Disclaimer: Naruto isn't mine. You'll have to go to Masashi Kishimoto ;)

Byouki

In this story Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke are 18 years. Sasuke came back after Naruto defeated Pain. He was already on his way to Konoha in the manga to kill the elders; instead he really wanted to return after killing Itachi and being told the truth by Madara.

He had to stay in jail for half a year, was on probation for the next four months and couldn't do any C or higher ranked missions for the year after that. Since two months of the beginning of this story he can do higher ranked missions.

He had to attend three hearings since he came back, one immediately after he came back, the second after the half year jail period and the third after the probation.

Chapter 1: 22nd of June

Naruto felt the rush that a battle brings.

He proficiently dodged a few stray shuriken, which were originally not aimed for him, and a blow to the head. He put his hands together while making eye contact with Sakura; she nodded back.

"Kage Bunshin no jutsu."

Immediately two clones appeared next to him. They both charged directly at the female Kumo shinobi he was fighting. Naruto himself turned around; right on time to see Sakura punch a ninja with an eye patch, in the gut. He was punched straight toward Naruto.

Naruto grabbed the man's arm and swung him 270 degrees, directly into the woman that his clones had kicked toward him. They made a loud 'thud' sound and the Kumo pair fell to the ground, unconscious.

One of his clones stayed behind to tie the ninja's together. His other clone came to him and together with Sakura they charged in the direction where Sasuke and Kakashi were fighting.

Sasuke was fighting a ninja with long dark brown hair tied up in a braid, near a cliff at the end of the forest where they were in. Kakashi was about 100 meters ahead in said forest, jumping from tree to tree while using all kinds of jutsus on the two kunoichi he was fighting.

Sasuke had just finished the hand seals to perform a Katon jutsu to roast the Kumo ninja in front of him, but the brown haired ninja had his counter ready and used a water jutsu to cool the fire down. Right then Sakura tried to slam her fist into the ninja, who dodged it. Instead she hit the tree behind him that split in two along the length.

While Sasuke and Sakura, now along with the Naruto clone, were fighting near the cliff, the real Naruto ran straight past Sasuke towards Kakashi to help him.

He could hear his clone and Sakura fighting hand-to-hand with the ninja, while a chirping sound from Sasuke came. Naruto made yet another Bunshin that made a Rasengan in his hand, then jumped in front of him to take a jutsu directed at him and poof-ed out of existence.

Naruto aimed the Rasengan at the short spiked, purple-haired kunoichi's chest. She could step aside just in time and instead place her right hand on his forehead as her left hand made special one handed signs.

"Secret art of the Ritangatsu," she yelled.

Naruto tried to step back but was now being held tightly at his arms from behind. The other black haired kunoichi that had been fighting Kakashi, held him in place.

"What the-," was as far as he could get when a horrible pain shot through his head. His knees gave out on him, but he was still being held by the black haired kunoichi from behind and the purple haired kunoichi still held her hand against his head.

At that moment, while Naruto screamed, a second scream could be heard.

A hand came chirping through the chest of the purple haired kunoichi in front of him. Kakashi had used his electric jutsu, the Raikiri. The hand of the purple haired kunoichi slipped off Naruto's head.

The kunoichi that held Naruto let him drop to the ground. The moment he hit the ground he grasped his head with his hands and bent over in pain.

The Kumo nin grasped a few kunai and threw them at Kakashi, who held the body of the now dying kunoichi as a shield in front of him to intercept the kunai. He wanted to pull his hand out of the dying kunoichi's chest when said kunoichi found her last bit of strength and held his wrist tight.

"Now, Kohako!" she spluttered through the blood coming from her mouth.

Kohako didn't need telling twice and pulled a katana from her belt, pointing it directly at Kakashi's heart and sprinted forward.

A scream filled the air yet again, along with a clash of katanas clinging against each other. Sasuke had intercepted the katana of Kohako with his own. The scream that still echoed through the air had belonged to Naruto.

The purple haired kunoichi dropped her hands. A 'shlrp' was heard when Kakashi freed himself and let the kunoichi drop to the ground next to Naruto. Looking at Sasuke and seeing he could handle himself, the copy ninja's gaze turned back to Naruto.

Sakura was already at his side, her hands glowing pink with chakra. Trying to calm the screaming Naruto, she leaned over to him, but he jerked away from her.

He was still gripping his head, but when she laid her hand softly on his shoulder he stopped screaming and instead began to cry. Tears rolled over his whiskered cheeks. Kakashi came behind Naruto and held him still so Sakura could begin her healing.

