Naruto woke up the next morning at 4:58 AM, two minutes before his alarm, because his body had apparently decided that sleep was for people who weren't about to have their first official day of training with their jōnin sensei.
He lay in bed for exactly eleven seconds before the excitement became physically unbearable and he launched himself upright with a yell that startled a bird off his windowsill.
"TRAINING DAY!"
He went through his morning routine with the same breakneck speed as the day before — teeth, face, ramen, burned tongue, regret, more ramen — and was dressed and ready by 5:15 AM. Kakashi-sensei had told them to meet at Training Ground Seven at 5:00 AM.
He was already late.
"CRAP CRAP CRAP!"
He bolted out the door, down the stairs, and into the pre-dawn streets of Konoha, running at full speed. The village was still mostly asleep, the streets empty and quiet, the first hints of sunrise painting the eastern sky in shades of orange and pink.
He made it to Training Ground Seven in record time — eight minutes flat — and skidded to a halt at the edge of the clearing, breathing hard.
Sakura was already there.
She was sitting on the grass near the three training posts, her legs tucked beneath her — or attempting to be tucked beneath her. The sheer volume of her thighs made the traditional seiza position a negotiation rather than a decision, her massive, creamy thighs spreading outward, the red fabric of her dress riding up to reveal an expanse of soft, pale skin that seemed to glow in the early morning light. Her enormous breasts rested heavily on her lap, each one rising and falling gently with her breathing, the zipper of her dress strained to a degree that suggested it was operating on willpower alone. Her pink hair was slightly messy — she'd clearly rushed to get here — and her green eyes were half-lidded with drowsiness.
When Naruto burst into the clearing, those eyes snapped fully open and filled with warmth.
"Naruto!" she called, her voice bright despite the ungodly hour. She patted the grass beside her. "Over here! I saved you a spot!"
"Morning, Sakura-chan!" Naruto jogged over and dropped onto the grass beside her, cross-legged. "Where's Sasuke?"
"Right here."
Naruto turned. Sasuke was leaning against the middle training post, arms crossed beneath her astronomical breasts, which the posture pushed upward and outward to a degree that made her blue shirt creak audibly. Her dark eyes were fixed on Naruto with that same soft, devoted intensity from the day before. Her massive thighs were crossed at the ankle, her white shorts straining against hips so wide they made the training post behind her look narrow. Her colossal ass, pressed against the post, was so large that it was visible from the front on both sides, two round crescents of pale flesh peeking out from behind her hips.
She gave Naruto a small nod, and her lips curved into a tiny smile that held more warmth than most people's entire emotional range.
"You're both here already?" Naruto said, impressed. "How long have you been waiting?"
"Since 4:30," Sakura said, stifling a yawn. "Kakashi-sensei said 5:00, so I wanted to be early."
"Since 4:00," Sasuke said quietly, and when Sakura shot her a look, she added, "I couldn't sleep."
She didn't explain that she couldn't sleep because she'd been too busy thinking about the fact that she was on Naruto's team and would get to see him every single day, but the way her cheeks flushed slightly in the early morning light told the story well enough.
Naruto, naturally, noticed none of this.
"So where's Kakashi-sensei?" he asked, looking around the empty training ground.
Sakura and Sasuke exchanged a glance. It was the kind of glance that communicated an enormous amount of information in a very short time — a skill that these two had apparently developed overnight despite years of rivalry.
"She said 5:00 AM," Sakura said slowly.
"She was two hours late yesterday," Sasuke observed.
They both arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously.
"She's going to be late again," they said in unison, and then looked at each other with mild surprise at the synchronization.
Naruto groaned, flopping backward onto the grass. "Are you KIDDING me? I woke up super early for this!"
He lay spread-eagle on the grass, staring up at the lightening sky, his orange jumpsuit bright against the green. His blonde hair fanned out around his head like a small sun. His blue eyes reflected the dawn.
Sakura looked down at him from her seated position beside him, and her expression did something complicated. Her green eyes softened to the consistency of warm honey. Her lips parted slightly. A blush crept across her cheeks. She had the unmistakable expression of a girl who was looking at a boy lying on the grass beside her and thinking thoughts that would have made her mother either very proud or very concerned.
Sasuke, from her position against the training post, watched Naruto lying on the grass with an expression so tender it looked physically painful to maintain. Her dark eyes traced the lines of his face — the whisker marks on his cheeks, the curve of his jaw, the way his blonde hair caught the first rays of sunlight. Her massive thighs pressed together, and she bit her lower lip.
Neither of them said anything.
Naruto, oblivious to the two girls who were currently looking at him like he was the answer to a question the universe had been asking since the dawn of time, yawned enormously.
"Wake me up when she gets here," he mumbled, and closed his eyes.
He fell asleep in approximately forty-five seconds.
For the next three hours, Uzumaki Naruto slept peacefully on the grass of Training Ground Seven while Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke stood guard over him like two absurdly thick sentinels.
Sakura had, at some point during the first hour, carefully maneuvered Naruto's head into her lap. This was a process that required significant logistical planning, given that her lap was approximately sixty percent thigh and forty percent dress fabric stretched to its absolute limit, but she managed it with the gentle precision of someone defusing an explosive tag. Naruto's head now rested on the vast, pillowy surface of her right thigh, his blonde hair spread across the cream-colored skin, his face turned slightly toward her stomach. He murmured something about ramen in his sleep and nuzzled closer, and Sakura made a sound like a tea kettle reaching critical pressure — a tiny, high-pitched squeak that she immediately suppressed by biting her lip so hard it nearly drew blood.
Her hand hovered over his hair for approximately fifteen minutes before she worked up the courage to touch it. When she did — just the lightest brush of her fingers through his blonde spikes — her entire body shuddered, and her enormous breasts bounced with the involuntary motion.
"His hair is so soft," she whispered to herself, her eyes wide with wonder.
Sasuke had moved from the training post and was now sitting on the grass on Naruto's other side, her massive thighs folded beneath her in a modified seiza that her body barely accommodated. She was watching Sakura's hand move through Naruto's hair with an expression that cycled between tender affection (for Naruto), jealousy (toward Sakura), and resigned acceptance (of the situation in general).
"You're hogging him," Sasuke said, her voice low enough not to wake him.
"I am not hogging him," Sakura whispered back, her fingers continuing their gentle exploration of Naruto's hair. "He put his head in my lap on his own."
"You moved his head into your lap while he was unconscious."
"He didn't resist."
"He was asleep."
"Exactly. His subconscious chose me."
