Series/Disclaimer: Naruto, which I don't own.
Pairing(s): Kankuro x Kiba
Warning(s): Not much really, Kiba flirting.
Chapter OST: Liar + I Want My Innocence Back - Emilie Autumn; Breathe In - Frou Frou
Summery: Kiba meets up with Shino one more time before his trip and Kankuro arrives at Konoha.
Author's Note: Mwaha! This is a short chapter for a reason. Mostly because I didn't want to blend it into them actually leaving for the Mist and I didn't want to do the Kiba talking to Shino bit in a flash back. So it's a short chapter, only about two and two-thirds page in Word.

Do you guys prefer longer or shorter chapters? I don't like the idea that I over-whelm you with too much text at once. I'm thinking of shortening down my chapters a little; but not making them void of anything of course.

I have some cute ideas for some up coming moments during the trip but I'm going to need to think a little about the events that happen once they really get there. I had to change the amount of time taken for the trip to a week and a half (I don't know if I mentioned how long they were going to be gone originally) because it's taking three days to get to the Mist.

So three days there and three days back would be too long so it's about a week and a half for the Inuzuka but Kankuro probably got in serious trouble for asking for two weeks off (he needs another three days to get back to Suna because he is NOT Rock Lee and just can't move that fast - nor does he really want to). I feel almost smart for thinking of that.

I hope you guys read these notes. They're kinda important sometimes.

Don't imagine Kankuro in green spandex because of that note. D:

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Kiba burrowed his hands further into the pockets of his leather jacket as he headed down one of the lamp-lit dirt roads of Konoha. Various other people passed him, enjoying their Friday nights with friends or getting in a last hour or two of hanging out with companions before going on a mission the next morning. For once, Akamaru was not at his heels as he headed down the street and pushed aside a banner to move inside a small, out-of-the-way tea shop. The different types of tea sent out a mixture of spicy, sweet, and miscellaneous other scents to swirl and go up his sensitive nose. The sudden bombardment of smells made him instinctively move a hand up to rub under his nose to keep him from sneezing as a waitress noticed him out of the corner of her eye.

"Oh, Kiba, are you looking for Shino?" she asked with a smile at seeing the teenager. Her auburn-brown hair was held up in a high pony-tail as she set cups down amidst speaking with him.

"Yeah Kazumi, have you seen him?" he asked. She nodded and waved for him to follow her and lead him to the bar maintained in a separate room from the rest of the tea house. It only served tea, like the rest of the house; it was really just a different choice of seating. Sure enough, the moment he walked in he saw Shino sitting in a dark turtleneck and pants across the room.

"Can I get anything for you before I go?" Kazumi asked.

He shook his head and continued in Shino's direction, "No thanks, I'll get something while I talk with Shino. Thanks Kazumi."

"No problem kiddo," she smiled and turned to head back to the rest of the shop.

Kiba pulled up a seat on the stool beside Shino's and immediately ordered Jasmine tea, not because it was his favorite but because Shino had a subtle way of complaining when he ordered anything with a stronger scent. The Aburame was already drinking from a small glass of his own and, had Kiba not known any better, he may have thought that Shino hadn't even noticed him sit down. His shades never moved in the other's direction and what he could make out of the corner of Shino's eye didn't seem directed at him.

"You're late," he spoke up after taking a sip of his tea and setting the glass down once again. Kiba sighed and drummed his fingernails against the side of the bar for a moment.

"Packing, sorry, Ma wouldn't let me leave until I finished. I think she's rethinking this entire Kankuro thing," Kiba replied.

"At least one of you is."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kiba asked, turning to fix his friend with an annoyed look in his black slitted eyes. Shino still didn't turn to face him but sometimes Kiba didn't think that mattered anyway because those shades covered any kind of indication that Shino was even focused on him anyway. Sometimes when the light hit the back of the glasses right he could manage to see Shino's eyes, but the light in the tea house wasn't nearly bright enough for that anyway.

"Think about it, Kiba," Shino explained, "You don't know Kankuro that well and it isn't as though he's incredibly…friendly."

"So? You aren't exactly friendly either," he argued, turning forward again. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Shino's brow furrow hard into an aggravated expression of his own.

