Hello all!
Yes, yes I know I only updated the other day, but I'm absolutely in love with writing this story.
Kiba and Hitori/Misaki's ups and downs are just awesome to write.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

Disclaimer: I don't own, etc, etc.

Chapter 6 - Crazy

As Kiba slowly walked up the stairs, ready to get into bed after letting Akamaru outside for a quick run (and to go to the toilet), the large ninken playfully leaping up three or four stairs at a time, making Kiba smirk and shake his head at his companion's antics and when they got to the bedroom door, they both started using the quietest movements they could, which were silent for shinobi standards.

The door opened and shut with only a tiny squeak and click, and both man and his dog walked over to their side of the room, Kiba standing next to the futon and Akamaru curling up in front of the heater. Kiba got some clothes out of his pack to change into, since his tidiest pair of long black pants, and the only nice button up shirt he owned, in a dark maroon colour probably wouldn't be comfortable to sleep in.

"Oi."

A voice sounded throughout the room and he nearly wet himself with shock until he realised that it was Hitori, and he could just see her laying on the large bed, with her grey eyes glaring at him thanks to the moonlight coming in from the window.

"I thought I said to come in silently...Tch, and you call yourself a shinobi." she scoffed at him quietly with a slightly amused huff before rolling over, to have her back facing him.

He snorted in disbelief. "As if that would have woken you."

"Don't you recall last week when you said that I might have learnt something from being around shinobi all the time? I did insinuate that I had, didn't I? You woke me because I know how to listen, even when I'm asleep." she said, rolling back over to look at him while they talked, or argued, more or less.

"So I was right. You do know a little bit about controlling your chakra." he smirked, quite enjoying being right about such a secretive woman.

"Yes, you are right. Happy now?" Hitori responded with a dull tone.

"Why, yes. I am actually." his tone was a little sharp and definitely sarcastic but he spoke normally again moments later. "So, did you go to the academy for a while or something?" the Inuzuka inquired, curiosity getting the better of him.

"Hmm. I wasn't there for too long." she answered, her tone back to normal as well.

"Did you drop out because you didn't like it or something?" he continued to question her, trying to get answers from her while she was going to give them to him, even though he watched her eyes narrow at him.

Instead of responding, like he hoped she would, she seemed to pick up on his inquisitiveness and gave him nothing more than a unreadable groan, and rolled over onto her back with her arms crossed behind her head. He took that as his queue to stop asking questions, so he did and went back to getting changed.

Hitori's eyes opened and flicked over to see what Kiba was doing after she heard quiet rustling coming from that direction and they widened considerably when she saw him standing there, shirtless, wearing only a pair of cotton boxers that didn't leave much to the imagination as he turned his sleeping shirt the right way out. The light filtering through the window gave him an almost luminescent glow and she couldn't help but stare with half-lidded, tired eyes and watch the rippling of his muscles as he moved.

She snapped herself out of it and a small, low growl escaped her as she averted her eyes pointedly at the roof, as if cursing whatever was high above them, in the clouds. Kiba's dark eyes looked over to her, and suddenly he smelt something and he put his guard up straight away, but he relaxed after he took it in and it was more amazing than the various gentle perfumes that Misaki wore, and it made him bite his lip. Hard.

He knew it was a familiar scent but it was too faint for even him to figure out what it was but, since the overpowering smells of cigarette smoke, alcohol, and the almost metaphorical smell of criminal activity coming in from the window basically masked everything, and he only smelt it for a moment before it faded away again, no matter how hard he concentrated on it.

Hitori felt his chakra spike, and without making it too obvious that it drew her attention, she casually glanced over to him as if wondering what he was doing, even though she really was, but for a different reason. She caught his eye, and raised an eyebrow in confusion and spoke.

"What are you doing?" her voice laced with flawless nonchalance.

"Nothing. I thought I smelt something. It's gone now." he said, clearly trying to shake something off his mind and she watched in confusion, wondering why he thought smelt something, and she tried to listen for anything suspicious going on in the nearby area, but couldn't hear anything.

For another minute or two, she thought about what he could have picked up on, until she looked back at him just as he was folding his clothes, and laying them down on a shelf in the small closet next to his futon and it hit her.

What he smelt was...her.

She abruptly realised that she may have been a little affected by his being half-naked, as loathe as she was to admit it. Since Kiba barely seemed to pick up on it, she gathered that it mustn't have been much, but his powerful nose was definitely not something to sneeze at, nor underestimate.