Sasuke's dark eye twitched. Her massive breasts rose and fell with a carefully controlled breath. Her thick thighs pressed together with a soft, audible sound.
"When he wakes up," Sasuke said, with the quiet intensity of someone making a blood oath, "it's my turn."
"We'll see," Sakura replied, smiling sweetly, and continued petting Naruto's hair.
A bird landed on the grass nearby. Sasuke glared at it. It left.
An ant crawled toward Naruto's hand. Sakura gently redirected it with a blade of grass. The ant, apparently sensing the combined protective energy of two absurdly powerful, absurdly thick kunoichi-in-training, changed direction and never returned.
A civilian walked past the edge of the training ground, glanced in, and saw a blonde boy sleeping peacefully on the lap of a pink-haired girl with thighs the size of tree trunks while a dark-haired girl with an ass visible from orbit watched over them both with the intensity of a mother hawk. The civilian decided that whatever they were witnessing was none of their business and kept walking.
At approximately 8:00 AM — three hours after the designated meeting time — a figure appeared at the edge of the training ground.
Hatake Kakashi.
She strolled into the clearing with the casual, unhurried gait of someone who had absolutely no concept of punctuality and felt zero guilt about it. Her single visible eye was crinkled in its signature smile. Her silver hair caught the morning sunlight. Her flak jacket was unzipped to the same halfway point as yesterday, her massive breasts straining against her dark blue undershirt with every step, bouncing gently in a rhythm that matched her footfalls. Her hips swayed with each stride, the dark fabric of her pants pulled taut across thighs that were, if anything, even thicker than yesterday — each one pressing against the other with a soft whisper of fabric and flesh. Her ass, monumental and impossible, swayed behind her like a pendulum, each cheek rising and falling in alternation as she walked.
She was carrying a small orange book in one hand and two silver bells in the other.
"Good morning, my cute little genin," she said cheerfully, apparently unaware that it was three hours past morning.
"YOU'RE LATE!" Naruto's voice erupted from Sakura's lap, and he sat bolt upright, instantly awake, pointing accusingly. His hair was mussed from sleep and Sakura's fingers, sticking up at angles that defied both gravity and styling products.
Sakura's hands hovered in the air where Naruto's head had been, her fingers still in petting position, her expression that of someone who had just had a precious treasure yanked away.
"Maa, maa," Kakashi said, waving the hand holding the bells. "I got lost on the road of—"
"YOU SAID THAT YESTERDAY!"
"It's a very long road."
Naruto sputtered incoherently. Sasuke stood up behind him — a process that involved her enormous thighs unfolding and her massive ass shifting in a way that briefly caught the sunlight — and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Calm down," she murmured. "Save your energy for training."
Naruto huffed but settled. Sasuke's hand remained on his shoulder for approximately three seconds longer than necessary before she reluctantly withdrew it.
Kakashi walked to the center of the clearing and placed the two bells on top of the middle training post. They glinted in the sunlight, small and silver and seemingly innocent.
"All right," she said, turning to face them. Her massive breasts shifted with the turn, settling into a new configuration against her flak jacket. "Here's the deal. Today is your real test. The Academy exam just proved you had potential — this test determines whether you actually become genin or get sent back to the Academy."
The temperature in the clearing dropped approximately ten degrees.
"WHAT?!" Naruto shouted.
Sakura's green eyes went wide. Sasuke's expression sharpened.
"There are two bells," Kakashi continued, gesturing to the training post with casual grace. Her single eye swept across the three of them, lingering on Naruto with that same warm fondness from yesterday. "Your objective is to take them from me before noon. Whoever doesn't get a bell goes back to the Academy."
She let that sink in.
"But — there are only two bells!" Sakura said, her voice tight. "There are three of us!"
"That's right," Kakashi said. "At least one of you will fail."
Silence. The morning breeze ruffled the grass.
Naruto's jaw was set, his blue eyes blazing with determination. Sakura's hands were clenched in her lap, her enormous breasts heaving with quick breaths. Sasuke's dark eyes were locked on the bells with predatory focus.
Then Kakashi smiled behind her mask — they could tell by the way her eye crinkled — and reached up to adjust her hitai-ate.
"But first," she said, her voice dropping into a register that was warm and playful and utterly at odds with the situation, "I need to even the playing field."
She moved.
Kakashi moved with the speed that had made her legend — one moment she was standing in the center of the clearing, the next she was simply gone, replaced by a flicker of dark fabric and silver hair.
Sakura's head snapped left. Sasuke's Sharingan — wait, she didn't have— her dark eyes widened, tracking something too fast to see.
And Naruto felt arms wrap around him from behind.
Strong, feminine arms. Arms that were simultaneously gentle and unbreakable. Arms attached to a body that was so warm, so soft, so overwhelmingly, impossibly plush that being pressed against it was like being absorbed into a heated cloud.
Naruto's back met Kakashi's chest.
Specifically, Naruto's back met Kakashi's breasts.
They engulfed him. There was no other word. They were so large, so magnificently voluminous, that they pressed against his shoulder blades and wrapped around his sides, warm and soft beyond description. His head was nestled against her collarbone, his blonde hair tickling the underside of her masked chin. Her arms crossed over his chest, pulling him firmly into her embrace, and her legs — those thick, powerful, outrageously meaty legs — folded around him as she settled onto the grass in a seated position, placing him squarely in her lap.
In her lap.
Naruto Uzumaki was sitting in Hatake Kakashi's lap.
Her thighs, each one wider than his torso, framed him on either side, creating a warm, soft, inescapable valley of flesh. Her massive ass, spread across the grass beneath them, provided a cushioned foundation that was more comfortable than any chair Naruto had ever sat in. Her breasts pressed against his back like two enormous, warm pillows, shifting slightly with every breath she took.
The entire maneuver had taken approximately one second.
"Wha— HEY!" Naruto squirmed, trying to break free. He pushed against her arms, kicked his legs, twisted his torso. Nothing. Her grip was gentle but absolute — the strength of a jōnin wrapped in the softness of a body that made the concept of "comfortable" seem inadequate. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! LET ME GO!"
"New rules," Kakashi announced cheerfully, her chin resting on top of Naruto's head, her single visible eye smiling at Sakura and Sasuke, who were standing frozen at the edge of the clearing with expressions of pure, unfiltered shock. "I've decided that the bells aren't the objective anymore."
She adjusted her hold on Naruto, pulling him tighter against her chest. Her breasts compressed slightly around his back, and she hummed — a low, content, vibrating sound that Naruto could feel through his entire body.
"What— what's the objective then?" Sakura managed, her voice strangled.