"But you and your family know me," he pointed out. Kiba took up his glass as it was set on the table to take a drink. The action was more for occupying himself so he temporarily abandoned common sense and ended up having to resist the automatic reaction to yelp when the hot liquid scorched his tongue and throat. He managed to put it down calmly and pressed his burning tongue to the top of his mouth as though that helped it to cool down. In reality it didn't and he was getting that tingling kind of burning yet numbing sensation in his mouth that he fought to ignore.

"Are you jealous that I didn't ask you to go?" Kiba asked more spitefully than he meant it. He raised a brow at Shino out of the corner of his eye but the expression was still fixed in place. Shino brought his own tea up to his mouth again to take a sip in the same way Kiba had intended earlier except being much more careful about it.

"I never said that," he replied in a tone Kiba found condescending but decided not to comment on it for the sake of not getting in an argument with his best friend before he left for a week and a half. Instead the Inuzuka sighed and focused on the warm glass in front of him, watching the dim light dance across the dark liquid.

"He's not going to do anything that I wouldn't let him get away with. You know how my Ma is with new people Shino; you were one of them once." Shino and Kiba both reflected back on how protective Tsume had been of her son when she first met Shino and Hinata. It wasn't as though she attacked them but there was the tension there that all of them could feel; though Kiba's tension was mostly embarrassment. Tsume pointed out that it was natural for a mother to be ready to protect her pups but Kiba argued that they weren't going to do anything anyway. Also that they were his new team and she would have to get used to them anyway.

"You were younger then, she trusts you more now."

Kiba snorted, "Yeah, but who is it she doesn't trust?"

Shino sighed, feeling both defeated and a little stupid in the face of Kiba's point. Tsume was a protective woman and was unlikely to let anything happen to Kiba that Kiba didn't invite himself. Hana was the same way as well with her little brother; his point was being ripped to shreds. He couldn't help but feel a bothersome foreboding feeling despite this; what if Kiba did invite something? Weather it was intentional or not, Kiba wasn't exactly known for backing down from things he probably should have just backed down from. Shino also didn't particularly trust Kankuro; the guy had poisoned him, weather he was good at holding grudges or not -- something like that wasn't exactly forgivable.

Then again, wasn't it Kankuro that had come to Kiba and Akamaru's aid when the guys went out on a mission he wasn't around to assist with? He felt some guilt over not being around when he was needed but he couldn't begin to think about the guilt he would have felt if Kiba had actually been killed. The Inuzuka had said himself that if Kankuro hadn't arrived he and Akamaru wouldn't be here now. So, perhaps, to some, extent he really did owe Kankuro more than he was giving him. But that doesn't mean I have to trust him or Kiba with him on this trip.

"You worry too much, you know? Take a chance every once in a while and don't try to figure every last detail out first," Kiba said, putting a hand on Shino's shoulder and leaning against him playfully. The stiff teenager didn't move from his spot but did relax slightly under the almost reassuring gesture of his friend's hand. He took another drink from his glass and sighed.

"You don't worry enough," he replied but already the tension was easing out of him and the conversation at hand. He looked over at Kiba to be met with that single-fang grin that made his brow relax and his face calm, even if he didn't smile. How he could keep such reckless company and manage to not go out of his mind was beyond him, but he did have three years practice.

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The two had left the tea shop and were heading back towards the Aburame Estates an hour or so later. The Estates that Shino's family lived on hugged the eastern wall of the village and had been there before his clan had even been around. The Inuzuka had settled in Konoha at least a decade or two after the Aburame and the Hyuuga only five or so years after them. Kiba was a firm believer in the fact that some clans seemed to be around longer simply by the ways they acted and were set in their ways. The Hyuuga had their own personalities and the Aburame had theirs, both of them seemed so much more elite than Kiba's family. It was probably simply because their mysterious ways and genius ninja generation after generation gave them some grander merit. But he never cared much; he loved his family and knew he wouldn't have been able to stand a clan as elite as Shino's anyway.

"This week is still going to be a waste of my life," Kiba said, lifting his eyes up towards the dark sky above him. Shino elected not to reply for the moment but Kiba was used to the subtle and non-existent responses that secretly meant things beyond comprehension of most people. Sometimes he took joy in saying shocking things simply for the sake of getting some reaction most people wouldn't expect. Aburame's weren't as emotionless as everyone liked to make them out -- but a lot of them didn't have the reason to get to know them.

