The morning of Day Fifteen began like every other morning since team placements: with competitive bento delivery.
Naruto arrived at Training Ground Seven at 7:55 AM to find that Sakura had set up what could only be described as a forward operating base of culinary warfare. She had a blanket — upgraded from the pink one to a larger red one with the Haruno circle embroidered in the corner — a thermos of tea, a thermos of coffee, a thermos of hot chocolate ("in case you want options, Naruto"), and three separate bento boxes, each one wrapped in a different colored cloth.
"The blue one is breakfast," she explained, radiating the energy of a quartermaster briefing a general. "The green one is a mid-morning snack for between training exercises. The red one is lunch. I've organized them chronologically."
"You organized my food chronologically," Naruto repeated.
"By nutritional phase. Breakfast is high-protein for energy frontloading. The snack is complex carbohydrates for sustained output. Lunch is balanced macros with emphasis on recovery nutrients. I consulted three textbooks."
"For my lunch."
"For your OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE, Naruto. There's a difference."
Naruto opened the blue bento. It contained a perfectly arranged selection of grilled chicken, steamed rice, miso soup in a sealed container, pickled plums, and — he counted — fourteen naruto fishcakes arranged in a spiral pattern that formed the Uzumaki clan symbol.
"That's... actually really cool," he said, genuinely touched.
Sakura's entire face went pink. Her massive breasts heaved with a breath that was trying very hard to be casual. "I just — it's just food — anyone could—"
"Naruto."
They both looked up. Sasuke had appeared. Not walked up. Not arrived. Appeared. One moment the space to Naruto's left was empty and the next it contained an Uchiha whose body could cause traffic accidents in three countries and whose dark eyes were locked onto Sakura's bento arrangement with the analytical intensity of a rival general assessing enemy fortifications.
Sasuke was carrying a bento box.
One bento box.
It was wrapped in midnight blue cloth with the Uchiha fan embroidered in the corner. When she unwrapped it and placed it before Naruto, the contents were revealed with the quiet drama of a curtain rising on a masterpiece.
It was a single layer of onigiri.
Twenty-four onigiri.
Each one was shaped and decorated to depict a different scene from Naruto's life. There was an onigiri shaped like the Hokage Monument with tiny nori faces. An onigiri shaped like Ichiraku Ramen with sesame-seed curtains. An onigiri shaped like Naruto himself, complete with a tiny nori hitai-ate and sesame-seed whisker marks. An onigiri shaped like a frog. An onigiri shaped like a spiral. An onigiri shaped like a fox with nine tiny nori tails fanned out behind it.
Each one was perfect. Each one must have taken fifteen to twenty minutes of meticulous, painstaking, obsessive work.
Sasuke had woken up at midnight to make these.
She had not slept.
She didn't mention this.
"I had extra rice," she said.
Naruto stared at the twenty-four individually sculpted character onigiri that represented hours of sleepless labor and said:
"Wow, Sasuke, you must really like making rice balls!"
Sasuke's left eye twitched exactly once.
"Yes," she said. "I really like making rice balls."
Naruto ate both breakfasts simultaneously, alternating between Sakura's nutritionally optimized high-performance meal and Sasuke's edible art gallery with equal enthusiasm and zero awareness of the escalating arms race occurring over his head.
Sakura watched him eat her chicken and mentally noted his chewing speed, his expression per bite, and the order in which he consumed each component. She would optimize tomorrow's breakfast accordingly. More chicken. The plums needed more vinegar. The fishcake count would increase to sixteen.
Sasuke watched him eat her onigiri and noted which ones he reached for first (the fox, then the Naruto-shaped one, then the Ichiraku one). Tomorrow's onigiri would feature more foxes. Possibly an entire fox-themed series. A fox family. A fox village. A fox Hokage.
She was spiraling.
She didn't care.
At 10:22 AM — two hours and twenty-two minutes late — Kakashi arrived.
"Yo."
"YOU'RE—"
"Lost. Road. Life. Bad signage. Shall we begin?"
"Today," Kakashi announced, standing at the edge of the pond with her hands in her pockets, "we're working on jutsu application. You've learned the hand seals. You've practiced the chakra conversion. Now I want to see you use them. Not on training posts. On targets. In scenarios."
She looked at Naruto.
"Start with the Water Dragon."
Naruto grinned. He'd been waiting for this. The Water Dragon Jutsu was the first technique Kakashi had taught him — the forty-four hand seals, the massive chakra investment, the sheer theatrical drama of turning a body of water into a living weapon. He'd been practicing the seals every night before bed, running through them in his mind while Anko muttered about relationship taxonomy on his couch.
He walked to the edge of the pond. Planted his feet. Felt the water beneath him — not physically, but with his chakra, sensing the mass and movement of it, the way Kakashi had taught him.
He began the hand seals.
One through ten — smooth, practiced, muscle memory taking over. The chakra in his core began to shift, converting from its natural state into something that resonated with water, with flow, with the liquid architecture of hydrogen and oxygen.
Eleven through twenty — the conversion deepened. He could feel the pond responding. Not just the surface — the entire volume of water, from the sunlit top to the muddy bottom, vibrating at a frequency that matched the jutsu's requirements.
Twenty-one through thirty — the shaping began. In his mind, he held the image of a dragon. Long, sinuous, powerful. Teeth like compressed currents. Eyes like whirlpools. A body made of ten thousand gallons of pressurized water moving with the singular intent to destroy.
Thirty-one through forty-four — he pushed.
Not with the careful, measured push that Kakashi had demonstrated. Not with the controlled, precise output that the jutsu technically required.
He pushed with everything.
Because he was Naruto, and Naruto only had one gear for jutsu he was excited about, and that gear was "everything."
The pond erupted.
Not partially. Not in the localized, directed manner of a standard Water Dragon Jutsu. The ENTIRE pond erupted. Every drop of water — hundreds of thousands of gallons — rose into the air simultaneously, as if gravity had been briefly and rudely uninvited from the proceedings.
The water twisted. Churned. Compressed.
And became a dragon.
But not the dragon Kakashi had demonstrated. Not a thirty-foot construct of churning water with vaguely draconic features. What rose from the pond — from the empty, instantly desiccated, newly created crater that had been a pond three seconds ago — was something else entirely.