Kakashi's eye curved. "Naruto is the objective."
Silence.
"Explain," Sasuke said, and her voice was flat and dangerous in a way that didn't match the adoring softness of her expression from earlier. Her dark eyes were locked on Kakashi's arms — specifically, on Kakashi's arms around Naruto — with an intensity that could have cut steel.
"It's simple," Kakashi said, beginning to run her fingers through Naruto's hair with casual, practiced ease, as if she'd been doing this for years rather than seconds. Her gloved fingers combed through his blonde spikes with a tenderness that was so at odds with her reputation that the universe itself seemed confused. "I have Naruto. You want Naruto. Get him back before noon, and you all pass."
She paused in her hair-playing long enough to tilt Naruto's head slightly to the side, examining his face from a new angle. Her visible eye softened to something almost liquid.
"Or don't," she murmured, more to herself than to them. "I'm perfectly happy right here."
"LET GO OF ME, KAKASHI-SENSEI!" Naruto shouted, still squirming. His movements caused Kakashi's breasts to bounce and jiggle against his back in ways that would have short-circuited most human brains, but Naruto's brain was occupied exclusively with righteous indignation. "THIS ISN'T TRAINING! THIS IS WEIRD!"
"This is an exercise in teamwork, retrieval tactics, and confronting a superior opponent," Kakashi corrected serenely, resuming her gentle exploration of his hair. She found a particularly stubborn spike and smoothed it down with her thumb. It popped back up immediately. She smoothed it again. It popped up again. She made a small sound of delight. "Also, your hair is ridiculous and I love it."
"STOP PLAYING WITH MY HAIR!"
"No."
Naruto tried to body-flicker out of her grip. He tried to substitute himself with a log. He tried to simply stand up through brute force. None of it worked. Kakashi held him effortlessly, her arms locked around his chest, her thighs bracketing his hips, her chin resting on his head with the casual comfort of someone sitting in their favorite chair.
Which, Naruto was beginning to realize with mounting horror, was apparently him.
"SAKURA-CHAN! SASUKE! HELP!" he shouted across the clearing.
Sakura and Sasuke were already moving.
Not toward Kakashi.
Toward each other.
They met at the far edge of the clearing, behind a large oak tree, their expressions a perfect mirror of intense determination. They crouched together — an act that, given the sheer volume of their respective bodies, looked like two small buildings settling — and began to whisper with urgent intensity.
"We need a plan," Sakura said, her green eyes sharp despite the flush on her cheeks. Her massive breasts rested on her thighs as she crouched, and she absently pushed them aside for a better view of Kakashi and Naruto across the clearing. "She's a jōnin. We can't beat her in a straight fight."
"Agreed," Sasuke said, her dark eyes narrowed. She was crouching beside Sakura, her enormous thighs bulging outward, her massive ass jutting out behind her like a shelf. "Direct assault is suicide. We need misdirection."
"Can you use your fire jutsu as a distraction?"
"If I aim it at her, I might hit Naruto." Sasuke's voice tightened on his name, and her expression shifted from tactical to protective with a speed that was almost comical. "I'm not risking that."
"Obviously not!" Sakura agreed, equally horrified by the suggestion she herself had just made. "No techniques that could hurt Naruto. No explosives near Naruto. No sharp objects near Naruto. No—"
"Sakura."
"Right. Focus." Sakura took a breath, her breasts rising dramatically. "Okay. Here's what I'm thinking."
Across the clearing, Kakashi had progressed from running her fingers through Naruto's hair to actively styling it. She was using both hands now — she'd released her hold on his chest, apparently confident that the cage of her thighs and the wall of her breasts were sufficient to keep him in place — and was attempting to part his hair to the left.
"It won't stay," she observed, pushing a section of blonde hair to one side. It immediately sprang back. "Your hair has a mind of its own."
"OF COURSE IT WON'T STAY! HAIR DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT!" Naruto was still struggling, but his efforts had decreased in intensity. Not because he'd given up — Naruto Uzumaki didn't give up — but because fighting against Kakashi's hold was like fighting against a particularly affectionate natural disaster. The more he struggled, the more she adjusted, and somehow every adjustment resulted in him being pulled closer, settled deeper into the warm valley of her lap, pressed more firmly against the soft, yielding wall of her chest.
"Have you ever tried conditioner?" Kakashi asked conversationally, experimentally twisting a strand of his hair around her finger.
"WHAT IS CONDITIONER?"
"That explains a lot." Kakashi tugged her mask down just slightly — not enough to reveal anything, but enough to press her lips to the top of his head. The kiss was so gentle that Naruto almost didn't feel it. Almost. "I'll buy you some."
"I DON'T WANT CONDITIONER! I WANT TO BE PUT DOWN!"
"You're not a cat, Naruto."
"THEN STOP HOLDING ME LIKE ONE!"
Kakashi hummed thoughtfully and adjusted him in her lap so that he was sitting sideways, his legs draped over one of her enormous thighs, his back supported by her arm, his head resting against the shelf of her breast. It was, objectively, the single most comfortable position Naruto had ever been in, and he hated it.
"There," Kakashi said, satisfied. "Much better."
She resumed playing with his hair.
Naruto opened his mouth to protest again, but a sound from across the clearing caught his attention. He looked up to see Sakura and Sasuke emerging from behind the oak tree with expressions of grim determination.
They had a plan.
Sakura moved first.
She stepped out from behind the tree and walked directly toward Kakashi, her hands raised in a non-threatening gesture, her hips swaying with each step, her massive thighs brushing together with soft sounds that punctuated her footfalls. Her enormous breasts bounced gently with the motion, the zipper of her dress straining.
"Kakashi-sensei," she said, her voice calm and measured. "I want to negotiate."
Kakashi's visible eye moved to Sakura. Her fingers paused in Naruto's hair. "Oh? Negotiate what?"
"Naruto's release." Sakura stopped about ten feet away, close enough to talk, far enough to react. "Name your terms."
"Hmm." Kakashi tilted her head, considering. Her silver hair caught the light. "How about... no."
"You haven't heard my offer."
"I don't need to. I have a Naruto." Kakashi bounced him slightly in her lap for emphasis. Naruto made an indignant sound. "Why would I trade a Naruto for anything?"
"Because the exercise requires it?"
"I changed the exercise. Keep up, Sakura."
Sakura's eye twitched. But she held her ground, her expression composed. She continued talking — asking questions, making proposals, keeping Kakashi's attention focused forward.
Behind them, a shadow moved through the tree line.
