A/N: Here is the second part! Thank you so much for my reviewers: lalala, The Lady Arianrod, cfox, -kAtOrSe-

To Lady Geuna and Dark Mimiru-Chan: I'm really sorry but I don't think this will end as Kakashi/Iruka. I don't really hate it, because I myself is a fan of some great KakaIru fics, but I just want to try something new. I hope there are already many KakaIru fics out there that you won't get mad at me... Oh, and thank you so much for the review! Hope you will still read this story!

To Bishiehuggler: That's a very close guess! Not quite right but not wrong either XD I'm glad that you like this fic and share the same passion for an unconventional pairing. Thank you for reviewing, hope you'll like this chapter too!

Thanks to my great beta-reader, kyubi-san! Your patience to point out my ridiculous mistakes is just remarkable! This chapter is entirely for you! Oh, and yes, you're right about the Big Dipper XD

DISCLAIMER: Masashi Kishimoto-sensei owns Naruto, I obviously don't.

WARNING: This contains male/male pairing: Naruto/Sasuke and Kakashi/? Perhaps OOC characters.

/Italic words in here/ are for thoughts.

Reflection of Passion
Author: SIB
Chapter Two: Prelude of Chaos

It was almost dark in the forest. The green canopy of leaves was so thick that the vast sky was merely seen as blue tints in seas of green, peeking behind the dense trees. Despite the protection it provided from direct heat of sunlight, it was no less hot under the shadow of many trees. The air was still in there, for wind was deterred by its thickness from cooling down the forest and its inhabitants.

Squatting on one of the branches was a boy dressed in bright orange. Sweat perpetually poured down from a mass of untidy blond hair, dampening his face which was crinkled up in a mix of impatience, ennui, and undivided attention. Blue eyes were fixed on a spot at the ground below, where a snake at twenty feet long was coiling peacefully.

Edgily the shinobi growled under his breath. He was excited at first, to do a C-rank mission after carrying out many D-rank ones which ranged from mowing someone's lawn which was apparently too large to be mown by its lazy landlord, to babysitting the most horrible baby he had ever met in the whole planet. However, the current state of affairs forced him to change his opinion.

Really, he couldn't find the point in having a snake –or a twenty-feet long anaconda in that matter– as a pet, except if the owner was somehow related to Orochimaru who used his 'pets' to destroy half of a ninja village. This owner obviously didn't give a second damn thought if his pet managed to escape from its huge glass cage, which exactly what was happening now. Add that to the fact that the said owner happened to own an intolerably large estate, which also happened to have a private jungle inside it. (Really, these rich people were so weird. They could have spent their money on anything else more useful, ramen for instance...) Then in some ridiculous ways, the rich owner happened to be enlightened by a bright idea to hire shinobis to look for his precious missing-snake and the mission furthermore happened to fall on Team 7's responsibility. Of course, he merely happened to be the one who found the damn snake first too.

The annoyed young boy wiped his pouring sweat with his long sleeve. Oh right, the current season also happened to be summer and he happened to wear a long-sleeved jacket. Not that he could really do something to the latter; his wardrobe didn't give that much choice, but if only he had chosen to wear his cool short-sleeved t-shirt...

He had been there for maybe fifteen minutes, waiting for the rest of his teammates to show up since they had divided themselves into four groups to perform a more efficient search, provided with a transmitter and a receiver each. Anyone who spotted the prey first had to notify his or her location with the transmitter and waited for the others to come before taking any action. He was used to wait, or rather trained to, on account of his sensei's infamous habit, but to wait where he was permitted to complain as loud as possible was quite different with his present condition where any noise more than twenty decibels was strictly prohibited. And this hellish infuriating heat...

/That's it!/ He had enough, thank you, and now he was going to catch the snake by himself! His teammates and their instructor could put the blame on their own snail-like speed if he were to fail later!

Stooping his head lower, the yellow-haired gennin prepared himself for a leap straight to the snake. First he should grab its head and then-

The sweat made his palms a bit slippery and the next second he had lost his balanced and fallen off the branch. Naruto was ready to scream in horrid of falling on top of a twenty-feet long snake and getting eaten by an angry reptile soon after, when he found a hand covering his mouth, effectively silencing him from emitting unnecessary noises.

