Chapter Two

When the time for going to the police station and meeting Hinata came, Sasuke already had couple of furniture pieces reduced to fragments. Fortunately, his rage was not completely mindless, so the scroll on the table he was bent over for most of the night was still intact. He should have been able to do this; he'd had almost eighteen hours, time he robbed off the investigation that was now his responsibility. But he was now at the same place he had been just before midnight when he found the scroll, with a sleepless - fruitless - night behind him and a day of socializing in front of him.

There was nothing for it, though. He had to go because he said he would – and being late was not one of the habits he had picked up from Kakashi. There was nothing more to be done about this, even if his curiosity was tickled.

At six o'clock in the morning, Konoha was only slightly less hot then at noon the previous day or noon on any other day in the last few months. The distant buzz of water sprinklers made it clear that a large portion of civilians were out of bed, trying to use that small relief to weed and water their plants. It took Sasuke only couple of minutes to get in front of the police station.

Hinata and Sakura were both already there, even though he had told Sakura she wouldn't be needed. As things were, neither would Hinata, but that was beside the point. Catching something in his expression, Sakura scowled and snapped instead of greeting him.

"We don't know anything more about those traps now than we did yesterday. I might as well be here if someone gets hurt."

Sasuke, of course, ignored her and climbed the stairs past two of them. Just because she didn't know anything more than she did yesterday, she shouldn't presume he didn't know anything more either.

"Good morning to you too, asshole."

Naruto's voice actually startled him, but Sasuke managed not to flinch. Where did he come from? Sasuke focused on Naruto's chakra, but it was as if there was nothing there at all.

"Where did you learn that?" he asked. Complete concealment was impossible, not to this extent – to look at someone and not feel their presence at all, even though you know they're there? It was...

Naruto grinned, "Sasuke... are you asking for tips again?"

That little idiot.

Sasuke was regretting he spoke aloud at all and he was defiantly not asking for tips. If Naruto had found a way to conceal his chakra completely, than Sasuke could do it, too. He turned away from the face brightly lit with the morning sun and the grin that fading into a real smile and moved toward the entrance.

"Wait, Sasuke, you can't just…" the words were promptly cut off by the door closing behind him with a satisfying bang. Like he would just walk in if there was a danger. What kind of moron did Sakura think he was?

He hadn't managed two steps before the door opened again, and this time, Sasuke could feel Naruto's chakra buzzing and wavering around him, filling the wide hall with a rich, heady atmosphere. Whatever he was doing to hide it was obviously not manageable in a situation where Naruto had to actually use it. Still, it would be invaluable for stealth missions.

"What are you doing?" Naruto demanded. "Did you even hear everything we told you about the traps?"

"Were you listening when I told you that there's probably something among my father's things?"

Naruto's steps grew less careful at those words. The entrance door opened once more, and Sasuke could hear Naruto telling the girls he thought it was safe and they could come in. Opening into a large cavernous area that looked to have been used as a central office, Sasuke headed in the direction the blueprints had told him the basement was. Toward the far right corner near the rear of the room, he found it. There was no door to the basement, only a wide stairwell leading down.

When the three of them caught up with him, Sasuke had already started sealing off the opening. Once he was done, Naruto spoke first.

"We would like to know what is going on."

There was more command in his words than Sasuke had ever heard him using – with the justification to do so, anyway.

He explained despite wishing he could simply ignore Naruto's command. "The traps can be only triggered if someone tries to go to the basement. It is safe everywhere else in the building."

"Oh," Sakura said, obviously revisiting what had happened to those two ANBU yesterday in her mind. "What's down there?"

"I don't know," Sasuke answered, which was the complete truth, though it cost him some effort to say it. "There is a sealed door at the end of a corridor jutting out from the bottom of the stairwell, but that is where the hallway is cut off on the blueprints."

"We should go and see," Naruto said, with a bright and curious look in his eyes, all ready to have an exciting adventure after all the paperwork. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but Sasuke found himself annoyed enough to grit his teeth on that.

"I have no more time to waste on this. Whatever is out there, it can wait."

Hinata cleared her throat to make everyone present pay attention to her and, catching Sasuke's eye, said, "The funeral of that little girl is today at noon. We- I think we should go."

To show sympathy and commitment to the case, no doubt. Sasuke wanted to tell her no, that there was no point in that, but Hinata continued before he could, "We could talk to her parents after. They were the ones who saw her last."

That would be good, they could do that. Then, going to the funeral wouldn't be a complete waste of time. Sasuke gave her a nod, to acknowledge that they would do as she suggested. Naruto burst out laughing.

"Hinata, if we knew you could make him do whatever you want like that, we'd have adopted you into our team years ago."