Sasuke had circled around the entire training ground, using the trees as cover. She moved with a silence that was impressive for a genin — each step placed with precise control, her body low to the ground, her massive thighs bunching with coiled power, her enormous ass somehow not making a sound despite being the approximate size and shape of a small boulder. She was approaching from Kakashi's blind side — the side covered by the tilted hitai-ate.
She got within five feet.
Three feet.
Two—
"Nice try, Sasuke-chan," Kakashi said without turning around.
Sasuke froze.
Kakashi's visible eye was still focused on Sakura, but there was a knowing curve to her smile behind the mask. "Did you really think the Sharingan side was my blind side? That's adorable."
Sasuke's jaw tightened. But she didn't retreat. Instead, she held her position, her dark eyes locked onto Naruto with fierce intensity.
"Give him back," she said, and her voice was quiet and deadly and filled with a possessive warmth that turned the threat into something almost tender.
"Make me," Kakashi replied cheerfully.
What followed was forty-five minutes of sustained, creative, and increasingly desperate tactical warfare waged by two twelve-year-old girls against a jōnin who was actively cuddling their teammate.
Sakura used a genjutsu — a basic one, Academy-level, the kind that created illusory copies. Three Sakuras charged Kakashi from different angles. Kakashi dispelled them all without removing her fingers from Naruto's hair by flaring her chakra once. Naruto felt the pulse and his own hair stood on end, which Kakashi found delightful.
Sasuke launched a fireball — a small one, carefully aimed, directed at the ground five feet to Kakashi's left to force her to dodge. Kakashi didn't dodge. She didn't even flinch. She simply extended one hand and deflected the fireball with a casual wind jutsu that sent it spiraling harmlessly into the sky. Her other hand continued braiding a small section of Naruto's hair.
"YOU'RE BRAIDING MY HAIR?!" Naruto shouted, having just noticed.
"It's therapeutic," Kakashi explained. "For both of us."
"IT IS NOT THERAPEUTIC FOR ME!"
They tried traps. Sakura rigged three tripwires around Kakashi's position using standard-issue ninja wire. Kakashi identified all three, pointed them out to Naruto ("See? That one's at ankle height, that one's at knee height, and that one's connected to an explosive tag that Sakura really shouldn't have because she's a genin"), and returned to her hair-playing.
Sasuke tried a substitution — not on herself, but on Naruto. She threw a log at Kakashi's position while simultaneously performing the substitution jutsu, attempting to swap the log with Naruto. Kakashi countered by performing the exact same jutsu at the exact same time, substituting the log with a second log, resulting in a log sitting in Kakashi's lap while Naruto briefly appeared next to Sasuke. For one glorious moment, he was free.
Then Kakashi flickered behind him and scooped him up again.
"DAMN IT!"
"Language," Kakashi chided, settling him back into her lap. "Also, that was clever, Sasuke-chan. Very clever."
Sasuke, standing where Naruto had been half a second ago, clenched her fists so hard her knuckles went white. Her dark eyes burned with frustration. Her enormous breasts heaved with heavy breathing. Her thighs trembled with restrained energy.
"Again," she said to Sakura, who had appeared beside her.
"Again," Sakura agreed.
They tried again. And again. And again.
Clone diversions. Transformation tricks. Coordinated attacks from multiple angles. Sakura used the Academy henge to transform into a copy of Naruto and tried to trick Kakashi into grabbing the wrong one — Kakashi saw through it instantly ("You smell like strawberries, Sakura, Naruto smells like sunshine and miso"). Sasuke used wire strings to try to yank Naruto out of Kakashi's grip like a puppet — Kakashi cut all six wires with a kunai without looking up from the braid she was working on.
Through it all, Naruto continued to struggle, shout, and demand release. Through it all, Kakashi continued to hold him with effortless strength, play with his hair, and occasionally press masked kisses to the top of his head.
And through it all, Sakura and Sasuke continued to work together.
They planned. They coordinated. They communicated with glances and hand signals and the kind of wordless understanding that usually took teams years to develop. They covered each other's weaknesses — Sakura's book-smart tactical thinking complementing Sasuke's combat instincts. They argued, briefly, about who would be the one to physically carry Naruto once they got him free (the argument ended in a tense standoff that they agreed to table for later). They pooled their resources, shared their weapons, and treated the rescue of one Uzumaki Naruto from the lap of one Hatake Kakashi as the most important mission either of them had ever undertaken.
Because it was.
At 11:47 AM — thirteen minutes before the deadline — they executed Plan Seventeen.
Sakura, using a chakra-enhanced punch that she'd apparently been practicing in secret, hit the ground fifteen feet from Kakashi's position. The impact cracked the earth, sending a spiderweb of fissures radiating outward. The ground beneath Kakashi shifted — not enough to hurt, not enough to damage, but enough to unbalance.
Kakashi's grip on Naruto loosened for a fraction of a second.
Sasuke was already moving. She'd launched herself from the tree line at maximum speed, her dark hair streaming behind her, her massive body cutting through the air with surprising grace. She hit the ground beside Kakashi in a slide, her thick thighs plowing furrows in the soft earth, and her hands closed around Naruto's arm.
She pulled.
Kakashi held.
For one moment, Naruto was the rope in a tug-of-war between a jōnin and a genin.
Then Sakura was there too, on Naruto's other side, her hands wrapping around his other arm, her massive breasts pressing against his shoulder, her green eyes blazing with determination.
They pulled together.
Kakashi could have held on. She was a jōnin — one of the village's best. Two genin, no matter how motivated, shouldn't have been able to overpower her grip on a sunny afternoon, let alone during a training exercise.
But Kakashi looked at her two students — sweating, panting, scratched and dirty from hours of failed attempts, their eyes burning with a shared determination that had absolutely nothing to do with passing a test and everything to do with the blonde boy between them — and she felt something warm bloom in her chest.
She let go.
Naruto tumbled forward, pulled by the combined force of Sakura and Sasuke, and all three of them went down in a heap. Naruto landed face-first in the grass, Sakura landed on top of him (her massive breasts cushioning the impact in a way that saved him from at least two broken ribs), and Sasuke landed beside them, immediately pulling Naruto toward her with an arm around his waist.
"ARE YOU OKAY?" both girls shouted simultaneously, rolling Naruto onto his back and hovering over him with expressions of panicked concern.
Naruto blinked up at them, dazed. Two faces — one pink-haired, one dark-haired — filled his vision, both flushed and sweaty and wild-eyed with worry. Behind them, the late-morning sun created a halo effect that made them both look vaguely angelic, if angels were known for having thighs that could crush watermelons and breasts that defied the known laws of physics.