He blinked and noticed that there was another hand holding his waist and also preventing him from falling further. Somehow he felt terribly familiar with this, as if he had experienced it for many times. Before he could register the feeling, a flat low voice had muttered in front of his ear.

"You. Are. An. Idiot."

Of course. Uchiha Sasuke. The last heir of the Uchiha-clan. A genius ninja who had the privileged ability of the sharingan. The cold bastard who happened to be his teammate and oddly also a prince to most of girls in Konoha. The blond shinobi chose to conveniently leave out the part which stated that Sasuke was also the person who probably had the longest records in saving him from countless disgraceful accidents.

Regaining his balanced position, Naruto shot back, "And you are a sluggish snail, bastard!"

The black-haired shinobi glared his friend to silence as their prey shot up its egg-shaped head in realization of the pursuers' presence. The two boys noticed immediately and waited with bated-breath until the reptile lowered its head again, probably dismissing them as mere fellow jungle friends.

Naruto huffed in relief and now was glaring back at his teammate. For some reasons, to forget or simply being oblivious of the fact that Sasuke was his savior seemed so easy for him.

Before any of them could start more bickering, their long-awaited instructor had emerged right beside the black-haired genin, still wrapped in his air of calm jollity. His lazy eye, however, seemed to be screaming warnings and threats if they dared to pull any motion or sound more than necessary. It reminded Naruto to the first test Kakashi had executed on them, where probably for the first time in his life the kitsune boy had ever felt raw fear to the continuity of his supposedly-still-long life. It also taught him to better obey his sensei for now.

A moment later, Sakura leapt to his side with almost no sound. She stared at the large snake which Kakashi pointed at and nodded, acknowledging their target which was now languidly stretching its long body. The kunoichi shivered slightly at the unsavory sight as her instructor's voice chimed in her head. Anaconda or Eunectes murinus, as he had said, was the largest non-summoned snake. It usually killed by squeezing its prey with bone-breaking power, and the one they were pursuing right now weighed no less than a hundred kilos. However –she remembered seeing an ominous smile beneath the black mask at that word, damn him– the owner had planted two fangs along with modified salivary glands to his anaconda, which made their large prey not only a constrictor but also venomous snake.

Just great.

With a low whisper, the jounin instructor told them what to do. Since their client demanded for his precious pet not to be harmed in any manner, they obviously couldn't use any shuriken or kunai. Thus in that case, Sasuke should catch its head and Naruto its tail, while Sakura ought to hold its body in place and later perform a sleep-inducing spell. Kakashi elected himself to be the observer, pointedly ignoring tart looks his subordinates were shooting him.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" the jounin raised his eyebrows and took his faithful book out. The three young shinobis looked at each other and nodded in unison, leaping off of the tree at the next second.

From the corner of his eyes, Kakashi watched his genins carrying out each of their job effectively, except for once when Naruto miraculously managed to slip on the fairly dry ground. Thankfully he could catch up with the rest of his teammates and was ready in position when they simultaneously stretched out their hands to grab the still confused snake.

All went well, or so was Kakashi's conclusion until a wince of pain reached Sasuke's face and the boy let his grip loosened a bit. Barely missing a chance of escape, their prey slid its head free out of the black-haired boy's hand and ducked at once to plant its fangs on the pale inviting flesh. Astonishingly the shortest genin for once had his reflect working just on time and pulled the snake by its tail, distancing the venomous teeth from his friend's hand and also falling straight on his back as the result.

The angry reptile could have done more irreversible damage –since Sakura was still frozen in place at the horrendous mishap– if their sensei didn't leap in at once and shove the snake's head to the ground. As if something had snapped him out of his trance, Sasuke suddenly moved and cast the spell by himself. The precious pet immediately fell into deep peaceful slumber.

For a moment, no unearthly sound graced the rather quiet forest as three pairs of eyes stared hard at the only black-haired boy whose hand was still on the snake's cold skin. Then one of them exploded.

"Sasuke bastard! You screw up the mission!"