The young woman knew that Kiba was the pride of the Inuzuka clan, from hearing conversations around the village and that he would definitely be one of the strongest shinobi they had ever produced in a year or two when he hit his prime as a ninja. She knew that he was strong, and maybe even stronger than he himself realised, just from going off what she felt with that tiny chakra spike when his guard immediately went up instinctively.

Trying to forget her little slip-up and move on, she watched as he got under the covers of the futon and raised a brow as he spent the next two minutes rolling around trying to get comfortable. When he finally stopped, she sighed silently and shut her eyes, trying to will herself to go back to sleep.

With a growl of frustration, Kiba started to shift again and Hitori's eyes opened and focused to glare at him again. He felt the weight of her stare, and turned around to speak, and try to convince her not to get angry with him because it was the crappy futons fault, but she got in first.

"If you are going to be rolling around all fucking night, just get in here so I can get some god-damn sleep, yeah." she said with restrained anger and continued to glare at him, her grey eyes piercing through his dark ones.

"Seriously?" was all he could muster, actually shocked that she was showing a bit of compassion, even if it was fuelled by her desire to get a decent night's sleep.

"Do you want me to change my mind?" she threatened with a sharp tone and narrowed eyes, still burning hot with flames of the metaphorical fuse that was decreasing in size rapidly.

"Nope." he said almost too quick for it to be coherent, and it seemed to take everything he had not to run and dive bomb onto the bed, so she rolled her eyes and moved as far over as she could without falling off the edge of the bed to make room for him.

He grinned happily as he clambered under the covers and sighed in satisfaction at how much of a sleep trap this mattress was. It wasn't too soft, and not too firm and he felt like he was laying on a cloud and continued to lay there with a stupid grin on his face before he was literally smacked out of his trance by Hitori whacking him upside the head.

"Get that stupid look off your face and go to sleep." she scolded as she rolled to have her back facing him, and shut her eyes.

"Thanks." he muttered quickly, and she only responded with a non-committal sound from the back of her throat and he smiled before getting comfortable and falling into a deep sleep...

It was quite a pleasant morning, and Kiba woke feeling quite well rested before Aisa could come in a wake the both of them and he didn't even bother to open his eyes until he felt something he didn't remember falling asleep with. He wasn't too surprised, since it was morning after all, but he was a little shocked at what seemed to be the cause of it.

From what he could gather after he opened his eyes and looked, he and Hitori had both shifted in their sleep and were much closer than he could have expected. She was still facing away from him, but her back was nearly touching his chest, and her body was bent so that her rear end stuck out a little and it was basically pressed right up against his 'private area' that was considerably stiff, so to speak.

He knew that she would probably wake up as soon as he moved even the tiniest bit, since they usually got up about this time, but he refused to give up and decided to attempt to use every bit of stealth that his half-asleep body could manage and get out of bed and into the bathroom before she realised what had happened.

Trying not to freak out completely at the situation he had gotten himself in, he enacted his plan, which failed almost straight away when she groaned and moved back a bit, as if not happy that he moved away from her, which definitely drove him nuts.

As he slowly kept moving away from her, she didn't seem to be too disturbed and he successfully got out of the bed, and mentally sighed with relief once he had achieved that. He quickly grabbed some clean clothes from his pack, and Akamaru woke up and drearily watched as his master went straight for the bathroom, sporting something that confused the ninken.

Hitori was woken when the bathroom door shut and she lazily rolled over to see that Kiba was no longer in the bed, but she saw that the bathroom door was shut and the shower was running, making it obvious as to where he was. Akamaru got up and went over to her to say good morning. She gave him a scratch behind the ears, and the woman decided to get up and take him outside to the toilet. With a stretch, she put her feet on the ground and led the ninken downstairs and out to the back door, which led to a small area behind the club with a bit of grass and a storage shed for tables, chairs, and any bar stock that they might need.

She heard the side door open after the locked clicked, and she presumed that Jinoichi had arrived. As soon as the scent of cigar smoke wafted in her direction, she knew she was correct and she knew that he would have seen her by now, since she was casually leaning up against the door frame watching the ninken run around happily.

"Misaki-chan! Good morning!" she heard from behind her and she didn't even bother to turn around and greet him fully, just merely looked over her shoulder from the corner of her eye and made an indifferent sound of greeting.

"I wanted to speak to you about something, so I'm glad I've caught you." he said, trying to get her attention, so she complied and turned around to look at him. "I would like you to do some promotion for the club tonight again. It's been a while, and the younger crowd always bring in a lot of money. So if you wouldn't mind finished a little early and going over to Shuuya after the show tonight for an hour or so, I would appreciate it." he continued with slight hesitation, knowing how much she hated that place.

