To be Hokage
The late afternoon sun gave the unusually silent back compound of the Konoha Academy a lazy, golden haze. Shadows, long and languid, stretched across the open field, its sandy surface compacted by generations of running, jumping, laughing Academy students. The trees surrounding the field rustled softly in the evening breeze, whispering their secrets amongst themselves. One tree in particular, though, seemed to stand apart - it whispered to itself, talked to itself, and to the swing that creaked on its strong, sturdy branch. Then the sun dipped and the tree seemed to burst into flame as the last orange rays of the day were flung upon it. Then the flame spread to the rest of the trees, as if a fire were consuming all of them, their roots, their trunks, their branches, their leaves - and all of them shone with a magnificient orange glow.
A lone figure stood under the tree, his clothes an unseemly clash of black and orange rivaled only by his unruly blonde hair. One of his hands ran up and down the well-worn rope that secured the wooden swing to its gnarled support. It was a feeling he was familiar with; after all, much of the wearing had probably been done by him. He smiled a little - this had been the playground of his childhood. No - he shook his head. It had been more than that. The Academy had been his childhood. It had been here, sitting on this swing by himself, watching the rest of the kids play, that he had truly grown up. It'd been here that he'd learnt to deal with the pain of solitude and rejection - the kind of pain that could bring a grown man to his knees. And it'd been here that he'd told himself that he would prove himself to all of them - that he would be Hokage.
"Naruto!"
The figure turned around to see a pink-haired girl advancing towards him determinedly.
"Sakura-chan!" he flashed his trademark grin. "What's up?"
"What do you mean, what's up? You were supposed to report to Godaime-sama right after the mission. Where did you go? You're lucky I covered up for you - she was furious that the report was late!" Sakura shook her fists at her friend.
Naruto scratched at his head. "Uhm...Sorry Sakura-chan. I'll treat you to ramen-"
"You idiot! I don't want ramen! I want you to-" Sakura stopped short, rage preventing her from coming up with a suitable means of its own appeasement.
"Come on," she ended with a sigh of exasperation.
"Come on where?" Naruto asked confusedly.
"You idiot! Ichiraku of course! The rest are there anyway."
Naruto smiled brightly at the kunoichi as they walked off together. And Sakura could not help but smile back. Naruto was an idiot, but one thing was for sure - no one could stay angry with him for long when he was smiling like that. Exasperated, maybe, but not angry.
Behind them the swing finally slowed to a halt as the shadows lengthened across it, shrouding it in the murky grey of dusk.
TROUBLESOME MISSION! IS HE BACK?
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
They were known as the Rookie Nine. People emphasised the "The" when they talked about them, much like they did "The" Sannin. Well, there were twelve of them and they were hardly rookies now, but the name had stuck from their Genin days. It was just like them anyway to have such a ludicrous and inappropriate name. But the name belied one of the strongest batches of ninja Konoha had ever seen. It wasn't like they'd graduated from the academy at 3, become Chuunin at 4 and joined ANBU at 5 - no, their strength wasn't anything so obvious as that. It was of a more subtle nature, an invisible strength borne of the hardest struggles together, forged in the heat of fighting against each other, for each other, built on an uncanny understanding that sometimes surprised even them.
Dinner at Ichiraku was a tradition that'd started with the ramen freak - Naruto and Sakura often ate there after training or work, and he sometimes dragged Shikamaru along. Shikamaru usually had dinner with Chouji anyway, so he'd come with his ex-teammate. Even if Ino managed to come up with an excuse for Sakura she couldn't bring herself to miss out on an Ino-Shika-Cho outing, so she came too. Kiba and Shino both knew how Hinata felt about Naruto, and they also knew how shy she'd be without the both of them, so they'd come as well whenever Hinata casually asked if they were free for a ramen dinner. And there was Lee, who didn't like ramen as much as he did Sakura and he somehow dragged Neji and Tenten along. So there was the Rookie Nine - dinner after dinner, year after year, each of them going their separate paths, but always bound by the village they loved more than anything else and the friendship they'd established since those days in the Chuunin exam.
"How did the mission go, Naruto?" Lee asked.
Naruto slurped down a long strand of ramen and grinned. "Not too bad. I think the old hag's been going easy on me."
Shikamaru frowned slightly at that.
"What?" Chouji asked through a mouth of beef.
"Yeah, why the face?" Naruto asked. Immediately, everyone quietened down. Naruto was their unspoken leader but Shikamaru's opinion was never taken lightly - it did, after all, have the backing of a 200-IQ.
"No...I was just thinking of my own troublesome mission..."
"Every mission is troublesome to you, Shikamaru!" Ino rolled her eyes.
"No, this one was different...It was strange." Shikamaru's eyes narrowed as he recounted the events of the past week or so.
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
It was supposed to be a simple, straightforward B-rank mission - retrieve a scroll which had been stolen. Ordinarily, this would have gotten a C-ranking, but the scroll in question was an ancient manuscript of historical value to the Fire Country and the job had been commissioned by the Fire-daimyo himself. So, Tsunade had upped the ranking and put one of her best Jounin on it. It was a solo mission, but most of the Konoha ninja had only just returned from the Mist insurgency and they were all taking a break. It must have occurred to Tsunade that Shikamaru himself had only taken a day off, but having read the brief, Shikamaru figured that it was more trouble talking himself out of it than taking on the mission.
So he made his way to the capital of the Fire Country and its National Historical Museum where the scroll had been kept on display. The daimyo personally welcomed "their esteemed emissary from the Hidden Leaf Village, whose valiant efforts are evermore the bulwark of the country" but after the required protocol, Shikamaru plunged straight into the investigation.
