slamming into the nearest trunk, palms clinging on for dear life.
She couldn’t get enough air and her heart was thrashing against her ribs like a wild animal, a thundering herd of wild boars. Thank fucking Kami.
“Stop right there!”
Clearly, she’d spoken too soon.
It was instinct forged from blood, sweat and tears, that had her diving out of the way of a nasty bolt of lighting, thrown — as a fleeting glance informed her — by a spiky-pink-haired girl with electricity wreathing her arms. Deftly, she took off running through the canopy, leaping as another streak came hurtling toward her. These nin were — and worse, she couldn’t sense their chakra signatures — B-ranked, she would have guessed, had they not been so obnoxiously loud. But she couldn’t afford the time to make sense of it all.
She funneled chakra into her ears, hearing them sprinting in pursuit on the forest floor behind her. The ground between them was growing. They were too slow, and yet they’d managed jutsu virtually without flaring their chakra at all. They possessed perfect control, and nothing else. The irony didn’t escape her.
“Tamaki! How about teaming up to catch this one?”
Nooo , Inner Sakura groaned.
Another bolt of lightning interrupted her thoughts. These people really needed to work on their introductions. A polite "hello" would have sufficed.
Team 7’s luck strikes again , she grumbled, picking up speed through the canopy. First the seal, then the fall, and now I'm being chased by discount Raiton users.
And where the hell were her teammates?
She'd have to figure out what was going on later. Preferably once out of… wherever this was. And over a drink. Maybe with biscuits.
Naruto's first thought upon crash-landing through someone's roof was that it smelled like ramen. His second thought was that Sakura was going to kill him for breaking another building.
"Sorry about the roof!" Naruto called cheerfully to the stunned staff, brushing ceiling tiles off his jumpsuit. "But hey, is that miso I smell?"
The kitchen staff gaped at him, frozen in place like civilians caught in a genjutsu. One man's ladle hung suspended over a pot, broth dripping steadily into the bubbling soup below. Behind the counter, a young woman clutched her order pad like a shield.
Naruto tried reaching out with his chakra, searching for any trace of his teammates. Nothing. Not even the faintest flicker of Sakura or Sasuke-teme. Just... emptiness, like trying to sense chakra in a civilian district.
"Uh..." The man with the ladle finally lowered his arm. "Are you... okay?"
"Never better!" Naruto bounced to his feet, sending more ceiling debris scattering. "Though Kakashi-sensei’s gonna be mad about the property damage. Again." He scratched his head, looking around the unfamiliar shop. "Say, where exactly am I? Everything feels weird."
The staff exchanged bewildered glances. The woman with the order pad ventured, "You're... in Tokyo?"
"Tokyo?" Naruto's face scrunched in confusion. "Never heard of it! Is it near Wave Country?"
"Wave... Country?" The ladle man blinked. "Are you from somewhere rural? Your accent..."
"Eh?" Naruto said, scratching his head. "I'm from Konoha! Believe it!"
More confused looks passed between the staff. The woman mouthed 'Konoha?' to her colleagues, who shrugged helplessly.
"Must be some small village in the countryside," the ladle man muttered. Then, louder: "Listen, kid, maybe you should sit down. That was quite a fall."
"Fall? Oh, that was nothing! One time Granny Tsunade flicked my forehead and I went through ALL the training posts! She wasn’t even trying!" Naruto grinned, then sniffed appreciatively. "But man, that ramen smells amazing! Almost as good as Ichiraku's!"
The kitchen staff's confusion was rapidly being replaced by a sort of resigned acceptance that only came from dealing with particularly enthusiastic customers. The kind that crashed through ceilings.
"Tell you what," the ladle man said, ladling out a bowl of steaming ramen. "Why don't you tell us about this Konoha place while you eat? And maybe explain how exactly you fell through our roof?"
Naruto's face lit up. "Free ramen? You're the best! Though we should probably do something about that hole before Sakura-chan finds out. She gets scary about collateral damage these days."
The woman with the order pad had finally lowered her makeshift shield. "Who's Sakura?"
"Only the scariest medic-nin in training! Well, after Tsunade-baachan." Naruto accepted the bowl with reverence. "She's gonna be so mad when she finds me. But first - ramen!"
The staff watched in fascinated horror as their mysterious guest inhaled noodles at physically improbable speeds, chattering between bites about chakra and ninja villages and something called 'jutsu' that sounded suspiciously like magic.
Must be one of those cosplayers, they decided silently. Just... a very dedicated one.