It was enormous.
Sixty feet long. Maybe seventy. Its body was the thickness of a mature oak tree, coiled and muscular, every surface rippling with currents that moved in patterns too complex to be natural. Its scales — and it had scales, individual, distinct, hydrologically impossible scales — shimmered with an iridescent blue-green that caught the sunlight and scattered it into rainbows. Its eyes were deep, luminous whirlpools of pressurized water that spun with a slow, deliberate intelligence.
Its claws — it had claws, four sets of them, each one a curved blade of compressed water hard enough to gouge stone — flexed as it hung in the air, its massive body undulating with a grace that belied its size.
Its mouth opened, revealing teeth made of water under such extreme pressure that they were effectively solid. A sound emerged from its throat — not the waterfall-roar of Kakashi's dragon, but something deeper, more resonant, more... alive.
It sounded like a purr.
"What," said Kakashi.
"WHAT," said Sakura.
"...What," said Sasuke.
"WHOA!" said Naruto, staring up at the massive water construct with eyes the size of dinner plates. "IT'S HUGE! KAKASHI-SENSEI, IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE THAT BIG?!"
"No," Kakashi said, her voice faint. "No, it is not supposed to be that big. It is supposed to be roughly one-fifth that size. It is not supposed to have individual scales. It is not supposed to have anatomically correct claws. And it is DEFINITELY not supposed to be—"
The dragon lowered its massive head.
Toward Naruto.
Slowly, with the careful, deliberate gentleness of something very large trying very hard not to break something very small, the water dragon brought its face down to Naruto's level. Its whirlpool eyes — each one the size of Naruto's torso — focused on him with an intensity that was unmistakable.
It was looking at him.
Not at the training ground. Not at Kakashi or Sakura or Sasuke. Not at the empty pond or the trees or the sky.
At him.
The dragon's mouth closed. Its purring intensified — a deep, hydraulic rumble that vibrated through the ground and made the remaining puddles in the empty pond basin tremble.
Then it nuzzled him.
A sixty-foot water dragon, composed of hundreds of thousands of gallons of chakra-infused water, pressed its enormous snout against Naruto Uzumaki's chest and nuzzled him like a cat demanding attention.
The force of the nuzzle knocked Naruto back a step, but it didn't hurt. The dragon's touch was — impossibly, inexplicably — gentle. Its snout was warm. Not the way water was usually warm, but warm in a way that felt intentional, as if the dragon had decided, independently and without consultation, that the boy it was nuzzling should be comfortable.
"Uh," Naruto said, standing in the training ground with a building-sized water dragon pressing its face against his chest and purring. "Is this... normal?"
"NOTHING about this is normal," Kakashi said, her single visible eye so wide that it had become approximately twice its usual size. Her massive body was frozen in place, her enormous breasts motionless for the first time in recorded history, her thick thighs locked together. She was staring at the dragon with the expression of a scientist who had just watched their experiment develop sentience and a personality.
"The Water Dragon Jutsu creates a construct," she said slowly, as if working through the problem in real-time. "A shaped mass of chakra-infused water that follows a predetermined attack vector. It's not alive. It doesn't have preferences. It definitely doesn't NUZZLE."
The dragon, apparently hearing this assessment of its ontological status, turned one massive whirlpool eye toward Kakashi and made a sound that could only be described as dismissive.
Then it turned back to Naruto and nuzzled harder.
Its enormous body coiled around him — not tightly, not constricting, but encircling. Like a protective barrier. Like a nest. Its tail curled around behind him, its neck arched over him, and its head pressed against his chest again with that deep, rumbling purr.
Naruto, standing in the center of a sentient water dragon cuddle spiral, did what Naruto always did when confronted with inexplicable affection: he completely failed to question it.
"Hey there, big guy!" He reached up and patted the dragon's snout. His hand sank about an inch into the water before meeting resistance — the dragon's surface had hardened beneath his touch, creating a solid platform for him to pet. "You're pretty friendly for a jutsu, huh?"
The dragon purred louder. The ground shook. A tree at the edge of the clearing dropped several leaves.
"Can I name you?" Naruto asked.
The dragon made a sound that was clearly, unmistakably, enthusiastic agreement.
"I'm gonna call you... Suiryu!" Naruto decided. "Water dragon. Suiryu. Because you're made of water. And you're a dragon. It works on multiple levels."
Suiryu — the sentient, cuddly, sixty-foot water dragon that should not exist — rumbled with satisfaction at receiving a name.
"Naruto," Kakashi said, her voice carrying the careful, measured tone of someone trying very hard not to lose their grip on reality. "The Water Dragon Jutsu is a temporary construct. It should disperse when you stop channeling chakra."
Naruto looked up. "Huh? Oh, I stopped channeling like a minute ago."
Kakashi's eye twitched. "You stopped channeling."
"Yeah. Right after the hand seals. It just... stayed."
"It just stayed."
"Is that weird?"
"Naruto, that is literally impossible. A chakra construct without continuous chakra input is — by definition — not a chakra construct. It's a... it's..." Kakashi's mouth moved behind her mask as she searched for the word. "I don't know what it is."
"It's Suiryu," Naruto said helpfully.
Suiryu purred in agreement and attempted to climb into Naruto's lap. Given that Suiryu was sixty feet long and Naruto's lap was approximately eighteen inches across, this resulted in the dragon compressing itself — scales and coils and currents folding inward with a hydraulic hiss — until it was approximately the size of a large dog. A large, scaly, shimmering, whirlpool-eyed water dog that curled up in Naruto's lap, wrapped its tail around his waist, and rested its head on his thigh.
"IT SHRUNK!" Naruto shouted, delighted. "IT CAN CHANGE SIZE! THIS IS THE BEST JUTSU EVER!"
"That's not a jutsu anymore," Kakashi murmured, approaching slowly. She crouched beside Naruto — her massive thighs bulging outward, her enormous ass jutting behind her — and reached a tentative hand toward Suiryu.
Suiryu's whirlpool eyes locked onto her hand. Its purring stopped. A low, warning ripple ran across its surface.
