“Who the hell are you supposed to be, un?” Deidara demands, bristling. “The villain from a shitty Princess Gale movie?”

Sasuke is actually eighteen the first time he looks at Sakura and realises abruptly that he wants her. (In which being close friends with Sakura actually frightens Sasuke a lot less than being physically attracted to her.)

Tobirama follows Hashirama to the river with a thousand points of light burning in his head. He leaves with one as all he can see, a bonfire, a conflagration. Uchiha Madara sets a match to his life with the simple fact of his existence, and in his wake Tobirama is left standing in a field of ashes.

Mikoto does not want her elderly relatives trying to pick out her future husband. Kushina has a brilliant idea. (Oh no... she's hot.)

While everyone in Suna concerns themselves with Gaara, terrified that the One-Tail might break free and rampage through their Village, they forget a few key facts. First, that just because Shukaku is the largest demon in Suna does not make the Bijuu the only demon in Wind Country, or even the only demon sealed away in Hidden Sand. Second, that Raza has two elder children that are just as capable of ushering in Suna's doom as their youngest sibling is. Third, Kankurou is the overlooked middle child who just wants to play with his baby brother. Remember these facts. They're important. Especially the third one.

The best revenge is living well. And maybe also spitefully staging a minor political coup to take over Konoha as payback for getting stuck in an arranged marriage.

Sasuke has a moment of inattention, and the fake hunter nin strikes down Naruto instead.

Itachi was a good looking troubled teenager left to wander the country unsupervised in the company of a group of insane criminals. He may have made a few questionable decisions involving alcohol and women. It is also worth noting that no-one actually got around to explaining the use of a condom to him. The results are depressingly predictable. Or the one where Itachi missed shinobi sex ed and ended up creating spawn across half the elemental nations, which Sasuke somehow ends up responsible for.

In which all of team seven are poster children for unhealthy relationships with their daemons. Except for Sasuke, who is fully in touch with his inner and outer daemons.

“I just want to go home,” he tells Nagato, and hates that he sounds so very much like the crybaby child Kakashi always calls him. Nagato's expression twists, grief and sympathy all wrapped up and tangled together. He catches Obito's bandaged face in his hands, leans in to touch their foreheads together, and it’s closer to anyone than Obito has been in years. “I know,” Nagato says, hoarse. “I know, Obito. But we can save everyone we love, we can save the world. All it takes is our sacrifice. And someday, when we’ve put everything to rights, we can go back. We can live in a good world with everyone we care for, and know that we’ll never lose them to war. Isn't that worth it?”

The path through the mire is narrow, barely visible against the dark water and grim-green of half-drowned paths, but Haku's feet don’t waver. He picks his way through, familiar and steady, and doesn’t take his eyes off the water.

There's something moving in the depths of the armory.

“Still breathing?” Madara asks, and the words are harsh in his throat.

There's no division between the forest and the citadel.

There's something in the water.

Kurama hears the footsteps long before anything else.

In the center of the spring is a listing signpost, one of several long since faded into incomprehensibility. If there were directions there, Tsume can't see any trace of them, but there's an angel perched atop the signpost, wide white wings sending feathers drifting across the breeze.

“There's something down there,” Tobirama says when he surfaces.

Smothering his amusement, Tobirama leans up, a few inches further than the other teacher can manage, and plucks the wayward student down from the tree he’s attempting to climb. Settling back, he flips Naruto upside down, dangling him under one arm, and asks Iruka with a smirk, “I believe this is yours?”

It’s a gateway, but he doesn’t seem to realize that.

“You want to hire a Kiri nin?” the swordsman says in surprise.

The Akatsuki are hired to separate a certain prince from a certain homonculus. It doesn't go quite as planned for anyone involved.

“What is that,” Obito says flatly. “It is a cactus,” Gaara says, like that’s the only question here. Deftly, with an air of ceremony, he sets the pot in Obito's hands, and then tells him, “It reminded me of you.”

Zabuza's got a thing for vicious, especially when it comes wrapped up in a cute package.

When Uzumaki Naruto breathed his last, he didn’t expect to wake up in the world of the living again. He was old, and tired, and so, so ready to move on. And, well...he wanted to see his wife again, dammit. But, of course, that wasn't what happened. Why? Naruto screamed at the powers-that-loved-to-fuck-with-his-life-and-now-his-afterlife-too, with tears streaking down his cheeks, feeling cold, weak, hungry, and utterly disgusted. Because you’re everybody’s bitch, Kurama helpfully supplied.

“Are those even practical?” Iruka hisses, unable to tear his eyes away from his mission partner.

“You would think they’d make it harder to break into their castle,” Mei huffs, and heaves the body of a guard into one of the empty rooms to sprawl with the others.

That’s a nice face, Genma thinks. A hell of a nice face. And the biceps that are as big around as Genma's head are nothing to sneeze at, either. “Genma,” Aoba starts, a warning in his voice, but in the same moment the bigger Swordsman laughs again, leaning down, and instantly three of the genin swarm him. He boosts them up, then rises easily, like the weight of three genin is nothing at all, and Genma watches them laugh and cling to his shoulders, his arms, and licks his lips. “Genma,” Aoba says, and that’s his judgey and horrified tone.

“I want it known that I'm only allowing this under protest,” Kakashi says dryly. Zabuza rolls his eyes, leaning back against a tree and watching the trio on the bridge with amusement. “Yeah, you’ve said that. I don’t think the Hokage was impressed, either.”

Obito meets a version of himself from another world. And another, and another, and another.

Tobirama loved Itama enough to go against the natural laws in an attempt to bring him back. For Itama, it’s time to return the favor.

Just when Konan has lost hope, she meets a hero.