For once Sakura found herself agreeing with Naruto although she would certainly voice her opinion in a more civil manner. Since she was pouring her full concentration on pinning the snake, she absolutely had no idea of what had happened to her usually faultless teammate. Knowing Uchiha Sasuke, it ought to be pretty serious.

"Sorry."

At the small almost inaudible apology, the pink-haired girl could only stare in complete shock as Naruto's jaw dropped. Sorry? When was the last time she heard her ice prince muttering a 'sorry'? She was almost sure it was in one of her dreams only. But this Sasuke... was indisputably real which meant... Sakura was so close to pinching her cheeks in order to convince herself that it was no mere dream.

Using the initial shock to his fullest advantage, Kakashi put the awfully long snake on the genins shoulders as he flung the head over his own and cheerfully led the way out of the forest. Excellent. He would happily use Sasuke anytime to mutter a 'sorry' if it could make his loudest subordinate suffer a difficulty of shouting and complaining.

By the time they reached the forest's border, the blazing sun had begun to glide down westward as shadows grew longer. They immediately returned the big heavy snake to its owner and received a profuse spluttering of thank-you, even a dinner invitation which was politely declined by Kakashi before the hearty-eyes Naruto could accept and hug the inviter. The fox-like boy was already launching obnoxious protests when his sensei dragged him out of the rich man's residence, which unbeknownst to him, was for goodness' sake.

A moment later he found himself shivering as his face turned to a dark shade of blue from the mentioning of varieties of food their generous client usually ate. Judging from Kakashi's somber voice, perhaps the jounin had experienced it by himself. Really, rich people did have weird taste.

"That thing is so damn heavy," Naruto grumbled as he massaged his sore shoulder. His black-haired teammate silently agreed and was thankful to see their village gate looming not too far under the steadily darkening sky. He could really use a bath to get rid of these uncomfortable sensations of dried sweat clinging to his skin. Then perhaps he could start to think what was actually happening to him. Only that thought had made him seethe.

As they approached the gate in leisure pace, Sasuke noticed a heavy upgrading to the guarding level of the entrance. Many chuunins could be seen passing to and fro, checking the passer-bys with a stern look on their faces, some of them were performing a jutsu he didn't recognize. The meticulous inspection caused a short queue in front of the gate, which they joined in since there was no other way they could go in to the village. Perhaps the Hokage had scolded them pretty bad due to the morning incident yesterday.

Standing behind the many inspectors was Morino Ibiki, whom he recognized at the first glance; no one could ever mistake him for anyone else anyway. As soon as they arrived in front of the chuunins, the jounin stepped forward and talked quietly with Kakashi while his hands were performing the jutsu Sasuke had just seen a while ago. The chuunin in front of him was completing the same sequence of seals, which he looked warily at.

"It's a jutsu used for detection," Kakashi's voice answered his unspoken thought. The black-haired boy looked up at his sensei, noting the first examiner placing a hand on Kakashi's left shoulder as his own inspector did the same to him. "With this jutsu we can check if someone is really the person he or she looks like. The jutsu will react to the chakra you have to exert if you're using a henge."

"This is necessary," Ibiki told them matter-of-factly at the indignant look on Naruto's face that someone would dare to suspect him as an impostor. "We can't risk more incident to take place."

"Of course," Kakashi nodded and hauled his subordinates in to the village before they could cause a longer traffic jam. Then he whirled around and waved cheerfully at his fellow jounin, "Have a happy inspecting, Ibiki." The scar-faced jounin might have been known as a professional in interrogation and torture, but right now the feared and honored Morino Ibiki could only scowl in return at his younger friend.

"Well then, I'm going home now," Sakura said, trying to overwhelm Naruto's loud tuneless singing of 'Ramen, ramen' which almost made their silent teammate wince in pain. Sasuke could feel the pair of blue eyes on him, but he was trying so hard not to look at that direction since there was no way he would let himself to be tricked like yesterday. The Uchiha clan might be rich but that didn't mean that he could waste his money on a futile effort such as trying to make a ravenous idiot like his blond teammate bored of ramen. The day Naruto said he hated ramen might as well be the day Uchiha Sasuke loaned himself freely to the hands of obsessive fangirls.