Of all the places that seal could have dumped him, Sasuke thought sourly, it had to be a tourist trap filled with squealing civilians. His Sharingan activated automatically, mapping possible escape routes through the bizarre metal and glass construction that surrounded him.
The gaggle of schoolgirls shoving strange handheld devices at him were somewhat compromising tactical advantage. More kept arriving, their excited chatter making his teeth ache. One particularly bold girl thrust her glowing rectangle toward his face, accompanied by a rapid stream of incomprehensible words.
Definitely not Fire Country, then.
The observation deck offered decent sight lines, at least. Though the complete lack of chakra signatures was... unsettling. His Sharingan caught nothing but civilian energy patterns - no hidden ANBU, no barrier seals, not even basic perimeter defenses.
"Look at his eyes!" Another girl squealed, pointing at his face. "They're red!"
Sasuke's jaw tightened. Below, the sprawling cityscape stretched far beyond even Sharingan-enhanced vision. The buildings were wrong - too tall, too angular, constructed of materials his eyes couldn't quite categorize.
Some sort of genjutsu trap? But the chakra patterns felt genuine, if bizarrely weak.
"Hey, are you a pro hero?" A boy this time, shoving forward with another of those glowing devices. "Can I get your autograph?"
"No." Sasuke moved toward the windows, calculating trajectories. The growing crowd of civilians was becoming problematic. And where the hell had that seal dumped Sakura and Naruto?
A flash went off in his peripheral vision. His Sharingan caught the strange energy signature - not chakra, not quite electricity. More flashes followed as the crowd pressed closer.
"Did you see him just appear?"
"Those eyes–"
"New hero agency maybe?"
"So cool!"
This, Sasuke decided as he plotted the fastest route to the roof, was exactly why he hated research missions.
Kakashi had landed in many questionable places during his career, but a plaza full of civilians staring at phones while giant screens flashed advertisements for something called 'All Might' was definitely new.
Between the noise and neon lights, Kakashi's first thought was that Naruto had finally managed to break reality. His second thought was that he really should have finished that paperwork before leaving the village. His third thought, as a child with actual wings fluttered past, was that perhaps he should have paid more attention during those interdimensional seal theory lectures.
His Sharingan spun lazily, cataloguing the overwhelming absence of chakra signatures. The civilians bustling around him buzzed with... something else. Energy, but not chakra. Like watching a jutsu perform itself without hand signs.
A group of young women giggled as they passed, rectangular devices raised surreptitiously in his direction. Kakashi eye-smiled and gave a little wave, which only increased the giggling. One of them was a busty redhead who reminded him vaguely of the lead from Icha Icha Paradise Volume 3, but he doubted now was the time to investigate that particular parallel.
The tower in the distance caught his eye - tall, red, and trying very hard to compensate for something. More importantly, it offered the best vantage point to search for his missing students. Knowing his luck, Naruto was already causing an international incident. Or worse, Sakura had found a hospital to reorganize. Or worst of all, Sasuke had found something to brood dramatically atop of.
A man with actual fire erupting from his arms jogged past, apparently late for something.
"Maa," Kakashi murmured, pulling out his book more out of habit than actual intent to read it. "I suppose this beats grading exams."
He began plotting his path to the tower, mentally calculating angles and handholds while maintaining his carefully bored expression. The fact that his grip was perhaps a touch tighter than usual on his beloved Icha Icha had nothing to do with the growing list of ways his cute little genin could be wreaking havoc in this strange place.
When the giant screen overhead switched to showing what appeared to be a man made entirely of wood fighting a villain, Kakashi briefly considered requesting hazard pay. Then he remembered he'd have to fill out the paperwork for that too.
A child pointed at him, tugging their mother's sleeve. "Look! Another underground hero!"
Kakashi wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but he'd been called worse things. Though the number of people with obvious mutations was starting to make him wonder if perhaps Orochimaru had finally succeeded in whatever madness he'd been plotting.
At least that would be familiar territory.
It took exactly three exchanges for Sakura to realize something was terribly wrong. These shinobi had all the tactical sense of academy students on their first day.
The first girl – Fujiwara, they'd called her – moved with all the subtlety of Naruto after three bowls of caffeine. The second one kept producing acid that would have been impressive if she hadn't nearly doused her own teammate with it. And the third…
Inner Sakura was having an existential crisis. Outer Sakura was trying very hard not to accidentally maim anyone. Neither of them was having a good time.
"You're leaving your right side completely open," Sakura said automatically, then immediately regretted it as the green-haired boy actually turned to check. She had to pull her punch so hard she nearly gave herself whiplash. "That was not an invitation to – oh gods, please don't do that with your spine."