Sakura snickered as well, like there actually was a reason to laugh over that. She straightened her face soon enough, though. "Well, you have time until noon. Tell us about that sealed door?"

They walked into a room adjacent to the stairwell where there were dusty chairs still set around a table. This had probably been a conference room or perhaps used for police interviews of witnesses. Sasuke knew from the blueprints the second floor housed all the interrogation rooms and separate offices for detectives of higher rank than the patrol officers relegated to the central office.

He took the scroll he wanted from his pouch, and opened it. The surface of the table was also covered in a thick layer of dirt, but he had to uncoil the technique for the drowning of the seal somewhere. Sasuke turned to the girls – not really expecting them to conjure up rugs from thin air just because they were girls, but if anyone knew where to find something…

His train of thought was cut off by a light wind from his right, where Naruto was standing. The door was closed and the windows too, so it wasn't the draft. Sasuke half turned and saw Naruto with his right palm open, facing the table, and had just enough time to cover his mouth and nose with the edge of his collar before a pocket-sized hurricane swept all the dust from the scratched and scarred surface. The wood was so clean you could see the shine of what was left of the paint; all the dust was lingering around them in the air. Sakura turned to open the door again, and Hinata to the window, both coughing.

Sasuke, glaring at Naruto, hissed, "Idiot!"

Naruto, who was scratching his neck in a painfully familiar manner with a sheepish grin on his face, narrowed his eyes to give Sasuke a dirty look in turn. He straightened his shoulders and raised both of his hands. Sasuke added a bit of his chakra into the movement and was behind the opened door when a hurricane that most definitely couldn't fit in a pocket swept all the dust and a big portion of old blank paper through the opened window, along with a desk-lamp.

When it was over and Sasuke looked at the three of them, Naruto was wearing a big satisfied grin and the girls a hairstyle that wasn't likely to become trendy or practical any time soon. When what happened started to sink into their minds, they both turned to look at Naruto, Hinata with wide eyes and Sakura with a glare that would have garnered a place with Akatsuki. If Sasuke was eight, he would have laughed; the panic in Naruto eyes was fun to watch.

"You . . . ," Sakura started, but Naruto cut in.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to ruin your hair! You're still pretty!" When Sakura just narrowed her eyes further, he added, softening his voice to a whisper, "Sakura–chan?"

Sasuke felt his jaw clench, and had to make an effort to not scowl at them. Why couldn't he do what everyone else would do in his place, play on his title? She would have to back off, and as a friend, she knew he didn't mean it anyway. Why did Naruto have to take them all back to childhood with that stupid honorific?

While looking at Sakura's softening expression, Sasuke almost missed the figure moving on his right. He glanced at Hinata and she gave him a tight smile.

"What is that?" she asked nodding at the scroll still in Sasuke's hands, sounding genuinely curious about it, but still loud enough to break the little moment Naruto and Sakura had shared. Sasuke's respect for the girl grew quite a bit on the subtle way she reminded them they were in a hurry - and not alone.

Sasuke uncoiled the scroll and laid it on the table. Everyone else gathered around it, and now the four of them were looking down on a complicated seal Sasuke had copied from the original scroll he found the pervious night. The unusual symbol in the middle was surrounded with so many clauses, you had to squint to read them; even those that were clear and familiar.

"What's that?" Naruto echoed, leaning curiously over the table.

Hokage or not, he always managed to ask the stupidest questions.

"A seal," Sasuke answered, making Sakura roll her eyes at him from the left.

"I know that," Naruto grunted, sounding as if he was struggling to act offended. "What's the symbol in the middle?"

"I've never seen it before," Sakura said, tracing the curves and letters on the scroll. The thin hope Sasuke had been clinging that she could help with it wore off. He took a quick look at Hinata, but she was scowling lightly in confusion.

"I don't know." As it wasn't actually the first time he'd had to say the words, Sasuke knew the sky would not fall down on him, but it was hard anyway. Naruto let out a small, gleeful sound still looking down. Sakura raised an eyebrow in question.

"According to my father's notebook, this is the seal on the door at the end of the hallway. I can't even recognize all the clauses but," Sasuke let his index finger trace the thin markings very similar to those that once surrounded the curse mark he had on his neck. "It means there is nothing good in there."

"How do you know that?" Naruto asked sharply.

Even though Sasuke knew that many people got through their lives without an actual need to use the evil sealing technique, and that Naruto of all people not knowing it was not all that odd, he was still irritated. They could have avoided the subject, but because of Naruto's ignorance, they had to go back into their childhood once again.

Finger still on the ink, Sasuke said, "I saw it first when Kakashi sealed off the curse seal Orochimaru gave me." Naruto flinched, and Sasuke took some morbid pleasure in it. "Those particular markings," he added, showing what looked like tiny ink smudges from the distance, "Are standard clause on the seals designed to hold evil trapped."