"I'm fine!" he said, sitting up. "I'm FINE! Geez, you guys act like I was in actual danger!"
"You were kidnapped," Sasuke said flatly, her hand still on his waist. Her dark eyes were scanning him for injuries with the systematic intensity of a medical-nin, moving from his face to his arms to his chest and back again.
"By our sensei!" Naruto protested. "During a training exercise! She was just sitting there playing with my hair!"
"She could have done anything," Sakura said, her voice tight. She had her hands on his shoulders, her fingers pressing gently against his jumpsuit, feeling for bruises or cuts. Her enormous breasts were hanging forward as she leaned over him, straining against her dress with the quiet desperation of a dam holding back a flood. "She's a jōnin, Naruto. She could have — she could have —"
"Played with my hair more aggressively?" Naruto supplied.
"This isn't a joke!" both girls said in unison.
Naruto looked between them, confused. He'd never seen Sakura this worked up about his wellbeing — about his wellbeing specifically, not about Sasuke or about the mission or about anything else. And Sasuke — Sasuke was practically vibrating with protective energy, her dark eyes darting between Naruto and Kakashi with the kind of vigilance usually reserved for S-rank threats.
"I'm fine," he said again, more gently this time. "Really. See?" He flexed his arms. "All good. Not a scratch."
Sakura and Sasuke both visibly relaxed, but neither of them moved away from him. Sakura's hands remained on his shoulders. Sasuke's arm remained around his waist.
A slow, deliberate clap broke the moment.
They looked up.
Kakashi was standing a few feet away, her single visible eye curved in a genuine, warm, deeply satisfied smile. She was applauding them — a slow, steady clap that somehow conveyed more approval than a standing ovation.
"You pass," she said simply.
The clearing went quiet.
"We... what?" Sakura breathed.
"You pass," Kakashi repeated. She stopped clapping and slipped her hands into her pockets, her posture relaxed, her massive body settling into a comfortable stance. Her enormous breasts shifted with the movement, and her thick thighs pressed together as she shifted her weight. "All three of you."
"But — the bells —" Naruto looked at the training post, where the two silver bells still sat, untouched.
"Forget the bells," Kakashi said. "The bells were never the point. The point was teamwork. And you three..." Her eye swept across them — Naruto in the middle, Sakura and Sasuke flanking him, all three covered in grass stains and sweat and the unmistakable glow of shared accomplishment. "You three worked as a team. Sakura and Sasuke — you put aside your differences, combined your strengths, and worked together for hours to save your teammate. Not because you were told to. Not because there was a reward. Because you couldn't stand the thought of leaving him behind."
She paused. Her visible eye softened.
"In the shinobi world, those who break the rules are trash," she said quietly. "But those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash."
The words hung in the air, heavy with meaning.
"You three..." Kakashi's voice was rough with an emotion she was clearly trying to suppress. "You're going to be something special. I can feel it."
Naruto's chest felt tight. Not in a bad way. In the way it felt when someone acknowledged him. When someone saw him. When someone said the words he'd been waiting his entire life to hear.
He grinned. "Hell yeah we are! TEAM SEVEN!"
"TEAM SEVEN!" Sakura echoed, pumping her fist.
Sasuke didn't shout. But she smiled — a real smile, a full smile, the kind of smile that transformed her beautiful face into something transcendent — and pressed closer to Naruto's side.
Kakashi watched them with an expression that, behind her mask, was definitely not tears. Absolutely not. Jōnin didn't cry.
Her eye was just sweating.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in something approximating actual training — Kakashi assessed their individual skills, gave preliminary feedback, and outlined a training schedule that would start the following week. Through it all, Sakura and Sasuke maintained a continuous proximity to Naruto that could only be described as "protective orbit."
When Kakashi asked Naruto to demonstrate his taijutsu, both girls positioned themselves within arm's reach, ready to intervene if any of Kakashi's counter-strikes came too close to landing.
When Naruto tripped over a tree root during a sprint exercise, Sasuke caught him before he hit the ground, her arms wrapping around his torso and pulling him against her chest with a speed that would have impressed the Fourth Hokage. She held him for approximately four seconds longer than necessary, her face buried in his hair, before setting him upright with a carefully neutral expression.
"Thanks, Sasuke," Naruto said, already running again.
Sasuke's cheeks were pink. She pressed her massive thighs together and followed.
When Naruto mentioned offhandedly that he'd skipped breakfast that morning, Sakura produced a bento from her weapon pouch — a bento she had apparently packed "just in case" — and insisted he eat it immediately. It contained rice, grilled fish, vegetables, and an unreasonable quantity of naruto fishcake.
"You need to eat properly, Naruto!" she scolded, though her voice was more worried than angry. She sat next to him while he ate, her enormous thighs pressing against his, her hand occasionally reaching over to wipe a grain of rice from his cheek with her thumb. "A shinobi needs proper nutrition! You can't live on ramen alone!"
"Watch me," Naruto said through a mouthful of fishcake.
"I'll make you lunch every day," Sakura declared, as if she'd just decided the fate of the Elemental Nations rather than a meal plan.
"I'll make him breakfast," Sasuke said from Naruto's other side, and it was a challenge.
Sakura's green eyes narrowed. "I'll make him breakfast AND lunch."
"I'll make him breakfast, lunch, AND dinner."
"I'll—"
"You guys know I can feed myself, right?" Naruto interrupted.
"NO!" they said in unison.
Naruto blinked. Shrugged. Ate more fishcake.
By late afternoon, Kakashi dismissed them with instructions to meet at Training Ground Seven at 8:00 AM the following morning ("And I'll try to be on time," she said, which all three of them correctly interpreted as "I will be at least two hours late").
Naruto said goodbye to Sakura and Sasuke — both of whom seemed reluctant to let him out of their sight, Sakura hugging him so tightly that his face disappeared into her breasts (a recurring theme), and Sasuke grabbing his hand and holding it for several seconds while staring at him with an intensity that could have welded metal — and headed home.
He walked through the streets of Konoha with a tired but satisfied grin, his body pleasantly exhausted, his mind replaying the day's events. They'd passed! They were a real team! Team Seven!
The evening air was warm and golden, the setting sun turning the village into a painting. Civilians were heading home from work, shops were closing for the day, and the smell of cooking food drifted from houses and restaurants, making Naruto's stomach growl despite Sakura's bento.
He climbed the stairs to his apartment, fishing his keys from his pocket, already thinking about which flavor of instant ramen to have for dinner. Miso? Pork? Maybe he'd go crazy and try the shrimp one that had been sitting in his cupboard for—
He opened the door.