Kakashi withdrew her hand.
"It's protective of you," she observed, her voice now firmly in the "scientist encountering unprecedented phenomena" register. "It doesn't want me touching you."
"What? Don't be silly." Naruto scratched behind one of Suiryu's fin-ears. The dragon's eyes half-closed in pleasure and its purring resumed. "Suiryu's friendly! Right, boy?"
Suiryu rumbled agreeably while keeping one whirlpool eye fixed on Kakashi with an expression that said "I am friendly to HIM. You, I am evaluating."
Sakura approached from the left, moving slowly, her green eyes wide with scientific fascination. Her enormous body cast a shadow over Naruto and the dragon as she crouched beside them.
"Naruto, can I examine it? Him? Them?" She reached toward Suiryu.
Suiryu looked at her hand. Looked at Naruto. Looked at her hand again.
Then it shifted slightly in Naruto's lap to give her access to its dorsal ridge and resumed purring.
Sakura's fingers touched the dragon's scales and she gasped. "It's warm! And the chakra signature is... Naruto, this is YOUR chakra, but it's been restructured. The molecular pattern isn't random — it's organized. Like cells. Like living tissue but made of water and chakra."
"Is that good?" Naruto asked.
"I have no idea. It's never happened before. In the history of jutsu."
"So... I'm special?"
"You have always been special," Sakura said, and her voice did that thing where it went from analytical to soft so fast it gave the words emotional whiplash. She looked at him over Suiryu's shimmering back, her green eyes warm, her pink lips parted slightly. "You've always been special, Naruto."
Naruto's ears turned pink. "Oh. Uh. Thanks, Sakura-chan."
Suiryu looked between them and purred louder, apparently approving of this interaction.
Sasuke approached from the right. She did not crouch. She stood over Naruto and the dragon with her arms crossed beneath her massive breasts, her three-tomoe Sharingan active, scanning Suiryu with the focused intensity of someone cataloguing a new phenomenon.
"The chakra structure is self-sustaining," she said, her voice clinical. "It's drawing ambient moisture from the air to maintain its mass. It's also—" She paused. Her Sharingan spun. "It's developing new chakra pathways in real-time. It's... growing."
"Growing?" Kakashi's voice sharpened.
"Not in size. In complexity. The internal chakra network is branching, creating new nodes, new connections. Like a brain forming new neural pathways." Sasuke's dark eyes narrowed behind the crimson glow of her Sharingan. "It's getting smarter."
They all looked at Suiryu.
Suiryu looked back at them with whirlpool eyes that did, indeed, seem slightly more intelligent than they had five minutes ago.
Then it yawned — a motion that revealed rows of compressed-water teeth and a tongue made of a single, elegant current — and buried its face in Naruto's stomach.
"I think it's sleepy," Naruto said, patting its head.
"Water can't sleep," Kakashi said.
Suiryu closed its eyes and began snoring. The snoring sounded like a distant waterfall. Small bubbles formed at the corners of its mouth.
"Water can apparently sleep," Kakashi corrected herself weakly.
They spent the next hour studying Suiryu while it napped in Naruto's lap. Kakashi ran diagnostic jutsu, Sakura took chakra readings, and Sasuke recorded everything with her Sharingan. Their findings were unanimous and deeply unsettling:
Suiryu was, by every measurable standard, alive. Not "animated chakra construct" alive. Actually alive. Self-sustaining, self-organizing, autonomously conscious alive.
Its chakra was identical to Naruto's in signature and composition, but restructured into patterns that no one had ever seen before. It was as if Naruto's chakra had been given the blueprint for a living organism and had simply... built one.
It was absurdly powerful. Kakashi's diagnostic jutsu estimated its combat capability at low A-rank at minimum — and it was still "growing," still developing, still becoming more complex with each passing minute. What it would be in a week, a month, a year, none of them could predict.
It was completely, unwaveringly, aggressively devoted to Naruto.
When Kakashi got too close during a diagnostic, Suiryu woke up and growled — a sound like a river reversing course. When a bird landed too near Naruto's head, Suiryu shot a jet of water at it with surgical precision, knocking it out of the air without harming it, then returned to napping. When Naruto stood up to stretch, Suiryu expanded to its full sixty-foot size, coiled protectively around him, and refused to let anyone else within arm's reach until Naruto explicitly told it to relax.
"Suiryu, chill," Naruto said. "They're my team. They're friends."
Suiryu's whirlpool eyes evaluated Kakashi, Sakura, and Sasuke with visible skepticism.
Then it slowly, reluctantly, opened its coils to allow them within the perimeter.
It did not stop watching them.
"Great," Kakashi muttered. "The jutsu is jealous."
"It's not jealous," Naruto protested. "It's just... protective."
"Naruto, it tried to bite me when I touched your shoulder."
"It was a love bite!"
"Its teeth are made of water compressed to the density of steel."
"A LOVE BITE, KAKASHI-SENSEI."
They managed to resume actual training by noon, though Suiryu refused to disperse and instead spent the entire afternoon following Naruto around the training ground in its dog-sized form, curled around his shoulders like a scaly, shimmering, purring water scarf.
Naruto practiced his other jutsu with Suiryu draped around his neck. When he performed the Great Fireball, Suiryu flinched and pressed closer to him, making disapproving aquatic noises. When he performed the Wind Style: Great Breakthrough, Suiryu's body rippled with excitement — wind and water, apparently, were a combination the dragon approved of. When he performed an Earth Wall, Suiryu climbed on top of it and surveyed the training ground like a tiny shimmering king.
"Focus, Naruto," Kakashi said, though she was watching Suiryu's behavior with open fascination. "Rasengan practice. Stage one."
Right. The Rasengan.
Kakashi had brought water balloons, as promised. The first stage of Rasengan training was rotation — spinning chakra inside the balloon until it burst. The key was to create a multidirectional spin, chakra rotating in multiple directions simultaneously, creating the turbulent internal dynamics that gave the Rasengan its power.
Naruto held a water balloon in his right hand. Suiryu, still draped around his neck, watched the balloon with curiosity.