"9 a.m. tomorrow at the bridge," Kakashi informed them.

Not really listening, Sakura walked off followed by Naruto –the ramen stall was to the same direction. The remaining member of Team 7 was about to leave too when his instructor's voice eliminated his strides at once, "What happened?"

Sasuke stared at the one lazy eye, which added with the casual tone of voice would lead most people to believe that the silver-haired jounin actually didn't give a damn care to his blunder. But Sasuke wasn't most people. He knew better, still he didn't have any intention to tell anyone, even as close as Kakashi, about his hand slipping off because of a mere shot of pain. It was all too disgraceful.

The Uchiha only shrugged, answering flatly, "My hand slipped, that's all." At his sensei's disbelieving look he added, "I apologized, okay?"

Instead of accusing his subordinate for being dishonest, the jounin curved his eyes into a smile. It made the black-haired boy slightly wary. From many long and hard-earned experiences, he knew that Kakashi's smile had never been a good sign.

"Let's have a dinner, Sasuke."

Damn right, it wasn't. Had he been eating something, Sasuke would have sputtered the content of his mouth. "...what...?"

Ignoring the somewhat incoherent question, the masked jounin tapped his hands together in satisfaction. "Excellent. Now let's go." Cheerfully, he dragged the sullen-looking Uchiha who was trying his best to death-glare his sensei.


"Ne, Naruto, did you see what happened?"

The asked boy looked up from the dusty road his feet were treading to his pink-haired teammate. Her opaque green eyes were clouded in worry as she stared at him. Crinkling his face into a clueless fox-like expression, he asked obliviously, "See what?"

Sakura clicked her tongue in impatience as if inquiring to herself why she had ever come to the thought to ask him in the first place. If she, the sharp and analytical one in Team 7 didn't realize, certainly no one expected that Naruto would. Nevertheless, her anxiety over the only boy she had ever liked told her to prod on in case the other boy did see something.

"About Sasuke-kun, baka."

"Oh, him." The kunoichi almost smacked Naruto over the head at the disgusted tone he was using, but she restrained herself in case the blond boy would actually tell her something informative. "He almost failed the mission, what's new about that?"

A square hit landed nicely on top of Naruto's head, which she thought was very well-deserved. The boy really had to learn that their previous myriad almost-failures were primarily caused by him.

Rubbing his head softly, the kyubi boy mumbled inarticulately about injustice in this cruel world and gazed downward. He wasn't exactly looking at Sasuke that time, but he had managed to catch a grimace on the other boy's face when he turned to see if Sakura had done the sleep-inducing spell. It was what actually put a queer force out of the blue on him to pull the snake. Psychologists would probably call it an unintended revelation of denied concern, but he chose to go with a need to make his rival feel less superior.

"Maybe there's a bug in his shirt," he muttered, unaware that he hadn't said it inwardly.

"A bug?" That did it and on the next second his friend were already howling in front of his ears. "A bug?? Do you think a bug can force Sasuke-kun to disrupt an important mission, Naruto?!"

"Who knows!" The other insisted, throwing his arms to the air in process. "What if the bug went into his... you know, private places where could be really uncomforta-"

Another whack arrived on his head, deterring the remaining of his words as Sakura screamed at the top of her lungs, "You're not saying that in front of a lady!" Naruto seemed to have a difficulty to decide whether it was his head or his ears which needed a massage the most since both were throbbing painfully. Sakura snorted unsympathetically. "Why did I ask you anyway?"

"Ask him then! He can answer that question better than me!" her friend pointed out.

The pink-haired genin once again sighed, a sad smile gracing her lips. "And why would he answer me? I know he loathes for others to pity him or to think that he is weak. Sasuke-kun will rather hide the fact that he is in pain if it can stop people from worrying about him. He hates weakness, he hates to make mistakes, and now he must be angry to himself for committing one."

