“Tokimi,” one of the detectives on the night shift with her says in a choked voice, “your daughter and her friend are here.”

“...Did Uzume say what she wanted?” Tokimi asks, checking the clock. It’s late — after two AM. Earlier, at dinner, Uzume said she was planning to meet Amano at a bar. That they’re showing up here and now…

Tokimi really hopes she’s not going to have to arrest her own daughter, especially since it’s Uzume’s first week as an MP.

“She, ah,” Raiden cut himself off with a snicker. “She said she needs a booking officer, because she’s caught a criminal.”

That’s not reassuring, in any way, but Tokimi gathers up the paperwork for booking and heads down to the front desk anyway.

Uzume and Amano are standing by the front desk, surrounded by officers. They don’t seem to be injured, but that’s no guarantee. When Tokimi clears her throat, everyone glances over to her, then starts making their way back to where they should be. Eventually she’s just facing her daughter and her daughter’s friend, with no sign of the “criminal” that she was told about.

“Mom!” Uzume says, in a overly bright, obviously drunk voice. Thankfully, she isn’t wearing the MP uniform. It’s about the only bright spot in this that Tokimi has found so far. “I have caught— caught…” She trails off for a second, thinking, before continuing in a triumphant tone, “the perpetrator.” Holding out her hands, she presents a small kitten.

Tokimi takes a breath, and makes the mistake of meeting the gaze of Fugaku, currently working at the front desk. He may be Kotachi’s chosen successor, but that doesn’t mean that he can escape the grind of gaining experience in every part of the MP. Fugaku starts to snicker, and Uzume and Amano both turn to look at him.

“I see,” she says, setting the paperwork down. “And what laws has... the perpetrator… broken?”

“He’s too small,” Amano says. “Illegally small.” He nods, dead serious. He’s less obviously drunk than Uzume is, but the way he’s blinking owlishly at her and swaying is something of a giveaway.

“We caught him in the act,” Uzume confirms, hair swinging as she nods. “...And vagrancy,” she adds after a second. “Maybe. Definitely trespassing, though. He was sleeping on Ama-oba’s porch, and you know she doesn’t like cats.”

“Right,” Tokimi says. Her lips quirk into a smile, finally, and she nods towards the booking room. “Let’s get mugshots of this dangerous criminal, and start filling out the paperwork.”

Uzume wakes up and regrets it immediately.

The hangover is bad enough that it takes her a while to actually be able to concentrate long enough to fire up one of the few healing jutsu she knows and can actually perform. It is — like many of Konoha’s medical jutsu — one of Senju Tsunade’s, and it’s one that she actually managed to copy from the Sannin with her permission.

Unlike the more serious medical jutsu, this one doesn’t require fine chakra control or full concentration, since it’s designed to be used in exactly this situation: badly hungover.

The first application takes care of the worst symptoms, and Uzume’s about to sit up when she realizes that there’s a cat laying on her — or rather, a kitten. A tiny kitten.

She doesn’t have a cat.

Uzume sits up carefully, staring at the kitten sprawling across her legs. It’s orangish, and striped, and vaguely familiar, even though she’s pretty sure she’s never seen it before. She gently shifts the kitten off of her, going in search of her mom — surely she would know.

Her mom is asleep (Uzume had thankfully remembered that this week is when her mom is scheduled for the night shift before she’d started yelling questions) but there’s a folder in the kitchen that has a note on it. Grabbing the folder and two mugs of coffee, she goes into the living room with the kitten trailing behind her.

Amano is still asleep, barely twitches when she applies the hangover cure jutsu to him, and she spends a long minute feeling envious before scooping the kitten up to drop on him. It starts exploring its new position busily as she turns her attention to the folder.

Congratulations on your first successful arrest, the note says in her mom’s handwriting, and, baffled, she flips it open.

It’s a booking form, also filled out in her mom’s handwriting… but that’s where it starts getting weird.

Because the mugshots feature Uzume, Amano, and the kitten that even now is starting to busily kneed Amano’s side, claws pricking and catching on his shirt. Amano snorts awake, squints briefly at the mid-morning sunlight coming in the room, and basically looks like he hadn’t been getting drunk right alongside her last night. She’s envious again, because she’s pretty sure her hair is a mass of tangles and her face looks like shit.

The kitten, knocked off balance, tumbles off his chest and lands on the couch in front of him. Uzume shifts it onto her lap as she continues flipping through the folder.

“I’m pretty sure we arrested a kitten last night,” she tells him.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Amano replies, rubbing a hand over his eyes before sitting up. He grabs one of the coffee mugs and peers at the kitten. “I assume this is the criminal? What were the charges, aside from assault? And what are we supposed to call… him? Her?”

Uzume flips back through the pages. “No assault,” she reports. “It’s a he, apparently, and he’s been charged with trespassing, vagrancy, and being illegally small in public. And… his name is ‘The Perpetrator’? He’s been sentenced to a year of house arrest, and mom’s going to be his parole officer.”

They study The Perpetrator, who has flopped onto his side and started licking one of his hind paws.

“I hope you realize you’re never going to live this down,” Amano says.

“Shut up, you were involved in this too. Besides — it’s just a cat, it’s not that interesting.”

Annoyingly… Amano is right.

Even twenty years down the line, people are still asking her if she’s arrested any kittens recently.

To make things worse, apprehending The Perp was both her first and only successful arrest.

The paperwork for her transfer to the Sensory Squad has “personality is better suited to fieldwork” as the reason for transfer, along with a commendation for catching The Perp in the act, but unofficially — “refusal to adhere to procedure” and “too volatile for police work” were only two of the many reasons that caused Kotachi to fire her only weeks after she started with the MP.

The damn cat was her only impact on the Konoha Military Police.

Shikako pauses and fishes out a folder from the back of one of the filing cabinets. It was one that she’d thought was empty, but she’d looked inside anyway, just to be thorough. The records from the MP had been taken after the massacre, so it was really strange that one had been missed.

Flipping it open, she pauses for a moment. “Hey Sasuke?”

“What?” he calls from a different room.

“Why does the MP have a permanent criminal record for a cat?”