There's a low chuckle from behind them, and the bedsprings creak as Kakashi sprawls out, half-reclined as he watches them with heavy-lidded eyes. “You know,” he says easily, “of all the perks I expected as Hokage, this definitely wasn’t one of them.” “Threesomes with other Kages?” Utakata asks, dragging his fingers up Zabuza’s spread thighs, and those golden eyes don’t waver from Zabuza’s, intent and hot even if he sounds like he’s just making polite conversation. Kakashi chuckles. “I meant access to your own personal harem,” he says lightly. “But that too.”

She’s barely days away from finally challenging Yagura for his seat, so of course Zabuza chooses now to make himself a problem.

Obito gets one look at the firefighter taking off his coat and almost drops his end of the gurney on his foot.

Kakashi’s senses keep going haywire, and Genma is pretty sure he’s the only one who notices.

Kurama! Kurama, go right to baa-chan! Get to her or I'm going to smack you, believe it! “Ha,” Kurama mutters under his breath, and deliberately turns away from the hospital, heading for the market instead. “You're not in the driver’s seat right now, brat. Let’s see how you like it.” Kurama! Kurama, don’t you do anything— “Sorry, can't hear you,” Kurama says smugly, and drowns out Naruto's voice from his inner world with all the spite of twenty-three years spent watching his host shovel down a truly nauseating amount of ramen each day.

“There’s a Lantern out here?” Hal asks incredulously.

Jason wrestles the crazy, half-feral ninja to the ground ten blocks from the building he blew up with magic, which means it’s probably a Thursday in Gotham.

“Why does the paper say you're dating?” Dick asks, waving the Sunday edition in Bruce's face. Bruce doesn’t let his expression so much as twitch. Dick can sense blood in the water the same way a shark can, and he knows Bruce far too well. “Does it?” he asks mildly.

“Well,” Asuma says as Hidan is shoved to his knees in front of him. “This is a surprise.”

"We did go looking for omegas," Izuna pointed out under his breath, staring down at his personal enemy. "Look me in the eyes and tell me you want Senju Tobirama for a wife," Madara replied just as quietly, a brief spark of amusement blooming at the shocked horror on his baby brother's face. -- Before he was forced to accompany a pack of rut-muddled idiots on a half-baked plan to kidnap omega brides for the good of the Uchiha clan, Madara hadn't given Hashirama's younger brother much thought. Tobirama was a Senju, and therefore the enemy; he, like Madara and Izuna, was sole survivor of his litter, and so to avoid being alone and therefore unmarriageable had ended up paired up with his older omega brother by default; he was a vicious opponent; he was a beta. He had to be a beta. Hashirama wasn't, and nobody would be brazen or stupid enough to bundle up two reproductive siblings in the same litter, right? ... Right?

Fighting all on the same side at last, the past and present members of Konoha's famous Team Seven came within a hairsbreadth of victory in the battle against Kaguya. Kakashi and Obito sacrificed everything they had and more to snatch one last miracle survival from the jaws of defeat. Cast adrift in the Warring Clans Era without the guidance of their sensei, Team Seven vows to avenge their teacher. Zetsu's plots would be unravelled, and Kaguya's ambitions would be ground into dust. Team Seven had a vendetta, and the Will of Fire. Spite was a perfectly acceptable motivation for saving the world.

Art for Asuka Kureru's "Days On A Wire", second in her ABO series "Cherry Wine". (She got me right in the special interest, how dare. :D )

Team Seven excels at two things: lying and long term planning. Kakashi wishes someone had told him that.

Sasuke could care less about being trans-- until he is betrayed utterly and completely by his own body. He can't get off. It's a problem. (Or: “Who the fuck else am I going to ask?” Sasuke looks away, catches himself, and makes himself look back. He’s got a dojutsu, for fuck’s sake. He’s not afraid of eye contact. “No one.” Naruto snaps, almost offended by the idea, and it’s Sasuke’s turn to be surprised. “Sakura, maybe.” He amends. “Obviously it’s you.” Sasuke masks his surprise with haughty arrogance, but the words come out true-- so true. Obviously, it’s you. They ring like a bell through the room and through Sasuke’s rib cage, reflecting in Naruto’s eyes. “It’s always gonna be you.”)

Who knew some dimensions had actual child labour laws? In which Kakashi is reborn, the Hero Commission doesn’t put all their eggs in one Hawks shaped basket and Shouta isn't getting paid enough to deal with this shit. Otherwise known as Kakashi in 1A.

Twenty is probably too young to die, even for a shinobi, but if anyone can kill Sakura with sheer attractiveness, it's Kori.

"Oh," Izuna said -- delicately, while studiously reading his folder, "I'm afraid we need someone with a ... strong personality for Naohime." "Why's that?" Hashirama replied, just as painfully polite. The daimyo's mediator kept watching them and scratching little pointy words in his notebook. "Because if your man doesn't prove that he's dangerous and has the personality to use it on her if she pushes him, it's going to turn abusive," Madara drawled. Hashirama stared at him for a blank second. The daimyo's envoy stopped writing; even his stone-faced Aburame bodyguard arched her eyebrows over her darkened spectacles. Tobirama stretched out across the table without another word to take back one of the folders Izuna had spread around him. -- The daimyo is over the whole Uchiha/Senju war. They're going to become one people if they know what's good for them. Madara hates it enough without having to marry a woman too.

Itachi and Madara massacre the clan, but they miss one member. Obito, loyal Konoha ANBU and disowned Uchiha, suddenly finds himself out of the organization that’s been his life for eight years and raising a traumatized, orphaned child. Kakashi helps. Or watches and plays the smartass, it’s a bit of a tossup.