For the second time that day, Naruto was beyond speechless. He pitied and admired the girl at the same time for being so compassionate to the one she liked, while he had always thought that her feeling was no more than a childish crush. It might wear off as time passed by, but Sakura had showed something that brought the blonde boy up to the point of despising himself. He had seen it twice, the wince on Sasuke's face, and he still didn't give a damn care about it. Kakashi's effort to teach them about the importance of teamwork obviously failed the most on him.

Sometimes he wondered why he hated Sasuke so much. Kakashi-sensei once told them that people tended to hate someone who resembled themselves the most, yet he didn't pay much heed about it since the ice prince and Uzumaki Naruto had too many differences to be listed, so the theory was just plain wrong, or so he had thought. However, every single word that Sakura had said about Sasuke described her blonde friend as well, even if she didn't mean it that way.

His jounin sensei might be right again, as usual.

"Hey, isn't that the third examiner of the chuunin exam?" Sakura's voice drew his meandering thoughts back to her. He averted his gaze to where she was pointing with her eyes and saw a bandana-ed man with a straw between his lips walking out of the village morgue. His face was a pale shade and there was a revolted expression painted on his usually impassive visage, but it could be the inadequate light tricking his eyes. A group of shinobis appeared from the morgue, following the jounin who had blended with the crowd of people into the night of Konoha.


Sasuke stared at the empty bowl in front of him which previously had katsudon inside it a moment ago and wondered for the umpteenth time how the hell he had let himself to be pulled all the way to this outdoor restaurant. To tell truthfully, if he had come out of his own free will, he might have enjoyed the place. The tables were laid under the thick veil of starry night, just at the side of a riverbank and the food were really good. From his table he could see fireflies floating across the river, coated in their small blinking lights while cicadas spoiled his ears with their soft chirps. Swirling around him, the night wind was cooling, washing the prior heat of summer sun off his skin. Really, this place wasn't a problem. The man sitting across him was.

The silver-haired jounin was –again– accomplishing his ritual of reading Icha Icha Paradise under a very insufficient light. Between the occasional chuckles coming from the man, Sasuke wondered if his instructor was still aware that he was there. For him, being ignored was almost as abominable as being pitied, or being questioned in this case.

The raven-haired boy lifted his glass and drained its content in one gulp, before setting it back on the table with a thud louder than necessary. "I'm going home," he declared in a 'don't-mess-with-me' tone.

Finally there was a reaction coming from his sensei as the jounin closed his book, putting it on the table beneath the fold of his hands. He looked at his silently fuming subordinate for a moment before diverting his eyes to the sky, starting to ramble, "Ah, look, Sasuke, that is the Big Dipper. Can you see it? And there, those three stars forming a line is Orion. How lucky we are that there is almost no cloud tonight. Look, we can even see Sagittarius..."

Dumbfounded beyond spoken words, the Uchiha could only gape at the masked jounin. Yesterday had been water and birds and today stars? What next? Naruto? He was seriously contemplating to take his instructor to a mental institution. And it was not as if they could actually see the stars with so many lights emitted from the village, however clear and cloudless the night might be. Of course he might be able to see them if he used the Sharingan, but Sasuke wasn't about to spend his exclusively inherited ability in stargazing. And where did that Naruto came from??

"...Cepheus and Volans there," Kakashi paused amidst his infuriatingly interminable talk as he squinted his one visible eye at the sky to his left. "Wait a minute, is that Libra? I can't really see it as scales-"

"Kakashi," Sasuke cut the jounin's lectures about constellations sternly. "I'm fine, okay?"

His instructor did stop and stared at him with an eye that obviously did not belong to any star-constellations rambler. Then he said, very slowly, "What happened, Sasuke?"

The younger shinobi gritted his teeth. Oh, being ignored was probably much better than being questioned; he could have just left back then. "I'm fine," he repeated, more firmly.

From his chair he could see Kakashi's eye narrowed into an ominous slit. "I've never expected you to be this weak, Sasuke," the jounin said blatantly. "Your obstinacy is foolish, and yet you try to keep it. You are too weak, too scared to admit that you too have weaknesses and can show them. You act though while in reality you are only being selfish and weak by letting those who care for you worried."

As soon as the jounin had finished, the younger shinobi stood up, so roughly that he sent his chair tumbling backward in process. "What the hell you know about that?!"