"Feel the water inside the balloon," Kakashi instructed, standing close enough that her massive breasts were approximately six inches from Naruto's arm. "Push your chakra in and spin it. Not one direction — multiple directions. Create chaos inside the balloon. When the balloon can't contain it, it'll pop."
Naruto closed his eyes. Pushed chakra into the balloon. Tried to spin it.
The balloon wobbled. Vibrated. Bulged on one side.
Didn't pop.
He tried again. And again. And again.
Fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes. An hour.
The balloon continued to not pop.
"Why won't this stupid thing—" He squeezed the balloon in frustration.
Suiryu, still on his shoulders, leaned forward and touched its snout to the balloon.
A ripple ran through the balloon's surface. The water inside it began to move — spinning in exactly the multidirectional pattern Kakashi had described, creating a miniature vortex visible through the thin rubber.
"What the—" Naruto felt it through his chakra. The rotation pattern Suiryu was demonstrating. The way the water moved, spiraling in on itself, layers of spin overlapping and interfering and building on each other.
He copied it.
Not consciously — not with intellectual understanding, but with the instinctive, physical, muscle-memory-level comprehension that came from feeling something done right and reproducing it. The same way a child learns to walk by watching others walk. The same way Naruto learned everything — not through study, but through experience.
The balloon bulged. Distorted. The rubber stretched in seventeen directions simultaneously.
It exploded.
Water sprayed everywhere — all over Naruto, all over Suiryu (who was made of water and therefore unbothered), and all over Kakashi, whose dark blue undershirt became somewhat transparent from the soaking, her sports bra visible underneath straining against—
"I DID IT!" Naruto shouted, holding up the shattered remains of the balloon. "I DID IT! STAGE ONE! SUIRYU HELPED!"
Suiryu purred triumphantly and did a small, celebratory spin around Naruto's shoulders.
Kakashi looked at the shattered balloon. Looked at Suiryu. Looked at Naruto's beaming, wet, triumphant face.
She pulled her mask down.
Naruto's eyes widened. "Wait— Kakashi-sensei—"
She cupped his face in both hands.
"You magnificent, impossible boy," she whispered.
And she kissed him.
This was not a four-second kiss. This was not a six-second kiss. This was not an eight-second kiss.
Kakashi pressed her lips against Naruto's mouth and held them there as the seconds ticked by. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty.
Her eyes were closed. Her thumbs stroked his whisker marks — gentle, circular motions that made Naruto's brain emit a sound like a dial-up modem encountering an error it wasn't equipped to handle. Her massive breasts pressed against his chest as she leaned into the kiss, soft and warm and impossibly large, compressing against him like two heated pillows.
Forty seconds. Forty-five. Fifty.
Her thighs were doing something. Pressing together. Rubbing. A slow, rhythmic, side-to-side motion that made the fabric of her pants whisper against itself. Her enormous thighs, each one thicker than Naruto's torso, were squeezing together and releasing and squeezing together again in a pattern that she was clearly not conscious of, because her entire conscious mind was occupied with kissing Naruto, and her thighs were operating on pure autonomous instinct.
Fifty-five seconds. Sixty.
One full minute.
Kakashi pulled back. Her face was flushed. Her lips — visible below the pulled-down mask — were pink and slightly swollen. Her single visible eye was glazed with something warm and liquid and deeply, fundamentally satisfied.
"Gold star," she breathed.
Naruto stood frozen, his face cupped in her hands, his blue eyes approximately the size and shape of satellite dishes.
"That was a really long gold star," he said faintly.
"You did a really good job."
"I popped a water balloon."
"You popped it beautifully."
Suiryu, still on Naruto's shoulders, was looking at Kakashi with an expression that could only be described as grudging respect. One predator acknowledging another.
Behind them, Sakura and Sasuke were experiencing what could clinically be described as a dual psychotic break.
Sakura had driven her fist into the ground. Not punched. Driven. Her arm was buried to the elbow in solid earth, the ground around the impact point spider-webbed with cracks that extended in a fifteen-foot radius. She was breathing through her teeth. Her green eyes were not blinking. They had not blinked in approximately forty-five seconds. Her enormous breasts heaved with each controlled, measured breath. Her massive thighs were locked together so tightly that the fabric between them had begun to audibly strain.
"One minute," she whispered. "One. Minute. She kissed him. For one. Minute."
Sasuke was standing perfectly still. Her Sharingan was spinning at maximum speed — three tomoe in each eye rotating so fast they blurred into solid red rings. She had recorded the entire sixty-second kiss in perfect, indelible, high-definition Sharingan memory. Every angle. Every moment. Every subtle movement of Kakashi's lips. Every involuntary thigh-rub.
She would replay this memory later.
Not for pleasure.
For analysis.
For countermeasures.
"She's escalating," Sasuke said, her voice flat. "Four seconds became six became eight became sixty. At this rate of increase, by next week she'll be—"
"Don't finish that sentence."
"—permanently attached to his face."
"I SAID DON'T FINISH IT."
They looked at each other.
Something passed between them — a wordless communication that transcended their rivalry, their competition, their fundamental disagreement about who deserved Naruto more. In this moment, facing this existential threat, they were allies. Sisters in arms. United against a common enemy whose lips had just been on their boy's mouth for a full goddamn minute.
"We agreed," Sakura said. "Whoever does something impressive. Gets to kiss him."
"You're suggesting we compete with a jōnin for kissing rights through demonstrated competence."
"I'm suggesting we show Kakashi-sensei that she is not the only one who can provide positive reinforcement."
Sasuke considered this for approximately one second.
"Acceptable."
The opportunity came forty minutes later.
Kakashi had set up a tactical exercise — a three-on-three scenario using shadow clones, where each genin had to navigate a section of the training ground while identifying and neutralizing "enemy" clones hidden in the environment. It was a practical application of the ANBU detection and engagement protocols she'd been teaching them.
Naruto went first.
He entered the designated zone — a dense section of forest at the edge of the training ground — and immediately created twenty shadow clones. But he didn't send them charging in. Instead, he deployed them in a systematic pattern that made Kakashi's visible eye widen.
Three clones went high — into the canopy, spreading out in a triangular formation, each one acting as an elevated observation point feeding visual data back to the original.