And stopped.
His apartment — his small, messy, lived-in apartment — was clean.
Not just clean. Immaculate. The kind of clean that suggested the involvement of cleaning products he didn't own, applied with a thoroughness he'd never demonstrated. The floor was swept. The surfaces were wiped. The dirty laundry that had been accumulating on his bedroom floor like a textile glacier was gone — not just moved, but apparently washed, folded, and stacked neatly on his bed. The empty ramen cups that had been colonizing his kitchen counter were disposed of. The dishes — all seven of them — were washed and put away.
And something smelled incredible.
Not ramen. Not instant anything. Real food. Complex food. Food that involved multiple ingredients and actual cooking techniques and a level of culinary competence that Naruto's kitchen had never experienced in its entire existence.
He followed his nose to the kitchen.
Mitarashi Anko was standing at his stove.
She was wearing an apron.
Just an apron.
Well, not just an apron — she had her mesh bodysuit on underneath — but the apron was the dominant visual element, and it was doing a spectacularly poor job of containing the body beneath it. The apron was clearly designed for a person of normal proportions, and Anko's proportions were to "normal" what an ocean was to a puddle. The fabric stretched across her chest — those enormous, impossibly round, gravity-defying breasts — like a handkerchief draped over two mountains. The strings tied at her waist only served to accentuate the dramatic flare of her hips, which pushed out on either side of the apron like geological formations. The apron ended at approximately mid-thigh, which meant that the vast, overwhelming majority of her thighs — each one a thick, meaty, mesh-covered pillar of flesh — was fully visible, along with the lower curve of her titanic ass, which jutted out behind her with a prominence that the apron made absolutely no attempt to address.
She was stirring a pot of something that smelled like heaven if heaven was a rich, pork-based broth with handmade noodles and slow-cooked chashu.
She was humming.
She was also, Naruto realized as he stood frozen in his doorway, talking to herself.
"—girlfriend is fine," she was murmuring, tapping the wooden spoon against her lip thoughtfully. "Girlfriend is... comfortable. Casual. No pressure. Just 'hey, I'm Anko, I'm your girlfriend, I cook in your kitchen and murder anyone who looks at you wrong.' Simple."
She stirred the pot again, frowning behind the steam.
"But wife..." She tested the word, rolling it around in her mouth like a foreign food. "Wife has authority. Wife has permanence. Wife means he comes home to me every night. Wife means I get to put 'Uzumaki' after my name, and wouldn't THAT make the old bastards at T&I lose their minds." A slow, wicked grin spread across her face, visible even from the doorway. "Mitarashi-Uzumaki Anko. No. Uzumaki Anko. Yeah. Yeah, that hits different."
She tasted the broth from the spoon, considered, added a pinch of salt.
"But then there's the wedding," she continued, her expression souring. "Ceremonies. Guests. Having to invite people I don't want to stab. Wearing a white dress when I look better in nothing. Dealing with the Hokage's paperwork. Ugh." She shuddered, her enormous breasts bouncing with the motion. "And then there's the whole 'joint finances' thing. Not that Naru-chan has any finances. I'd basically be marrying a ramen debt. A cute ramen debt. The cutest ramen debt."
She stirred more vigorously, lost in thought.
"Girlfriend means I can leave whenever I want. Not that I'd WANT to. But the option is there. Freedom. Independence. I'm a strong, independent kunoichi who don't need—" She stopped, scowling. "Who am I kidding. I'd chain myself to that boy with actual chains if he asked me nicely. Hell, if he asked me at ALL."
She sighed — a deep, full-body sigh that made her massive chest rise and fall like a tide.
"Girlfriend is inadequate," she declared to the pot. "Wife is inadequate. I need a word that doesn't exist yet. Something between 'soulmate' and 'person I would literally devour whole if it meant we could never be separated.' Is there a word for that?"
She asked the pot. The pot did not respond.
"Useless," she told the pot.
She reached for the cutting board, where she had an array of toppings arranged with the precision of a surgical tray — sliced green onions, a soft-boiled egg cut in perfect halves (the yolk a gorgeous, runny gold), sheets of nori, a mound of fresh bean sprouts, and chashu slices so perfectly pink and tender they looked like they'd been cut by a master.
"Maybe I should just skip the labels entirely," she mused, carefully arranging the toppings on two bowls. "No girlfriend. No wife. Just... Anko. Naruto's Anko. His. Completely, totally, irrevocably his. Whether he knows it or not."
She paused, a slice of chashu held delicately in her chopsticks.
"He definitely doesn't know it," she acknowledged.
Then she shrugged, popped the chashu into her own mouth, and cut another slice.
"He'll figure it out eventually. Or he won't, and I'll just live here forever and he'll think I'm a very dedicated cleaning lady who sleeps in his bed. Either way, I win."
She was in the middle of ladling broth into the first bowl when she registered the presence in the doorway.
She turned.
Naruto was standing at the entrance to his own kitchen, his key still in his hand, his mouth slightly open, his blue eyes wide.
"Oh!" Anko's expression transformed instantaneously from 'woman having a philosophical debate about relationship taxonomy with a pot of ramen' to 'radiant, warmth-incarnate, so happy to see you that my soul might actually leave my body.' She set the ladle down, wiped her hands on the apron (which accomplished nothing, as the apron barely existed as a functional garment), and beamed at him with a smile so bright it could have been used as a signal flare.
"Welcome home, Naru-chan!"
Naruto's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
There were so many questions competing for priority in his brain that they'd created a bottleneck, and for approximately three seconds, no sound came out at all. Finally, one question fought its way to the front of the line:
"How did you get into my apartment?"
"The window," Anko said cheerfully.
"The window is on the third floor."
"I'm a ninja."
"That's—" Naruto paused. That was, technically, a valid response. "Okay, but WHY are you in my apartment?"
"I'm making dinner!" Anko gestured to the stove with a flourish, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. "Homemade ramen. From scratch. The broth has been simmering for six hours — I came over right after I saw you head to the training ground this morning. I used pork bones, kombu, dried shiitake, garlic, ginger, and a little bit of soy sauce at the end for color. The noodles are handmade — I found a recipe in a cookbook I stole from the jōnin library — and the chashu was braised for four hours in a soy-mirin glaze. I also made the eggs myself. Soft-boiled, six and a half minutes exactly, then ice bath. The yolks are perfect." She paused. "I'm telling you this because you should appreciate how much effort I put into feeding you."
Naruto stared at her.
Then he stared at the stove.