"Look, you can't even control your anger. And you're angry for me calling you weak?" his sensei stated coldly.

Sasuke's eyes turned into a pair of red blazing flames. "Listen here, Sir I-know-all jounin," he shot mockingly, his voice was a thin glaze of ice. "I don't think you're the one to talk with what you did in Wave Country. You acted though back then, shielding us with your so unwavering bravery, pushing yourself to your limit, and making your subordinates worried. You were too scared to show your weakness, weren't you? And you're telling me those things while you're at it yourself?"

"I've never said that I'm not weak."

That line again. "Then don't you dare go lecturing me about any of it!" The Uchiha shouted and strode away, leaving his sensei in the company of his rage. He could feel the other guests' eyes on him, but he was too furious to even look at them.

Letting his feet guide him home automatically, Sasuke sauntered along the deserted road while his mind was wandering in its own seething realm. Kakashi was really the most vexatious hypocrite he had ever met. His words were utter nonsense, full stop.

Were they?

Was he actually making them worried? Wasn't he actually trying to spare them from worrying about him needlessly?

The little stroll seemed to cool off his anger and he felt somewhat guilty at the words he had thrown to the jounin. To tell the truth, Kakashi was someone precious to him and now perhaps he couldn't gain him back. The thought somehow made the Uchiha cringe slightly. His precious people were few and he wasn't ready to lose one of them now. Not now.

These emotions were all too new for him; to be told bluntly that he was weak, to realize that what he had believed all the way were only making those precious to him worried, and to feel fear of losing someone. He was not used to them, which made him react quite violently back then.

The Uchiha residence was just around the corner when he suddenly felt the presence of four persons spying on him. At the side of the empty road he was ambling was a line of trees. Played by the wind, their branches were waving like dark menacing hands sprouting from their sturdy trunks. Whom they were waiting for, he could not tell, but it could be him.

All he had to do was to find out. Sasuke slowed his pace down when he was passing a particular tree where two of them were hiding, as he started to count inwardly.

/One.../ Still no reaction.

/Two.../ One of them stirred, he could sense the movement.

/Three.../ A sound of two kunais being pulled out. Oh yes, they were obviously aiming for him. The black-haired gennin activated his Sharingan; the attack should be coming soon.

/Fou- here they come!/

Four shadows, as he had expected, emerged from the trees with a speed almost competing the sound. They could have taken him down already if their prey didn't posses the pair of red eyes. Leaping high to the night air, he failed their ambush and fished two kunais out, stabbing each to two of his opponents. One of them could dodge it, whom he quickly kicked straight in the face, sending the attacker to lie unconsciously against a hard tree bark. Two down. Only two left-

All of a sudden, another shot of pain went through his head. It felt as if a thousand of needles were trying to make their ways out of his brain at once. The horrible sting sent him to his knees clutching his hair in a desperate grip. He would even tear his hair out, all of it, if he could reduce the pain.

Abruptly aware that he was still in a fight, Sasuke looked up, finding the rest of his opponents lunging at him with their kunai glinting between their fingers. He forced himself to move a little, but it was still insufficient to fully dodge the attack. Noticing his lack of choices, the Uchiha brought his hands up to cover his head and the most critical areas he could think of, waiting the kunai to pierce his body.

Then suddenly the pain disappeared.

He was astonished yet wasting no time to ponder about it if he could finally do something to evade from the attack. And the next millisecond, he found himself unable to move a single joint of his body, as if something had completely stopped his movement. Angry and confused beyond imagination, he could only watch the two shinobis charging at him.

A shadow appeared before his eyes and the Uchiha found himself looking at his sensei. The jounin easily took them down by giving their neck a hit from behind. At the same exact time, his body gained its control back.

Squatting before the unconscious men, Kakashi turned one of them carefully. Coating the unknown guest's brow was a forehead protector with a symbol of a single note carved on it. A Sound ninja.

"Obviously Orochimaru hasn't lost his interest on you," the jounin instructor stated, his single eye resting on a pair of Sharingan. "Why did you freeze?"