The boy's body had contorted in ways that made her medical training scream. She actually felt her eye twitch.
"Impressive flexibility," she managed, while Inner Sakura catalogued at least seven ways that movement should have snapped his vertebrae. "But maybe don't–"
A shadow fell over her. "Got you now!"
Sakura sidestepped the giant fist that crashed down where she'd been standing. The impact crater was decent, but the girl's form was terrible. Her medical diagnostic jutsu activated automatically, mapping stress fractures forming in the attacker's bones.
"Stop," Sakura ordered, thoroughly horrified. "You're damaging your-"
"Plus Ultra!" Someone actually shouted, and Sakura had to catch another student before they could fracture their own tibia.
"What kind of civilian combat program-" She broke off as the implications hit her. Her hands still glowed with healing chakra as she stared at the group of students. "You're civilians. These are civilian techniques."
"We're heroes in training!" The acid girl protested, then yelped as her own acid started eating through her shoe.
"Stand down," a new voice called. Four more students emerged - three radiating easy confidence that marked them as elites, accompanied by the lightning wielder whose chakra remained unsettlingly absent.
"Is this training bot malfunctioning?" One of the girls, with periwinkle hair and huge donuts on her arms, tilted her head inquisitively.
"What's a bot?" Sakura asked, still holding the boy whose leg she'd just healed. Her mind raced through possibilities - some kind of puppet technique maybe?
"You don't know what a bot is?" Another of the students - Mirio, based on the others' chatter - grinned impossibly wide. "That's not very robotic of you!"
"I'm a medic-nin," Sakura said slowly, backing away while keeping all of them in sight. "And you're all civilians. Civilians with... abilities, but still civilians." She lowered her hands, chakra fading. "I don't want to hurt anyone."
"A medic... nin?" Tamaki repeated, testing the unfamiliar word.
"Interesting," Mirio's grin somehow widened further. "You might not be a bot after all! Want to explain why you're here?"
"Preferably," Sakura agreed, deciding they seemed friendly enough (and not so much murderous as murderously clumsy), "at a safe distance from any more attempted heroics. And perhaps somewhere with a map, because I'm starting to think that seal sent us somewhere significantly worse than Tea Country."
Kakashi's ninken scattered through the steel-and-glass maze of this strange city, tracking scents they knew as well as their own. Pakkun had already reported back twice - once to inform him that Sakura's trail led to some kind of training facility ("Smells like sweat and teenage drama, Boss"), and again to confirm Sasuke's location at the red tower.
At least someone had the sense to find high ground , Kakashi mused, ignoring another civilian's attempt to flash a light at him. Their strange devices still registered as not-quite-chakra to his Sharingan.
"Got the loud one's scent," Bull rumbled, materializing beside him. "Ramen shop, two districts over. He's already made friends."
"Of course he has." Kakashi's eye curved. "Has he broken anything?"
"Just a roof." Bull's tail wagged once. "He's trying to fix it."
Which means it's probably worse now, Kakashi thought, but didn't say. "Keep tracking Sakura. I'll retrieve our brooding avenger first."
Above them, a massive mechanical bird roared past - some kind of patrol construct, based on the markings. More importantly, it was headed toward the tower where he'd sensed a familiar spike of killing intent.
Maa, better hurry before Sasuke decides to reduce the local population.
"And then I was like WHOOSH through the ceiling - but don't worry, I'm totally gonna fix it!" Naruto gestured enthusiastically, nearly knocking over his fourth bowl of ramen. "My clones are super good at repairs now! Well, mostly. There was this one time with a shrine-"
"Your... clones?" The cook - Tanaka-san - asked weakly.
"Yeah! Watch!" Naruto's hands flew through seals. "Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
The kitchen erupted in orange as two dozen Narutos materialized, already reaching for tools. "Okay guys, Operation: Fix The Roof is go! Believe it!"
"He just-" One of the waitresses clutched her pen like a lifeline. "Is that his quirk?"
"What's a quirk?" All the Narutos asked simultaneously.
Outside, sirens wailed closer.
Sasuke's Sharingan caught the approaching mechanical monster before its thunderous roar reached the observation deck. Metal and glass, larger than any summons he'd seen, hovering impossibly in the air. The civilians were still pressing closer, devices flashing, chattering in that strange dialect he couldn't quite parse.
Escape route compromised, he noted. No chakra signatures in pursuit. Unknown aerial capabilities. Some kind of mechanical construct, but the power source...
His hand moved toward his weapon pouch, but before he could act, a familiar voice cut through the noise:
"Maa, my cute little student is making friends."