Three clones went underground — using the Earth Style: Underground Projection Fish Technique that Kakashi had taught them last week, burrowing into the soil to detect vibrations and movement from below.
Six clones formed a moving perimeter around his position — a defensive screen that advanced ahead of him, checking sight lines and potential ambush points.
Five clones were held in reserve — hidden, transformed into natural objects (rocks, logs, a convincingly ordinary bush), ready to spring.
Three clones were sent as decoys — loud, visible, deliberately drawing attention, running through the forest making enough noise to mask the movements of the others.
It was a textbook ANBU search-and-destroy formation. Adapted, improvised, and executed by a genin who had learned the doctrine less than a week ago and was applying it with a creative flair that the original doctrine's authors had never imagined.
He found and neutralized all eight hidden enemy clones in four minutes and twelve seconds.
The ANBU record for a similar exercise was six minutes.
Naruto emerged from the forest, brushing a leaf from his shoulder, Suiryu still perched around his neck like a shimmering scarf.
"Got 'em all," he reported casually. "The three in the trees were the hardest — they had good concealment. But the underground clones picked up their chakra vibrations, and the canopy clones confirmed visual. I sent two of the reserve clones up from behind while the decoys held their attention from the front."
He paused.
"Was that good?"
Kakashi opened her mouth to respond.
Sakura got there first.
She moved with a speed that she had not previously demonstrated — a speed that came from somewhere deep inside her, from a place powered not by chakra or training but by the singular, overwhelming, absolutely unhinged determination to kiss Naruto Uzumaki before Kakashi's mask came down.
She was across the clearing in two steps. Her massive body covered the distance with a momentum that made the ground tremble. Her enormous thighs pumped like pistons, her colossal breasts bouncing with each stride, her wide hips cutting through the air.
She reached Naruto.
She grabbed his face.
Both hands. Firm but gentle. Her palms on his cheeks, her fingers in his hair, her thumbs on his whisker marks.
"That was brilliant," she said, and her voice was shaking, not with fear but with the accumulated pressure of days of watching someone else kiss the boy she loved. "You were brilliant. The formation was brilliant. The clone deployment was brilliant. You are brilliant."
And she kissed him.
On the mouth.
It was not a tentative kiss. It was not a shy, first-kiss, teenage-uncertainty kiss. Sakura Haruno had watched Kakashi kiss Naruto for a cumulative total of approximately three minutes over the past two weeks, and she had learned from observation that half-measures were for people who didn't want it enough.
Sakura wanted it enough.
Her lips pressed against his with a force that was firm without being aggressive, warm without being desperate, and confident in a way that surprised even her. Her enormous breasts pressed against his chest — softer than Kakashi's, somehow, yielding and warm and impossibly large, compressing around him like two heated clouds. She tilted her head slightly to the right, adjusting the angle, and felt his lips — warm, slightly chapped, tasting like the tamagoyaki she'd made him for breakfast — against hers.
It lasted ten seconds.
She pulled back.
Naruto's face was the color of a ripe tomato.
"Sakura-chan," he said, his voice approximately two octaves higher than normal. "Why did you—"
"Gold star," she said firmly, her green eyes blazing. "For excellent tactical execution."
She then — in a move that she had clearly planned and rehearsed — pulled his head forward and down, guiding it to her chest. She pressed his face into the valley between her massive breasts, her arms wrapping around his head, her fingers cradling the back of his skull with a tenderness that was undercut by the absolutely unhinged grin spreading across her flushed face.
"And here's your pillow," she announced. "For being the best. You can rest here. Whenever you want. After training. During training. Before training. At night. In the morning. Forever."
Naruto's response was muffled by approximately twenty pounds of warm, soft, Sakura-scented bosom.
"Mmfph?"
"Shh. Rest."
"Mmfph mmfph mmfph."
"SHHHH."
Kakashi stood five feet away, her mask half-down, her lips parted, her hand frozen in mid-reach toward Naruto's face. She had been less than one second from kissing him when Sakura had intervened.
Her single visible eye was twitching.
Not a subtle twitch. Not a brief, involuntary flutter. A full, sustained, rhythmic twitch that was visible from across the clearing. Her eye was twitching at approximately three beats per second, creating a strobe effect that made her look slightly unhinged.
Her right hand — the one that had been reaching for Naruto — curled slowly into a fist at her side. Then uncurled. Then curled again.
Her thighs pressed together. Hard.
"Sakura," she said, and her voice was pleasant. Absolutely pleasant. So pleasant it could have been classified as a genjutsu. "That was very... supportive of you."
"Thank you, sensei," Sakura replied brightly, still pressing Naruto's face into her chest. "I believe in positive reinforcement."
"Indeed."
Kakashi's eye continued twitching. Her pleasant expression remained firmly, immovably in place, like a mask on top of her mask. Beneath both masks, the landscape of her actual emotions was something that seismologists would have classified as "catastrophic."
But Sakura's intervention had opened a door.
And Sasuke walked through it.
The next exercise was individual sparring — each genin against a Kakashi shadow clone. The purpose was to test their ability to apply the techniques they'd learned in a dynamic combat scenario against a superior opponent.
Naruto fought first. His spar against the Kakashi clone was — by genin standards — remarkable. He used shadow clones not as a mass-assault tool but as a tactical network, exactly as he'd done in the search exercise. Clones flanked, feinted, and coordinated while the original identified openings and struck with wind-enhanced kunai and targeted jutsu. He used the Great Breakthrough to control the clone's movement, driving it toward a position where three hidden clones simultaneously attacked from underground, above, and the side.
He didn't beat the clone — it was a copy of a jōnin, after all — but he lasted nine minutes and forced the clone to use three A-rank techniques to put him down. For a genin two weeks out of the Academy, this was exceptional.
Kakashi tried to kiss him.
Sakura body-blocked her.
There was a brief, intense, completely silent confrontation between the two of them — jōnin and genin, silver-haired and pink-haired, masks of pleasantry barely concealing homicidal intent — before Kakashi smoothly redirected to ruffling Naruto's hair and saying "Good job" through slightly gritted teeth.
Sakura beamed.