Leaning back to the wall behind him, Sasuke bit his lips and decided to tell his sensei since his syndromes had gone worse: he had actually lost the control over his own body. If Kakashi hadn't arrived, he might have been carried to the morgue by now, to lie beside the unknown man found yesterday morning. Or worse, he could have been brought to the feet of Orochimaru.

The silver-haired jounin was listening silently at his subordinate's rather short explanation. His visible eye had narrowed as the details were told and his stare grew sharper with each second. By the time Sasuke finished his clarification, the older shinobi had practically been glaring at him.

After glowering in silence for a while, Kakashi said evenly, "You're coming with me to see the Hokage tomorrow morning. Meet me at the bridge earlier at eight." As soon as he finished putting a sleep-inducing spell on the Oto-nins, he stood up, still looking at his subordinate. "Listen, Sasuke, I need you to be alert even when you are sleeping. This attack most likely tells us that you are still catching his eyes, but whether it means that he still needs you alive or the contrary, in other words, a dead you, is still unknown to us. Tell me if that pain appears again."

Only half-listening to the jounin, the raven-haired boy stared wordlessly to Kakashi who was now performing the spell to the remaining of his unconscious guests. After all of those things Sasuke had uncouthly said, his sensei didn't even make a problem out of it. He had no idea what had Kakashi seen in him to put so much patience. Or how he had so much patience in general to deal with things of this nature.

"Kakashi," before he could stop it, the name had slipped out of his lips. The called one looked up, inquiry looming in his eye.

It was so hard to spill that word and he was about to say it for the second time today after who-knows how long. Steadying his voice after a gulp, he blurted out, "I'm sorry."

The other simply looked at him, as if contemplating the actual meaning of the two words. Slowly a smile creased his black mask. "No need to worry. When we are giving birth to something new, it always hurts. Perhaps we only have to believe that what actually lies beneath the pain is for the better." With that he paused, allowing his eye to shape a curve. "Just don't lie to me again, Sasuke."

A very small almost unnoticeable smile adorned the boy's lips, which soon altered into a smirk. "We'll see about that, Sensei."

"Well, I'm going to report this now. Don't forget to meet me tomorrow morning." Then the jounin disappeared into a puff of smoke.

With a considerably lighter heart, Sasuke resumed his walk. Maybe, just maybe, he could finally put an end to the world of utter loneliness engulfing him. Well, he would never know unless he gave it a try.

As soon as he turned the corner, a sight of his blonde teammate pacing back and forth in front of the gate of Uchiha residence with his mouth mumbling incoherently greeted his eyes. The said teammate also noticed him at once and practically shouted at the top of his lungs. "Where the hell have you been, Sasuke?!" his yell rang throughout the rather deserted alley.

Leaving the question unanswered, the other boy frowned instead, "What are you doing here, dobe?"

"Great!" Naruto trotted back and complained to no one in particular. "Look at him! I've waited here for an hour and he doesn't even have the courtesy to stop calling me names!"

"What are you doing here?"

"To ask what happened to you, asshole!" The shorter boy was bellowing so loud that it forced Sasuke to take a several steps back. As stout and fearless as he was, the Uchiha still preferred to use a pair of functionally normal eardrums to damaged ones. "Sakura-chan is totally worried about you! But she doesn't want to bother you by asking, so I'll do it!" Pausing to catch his breath, he glared at the taller boy. "What was that in the forest?"

Sasuke only smirked. "What makes you think that I'll tell you?"

"You bastard!" Naruto coiled his hand into a fist and sent a punch straight to the other gennin's face, which was effortlessly stopped by another hand clenching his wrist.

The smirk only went even wider. "When will you learn that such reckless attacks will never work against me, moron?"

There was a dangerous glint flashing in the kyubi boy's eyes as suddenly, with a speed Sasuke had never thought the other possessed, he pushed his black-haired teammate and pinned him against the wooden gate. Both of his hands were on the other boy's shoulders, gripping them tightly as he leant closer. "Listen you, smartass, I don't care if you want to keep that oh-so-cool attitude, but she is so damn worried about you! Aren't we teammates?! Why can't you just tell us?! You're making me-" Suddenly he stopped as if a steel pipe had been shoved into his throat to silence him.