"Listen, Naruto, everything is going to be all right," she said as she held his head in her warm glowing hands. He whimpered a little and mumbled something inaudible but at the same time relaxed and stopped struggling.

Sasuke came walking back as he wiped some blood from his katana and put it back in its sheathe.

"Good work, Sasuke," Kakashi said, letting go of Naruto.

Sasuke looked from Naruto to Sakura, who had a look of worry on her face. Naruto had stopped crying and whimpering, but was still looking like he was in pain.

"What is wrong with him?" Sasuke asked, looking at Sakura with a straight face. But Sakura knew better; he was worried.

"I'm not sure." She put her hands down. "I think that technique she used on him was some sort of mind erasing jutsu." She looked up at them.

"How bad is it?" Kakashi asked, worry lining his voice.

"I don't think the jutsu was completely successful, but he still needs medical care. I can't do too much about this, except for taking most of the pain away. " She now directed herself to Naruto. She gripped his arms and he opened his eyes, though he did not look directly at her. "Naruto, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?"

"Wh-what… n… nhhh," was al that came from him as he closed his eyes again. Sasuke lowered himself on his hunches and spoke with a soft voice to Naruto.

"Oi, dobe… Naruto, look at me." Those last few calm words worked like magic. Naruto looked him directly in the eye.

"Sa-Sasuke?"

Sasuke saw that he looked very pale, still some wet tears on his face. "Naruto, do you know where you are?" he asked, looking at those sapphire blue eyes.

"I'm… I…," he took a deep breath and started again, "I… I don't feel so good." And he doubled over to vomit right in between Sasuke and Sakura, who both backed away a bit.

Sakura began to stroke his back.

Finally Naruto came back up again, still some saliva hanging from his mouth. Wiping it away, he breathed a little heavier.

"There, there," Sakura said, while patting his back, "Do you feel better now?"

"Yeah," was the soft reply of the other.

After sitting like that for about three minutes, Naruto tried to stand up, but Sasuke pushed him down again.

"We gotta go… the… the mission," Naruto said. "I'm fine" he added, but it didn't sound as convincing as he had wanted it to, especially not with the pain written on his face.

"No, you're not," Sasuke shot back.

"Okay, Naruto, you and Sakura head back to Konoha," Kakashi finally said, "Sasuke and I will finish the mission and bring those shinobis to the client. We will catch up to you later on."

Their mission had been to bring back the very Kumo shinobi they had been fighting; dead or alive.

"But-"

"No, Naruto, Kakashi-sensei is right," Sakura cut him off. "We have to go back. You were already sick before we got here, I'm still mad you tried to hide it, and now this." She closed her eyes for a second. "You need medical care. I can't do much more for you and I'm still not sure what that woman did or tried to do to you."

"Bu… o-okay."

They all looked perplexed. Did he just agree so easily? Sakura's eyebrows shot up, Kakashi's eyes widened a bit and Sasuke said, "She really must have messed up your head."

"Hmpf."

"Okay. Let's go, Sasuke." Kakashi started walking towards the bodies. He turned around and added, "Naruto… listen to what Sakura says, ne?" His eyes were upside down like half moon crescents as he turned again to walk further.

Sasuke looked at Naruto one more time and said, "Don't do anything stupid… Naruto," which actually meant 'be careful'.

"I never do…"

Everybody was quiet, thinking something along the lines of 'yeah, right'.

"Come on, Naruto, carefully." Sakura put an arm around him for support and helped him up. Naruto groaned a little and his face crunched up in pain.

"See you later."

"Ja na."

-x-

"How is he?" Kakashi asked.

Kakashi and Sasuke had finished the mission and had caught up with Sakura and Naruto close to Konoha. Naruto lay resting against a tree. The rest of team 7 stood a little further away, watching him.

"He says he's fine, but I can see he is in pain and he really needs a check-up. I know he sometimes can say weird things normally, but now he really says weird things every now and then. Mixing words up and saying the wrong words, while trying to say the right things." She looked worriedly at Naruto, who was mumbling in his sleep, "Ra-rame... n…"

"Alright, when he wakes up, we go."

"Did the mission go well?" Sakura asked, sitting on the ground. She looked over to Sasuke, who was walking toward Naruto.

"The client, Momushi-san, was very delighted when we arrived. He even let his many women-"

"Sasu… ke?" Naruto blinked a few times and smiled.

"What are you smiling about, dobe? You look like something the cat dragged in."

"A 'hello, how are you?' would have sufficed, you know."

And at those words Sasuke gave Naruto one of his rare smiles. Naruto snorted.

That had apparently been a mistake, for his nose began to bleed viciously. Sasuke leaned over to him and gripped his nose to stop the bleeding. He was getting a little pale again, Sasuke noticed.