The guards, having made their usual rounds in the morning, had found the display case razed to the ground and its contents missing. However, nothing unusual had happened in the night - the only way into the museum was through them, and they hadn't seen anybody at all the entire night. Examination of the display case revealed what Shikamaru had suspected - the case had been burnt by a very strong fire, one hot enough to melt even the glass display. He then went on to interview the guards.
"Come to think of it, I did go to the toilet to take a crap, if it matters at all." The first guard admitted.
"A crap? That was fast..." the second guard muttered.
"How long were you at the toilet?" Shikamaru asked.
"About fifteen minutes...maybe slightly more."
"No way! You were back right after that drunk left! And he came right after you'd gone!"
"Maybe you fell asleep!"
"I certainly did not!"
Shikamaru looked at the both of them as they began arguing. "Drunk?" he asked.
"Yeah, a drunk came by - he looked really wasted, so I just told him to leave."
"Wasted?"
"Yeah his eyes were really red and bloodshot or something - I couldn't see clearly in the moonlight. Must have been drinking for days."
Having decided that he'd heard enough, Shikamaru decided to examine the museum again. Apart from traces of dirt and earth (which were in themselves nothing to make a fuss about - people came in with muddy shoes all the time) along the route to the case, there was nothing in particular. It'd take no more than about three minutes for an average ninja to get from the entrance to the display case. Another five to cut, and another three back out. The one who'd gone to the toilet was right. It'd been fifteen minutes that he'd been away. The drunk was the key then. Genjutsu, probably. But the guard had insisted that he'd been awake all the time. So it wasn't just simple Nemuri-type jutsu then. And it involved warping the person's sense of time...
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
"So? What's the conclusion?" Kiba urged. "It's getting pretty late."
"It ended normally enough. I found footprints near the back of the museum. The mud on them seemed to match the dirt found in the museum and I traced them to this person who was hurrying out of the city. It was found to be on him, and he was arrested for theft."
"Why did he do it?" Lee asked.
"Don't know. He insisted right till the end that he didn't take it, that he was set up."
The eleven of them pondered the case for a moment, then prepared to bid each other goodnight and leave for their respective homes.
"Oh, and he asked something really strange too...the daimyo, just as I was leaving, he asked if Sa-sasuke had returned to Konoha since the assault on Sound and Akatsuki."
At that, everyone froze. There was a silence, then Sakura asked hesitantly, as if afraid of the answer. "What did you say?";
"I told him that he hadn't been back for some time."
It was then that Naruto knew that Sakura hadn't forgotten their ex-teammate, nor was she going to forget him for some time, if ever. With that, the Rookie Nine made their separate ways home.
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Naruto walked Sakura back, as he always did whenever he got the chance.
"Say...Naruto...would you be angry if I asked you whether you think of Sasuke?" Sakura asked softly.
Naruto turned to look at her. Her pale, pink hair seemed a luminescent veil under the moonlight.
"Angry? No, why should I be? Of course I think of him sometimes. He- he and Kakashi-sensei, and of course you...when we were together...those were some of the best moments in my life." Naruto locked his hands behind his head and looked up at the stars in the sky. "But he made his decision. And I respect that."
"Naruto...It was him, wasn't it."
Sakura didn't mean it as a query - they both knew it for a fact. Most probably Shikamaru knew it too. Sasuke had gained the Mangekyou Sharingan in the fight with Itachi - and that was the only way anyone could use Tsukiyomi and Amaterasu.
"Why would he do it?" Naruto asked reasonably, though he knew with a sinking feeling that it couldn't be anyone else.
Sakura didn't answer and they walked the rest of the journey to Sakura's house in silence.
"Thanks, Naruto. You really don't have to, you know," Sakura said at her doorstep.
"Hey, if I don't maybe one day I'll find that you've run off to join some village or other," Naruto said with a grin.
Sakura rolled her eyes, attempting a grin to show that she appreciated Naruto's attempt.
"Night."
"Night."
Naruto had turned to leave when a voice emerged from the shadows.
"There's more to the scroll than meets the eye."
"You held something back just now, didn't you?" Naruto asked Shikamaru, who fell into step beside him.
"Naruto...that scroll - it wasn't any ordinary manuscript. It was a contract scroll - used in Kuchiyose."
"You read it?"
"Yeah, when I found it on the person. There's no way it'd be of use to anyone other than a ninja. And it'd have to be a ninja with quite some chakra."
"What was the summon?"
There was a tense silence, as if Shikamaru were gathering the courage to say it. Naruto turned to look at his friend.
"What was it?"
"When I gave my report to Tsunade-sama...Naruto, you should have seen her. She nearly freaked out. Then she said that she was going to put me in charge of an S-rank investigative mission, commissioned by her."
"Shikamaru, what was it?";
"It didn't have a name. From what I managed to read, it works the same way as Edo Tensei. By using human sacrifices. But that's not all. The thing - it's more evil than Shukaku, or your Kyuubi, or even Manda. It's sole purpose is to destroy."
After a while, Naruto spoke up. "The old hag knows all this?"
"She does."
"Shikamaru, take care of yourself. You may be in danger. And...keep the Sasuke thing to yourself."
Then both of them flitted into the dark streets, headed for the comfort of home.
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
Naruto as voiceover: What the hell's going on dattebayo? Why's Sakura running after...?
Scene: Sakura leading Kakashi, Gai, Kiba and Shino through the forest.
N: Who are those people Neji and Lee are fighting?
Scene: Lee and Neji, battle-weary and panting heavily
N: And what the hell's that dattebayo!
Scene: Two coffins rising from the ground.
N: Next episode: Konoha attacked! Enemies new and old