Sasuke fought second. Her spar was technically brilliant — the Sharingan allowed her to read the clone's movements, her Fire and Lightning techniques gave her offensive range, and her taijutsu had improved dramatically under Kakashi's instruction. She also lasted nine minutes, matching Naruto's time, which she found simultaneously satisfying (they were equals) and frustrating (she wanted to surpass his time so that her subsequent actions would be justified by a clear superiority of performance).
But she didn't need to surpass him.
She just needed a reason.
She found one.
After the sparring rotation, Kakashi assigned a cool-down exercise: paired stretching, where teammates helped each other through flexibility positions. Standard training procedure. Completely normal.
Sasuke volunteered to partner with Naruto.
Naruto, exhausted from his spar, agreed without hesitation.
They sat on the grass, facing each other, legs extended. Naruto reached forward to touch his toes — or tried to, because Naruto's flexibility was, to put it charitably, a work in progress. He got about halfway before his hamstrings staged a revolt.
"You're tight," Sasuke observed, kneeling beside him. She placed her hands on his lower back and pressed gently, helping him deepen the stretch. Her massive breasts hung forward as she leaned over him, her dark hair falling around her face like curtains.
"Ow ow ow— yeah, I don't stretch enough," Naruto admitted through gritted teeth.
"I'll help you stretch every day," Sasuke said, and it was a vow spoken with the gravity usually reserved for blood oaths and declarations of war.
"Thanks, Sasuke. You're a good friend."
The word "friend" hit Sasuke like a physical blow. Her dark eye twitched once. Her Sharingan flickered briefly. But she absorbed it, processed it, filed it under "temporary misunderstanding that will be corrected in time," and continued pressing his back.
After stretching, Naruto groaned and flopped backward onto the grass, his arms spread, his eyes half-closed with exhaustion.
"I'm so tired," he mumbled. "Everything hurts. My chakra hurts. Can chakra hurt?"
"Yes," Sakura called from across the clearing, where she was stretching with a Kakashi clone (and by "stretching with" she meant "maintaining visual contact on Naruto at all times while nominally performing hamstring extensions"). "Chakra fatigue is a real condition. You've been running at high output all day. You need rest."
"I'll rest when I'm Hokage."
"You'll rest NOW," Sakura and Sasuke said in unison.
Naruto grumbled but didn't get up. His eyes were closing. The afternoon sun was warm. The grass was soft. Suiryu, still in its small form, slithered off his neck and curled up beside his head like a shimmering, aquatic pillow.
Sasuke looked at him.
Lying on the grass. Exhausted. Vulnerable. His blonde hair spread around his head. His chest rising and falling. His whisker marks — those ridiculous, endearing, impossible marks — catching the light.
She moved.
Slowly, carefully, with a deliberation that her Sharingan recorded in real-time for future analysis and optimization, Sasuke repositioned herself. She sat beside Naruto's head. She adjusted her massive thighs — each one thicker than his torso, pale and soft and warm — into a comfortable position. She smoothed her shorts — a futile gesture given how much they were already being asked to contain.
Then she lifted Naruto's head, gently, with both hands, and placed it in her lap.
Not on her thigh. In her LAP. The warm, soft, impossibly plush valley created by the convergence of her massive thighs, where the fabric of her shorts stretched to transparency and the flesh beneath was heated to a temperature that had nothing to do with the weather.
Naruto's head settled into her lap like it had been designed to go there. The back of his skull rested against the soft inner surface of her left thigh. His right ear pressed against her right thigh. The entirety of his head was cradled in a cocoon of warm, yielding, ridiculously thick Uchiha flesh.
His eyes opened.
He looked up.
Sasuke's face — beautiful, sharp-featured, flushed with color and framed by dark hair — hovered above him. Directly above. Close enough to count her eyelashes. Her dark eyes — Sharingan deactivated now, just black and warm and deep — looked down at him with an expression that she had never shown to another living being. An expression of such pure, unguarded, absolute tenderness that it redefined the word.
"Lap pillow," she said, as if this explained everything.
"Huh?" Naruto said intelligently.
"You're tired. Sakura said you need rest. This is rest." Her voice was quiet. Steady. Not a tremor. Not a waver. Pure Uchiha composure applied to an act of romantic aggression that would have made her ancestors either proud or deeply confused. "Close your eyes."
Naruto should have protested. Should have sat up. Should have done any of the things that a normal, socially aware human being would do when their teammate placed their head in their lap with the gravity of a marriage proposal.
But his head was SO comfortable. The warmth of her thighs was SO soothing. And he was SO tired.
His eyes started to close.
Then Sasuke's fingers found his whisker marks.
She traced them. Gently. With the tip of her index finger. Starting at his cheekbone and following the thin lines across his cheek to his jaw. Three lines on the left side, then three on the right.
The sensation that shot through Naruto's body was indescribable.
The whisker marks were sensitive. Not painfully sensitive — pleasurably sensitive, in a way that Naruto had never experienced because no one had ever touched them. They were a part of himself that he'd always had but never explored, never understood, never had anyone care enough to investigate.
Sasuke's finger traced the first line, and Naruto's entire body shuddered.
"Wha—" His eyes flew open.
"Sensitive?" Sasuke asked, her voice soft.
"I— yeah— that's— what are you—"
She traced the second line.
Naruto made a sound. A small, involuntary, completely undignified sound that came from somewhere deep in his chest — a cross between a hum and a whimper, like a purr that hadn't decided what it wanted to be. His eyes went half-lidded. His body relaxed against her thighs. His fists, which had been clenched at his sides, uncurled slowly, his fingers going limp.
"Does it feel good?" Sasuke whispered.
Naruto nodded helplessly. Words had temporarily abandoned him.
Sasuke traced the third line. Then back to the first. Then the second. A slow, rhythmic pattern — first line, second line, third line, pause, repeat — that sent waves of warm, tingling pleasure radiating from his cheeks through his entire body.
His eyes closed fully. His breathing slowed. His body went completely, utterly, boneless limp in her lap.
He was melting.
Uzumaki Naruto, genin, jinchūriki, future Hokage, was melting like butter on a warm pan because a girl was touching his face.
"There you go," Sasuke murmured, her fingers continuing their gentle circuit of his whisker marks. "Rest."