"Standard clause," Naruto murmured, leaning lower to look better, until he was so close across the table Sasuke had to straighten so their heads wouldn't collide.

"Well, it's a forbidden technique. Konoha allows it to be used only by a jounin," Sakura explained. When Naruto slowly lifted his head and gave her a very serious and maybe even a bit of a dark look, she bit into her lip.

"Oh, there it is again," Naruto said slowly, as if the words were a bottle of poison on his tongue and he had to be careful not to break it. "Another useful thing we don't teach our children. We do teach them to seal the explosives into the paper to make bombs, though."

"Well, what would children do with a technique like that one? If they had a cause for doing it, they could always go to someone with a higher rank."

Sasuke could see the fault in her reasoning and Naruto didn't miss it as well.

"Then why didn't we go to someone higher ranked to fix Sasuke?" Fix him? Sasuke was not fond of the way that sounded. He was not a broken toy and the fucking sealing was not supposed to fix him anyway, it was supposed to make sure he didn't break someone's arms again, or someone's head, next time he got angry. "We were actually there when he got his cursed seal. Knowing this would have helped."

Of course, Sakura knew she was fighting a lost cause. She, as smart as she was, never knew how to defend something she did not believe in. That did not stop her trying anyway.

"We were on an exam, in a controlled environment. I don't think Sasuke would have let us do it anyway."

He would have let them. He let Kakashi, didn't he? And that was much later, when the black, painful fog and all the maleficent nightmares the damned thing had drawn out of him had lifted. He would have let them try anything, if there was even the slightest chance it would have taken the pain and the dread away.

"Maybe one in a thousand genins would have had enough chakra to seal the evil of the cursed seal. This conversation is pointless," Sasuke said, wanting to end the discussion. Perhaps it was not really pointless, but as he could not say anything and expect for Naruto to listen, he wanted them to stop, save it for later.

"I had enough chakra for it," Naruto returned, challenge in his eyes. What did he want, to hear Sasuke say how much of a moron he was, again? Well, that was easy enough.

"What use is that when you don't know the first thing about sealing? One messed up clause and I would have ended up dead."

"I know about sealing," Naruto said, his hand curling in his shirt, over his stomach. "This is much simpler than my seal, I could have learned it if I had had a chance. I could have helped you."

Right; only he couldn't have, and it was not his job to do it anyway. Not that Sasuke believed for one minute Naruto would take that kind of explanation as good enough for anything. He had to say something, because holding Naruto's gaze full of guilt across the table was a bit too much to handle in silence. Somebody needs to make him understand he can't save the entire world before he dies from worry and too much thinking about what could have been.

"Maybe, but you were also unconscious at the time and Sakura was alone; if she knew the sealing at the time and was desperate enough to try, she would have been the one to end up dead. As I said, you need a lot of chakra to make this kind of sealing."

Naruto huffed in annoyance. "There must be a way to make sure the kids were taught according to their talents, not age or whatever."

Sure, there was. Make the talented ones stay after class to have special lessons and the least talented to work under the supervision of a teacher on their problematic points, Sasuke wanted to say. He didn't, because Naruto had his committee to discuss those kinds of things with him. If Naruto wanted Sasuke's opinion, he would have asked for it.

Obviously in an effort to change the subject, Sakura asked, "So, do you recognize anything else? There are a few other standard clauses, but I don't see anything else that is familiar."

Naruto snapped out of his daydreaming about making the world a better place, or whatever a proper Hokage is supposed to be daydreaming about while looking deep in thought. "How many of those clause things are there?" he demanded, making them all blink and stare at him.

After a moment, Hinata cleared her throat.

"You learn sealing techniques by memorizing the shape of a seal, am I right?" Of course she was right, that is how they taught them in the academy. Naruto probably had the opportunity to discover a better way, but he obviously never did, as he confirmed by answering Hinata's question with a nod. "It is easier to learn what every part of the seal means, because they often appear more than once."

Naruto just frowned. It was actually – not quite embarrassing, but . . . unbecoming, for a Hokage not to know something so basic. Sasuke could see where such a gap could come from, of course; it was because it was so basic. Itachi was the one who explained it to him, many months before… well, before. Hinata probably also learned at home. Sakura was a bookworm; it was not a surprise she knew it as well, despite coming from a civilian family. But Naruto was alone and, as long as he knew how to do a required sealing technique, he had no one to question how he learned it or whether or not he knew why things were they way they were.