"I'm getting dizzy," Naruto stated, "But if you don't pinch my nose so soft, it would feel worse."

"What?"

"He is mixing up words again." Sakura came hurrying toward them.

"No, I am."

Sakura put her hand on the bridge of his nose and poured a bit of chakra into it. After a moment she let his nose go. "Better?"

"Yeah," came the soft reply, "Danks." Sasuke was still holding his nose closed.

Taking the tissue Sakura was offering he wiped the blood from his face. Slowly some colour came back into his face.

"Come on, we have to go. I'll carry you."

"Eh?" Naruto was a little surprised, looking up at Sasuke, but nonetheless let Sasuke help him up on his feet and climbed up Sasuke's back.

"Let's go," Sasuke said to the others when he was sure the blond was safely settled on his back.

-x-X-x-

"Itai."

"Then don't struggle!"

"But it's freezing in here and your creepy, cold instruments aren't helping!"

Tsunade just finished putting some small stethoscope-like devices on Naruto's forehead and was now removing them. Tsunade had been checking Naruto's head until now. He sat in his shirt and pants on top of an observation table. Sakura stood next to him on his other side, redrawing the needle from a syringe, now filled with blood.

"Just sit still."

"Hmpf," Naruto frowned.

Tsunade finished collecting the stethoscope-like devices and grasped a small light from the table next to her, which was filled with instruments from different kind of sizes and sorts. She held it in front of his eyes and looked how his pupils dilated.

"Ehn, do you need to do that? It's so light." Naruto tried to close his eyes.

"No kidding. Perhaps that's because it is a light," Sakura said getting the light from Tsunade and laying it back on the table. Naruto grumbled.

Tsunade now got some cards from a drawer and held one in front of him.

"What colour do you see on this card?" she asked very seriously.

"What?" Naruto pulled up an eyebrow, like she was crazy; he wasn't a toddler.

"What colour, Naruto?" she said a little harsher.

"Blue," it was green.

Tsunade held another one up, it was red with green.

"Red and green."

She held the next card up. This card had pictures of the four seasons on it.

Naruto signed. "Spring, summer, fall and winter," he told her, looking more bored by the second.

Next was a card with animals: a rooster, a cow, a spider and a cat.

"Rooster, thing that stands in the meadow, a spider and… eto… pass?"

"You can't pass. It's not a game," Sakura said.

"Hmm," he thought for a while, putting his hand under his chin, "then I… I can't remember."

"Okay, I want to do one more test. Tell me what happened on this last mission," Tsunade said. "What do you remember?"

"Oh, okay. You gave us a B-ranked mission to get…" he tried counting in his head the number of ninja, failed, and then tried with his fingers. That didn't seem to work either so he decided to just say, "a couple of Kumo ninja's, for a guy named Muchi-or-something. We searched in the area indicated in the mission briefing for a couple of days- "

"How many?"

"How should I know?... Wait, how many what?"

"Days, how many days did you search for the nukenins?"

"Two days, then the next day we found them… or they found us… we kind of found each other, more or less. Anyway, we got in a fight, Sakura-chan and I fought a man and a woman, teme was fighting a ninja with a braid; I'm still not sure if it was a man or a woman. And Kakashi-sensei was fighting as well."

Sakura pulled one eyebrow up 'fighting as well'.

"Sakura-chan and I handled the men we were fighting and we went to Sasuke. Sakura-chan helped him and I went to Kakashi-sensei. After that, all I remember is pain and… I'm not sure, but there was something else."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Next I remember Sasuke and after that Sakura-chan helped me walk back home. It's a bit hazy after the pain part 'till Sasuke carried me back," he smiled a bit at that, looking over to Sasuke, who had been standing 3 meters away all the time.

"Okay, that's good. What was that other feeling you felt apart from the pain?"

"I'm not sure. It's hard to describe."

"Think about it for a while."

Naruto went silent and after some time he closed his eyes. He tried to recall everything he had felt, but it was all too much of a jumble, so he tried to concentrate on a separate feeling.

Finally after a few minutes he said, "It felt like… red." He opened his eyes as if what he had said explained everything, which it apparently did to him.

"So?" Sasuke asked, "What does that mean."

"Kyuubi," Naruto said simply.

"What does he have to do with this?" Tsunade asked.

"I don't know," Naruto said shrugging, like she had just asked him to explain what a star exactly is. Tsunade considered this for a moment.

"That was that. I can't say for certain what's wrong with you, so I want you to make an appointment with Inoichi-san, just to be sure," Tsunade finally said, not giving anything away, "Alright, now pull out your shirt and lay back."

