Sorry about the long wait, readers. I'll try not to make you all wait so long next time, but no promises or guarantees. And please, review! I want to know if I'm doing something good, or bad, or anything! Just alerts and favorites isn't telling me how bad a writer I am.
Naruto whistled a little tune to himself as he walked to his favorite place in Konoha, bar the Hokage Tower or Monument, Ichiraku Noodle Shop. Riku walked beside him and contemplated something she hadn't noticed till now. Naruto's heart had about the largest natural amount of Light she'd seen in any male, with only that sliver of Darkness that allowed Naruto to have a personality of his own, but there was a red dot in the Darkness for some reason. Riku had felt a third mind when she was Soul Eater and in Naruto's hand, but hadn't pay it any mind before now. Perhaps it was time she explained how to sense Darkness and what little of it Naruto smelled like.
After they were out of the public eye, that is. Riku didn't want Naruto to start freaking out about what they were going to be talking about in plain sight, so Riku and Naruto ate their noodles in silence. Well, Riku ate, Naruto slurped. Let it not be said that Naruto spilled, though, since Riku managed to walk out without having to change into Soul Eater and back to clean herself. On the way to their new home, Naruto patted his stomach, content with the amount of noodles he'd eaten.
And then a finger poked his shoulder from behind. Looking over his shoulder, Naruto saw a familiar face from his class at the Ninja Academy. "Tenten-chan? What're you doing here?" Turning fully to face her, Naruto saw she'd gotten some new clothes that seemed to accentuate her growing figure. She wasn't an hourglass, yet, but Naruto's puberty stricken mind imagined her grown figure easily.
And then his mind came back when he noticed she'd been talking for a couple seconds. "-alked on a roof?" Naruto nodded his agreement almost instantly, taking a second to think of the words that took place before she finished her question. He wondered what she wanted to keep out of civilian ears, but turned to Riku first.
"Wait here, I should only be gone for a few minutes." After seeing her nod, Naruto jumped up to the nearest rooftop, Tenten following him after a second of airtime. "So, what is it you wanted to talk about?" Naruto turned to face the bun-haired girl again as he asked, seeing her face turn from a forced calm to worry. "Is something wrong?"
Tenten chewed on her lip for a few seconds, before blurting out, at a speed faster than the text would have you think, "Do you know why Mizuki wanted to kill you last night?" Naruto, being a fast talker himself, managed to catch and translate the quicker than normal speech. He didn't even need to think about his response.
"Nope. Don't really care, either, since he was probably a lunatic, too. He tried to kill me and Iruka-sensei, s-wait, how do you know Mizuki tried to kill me? I'm pretty sure Hokage-jiji hasn't told anyone about it, and I know Iruka-sensei and I haven't." Naruto crossed his arms and gave Tenten an out of place serious look, causing the girl to scratch the back of her head sheepishly.
"I sometimes stay out too late training and didn't want my dad to yell at me for coming home after the shop's closed, so I found that shack one day after moving to a new training ground for some self study, and I use it to sleep in some times. I had the luck to be sleeping when something impacted the outer wall, which woke me up, and I saw everything from there." Tenten paused here, unsure if even a roof was safe from eavesdroppers for this part of the conversation. Naruto took the pause differently.
"So you saw Riku's arm when she killed Mizuki?" Tenten winced at the memory, answering Naruto's question handily. "Right, taking you to Hokage-jiji." With that Naruto said to Riku, "Going back to the Tower, meet us there." Before turning back to Tenten and feeling a little bad at himself from the face she was making. It was a mix between saddened and horrified that probably wouldn't be out of place on a falsely accused witness being called the murderer. Though Naruto's thoughts probably exaggerated that from her slumped posture, he couldn't help but feel bad for her. At least no ANBU were around to hear, that would've sucked horribly for both of them. Deciding to try and better her mood, Naruto scratched the back of his head as he started thinking of a way to do so.
"It's not like I don't trust you not to tell anyone, Tenten-chan, it's just that I think Hokage-jiji wouldn't want to let it be known that someone unaccounted for was there." After getting a nod from Tenten, looking a lot less scared of getting executed for a treason she didn't willingly or knowingly commit, the two began jumping towards the Hokage Tower, passing Riku overhead, as she was going at a more leisurely pace than the situation would be called for if she were a member of Konoha's military force. This did give her time to think of how to tell Naruto how to increase the darkness inside him without it sounding like she were trying to convert him into some evil cult.
"First off, there's the fact that he's barely got enough darkness inside him to let him wield me without burning either of us, so there is that. Though, come to think of it, anyone else probably WOULD be burned with that amount of darkness. Maybe it's that red dot that's making him not burn? I know I haven't felt anything adverse, so I'm not in any danger, yet." Riku rubbed her chin before looking at her hands. Finding they were burn free, she noted to herself to check her legs later. "Though I wonder how long it'll take him to be able to use his skills. Probably a month or two, unless I can corru-TEACH Naruto how to act as a 'Not Evil Darkness User'(TM), but how? Riku wasn't exactly the most sociable guy around, and he was a major playboy. I don't think Naruto is going to act like that at all. He seems more like the type to stumble into a relationship, and do his best to keep it. Whether it advances or not is up to chance." Riku chuckled a bit at her description of Naruto's eventual lovelife. She didn't know when or who, but Riku was fairly certain Naruto would be a curveball in anyone's lovelife, whether they wanted him or not. That much she could tell from just sifting through his memories as she was held earlier today.