Sasuke's shoulders tensed minutely. "Took you long enough."
Kakashi eye-smiled at the gathered crowd. "So sorry, but I need to borrow him. Hero business, you understand."
The civilians actually backed away, excitement shifting to something like respect. Sasuke filed that away. They had some kind of authority structure based on… heroes.
"The others?" he asked as they made their way to the roof.
"Naruto's eating ramen and damaging property, Sakura's probably terrorizing someone with medical lectures." Kakashi's eye curved. "Ready to collect them?"
Sasuke's response was lost under the metal bird’s spotlight.
"So you’re really from somewhere rural?" Fujiwara Akane tilted her head, tail swishing. "I mean, I guessed — because, well, your way of speaking is just so... traditional!"
"Oh, tell me about it,” said Sakura, still processing the fact that she was now an anthropological relic. The students had snuck her into what appeared to be a classroom, though the devices humming with strange energy were unlike anything she'd seen. "Though I'm more interested in how your society structures these... abilities you mentioned."
"Wait, you really don't know about quirks?" Kurogane Tetsu looked baffled. "But what about all that crazy stuff during the fight? The way you moved, the things you did-"
"Where I'm from," Sakura interrupted carefully, "things work... differently." Different energy system entirely. No wonder I couldn't sense their signatures properly .
"But where exactly is that?" Tanaka Yui leaned forward, eyes bright with academic interest. "I don't recognize your accent, and some of your phrases seem almost archaic-"
Sakura's lips quirked. "Further than you'd believe."
Konoha was decidedly nowhere near this place they’d called Tokyo (in a tone that suggested she was either slow or stupid), and she’d almost made peace with the fact that Matasui had dropped them off in an entirely different dimension.
The door slid open. "There you are!" Another student burst in. "Is it true? Did someone really-"
"Problem," Yume interrupted, head tilted. "Think I hear sirens. Lots of them."
Time to go , Inner Sakura decided. Through the window, Sakura caught a flash of silver hair on a nearby rooftop.
"Thank you for the information," she said politely, already moving toward the window. "This has been... educational."
"Wait!" Yui called. "I have so many questions--"
"Another time," Sakura promised, though they both knew she was lying. "I have a team to collect."
She was through the window before any of them could react, chakra carrying her toward the familiar signatures of her boys.
I give it ten minutes , she mused, half fondness and half exasperation, before Naruto’s gone and made friends with half of Tokyo.
Twenty Minutes Later
"I can explain," Naruto said immediately.
"The roof," Sakura's eye twitched, "is on fire."
"Only a little!" He protested. "And look, my clones are helping!"
"Your clones," Sasuke observed flatly, "are the reason it's on fire."
"Now, now," Kakashi interrupted cheerfully, eye fixed on the approaching emergency vehicles. "Perhaps we should discuss this somewhere less... flammable?"
Sakura's hands flew through seals. “Naruto, this is why we can’t have nice things.”
The water jutsu, at least, put out the fire. Mostly.
They were gone before the officials arrived, leaving behind a very confused ramen shop staff, an extremely detailed entry and sketch on an order pad, and a small army of local heroes with a lot of questions.
"So," Sakura said brightly, staring at the frankly ridiculous number of policemen surrounding them, pointing tiny metal handhelds their way, "this is cozy."
"Could be worse," Kakashi offered, flipping another page in his book with magnificent unconcern. "Remember that time in Tea Country?"
"Which time in Tea Country?" Naruto asked. "The one with the angry daimyo or the one with the possessed teapot?"
"The one with the poetry competition," Sasuke muttered darkly.
Everyone winced. Some traumas ran too deep.
"At least this time there's no interpretive dance," Sakura said, then raised her voice to address the increasingly nervous-looking police. "Hello! We come in peace and would very much like to avoid any accidental maiming!"
"Sakura-chan," Naruto whispered loudly, "I don't think that's helping."
"Neither is the he-li-cop-ter circling us," she pointed out. "Sasuke, stop glaring at it. You're making them nervous."
"Good."
"No, not good! These people are incredibly breakable. Like, civilian-bone-density breakable. Do you want to explain to their medical authorities why someone's skeleton is suddenly outside their body?"
Sasuke considered this. "...no."
"Exactly. Now everyone smile and look harmless."
"I'm always harmless!" Naruto protested.
"You set a roof on fire an hour ago."
"Only a little fire!"
"Let me get this straight," the detective said, looking like he desperately needed a drink. "You're from another dimension."
"Yep!" Naruto beamed.
"Where you're ninja."
"Shinobi," Sasuke corrected, radiating disdain.
