Ain't That a Kick in The Head?

Property Damage and Bribery

The rest of Team Seven is waiting at the gates when Sasuke, Naruto and their clients finally get there after another fifteen minutes. Sakura looks murderous. Sai smiles.

Sasuke finds him even creepier than his (former?) fangirl team mate.

The pair of teachers just look resigned.

Hajime immediately rushes up to his daughter. "My princess! My darling, are you alright? Oh how terribly frightening it must have been to be lost in such a dreary, unsanitary place!"

Umeko makes a gesture that signals to Kazuhiko to take her parasol from her. He obliges, and she hugs her father. "It was, Papa, it was!"

"Unsanitary?" Sakura repeats.

Sasuke has to actively stop a smirk from spreading across his face.

Kakashi whispers something in Sakura's ear and she unclenches her fist with reluctance. Then he pastes on another lazy half-visible smile and says, "We're glad you found your way back. Let's go."

Hajime raises his thick eyebrows and exchanges an alarmed look with Kazuhiko. "But the day is nearly over."

"The mission request you filed stated that it was urgent you be delivered to this wedding. The sooner we go, the better, yes?"

"Alright," the bodyguard says, "but with all due respect sir, we gotta stop at an inn sooner, 'cause we started later."

Kakashi's eye twitches, a reaction invisible to anyone who doesn't know the man. He looks at Yamato and the two step away to confer for a few minutes before Kakashi announces, "We'll stay in the village another day. We leave, bright and early, at the gates at eight o' clock tomorrow morning. Don't be late."

He disappears in a swirl of leaves. From the displeasure on Team Seven's faces, he presumes the man hasn't gotten any better at being early.

*

The Uchiha compound is in complete disrepair.

Weeds of every size sprout up from every crack in the pavement and between every floorboard. Shingles have been sliding off of the roofs and lay in broken piles on the road. Paint peels off of the cracking walls surrounding the compound. Doors had been left wide open or broken in half, leaving everything to be worn down by the elements. Neon graffiti and broken beer bottles litter the grounds.

It's a ghost town.

He walks, inspecting the damage until sundown.

His house is the worst of all. It's been mostly preserved.

A memento mori of that night.

He's going to repair it all to its former glory when he returns. Might as well if he's here.

The doors are completely punched in and the wooden floors are water damaged beyond repair in the foyer. The room where it occurred is scattered with candy wrappers. A lantern sits in the far corner of the room, forgotten.

Fury overtakes him and Sasuke has a fist full of Chidori crackling through the floor. The blinding rage fades with the blue light of his jutsu, and he cusses at his destruction of his own house.

The state-sanctioned massacre of his clan is NOT a fucking test of courage.

May Amaterasu or whoever else is out there have mercy on their worthless, pitiful souls because when he's found whoever had been here, Sasuke will not.

*

By the time he'd finished cleaning his house of litter and junk, pieces of rotted wood floors and remnants of walls, and former possessions too destroyed to keep any longer, sunset had long passed.