Sasuke raised his perfectly curved eyebrows. "I'm making you what?"

Naruto looked as if he all of a sudden suffered a high fever with the flush breeding on his face. Looking at his taller friend's smug face, the blonde gennin roared in obvious rebuff, "Forget what I said! Just forget it! Now you tell me!"

The other boy shrugged. "If Sakura is the one worried, I'll simply have to tell her, right? Why should I tell you?"

Face crinkling in anger, Naruto shouted, "Fine, you damn asshole! Forget that I've ever asked anything!"

Sasuke watched his raging friend leave. Something stirred inside of him; he was definitely making them worried, even if Naruto had tried so hard to deny it. Perhaps Kakashi was right that he was weak but still, he didn't know what to do with that little something he had comprehended. Turning on his heels, the black-haired boy pushed it to the back of his mind, dismissing the thought at least for now until someone dared to knock and wake it up.


The late night air greeted him as Kakashi walked out of the ANBU headquarter where he had just reported the attack on Sasuke. The Sound ninjas had been taken care of by a squad of ANBU but the captain had demanded a full elaboration from the copy ninja which took quite some time. He had no intention of telling anybody but the Hokage about Sasuke suffering sporadic attacks of pain and he was quite careful not to mention it.

A little walk led him to the border of Konoha forest while he was deep in thought about things happening in the village recently. The Uchiha's pain, above all worried him especially since it managed to make the boy lose his control over his body, which he had no idea how and why.

The forest was just ahead, looming threateningly in its eternal darkness and shade. He was about to turn back to the village, to his house, when a figure under one of the trees caught his eyes. Whoever the person was, was sitting with legs-crossed, back facing the masked jounin. Even with the darkness and all, a name immediately lit his mind once he had taken a better look.

The sitting man, on the other hand, seemed to have noticed his visitor's presence also. A loud clear voice filled the still night as he spoke, "Kakashi-san, isn't it?"

Cautiously the silver-haired jounin let a name answered. "Kabuto."

"You seem to always know that it is me," the voice which replied to his one-word assertion was filled with amusement. "An ability you have developed with your Sharingan, Kakashi-san?"

A pale hand reached up to push his forehead protector up, revealing the referred eye to the night to see. At the same moment the other man rose to his feet, as if being intimidated by the blood red Sharingan and the damage it could bring upon him. "No need to be on guard, I'm not here to fight," he said with a tone which probably would be believable if it was not the bespectacled guy who had said it.

The silver-haired jounin only asked back, "Then what are you doing here? Feeling nostalgic to the old village you have betrayed?"

A chuckle answered his sarcastic question as the other turned to face him, dark eyes glinting behind a pair of glasses. "You have something wrong here, Kakashi-san. I have never been the shinobi of Konoha to begin with."

Time passed while the two stared at each other, both were wary that the other might start an attack. Suddenly Kabuto raised both of his hand, an action which made his opponent quickly pull out a kunai. A smile that had been more alarming than comforting appeared on his lips. "It is a great pleasure to meet you again, and the Sharingan also, but unfortunately I have to leave now."

The jounin might have smirked under his mask. "Running away from me again, aren't you?"

Kabuto smiled modestly. "The time has not come for us to fight, Kakashi-san. It will come soon." Then he vanished into the thin air.

Kakashi stared impassively at the forest and its shadow, his mind was reeling. It was too much for a coincidence that Sasuke was attacked by a group of Sound ninjas and he himself discovered a Sound spy lurking at Konoha forest at the same night. What was going on?

To Be Continued

Notes: It has been this long and I haven't even reached the main plot yet -- About the errors which probably occur up there, I'm not familiar with the trait of snakes so if the anaconda behaves very un-snake-like, please forgive my lack of information. Hopefully, everything can happen in Naruto world... Second, I hope Sasuke isn't too OOC up there (the way he gets angry to Kakashi and stuff) and I really apologize if Kakashi sounds like an old man who pretends to know everything. He only wants to help Sasuke, that's all.

Thank you for reading! Please give me reviews!