"And you got here through... a magic circle?"
"A highly complex transportation seal with unexpected dimensional resonance properties," Sakura said, then caught herself. "I mean, sure, magic circle works too."
The detective looked at Kakashi, clearly hoping for some adult sanity.
"Don't mind them," Kakashi said cheerfully. "They're just excited to be in the big city. You know how it is with rural kids."
"Rural... kids."
"Mhm. I'm their guardian. We're from a very small village with some unique customs. Very traditional. Very isolated."
"That's... that's not even a real explanation!"
"Isn't it though?"
The detective's head hit his desk with a thunk.
"Well," said Sakura, watching their third interrogator flee the room, "that could have gone worse."
"Could've gone better," Sasuke muttered, still radiating enough killing intent to make the air in the room fritz.
"Hey, at least no one's on fire!" Naruto offered brightly. Then, after a pause: "...anymore."
Kakashi turned another page in his book. "Maa, my cute little students are so pessimistic. I thought that last detective's face was quite entertaining when you started lecturing him."
"I was trying to be helpful!" Sakura protested, inwardly vindictively pleased and also lying blatantly. "Their interrogation manual might as well be written in crayon! I mean, when someone claims they're trained in advanced interrogation methods, they should really be prepared to defend that statement. And all I did was ask him if his mother ever loved him–"
"Sakura," Sasuke interrupted, "you made him cry."
"That was for entirely different reasons," she sniffed. "And anyway, he really should have known better than to suggest my forehead was some quirk ."
Through the observation window, several officials appeared to be having a spirited argument. One of them kept pointing at security footage of Naruto's clone army attempting to fix (and subsequently ignite) the ramen shop's roof. Another seemed to be having an existential crisis over Kakashi's paperwork, which somehow listed their home address as "That village in the mountains, you know the one."
"Think they'll let us go soon?" Naruto asked hopefully. "I'm starving!"
"You're always starving," Sasuke said, but his own stomach chose that moment to growl traitorously.
"We do need to figure something out," Sakura admitted. "We have no money, no documentation, and—" she shot Kakashi a look, “—apparently a guardian with questionable form-filling skills."
"I thought I was very thorough," Kakashi said, eye curving. "Previous address, family status, even a lovely cover story about being from a remote village with unique customs..."
"You listed our previous residence as 'probably still there' and our family status as 'it's complicated'!"
"Technically accurate."
Before Sakura could explain exactly why that wasn't helping at all , the door opened. A small white creature in a suit stepped in, followed by an impossibly muscular man with hair that defied (probably) several laws of physics.
"Well!" said the creature cheerfully. "This is certainly interesting!"
Naruto's eyes went huge. "Is that a talking animal? That's so cool! Hey hey, are you like one of Kakashi-sensei's ninken? Can you do jutsu? Why are you wearing clothes? Can—“
"Naruto," Sakura hissed, "please stop interrogating the..." she squinted at the mouse man, "...gentleman?"
"Ha-ha!" The creature — apparently not offended — chuckled delightedly. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Principal Nezu of UA High School and I believe I have a proposition that might solve everyone's problems."
"YOUNG ONES!" the muscular man boomed, "LET US DISCUSS YOUR FUTURE AS HEROES!"
There was a brief silence.
"Heroes," Sasuke repeated flatly. Sakura shared the sentiment.
"Indeed!" said Nezu. "Tell me, how do you feel about robots?"
Sakura heard their collective blink.
“Ro… bots?”
"A superhero school," Sakura repeated slowly, not in the least because she had to sound the words out. "You want us to attend a superhero school."
"With ro-bots!" Naruto's eyes sparkled. "We get to fight ro-bots!"
"Focus," she hissed. "They're offering us housing, food—“
"RAMEN?"
“—and legal documentation in exchange for attending their school and not accidentally destroying their city."
"Seems reasonable," Kakashi mused. "Especially since someone already registered us as a family unit."
"We're going to talk about that later," Sakura promised darkly.
"It's a very prestigious institution," Principal Nezu added, looking far too amused. "Though you'll have to pass the entrance exam first."
"What kind of exam?" Sasuke asked suspiciously.
"Oh, nothing too difficult! Just demonstrate your abilities against some robots, take a written test..."
"That's it?" Naruto bounced in his chair. "We can totally—"
"Without killing anyone," Sakura interrupted. "Or causing permanent trauma. Or blowing anything up."
"But the robots—"
"The robots are fair game," Nezu confirmed cheerfully.
"Then we accept!" Naruto punched the air. "UA, here we come! Believe it!"