Then she bent down.
She bent down slowly — her massive breasts pressing forward, her dark hair falling around their faces like a curtain, creating a private space that was just them, just her face and his face, just two people in a world that had narrowed to the width of a whisker mark.
She kissed him.
Softly. Slowly. Her lips — full, warm, tasting faintly of the tea she'd drunk that morning — pressed against his mouth with a gentleness that was devastating in its precision. It was not a competitive kiss. Not a "keeping up with Kakashi" kiss. Not a "one-upping Sakura" kiss.
It was a Sasuke kiss.
It said everything she couldn't say with words. Everything her Uchiha pride and emotional constipation and years of trauma kept locked behind walls so thick she'd forgotten they were there. It said: I see you. I choose you. I will never leave you. I will burn the world down around us and we will stand in the ashes and I will still be here, kissing you, because there is nowhere else I want to be and no one else I want to be with and if you never figure out what this means, if you go your whole life thinking this is just a "teammate thing," I will be okay with that because at least I got to be close to you and that is enough, it's enough, it has to be enough.
She pulled back.
Naruto's eyes were still closed. His lips were slightly parted. A faint, dreamy smile had settled on his face.
"Gold star?" he murmured, half-asleep.
"Gold star," Sasuke confirmed, her voice barely a whisper.
She resumed tracing his whisker marks. He drifted further toward sleep, his body warm and loose in her lap, his breathing deep and even. Suiryu, curled beside his head, cracked one whirlpool eye open, assessed the situation, determined that Sasuke was an acceptable custodian, and went back to sleep.
Twenty feet away, Kakashi stood at the edge of the clearing.
Her mask was up. Her single visible eye was locked on the scene before her with an intensity that had nothing to do with tactical assessment and everything to do with watching someone else do something she wanted to do.
Her eye was twitching.
Not just twitching — spasming. The muscles around her visible eye had developed a tic so pronounced that it was visible from across the clearing, her eyelid flutter-flutter-fluttering in a pattern that matched her heartbeat.
Her hands were at her sides. Her right hand was curled into a specific shape — index and middle finger extended, ring and pinky curled, thumb tucked.
Horse. Tiger.
The first two hand signs of the Chidori.
She wasn't conscious of it. Her hands were forming the seals on pure muscle memory, responding to the emotional stimulus of watching Uchiha Sasuke kiss Naruto Uzumaki and pet his whisker marks and cradle his head in a lap that was — Kakashi's tactical mind supplied unhelpfully — objectively, measurably thicker than her own.
Horse. Tiger. Serpent. Dragon.
The hand seals progressed. Kakashi's right hand was now flickering through the Chidori sequence with the casual speed of someone who had performed this technique ten thousand times. Lightning chakra began to crackle around her fingertips — not intentionally, not consciously, but as a natural consequence of performing the hand seals with genuine emotional investment.
Ram. Monkey. Boar. Horse. Tiger.
The full sequence. Lightning was now visibly arcing between her fingers, blue-white sparks snapping in the air, the characteristic chirping sound of a thousand birds beginning to build.
"Sensei," Sakura said from beside her.
Kakashi didn't respond. Her eye was still locked on Sasuke. On Sasuke's fingers on Naruto's whisker marks. On Sasuke's lips, still slightly swollen from the kiss. On the expression on Sasuke's face — that unbearable, infuriating, painfully beautiful tenderness.
"Sensei."
The lightning was getting louder. The chirping was now clearly audible across the clearing. The grass beneath Kakashi's feet was beginning to scorch.
"SENSEI."
Kakashi blinked.
She looked down at her hand. At the fully formed, combat-ready Chidori crackling in her palm, its blue-white light reflecting off her mask, its sound filling the clearing with the song of a thousand murderous birds.
She looked at Sakura.
Sakura was standing beside her with her arms crossed beneath her chest — which was less "beneath" and more "somewhere in the general region of," given the sheer volume involved — and an expression of weary solidarity.
"You were about to Chidori our teammate," Sakura said flatly.
"I was not."
"Your hand says otherwise."
Kakashi looked at the Chidori. The Chidori crackled cheerfully, ready and willing to pierce through whatever her emotional state required it to pierce.
She dispelled it.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, sliding her hand into her pocket.
"You formed the complete hand seal sequence, generated enough lightning chakra for a full-power strike, and were facing directly at Sasuke's position. Your left foot was in a forward stance. You were targeting."
"I was stretching."
"You were TARGETING."
"Stretching. Hand stretches. Very important for maintaining seal speed." Kakashi wiggled her fingers in her pocket. "See? Stretching."
Sakura stared at her for a long, flat, unimpressed moment.
Then she sighed.
"For what it's worth," Sakura said, turning back to watch Sasuke pet Naruto's whisker marks with an expression that mixed jealousy and yearning in approximately equal proportions, "I also want to do violence."
"I don't know what you mean," Kakashi said. "I'm perfectly calm."
The grass beneath her feet was still smoking.
Naruto woke up twenty minutes later, refreshed and confused, with no clear memory of being kissed by Sasuke but a lingering sensation on his whisker marks that made his cheeks tingle pleasantly. He sat up in Sasuke's lap, stretched, yawned, and announced that he was ready for more training.
"What happened?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.
"You fell asleep," Sasuke said, her voice carefully neutral. Her expression was carefully neutral. Everything about her was carefully neutral, in the way that a person who has just gotten away with something incredible is carefully neutral.
"Oh. Huh. I had a nice dream." He rubbed his cheek. "My face feels warm."
"Sunburn," Sasuke suggested.
"Yeah, probably."
Kakashi's eye twitched.
They trained for three more hours. Naruto continued Rasengan stage one — bursting water balloons with increasing efficiency, Suiryu occasionally helping by demonstrating rotation patterns from its perch on his shoulder. He succeeded in bursting twelve consecutive balloons before muscle fatigue set in.
Each time he burst one, Kakashi took a step toward him.
Each time Kakashi took a step, Sakura took a step.
Each time Sakura took a step, Sasuke stood up.
By the twelfth balloon, the three of them were standing in a tight semicircle around Naruto, each one approximately eight inches from his body, each one radiating the energy of someone who was absolutely prepared to throw down at a moment's notice.
