There’s a kind of clarity that reminds you why you’re completely fucked. Sakura's team is clueless. It would just figure.

A musing on the social and legal construction of childhood in hidden villages. Downbeat and philosophical.

She's the extractor, not that she looks it. Most people walk on by her without realizing that she can–and will make their lives agony beyond their imagining to get what she wants. She comes in looking like little more than a florist's daughter: low necked shirt, mesh, a short skirt and a bundle of flowers wrapped up. Her gloves are long and made of thick leather which the poison can't quite get through. She plucks a hybrid rose and examines it a moment. Let the prisoner think a geisha has come to him; she's had training in that manner as well. Unlike Sakura who wore her heart on her sleeve, Ino could be the honeypot, the poison thorn.

Love is a weapon brought to bear. Love is blood spilled without remorse, and a kiss that’s so sweet they can ignore the taste of copper underneath.

“Shh,” Kakashi breathes against his lips, and there's a look in his eyes that he gets on the very worst missions, in the middle of a battle, when there's nothing left in him of restraint or anything beyond instinct and act-react. “You’re safe, Shisui. And I'm going to fix it.”

A what if, of a what if... What if the Vongola Tenth Generation were to be raised by Uchiha Madara and Senju Tobirama? Well, for one thing they don't even bother with pretending to be nice people. For another, Madara is born into the Hibari family. Yes. Madara. Also yes. Those Hibari.