At the end of all things, there is a waiting room.
It's fairly typical, as these things go. Thin, scratchy carpet. Fish tank with still fish. Old gossip magazines. Incredibly uncomfortable chairs. The low buzz of a television or radio or something somewhere else, words indistinguishable. No windows, no clock, no door, and the receptionist's desk was shuttered.
This one's a bit special, though.
He's so much louder than she can be, so instead she jumps at him, still growling.
She giggles and snuggles close to him, making little puppy noises.
"Best Kiba."
Tsume chuckles and scoops her little hellions up.
The party winds down, soon enough, everyone aware of the need to not overwork toddlers, and Tsume lays them to sleep.
Rai starts getting more focused attention in the days and months and years to come, clan members helping her with words, with walking and running and playing, with working alongside Inazuma and other kids (there is a tremendous focus on collaboration games, rather than competition games - turn-based story-telling; group obstacles and puzzles; races where what matters is when the last team member crosses, not the first, so everyone who's smart hangs near the back to help out the younger and slower players. Even the play fights - outside of spontaneous wrestling of course - are often group affairs, one entire age group against a smaller number of older kids or rarely teens, and more than once if Rai starts wrestling Kiba or Hana in a public place a younger kid will jump in on her side, shrieking in laughter, until whatever little argument turns into a full-on brawl. This seems unusual, for Konoha - Tsume takes her to the parks, too, and most non-Inuzuka kids want to see who's fastest or smartest or strongest or best).
Raizume is definitely once again reminded of a werewolf pack. She loves it. It's so... freeing being able to let loose that wildness that she was always taught to hide. She loved her father, but he was constantly terrified of people finding out about her, about the werewolf thing, that she was never allowed to play with other kids and be herself.
She excels tremendously in all physical activities. It's different from being a werewolf, the energy coming from somewhere else. She supposes that has to do with chakra and the natural taijutsu skill she picked up. She was always really athletic anyway, even before she was a hybrid. But this was definitely different. She picks up on all the tricks and reasons behind their activities, and goes out of her way to excel there too. Helping everyone out and setting a good example. She wants her clan to be good and talented and strong. They need to be to survive whats coming.
When they're at the park, she keeps her eye out for anyone else familiar, but otherwise ignores the non-Inuzuka kids. She doesn't have time for everyone, there are only so many hours in a day and she's got so much life to live.
Most of the kids ignore her back. (There's a few random Uchiha kids, sometimes - both the Inuzuka and Uchiha live near the edge of the village, in their own isolated compounds. It's hard to tell which ones are which, there's more than one around Kiba's age and the Uchiha dress their boys and girls the same. There's the children of minor clanless shinobi who live around here. There's a handful of civilian-born hopefuls.)
There's a sad little boy, who seems to wander between playgrounds to lurk on the edges and mope and occasionally try to play if someone isn't mean to him.
(Tsume never warns them away, and will keep a hawk-like eye out for anyone being a shithead to Kushina's brat, but he's new and weird and poorly socialized and an outsider, so most of the Inuzuka kids will hesitantly try to play with him once or twice, then end up in a bad argument that everyone takes wrong, and then drift off.)
-- speaking of familiar. Raizume walks up to him one afternoon and hands him the ball she was playing with.
"I'm gonna go over there," she points to a semi far away distance, "and you haveta throw it to me really hard."
!!!
A friend!
(Maybe she's pretending like that meanie from the orphanage, but maybe she's not...)
"Okay!"
He is not a good thrower ahhhhhhh he's gonna miss and she's gonna HATE HIM -
And when she gets there, he throws as hard and good as he can...
And misses. He doesn't throw the ball hard enough, and it goes way off to the left.
Raizume laughs loudly and chases after it really quick, trying to catch it before it hits the ground.
"You're fast!" he says, but frowns. "The ball was bad and threw off my aim."
"If it's bad that means you have to figure out how it's bad and throw it different."
"Yeah! I wanna play ball!"
Also get to know the protagonist and key player in the coming apocalypse. But playing catch was really fun too.
!!!!!!
They can keep playing ball! Naruto remains really bad at it, but he's enthusiastic and actually fairly good at correcting with relatively few nudges. He doesn't think like a lot of kids do, his brain comes at ideas from sideways and backwards and above but never the way you're supposed to go, and no one's taught him how to try a bunch of ideas instead of just slamming himself against the One Way, so he's not good at that, either.
He's loud and brash and has a much younger kid's understanding of boundaries, too, but he doesn't need to be told twice not to do or say something accidentally mean, even if he sometimes mumbles about people being weird.
Eventually Rai does have to go home. Naruto droops, then, hesitantly, "Will I see you again?"
Raizume nods and hugs him.
"You're nice and funny and remind me of my brother. Next time I'll bring him and we can build a secret fort!"
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