Snow Storms & Snake Wine

Old Coots & Meddling Kids

The second the Konoha entourage stepped into the Tsuchikage's office, Deidara knew two things. One: it wasn't going to be just another one of those boring-ass, soul-sucking, political shindigs that made him whine for hours until the Old Bastard kicked him out and Two: the Old Bastard in question was going to get such a stress headache.

Because, following Senju Tsunade, Kato Shizune, and Nara Shikaku was Sakura, and the second they locked eyes from across the office, matching grins crossed their faces before they dropped them so their respective Kages didn't get a chance to see.

"Jiji," the Godaime smiled as her heels tapped against the few steps up to the long stretch of the poplar wood desk and to Gramps, scowling behind it. And maybe Deidara scowled a little too as he was drawn behind the chair and to the worst painting by the worst surrealist artist Earth Country had to offer, and Deidara couldn't understand how a dude as old as Onoki could look at it and not want to dramatically set it on fire with a candlestick. And yeah, whatever, he knew there was the fascination of exploring the concept of dreams between the conscious and unconscious mind along with the pursuit of psychic automatism but god, it was so fucking ugly—

"Namekuji-hime," Onoki returned shortly. "I see you're still shamelessly maintaining your youth."

"And I see you're still miraculously alive."

Kato pressed her notebook to her face the same time Kurotsuchi shut her eyes, mentally counted to five, and forced herself to concentrate on the two most powerful people in the room like they weren't going to make this another example of how-not-to-do-good-political-etiquette, and he expected Sakura's face to puff out like a chipmunk like when they all had to listen to Kisame try to do math over his ramen, but she only spared a long eye roll before looking back at him and grinning again.

She raised the hand hidden behind Nara's bulk and waved.

He glanced ahead of him. Tío Kitsuchi and Nara were about the same middle age, if their perfected tired-dad faces were a show of anything, but they were both way too high up to ignore nation affairs in favor of giving a damn about the two teens in the back.

He lifted a palm and made it smile, wiggling its tongue.

Her face screwed up in disgust, but she couldn't stop the edges of her lips pulling up as she stuck out her own tongue and quickly turned to the front before anyone could catch her out.

"—how unreasonable! Back in my day—

"Use that on me one more time, you fossilized sonuva—"

Thank god Kurotsuchi's always been more competent between the two of them. She had all those things like active listening skills and a sense of responsibility that didn't get her dojo kicked out of village limits because 'who explodes trash cans.' And she'd never let an argument get as far as using wrinkle-counts as insults. He always hated the obligation of the Tsuchikage hat, but he hated his candidacy for it even more and he was lucky his cousin announced her intent for the position. Was the Old Bastard disappointed in him for letting her have it undisputed? Sure, but he was also disappointed when he had to watch his only grandnephew throw back an entire bottle of wine because it wasn't allowed over a border checkpoint.

Anyway.

Point was, Kurotsuchi was going to be a good Kage. The problem with that was that Onoki was a good Kage too—good, not more than that, he was serious—and he was still squabbling with another world leader in between trade route negotiations and price adjustments.

He snuck a look at Sakura's poorly masked exasperation.

Did she want the Hokage hat? There were a lot of instances of shared blood in Konoha's kage, but they maintained a trend of more mentorship. The First was brother to the Second who taught the Third, then the Third taught the man who taught the Fourth and also directly taught the Fifth, and if those connect-the-dots went the way he was thinking, it was totally in the realm of possibility of her becoming the Sixth.