Naruto, standing in the center of three women whose combined body mass could qualify as a geographical feature, didn't notice the tension.
"This is great!" he said. "You guys are all really supportive today!"
Three smiles. Three different smiles. Each one containing multitudes.
Kakashi's smile said: "I am going to find a way to kiss you that they can't interrupt."
Sakura's smile said: "My chest pillow offer stands and I will physically interpose myself between you and any other lips."
Sasuke's smile said: "I have your whisker marks memorized. I know exactly which order to trace them. You will be back in my lap before sundown. I have the Sharingan and I have a plan."
Naruto's smile said: "I love my team!"
Suiryu's smile — and it was, impossibly, smiling — said: "These women are all insane and I am the only one who truly deserves him but I suppose I can share."
That evening, Naruto walked home flanked by Sakura and Sasuke as usual. The setting sun turned the streets gold. His body was exhausted. His chakra was drained. His mind was buzzing with everything he'd learned.
Suiryu was still on his shoulders. The dragon had shown no sign of dispersing and, at this point, had been alive for approximately eight hours, which was approximately eight hours longer than any Water Dragon Jutsu in history.
"Are you going to stay?" Naruto asked it, tilting his head to look at the small, shimmering creature.
Suiryu pressed its snout against his cheek and purred.
"Okay," Naruto said, smiling. "You can stay."
Sakura watched this interaction with the scientific portion of her brain (fascinating — a self-sustaining, sentient chakra construct with apparent emotional capacity) and the other portion of her brain (I want to be that dragon. I want to live on his shoulders. I want to press my face against his cheek. I want to PURR—).
Sasuke watched with her Sharingan, recording everything (the dragon's chakra signature was stabilizing, its neural network was now approximately twice as complex as it had been this morning, and its devotion to Naruto appeared to be deepening toward something that, if observed in a human, would be classified as obsessive love).
They reached the intersection.
"Same time tomorrow?" Naruto asked.
"I'm making you pancakes," Sakura said. "For breakfast. Because you deserve pancakes."
"I'm making you omelets," Sasuke said. "With rice. And fox-shaped onigiri. And a new type that I'm working on."
"What type?"
"It's a surprise."
"I love surprises! You guys are the best!"
He jogged off toward his apartment, Suiryu shimmering on his shoulders, his orange jumpsuit bright against the evening.
Sakura and Sasuke watched him go.
"The whisker marks," Sakura said. "You touched his whisker marks."
Sasuke said nothing.
"He made a SOUND, Sasuke."
"I'm aware."
"WHAT sound? What kind of sound? Describe the sound."
Sasuke's Sharingan activated. Not to fight. To remember. To replay, in perfect, high-definition clarity, the exact sound Naruto had made when she'd traced the first whisker mark — that small, involuntary, devastating sound that had come from somewhere deep inside him and had rearranged the fundamental priorities of her existence.
"It was..." Sasuke searched for the word. Her vocabulary, extensive as it was, seemed inadequate. "...a purr."
Sakura's entire body went rigid.
"He PURRED?"
"Approximately."
Sakura was breathing very fast. Her massive chest was heaving. Her eyes had gone glassy. Her hands were shaking.
"I need to touch his whisker marks," she whispered with the intensity of someone declaring a lifelong quest. "I need to touch them and I need to hear that sound and I need it to happen while his head is on my chest and I need it RIGHT NOW—"
"Tomorrow," Sasuke said, and there was a sharpness in her voice that said "the whisker marks are mine and any attempt to encroach on this territory will be met with force."
Sakura heard the sharpness. Processed it. Filed it under "challenge accepted."
"Tomorrow," she agreed, and it was a promise and a threat and a declaration of war.
They parted ways.
Above them, in the darkening sky, a figure watched from a rooftop with binoculars and a flask.
Kakashi lowered the binoculars.
Her single visible eye was twitching again.
"The whisker marks," she murmured to herself. "Of course. The whisker marks."
She pulled out a small notebook and wrote, in neat, precise handwriting:
Note: Naruto's whisker marks are apparently erogenous zones. Sasuke discovered this. Sasuke is now a priority threat. Countermeasures required. Possible approaches: (1) discover additional erogenous zones before Sasuke or Sakura, (2) develop whisker-mark technique superior to Sasuke's through speed and precision advantages, (3) learn to purr.
She stared at the third option.
Crossed it out.
Wrote it again.
Crossed it out again.
Left the notebook open on that page and stared at the evening sky, her massive body silhouetted against the sunset, her thighs pressed together, her mind racing with tactical calculations that had nothing to do with combat and everything to do with a blonde boy whose face made sounds when you touched it.
Below her, in his apartment, Naruto opened his door to find Anko elbow-deep in a whole roasted duck, Suiryu exploring his apartment with curious whirlpool eyes, and his life continuing to be something he didn't understand, couldn't explain, and wouldn't trade for anything.
"Welcome home, Naru-chan! I'm trying a new recipe! Also, why is there a sentient water dragon in your bathroom?"
"That's Suiryu! I made him today! He's my friend!"
"Your friend is drinking your bathwater."
"He's MADE of water, Anko-nee."
"He's DRINKING your BATHWATER, Naru-chan. There's a difference. A WEIRD difference."
Suiryu, caught in the act, paused with its snout in the tub, turned one whirlpool eye toward Anko, and had the decency to look slightly embarrassed before resuming.
"I'm not judging," Anko said. "I mean, I am. I'm judging a lot. But I'm also making duck, so let's focus on the duck."
They focused on the duck.
It was an excellent duck.
End of Chapter Four
Author's Note: Suiryu is alive and will be protected at all costs. The Water Dragon Jutsu was not designed to produce sentient, cuddly dragon companions. Naruto's chakra did not get the memo. Kakashi's reward system has been challenged by two competitors and is now operating in a contested market. Sasuke has discovered whisker marks and will defend this territory with lethal force. Sakura has declared pancake warfare. Kakashi's Chidori hand signs are now an involuntary stress response. Suiryu drinks Naruto's bathwater and feels no shame. Naruto still thinks everything is normal. He is wrong. He will always be wrong. We love him anyway.