Of course, there are those things in life that even someone like Hatake Kakashi can't prevent or avoid.

One of them happened to be puberty.

It was a nasty period of life, he'd decided, one that had snuck up on him not just once, but twice.

The first time he had been sort of wearily annoyed. A perfectly acceptable existence of poking things with sharp pointy objects for a paycheck had been thrown into chaos by the overwhelming urge to poke girls with one particular pointy object.

It took years to get used to it, during which he did things he never wanted to think about again and things he hoped to god he never forgot. In the end he pledged his heart to his one true love---Momoda Nadeshiko, the long legged heroine of Icha Icha Paradise, volume one----and settled into the comfortable life of a professional bachelor.

The second strike of puberty came the day he looked upon Sakura and realized that there was now a pair of what were obviously breasts making themselves known under her dress. It didn't help that the dress, which had been zipped up to her neck just twenty minutes ago he'd bet his life, was open down the front to the point of invading nipple territory. If he'd had a stable gun on him right then, he would have stopped that siege in five seconds and spent the rest of his day in a much better mood.

After that, it came to his - rather bleated - attention that Sasuke was going through the rather unpleasant squeaky voiced stage, and Naruto...

Well, actually, there was one incident and that was admittedly Kakashi's fault. You just didn't drop in unexpectedly on teenage boys. Especially ones that lived alone and didn't have to worry about things like locking themselves in the bathroom for privacy.

On the upside, Naruto spent the next two weeks avoiding him like crazy. It was the quietest two weeks Kakashi had enjoyed since the hyperactive brat was put under his care.

After his initial 'well, crap' reaction, Kakashi was ready to brush the whole thing aside and leave them to muddle along on their own. They'd figure out things eventually.

Okay, no, he wasn't that bad.

He gave the boys books and Sakura had Tsunade so all was well on that front. Granted, he was pretty sure Sasuke burned his book and Naruto vanished for a week with his, but those were acceptable causalities.

The sudden burning rage he experienced when he saw a group of older teenagers eyeing Sakura in a distinctly predatory fashion, however, was not.

While he'd adapted himself to honestly, wholeheartedly caring for people for the first time in years, the fact that this caring appearantly extended to protecting his former students' virtue was a new one on him. It wasn't exactly a happy discovery either.

Unfortunately, the feeling of protectiveness extended to Naruto, too. The boy had finally discovered a world of females that existed beyond Sakura and he was taking full advantage of it. His tastes ran toward the dominant and aggressive, which meant the girls either had nothing to do with him, or ate him for breakfast. Sakura provided unexpected salvation in this arena as she caught onto the problem quicker than Kakashi did and warned off the sharks through some archaic female ritual.

Sasuke turned out to have all the sexual drive of a piece of granite. Kakashi suspected that it would either all come out one day and he'd assault the nearest sheep field, or he'd turn into Ibiki. Lord knew that man hadn't gotten anything in over a decade.

All in all, it was enough to make Kakashi want to neuter the lot of them.

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