#and i love a dadmode nines

[its-sixxers]

Ava and Nines for @astral--ghost! Thanks for letting me work on 'em!

[rourhksapocolypse]

Big points in its favor:

Hinata grows as a young woman and all but dismantles Neji during the preliminary exam before wrecking her opponent.

Orochimaru gets rekt, but not yet dead.

Sakura sass because she's practically an adult by the time of the Wave mission, rather than the whiny-stalker child of Canon and more than willing to knock some heads when the boys disrespect her (and fully capable of dishing it out just as much as taking it). She's a highly destructive medic nin without needing Tsunade and missing-nin Sasuke to tell her to grow up.

Sasuke being more than a Broody Emo going for lonely power that says "Hn". That alone is great, but combine that with healing emotionally and getting friends he's absolutely amazing.

Naruto having the confidence of his Boruto version and the power of Sage Mode by combining the Power of Friendship significantly earlier than Canon and the knowledge needed to make use of his unorthodox intellect.

Feral Dadmode Kakashi healing from his past

Rookie Nine being absolute caring Assholes. Found Family with no care for how it could go wrong, because they love each other, would do practically anything for each other.

"I Regret Nothing!"

Mentions of RL being rabid at one point. That one's funny :]

Obito is not a mindless, hopeless flunky and isn't completely alone.

Iruka being a Sensible Adult. With entirely too much patience and too little fear:}

Currently reading: Of Harrowed Hearts

Tagline: I Regret Nothing!

With today's chapter of CmpWz's Hybrid Hive (176) shortly read and done with (still amusing to see the freak out The Queen of Escalation gives people in Wz's stories) I turn back to my most recent re-read of Harrowed Hearts, and the basic idea, the plot's tagline so to speak, is "Kurama decides to teach Naruto How to Ninja, Team 7 is therefore baby badasses". With incredible detail and even better character development and interactions, this is one of the longer and significantly higher quality Naruto fanfics out there. It's better than Seraviel's A Drop of Poison for sheer immersion and takes the entire team - heck, practically the whole of Konoha, but the Rookie Nine and Kakashi and Iruka most of all, one of several levels of Badass upgrades from Canon, alongside a deeper look at lore and chakra without getting bogged down in everything about it or the world.

End result?

Long, excellently written fic that overpowers the main characters without feeling cheap. They earned that upgrade, in blood, sweat, and character development that feels like growing up organically.

In short, a story I highly recommend.