Then he stared at the two bowls — beautiful, enormous bowls of ramen, steaming and fragrant and arranged with the artistry of a professional chef.
Then he stared at Anko.
"You... made me dinner?" he said slowly.
"I made US dinner," Anko corrected, turning back to the stove to finish ladling the second bowl. Her massive ass swayed as she moved, the apron riding up to reveal even more of her mesh-covered thighs. "You and me. Together. At your table. Which I also cleaned, by the way. You had a kunai stuck in it."
"That's where that went!"
Anko finished the second bowl with the same careful artistry — the chashu fanned just so, the egg halves positioned to display the golden yolk, the green onions scattered like confetti. She carried both bowls to Naruto's table — which was, indeed, cleaner than it had been since the day he'd moved in — and set them down opposite each other.
Then she sat down.
The chair groaned.
This was not the chair's fault. The chair had been designed for a person of reasonable proportions, and the person sitting in it was proportioned in a way that would have given furniture designers nightmares. Anko's ass, enormous and round and impossibly plush, engulfed the chair seat entirely, spilling over the edges on all sides. Her thighs, each one thick enough to have its own gravitational pull, spread to accommodate the width of her hips, pressing against the table legs. Her breasts, resting on the edge of the table like two mesh-covered globes, were large enough that they partially obscured her bowl of ramen.
She looked up at Naruto with an expression of patient, radiant adoration.
"Well?" she said. "Sit down before it gets cold."
Naruto sat down.
He sat down because there was a bowl of the most incredible-looking ramen he had ever seen in front of him, and because his stomach was growling, and because he was tired from training, and because Anko — scary, loud, snake-lady Anko — was sitting in his kitchen in an apron, smiling at him like he was the most important person in the world, and his brain simply did not have the processing power to deal with all of this simultaneously.
So he sat down.
He picked up his chopsticks.
He looked at the ramen.
It was perfect. The broth was a deep, rich amber, with tiny droplets of fat glistening on the surface like jewels. The noodles were thick and wavy, tangled together in a nest that begged to be pulled apart. The chashu was pink and glistening. The egg yolks were golden and runny. The green onions were bright and fresh. The nori was crisp. The bean sprouts were tender.
It smelled like the best thing that had ever existed.
Naruto's eyes, to his horror, began to sting.
"Naru-chan?" Anko's voice was instantly concerned. She leaned forward — her breasts pressing further onto the table, the bowl sliding slightly — and reached across to touch his hand. "What's wrong? Is it the egg? Did I overcook the egg? I swear, if I overcooked the egg, I will go back in time and—"
"No one's ever made me dinner before," Naruto said quietly.
The kitchen went silent.
Anko's hand, resting on his, tightened.
Her expression shifted. The bubbly cheerfulness, the manic energy, the over-the-top enthusiasm — it all melted away, and what was left underneath was something raw and fierce and aching. Her brown eyes, usually sharp and playful, were suddenly very, very soft.
"Well," she said, and her voice was steady even though her jaw was tight. "Get used to it."
She squeezed his hand once — firmly, meaningfully — and then released it.
"Eat," she said, nodding at the bowl. "It's getting cold, and I didn't spend six hours on broth to have it go cold."
Naruto wiped his eyes with the back of his hand — aggressively, the way a boy who refused to cry wiped his eyes — and nodded.
He took the first bite.
His eyes went wide.
The broth hit his tongue first — rich, deep, complex, with layers of flavor that unfolded one after another like a jutsu sequence. Pork and umami and ginger and garlic and something sweet and something savory and something that was just warm, warm in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. The noodles were perfect — springy and chewy, with a bite that complemented the silky broth. The chashu melted on his tongue, the meat so tender it practically dissolved. The egg was—
The egg was perfect. The yolk was runny and golden and it mixed with the broth to create something that transcended food entirely and became art.
"This is the best ramen I've ever had," Naruto said, and he was not exaggerating. He was not being polite. He was stating a fact with the absolute conviction of someone who had eaten ramen nearly every day of his life and had an expert's palate for the dish.
Anko's face lit up like a sunrise.
"Better than Ichiraku?" she asked, leaning forward with barely contained excitement.
Naruto paused. This was a serious question. A sacred question. Ichiraku Ramen was his temple, his sanctuary, his religion. To say that something was better than Ichiraku was to commit a form of culinary blasphemy.
He took another bite. And another. The flavors exploded across his tongue.
"...Don't tell old man Teuchi," he whispered.
Anko actually squealed. It was a sound that no one who had ever met her would have believed she was capable of making — a high-pitched, girlish squeal of pure, unfiltered joy. She clapped her hands together, her massive breasts bouncing with the motion, her eyes sparkling.
"I KNEW it!" she crowed. "I KNEW I could do it! Six hours, Naru-chan! SIX HOURS on that broth! Do you know how many snakes I had to summon to keep the fire at the right temperature? Seven. SEVEN snakes. Manda's going to send me a bill."
Naruto was no longer listening because he was eating ramen at a pace that could only be described as "competitive." He was lifting the bowl, drinking the broth, slurping the noodles, devouring the chashu, and making sounds of pleasure that Anko was mentally recording for future replay.
They ate together. In Naruto's tiny kitchen. At Naruto's tiny table. Under the warm light of a single bulb that Anko had replaced because the old one had been flickering.
Anko ate with slightly more restraint, watching Naruto over the edge of her bowl with an expression of such deep, complete, unguarded contentment that it would have made anyone who saw it understand, immediately and without question, that Mitarashi Anko was exactly where she wanted to be.
When Naruto finished his bowl — in approximately four minutes — Anko wordlessly ladled him a second helping. And a third. And a fourth. Each one she prepared with the same careful artistry, the same precise arrangement of toppings, the same attention to detail.
"You're a growing boy," she said when he tried to protest. "Eat."
He ate.
By the fifth bowl, Naruto was slowing down, his belly full, his body warm, his eyes heavy with the comfortable drowsiness of a good meal after a hard day. He leaned back in his chair and patted his stomach with a satisfied groan.
"That was amazing, Anko-san," he said genuinely.
"Anko-nee," she corrected automatically.
"Anko-nee," he repeated, and the smile he gave her was so natural, so unguarded, so purely grateful that Anko had to look away for a moment to collect herself.
She busied herself with cleaning up — washing the bowls, drying the pot, wiping down the stove. Her enormous body moved through Naruto's tiny kitchen with a practiced efficiency that suggested she had already memorized the layout and optimized her movements accordingly.
"You cleaned my whole apartment," Naruto observed from the table, watching her.