"The central part," Sakura started in lecturing tone, "is the subject of the sealing. It could be the thing we are sealing, or the area where the sealing happens – depending on what we are trying to accomplish. It's a base, something to link the intention and all the conditions." She then pointed at segments positioned almost symmetrically around the base. "Each of those groups of marks is a clause to determine specifics of the sealing – more information on the type of sealing, on what is being sealed, from where the chakra for preserving the seal will be drawn; things like that. They are standard. Most of the time, we simply combine them to serve out whatever purpose we require."

Naruto formed a little 'o' with his mouth. Sakura smiled in satisfaction.

"The stronger the sealing is, the more chakra you need. Using it is like signing a contract with nature; if you do everything right, in a correct order and according to the requirements, then nature will respect your binding. Of course, new sealing techniques are invented all the time. You invent them by establishing one or more new clauses."

Sasuke felt obligated to add on what was being said, in case the subject came up again and also because showing he knew things his entire life that Naruto would never learn was always fun. "Not everyone uses the same symbols as Konoha, but they are mostly similar." This drew the curious attention of everyone, even the girls, to him, so Sasuke explained. "Sometimes, in times of peace, as a sign of trust and proof of honorable intentions was required to cement alliances. So, leaders would exchange information. Sealing techniques were often offered first, because, before the bijuu, they hadn't had much influence on the balance of power. In the years since, techniques changed and evolved, so even though most of the sealing techniques look comparable, they are not even close."

"So, no one from another village could read what's on my seal?" Naruto asked, turning his bright, curious eyes to Sasuke.

It was pointless, because Sasuke had already said as much, but he answered anyway. "No. Not unless they made a special effort to get their hands on our secrets."

"And you? Can you read it?" Naruto asked, including this time Sakura and Hinata.

Hinata blushed looking down at her hands. Sasuke hoped it was not because she was thinking about the place Naruto bore the seal and the opportunity she could use to see it because that, despite barely knowing her, was unsettling. She probably knew Naruto's sealing and what each clause meant by heart, just like Sakura and Sasuke did.

After a couple of seconds of Naruto trying to read the answer directly from their heads using nothing but the pure power of will and some glaring, Sasuke elucidated.

"The swirl in the middle might be a reference to your name, or the type of chakra you wield – though that is not very likely. It is a symbol that fits you, at any case, so it was well chosen."

Naruto nodded to say he understood and prompted him to continue, curious and impatient.

"What about the clauses?"

"Some are new, as the sealing was invented for that purpose. A lot of it is dealing with specifics of the pact with the being that acted as a catalyst in the process, so it is a bit unclear." It was not that unclear, but now that Naruto knew that Yodaime was his father, it was probably not the best thing to mention how his soul was trapped forever in the belly of a Death God as payment for such a powerful technique; messing with the flow of nature always had its consequences. Sasuke continued without a pause so Naruto would hopefully not pick up on his lack of complete honesty. "The necessary fuel for the seal is coming from Kyuubi's chakra, which is a good solution, as there is nothing but the thing's chakra sealed. If, for some reason, there was no fuel any longer for keeping the seal active, it would not matter anyway."

Naruto nodded again. Sasuke had to wonder did he actually understand anything it was being said, or was he just nodding them forward to end the lecture faster.

"There is also a clause to determine a way of breaking the seal, and specifics on the sealed object and details to support your identity." And one that dealt with actual using of the beast's chakra that Sasuke was still unclear on.

"What sort of details? The color of my eyes?"

"No, it marks you by your given name, the only heir of the Namikaze family and the son of the sealer."

For one second there was nothing, no reaction, and then Naruto's chakra burst into life, stifling the atmosphere in the room with a sinister edge. He was in the mood for a fight, and Sasuke had to squeeze his hand shut to keep from reaching for his sword.

"Are you saying," Naruto asked, leaning forward and keeping his eyes on Sasuke's, in a voice so quiet that the low buzzing of his chakra would easily overpower it if the three people in the room with him were not listening so carefully, "that if only I had taken some time to research the sealing, I could have known the truth about my family years ago?"

Tell him no, Sasuke's brain advised him through the haziness of resisting the pull of the possible fight and the intensity of Naruto's eyes. Tell him old Sarutobi would have never allowed it. Tell him it's not his fault, none of it. Tell him anything, just not…

"Yes," Sasuke said.

The window behind them opened with such force it burst out of its frame from the power of the chakra-infused wind. But, around the table where the four of them were still standing around the scroll, there was barely enough shifting of the air to move Sasuke's bangs from his eyes. Then, Naruto's gaze finally fell, leaving nothing but the slowly retreating thrill of power behind it, and he quickly walked out, tossing over his shoulder, "I'll see you at the funeral then."

Sasuke smoothly avoided Sakura's charged hit without any hard feelings and allowed Hinata to change the subject onto the currently active political changes in the Fire country.

A/N. Yes, I shamelessly used Naruto to get the idea through. Please forgive me.