Suddenly Shino stopped walking and shifted his feet in a way signaling one of two things; he planned to make his move or he was uneasy. Kiba glanced at his friend and followed his eyes in the direction ahead of them. Sure enough his uneasiness was due to a person standing not ten yards from them, supporting two scrolls and a back-pack he wasn't normally seen with. Kiba followed the Jounin's annoyed look back to Shino's face and found that if he followed Shino's gaze he would end up at Kankuro's face. He rolled his eyes and lowered his arms, moving to stand more ahead of Shino and catch the teenager's attention from the corner of his eye, "Relax, would you? We've had a treaty with them for two years now; he isn't going to attack you."

"It isn't me I'm concerned about," Shino replied, his eyebrows slanting even more over his glasses. Kiba could feel the weight of the other's worried gaze on him through the glasses and it sank in more than it would have been able to if he could have seen Shino's eyes. He sighed and moved forward, putting his hand on Shino's shoulder again.

"I'll be alright Shino, I promise. I'm a big Chuunin, I can handle myself," he said, smiling in an attempt to lessen his friend's sour mood.

Sometimes he thought what Shino felt may have been jealousy but he quickly realized that it was simply an attachment. Kiba and Hinata had been his first real friends outside of the other kids in his own clan, had Hinata been doing something like this he would have been just as worried. The urge to protect each other rose up in all of them when it came down to the dangerous situations but Shino really was making this a hell of a lot more dangerous than it should have been.

"Just…watch yourself," Shino said after a moment, his voice low with a sigh. At his friend's loss of tension, Kiba grinned once again and started walking backwards in Kankuro's direction. Shino remained where he was with his hands in his pockets. They fisted, unnoticeably, around the edges of his sleeves as he watched his best friend disappear in the direction of someone that had nearly cost him his own life.

"I'll be home again before you have the time to enjoy the silence!"

Kankuro shifted his bag on his back as he waited for Kiba to call out his last remarks and finish the jog in his direction. The trip here had been pain-staking enough and he wasn't looking forward to waking up early in the morning for another three day trip to the Mist.

The Suna native couldn't say he was even looking forward to visiting the Mist. His reasons for this were quite simple; he didn't like islands, boats, or anything pertaining to either of the two. The reality of the fact that one-third of the trip involved being on a boat hit him hard when he received Kiba's scroll about things he would need to pack and he had been faced with an intense sinking feeling in his stomach.

"You're bringing your summon scrolls? On a vacation?" Kiba asked as he tucked his hands back in his pants pockets and started moving with a different company at his side.

"Are you bringing the dogs?"

"…good point," he sighed in defeat. He wasn't expecting there to be any reason for Kankuro to need his scrolls the way his family naturally kept their canine-companions with them. But he did have to accept the fact that Kankuro's puppets were of just as much importance to him as the dogs were to them, "You're not going to be whining for sleep during the run tomorrow are you?" He smirked as Kankuro yawned and fixed him with a glare.

"I don't whine," he replied, training his look back forward. The two continued walking in silence and had started to head into the dark of the forest surrounding the Inuzuka Estate when Kankuro spoke up again, "Hey, remind me again why you don't just take Shino with you?"

"I just don't want to put him through that mocking again," Kiba said, "He's got a lot of control but if something happens I don't want him to get in trouble on my behalf."

"But me getting in trouble is okay?" Kankuro asked, more curious if Kiba had even caught on to that then the actual answer.

"Do you have an entire clan to disgrace when you beat up a bunch of kids for calling your best friend names?" Kiba perked a brow in the other's direction.

Kankuro smirked slightly with a low chuckle, "Touché." Kiba smirked slightly himself and moved his hands back behind his head to lean backwards as he continued walking.

Stars were visible in flickers between the leaves and branches of the canopy above their head, the moon was only about half full so it didn't illuminate much. Soon shadows stretched to greet their feet as they headed down the pathway towards the house and the warm golden light of the house was visible. Akamaru lifted his head and quickly got up to bound over and greet his owner.

"Besides," Kiba said after a moment, watching his friend come to greet him. Kankuro glanced over at him curiously, though it may have been hard to tell by his expression. Kiba grinned at him from around his arm, "No one would buy that Shino's my type."

He ran ahead to greet Akamaru and left the surprised puppet master standing a tad dazed behind him.