"It needed it," Anko said without turning around. "I found a mushroom growing behind your toilet. Not a normal mushroom. A chakra-infused mushroom. It was developing sentience, Naru-chan."
"Oh. Was that what that was?"
"It tried to bite me."
"Yeah, it does that."
Anko turned to look at him, her expression flat. "You knew about the sentient toilet mushroom?"
"I named him Gerald."
There was a long pause.
"Gerald is dead," Anko said.
"...Oh."
"I killed Gerald."
"...Okay."
"He deserved it."
"He was actually kind of—"
"He BIT me, Naru-chan."
"Fair enough."
Anko finished cleaning and turned to face him, leaning against the counter. Her arms crossed beneath her breasts, pushing them up to a prominence that defied architectural logic. Her hips cocked to one side, the apron riding up on one thigh. She studied him with an expression that was trying very hard to be casual and failing magnificently.
"So," she said. "How was your first day?"
And Naruto — tired, full, warm, and sitting in a clean apartment that smelled like incredible ramen — told her.
He told her about Kakashi being late. About the bell test that became a kidnapping. About being held in Kakashi's lap while she played with his hair ("I know the feeling," Anko muttered, her eye twitching). About Sakura and Sasuke working together to rescue him. About how they passed. About how Kakashi said they were going to be something special.
He talked for nearly thirty minutes, animated and excited, his hands gesturing wildly, his blue eyes bright. He reenacted the moment Sakura cracked the ground ("It was SO cool, Anko-nee!"), the moment Sasuke caught him mid-fall ("She's crazy fast"), and the moment Kakashi told them they passed ("She said we're something special! ME! I'm part of something special!").
Anko listened to every word.
She listened with her whole body, leaning forward, her brown eyes locked on his face, her expression shifting to match his — excited when he was excited, tense when he was tense, proud when he was proud. She laughed at the funny parts (Naruto trying to escape Kakashi's thigh cage). She scowled at the parts that annoyed her (Kakashi touching Naruto's hair, which was apparently HER thing). She smiled — really smiled, a genuine smile that softened every hard edge of her personality — at the parts that mattered.
And when he finished, trailing off into a yawn, she pushed off the counter and walked over to him.
She bent down — her massive breasts hanging forward, barely contained by the apron and mesh — and pressed her lips to his forehead. The kiss was firm and warm and lasted exactly three seconds.
"I'm proud of you, Naru-chan," she said against his skin.
Naruto's ears turned red. "Y-yeah, well. It was nothing."
"It wasn't nothing." She pulled back and met his eyes. "It was everything."
There was a moment — brief, fragile, incredibly rare — where Naruto didn't know what to say.
Anko saved him from the silence by ruffling his hair (aggressively, with both hands, in a way that turned his blonde spikes into a complete disaster) and stepping back with a grin.
"All right, brat, time for bed. You've got training in the morning, and you need sleep."
"I'm not tired!" Naruto protested, immediately yawning again.
"Sure you're not." Anko began untying her apron, which was the only thing between her mesh bodysuit and the open air. She folded it neatly — with a care that seemed at odds with everything else about her personality — and draped it over the back of a chair. "Go brush your teeth. I left a new toothbrush in the bathroom. The orange one."
Naruto paused halfway out of his chair. "You bought me a toothbrush?"
"Your old one looked like it had been through a war. Several wars. Wars that the toothbrush lost."
"It was fine!"
"It had three bristles left, Naru-chan. Three. I've interrogated prisoners with more bristles than that toothbrush."
Naruto grumbled but headed to the bathroom. He found the new toothbrush — orange, as promised — and brushed his teeth. He changed into his sleeping clothes (a t-shirt and shorts that were, by Anko's standards, "inadequate sleepwear" and would be replaced by tomorrow). He crawled into bed — which had fresh sheets, because of course Anko had changed his sheets — and pulled the blanket up to his chin.
His apartment was clean. His stomach was full. His bed was warm.
And standing in his kitchen doorway, silhouetted against the light, was Mitarashi Anko, watching him with an expression that she would deny until her dying breath but that could only, accurately, be described as love.
"Night, Anko-nee," Naruto murmured, his eyes already closing.
"Good night, Naru-chan," Anko whispered.
She stood there for a long time after his breathing evened out. Watching him sleep. Watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Watching the way his face, in sleep, lost all of its bravado and energy and became something young and soft and achingly vulnerable.
She didn't leave.
She settled onto his couch — which was too small for her body, her thighs hanging over one end and her ass engulfing the cushions — and pulled a blanket over herself.
"Girlfriend is inadequate," she murmured to the dark ceiling. "Wife is inadequate."
She rolled onto her side, facing the direction of his bedroom.
"But this..." She closed her eyes. Her lips curved into a small, private, perfect smile. "This is a start."
Outside Naruto's window, on the roof of the building across the street, two figures crouched in the darkness.
Sakura, who had followed Naruto home "just to make sure he got there safely," was watching his apartment window with her hands clasped under her chin and her green eyes glowing in the moonlight. Her enormous body was pressed flat against the rooftop, her massive breasts squished against the tiles, her wide hips raised slightly in the air.
"He's asleep," she whispered. "He looks so peaceful."
Beside her, Sasuke — who had ALSO followed Naruto home, independently, for the exact same reason — was watching the same window with an expression of dark-eyed devotion.
"Why is Anko in his apartment?" Sasuke asked, her voice flat.
"I don't know," Sakura replied, her voice equally flat.
A pause.
"Should we do something about it?"
"...Not tonight."
"Tomorrow?"
"Definitely tomorrow."
They lay on the rooftop in silence for a while longer, watching Naruto's window, two absurdly thick silhouettes against the night sky.
"Sakura."
"Yeah?"
"If I make him breakfast, you can make him lunch. We'll alternate dinner."
Sakura considered this. "Acceptable. But I get Sundays."
"Why Sundays?"
"Because Sunday breakfast is pancakes, and I make excellent pancakes."
Sasuke was quiet for a moment. Then: "Fine. I get Saturdays."
"Deal."
They continued their vigil in companionable silence, two girls united by a shared purpose that transcended their rivalry, their differences, and their basic understanding of appropriate boundary-setting.
Below them, Naruto slept peacefully, completely oblivious to the fact that his life had fundamentally, irreversibly, and incomprehensibly changed.
He was dreaming about ramen.
It was a good dream.
End of Chapter Two
Author's Note: The bell test has been officially redesigned. Kakashi regrets nothing. Anko killed Gerald. Sakura makes excellent pancakes. Naruto noticed absolutely nothing. Again.