"What? Didn't I already tell you that it's cold in here, Tsunade no baa-chan?"

"Just do it, Naruto."

And so he complied. The moment he pulled up his shirt, Sakura gasped.

The seal was clearly visible, black as the night on his tan skin.

"That's odd," Tsunade said, also looking at it.

Once he had pulled out his shirt and had thrown it on the ground, Naruto looked down as well, already knowing what they had been talking about.

"How long has it been visible?" Tsunade asked, now examining the swirly patterns on his stomach.

"Eto... I think I might have seen it… erhm… yetrdj." He added the last part more in a mumble than in actual words.

"What was that?"

"Yesterday," he said a little bit louder this time, barely making a sound.

"What? And you didn't say anything?" Tsunade asked angry, while at the same time sounding a bit worried. She pushed him down, so he was lying on the table now.

"I don't know; the mission and everything... Besides it's not like it hasn't happened before." He suddenly realized what he had said. Trying to correct his mistake, he added quickly an "I mean-", but it was too late.

"You mean this happened before? Since when?"

Naruto shrunk a little. "I think around the time I began feeling ill every now and then." He shrugged slowly.

"You mean this is already going on for two weeks now?" Sasuke suddenly joined in the conversation. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't want you-"

"Two weeks already? And you didn't say anything?" Tsunade was getting furious.

"Well… more like six weeks now," Naruto said very quietly, hoping they wouldn't hear, but just in case he already shrunk.

"WHAT?" three voices said in unison.

"Alright, this is enough. Kakashi," Kakashi stood up from the chair in the corner he had been occupying, very silently, until now, "come over here and take a look. I want your opinion on this." Tsunade took a step backwards, having finished her examination on the seal.

Naruto still lay on his back on the observation table, shivering a bit. First Kakashi studied the seal only by looking. His face didn't conceal anything. Naruto was getting a little bit nervous and very irritated about the fact that no one was turning the heater on.

Then Kakashi laid his fingertips on the seal. At the moment he touched Naruto the blond yelped a bit, not having expected the cold fingertips on his stomach.

Kakashi looked up for a moment and then back at the seal, now pouring some of his own chakra through it.

"I won't deny that I'm no expert on this kind of seal, but for as far as I remember, it looks a bit different; like it has changed." He looked from Naruto, who now tried to see the seal again for himself, to Tsunade.

"Yes, I had the same impression. Naruto?" They both looked to Naruto, who looked from Tsunade to Kakashi to Tsunade again as he sat upright.

"Well, I don't know." They looked at him a bit surprised. "It's not like I made a study of the damn thing," and at that he crossed his arms.

Sasuke stepped forward to look at it as well. "It looks like the line of the swirl has gotten thicker and the side markings are less visible than before."

"How do you know?" Sakura asked, knowing she had never seen the seal before. When had he? But Sasuke just remained silent.

Sakura looked over to Naruto. Apparently he hadn't heard her because he was staring at his seal again, trying to confirm for himself what Sasuke had said.

"All right, that was it. I will inform Inoichi-san about this and get back to you about the date of the examination," the blonde woman said and walked out of the examination room.

While Naruto was pulling his shirt back on and Sakura was cleaning the instruments, Tsunade waited for Kakashi and Sasuke to step out of the room as well.

"Things don't seem good for him. Although from what Sakura told me about the tests she did before, his head is getting better. His 'mis-sayings' are getting lesser. It might be the influence of the fox, but I still want Inoichi-san to find out what that woman did to him, or tried to do. One of you should be present with him, just to be sure. You know how Naruto can get over such things."

"I'll go with him," Sasuke offered.

"Good. I don't like what is going on with the seal at all, but right now we can't do too much about it. I need to do some research about this. That won't be easy. Kakashi, you should come with me and tell me what you know about it."

"Yes, Hokage-sama." Kakashi turned back to Sasuke. "Well then, don't go making things worse than they are for Naruto in the time you are alone." He grinned at Sasuke, who had a foul look on his face, and walked away with the Godaime Hokage.

Sasuke was still scowling when Naruto appeared next to him.

"Shall we go to Ichiraku ramen? I'm hungry… and cold." He smiled at Sasuke. Sasuke nodded.

"Sakura-chan are you coming as well?"

"No, I need to clean this up and go home. I promised my mom to help her with some things when I would come back from this mission."

"Okay, see you later." Naruto waved at Sakura, who waved back, and turned around to walk away. Sasuke came walking next to him and put an arm around his waist.

"You really are cold."

"I told you so."

And they took off, leaving the hospital.