Shuuya was a nightclub also owned by Jinoichi, but he had placed Sakamoto, who was also her manager in charge of the place. He got a lot of money out of it since it was extremely popular with people around the age of 18 to 26 and occasionally he would send Misaki and Aisa over to promote the club just to get some extra customers and money into the place. Shuuya meant 'all-night' and in a city like this, a place like that just kept going, and going literally all-night suited fairly well, so even when Misaki finished her performance at midnight, the place would still be full of people.

If looks could kill, she knew that Jinoichi's head would just spontaneously combust at the very moment he mentioned the name 'Shuuya' and her in the same sentence. Unfortunately though, his head didn't explode and she knew that she would have to go to that filthy place after the show tonight, so she continued to glare off into space and didn't bother to say anything.

"Thank you. Just please stay there for an hour or so and get some customers over here for the next week or so. I will inform Sakamoto about you going there." he still spoke with hesitation, but tried to keep his voice from wavering, even though it failed terribly.

With a sigh, she decided to head back upstairs since Akamaru was satisfied with his little run and toilet stop. She went up the stairs and watched with mild amusement as Kiba nearly threw the bedroom door off it's hinges just as she stood in front of it and reached out to open it. He sighed with relief and she presumed that he was worried about Akamaru's whereabouts.

"Jeez, don't do that again. You scared the shit out of me." he sounded relieved and shook his head with another sigh but got a little confused as to why Hitori was just blatantly staring at his face, with a black, shaped brow raised and a corner of her mouth turned upwards in a barely there smirk.

"Your towel." she pointed towards the ground and he looked down to see that in his state of concern, he had forgotten to hold his towel up and it had fallen into a damp heap at his feet, revealing everything.

He cursed and picked it back up, wrapping it around himself as quick as he could, and nearly dropping it again in the process, and he looked back up after he'd covered himself to see Hitori purposely averting her eyes and staring into space for the sake of his modesty.

"Sorry." he muttered awkwardly, for lack of not knowing what else to say and she glanced back at him before merely shrugging with her smirk growing and walking past him into the bedroom.

"Akamaru was fine. I was just letting him out to have a quick run since you were having a shower." she explained simply with a bored tone, even though she was trying not to laugh at him for his earlier exposure.

"I was worried about both of you. I thought you'd run off somewhere, and I just wasn't sure where Akamaru went." he blurted out before he realised just what he'd said and he snapped his head towards Hitori to gauge her reaction but she just looked at him with slightly narrowed eyes and an unreadable expression.

Instead of thinking too much about it, she turned away and headed for the bedroom door, intending on waking Aisa up. It was pretty rare that she got up before the blonde did, but Kiba's being around changed things up a little bit. He was starting to get under her skin, especially with the 'falling-towel' stunt and the getting changed right in front of her number from last night.

She knocked on Aisa's door and stepped inside to find her just about to get out of bed. The blonde was stretching and yawning and smiled once she realised Misaki was standing in the doorway who continued to lean up against the doorway as the other woman swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

"Morning. Since when are you up before me?" she asked, half-yawning again.

"Since Kiba woke me when he got up to have a shower. It was rather amusing actually, I went downstairs and let Akamaru out, and when I came back, he thought we'd gone off somewhere without him and dropped his towel without realising it." she spoke casually, even though on the inside she was still cracking up laughing over it.

Aisa's jaw dropped in shock and intrigue lit up her still-tired blue eyes. "So he wasn't wearing anything underneath?" she asked, a little bewildered at Misaki's story.

"No. I did avert my eyes for the sake of his modesty, but it was all a bit hard to miss." Misaki admitted, making Aisa laugh and continue to keep her eyes as wide as saucers.

"Did you see if he was, you know..." Aisa mouthed the word 'big' and held her hands a small distance apart from each other, indicating length.

"Rather substantial, from what I saw." the dark-haired woman drawled, her tone revealing a little amusement and Aisa knew that she was speaking like that because she definitely was surprised by what she had seen and probably never expected to see of Kiba.

"Oh, you should so get in with him. I bet he'd be awesome in the sack." Aisa threw her head back and sighed dramatically.

"And why would I want to do that? Why don't you, hmm?" Misaki retorted, not missing a beat as per usual.

"Trust me, you'd need it more than I would, honey. Besides, I know you think he's attractive. He's a pretty decent guy too." she shrugged and smiled in a way that Misaki couldn't quite put her finger on.

"If I felt the need to seduce Kiba, or anyone for that matter, I would. But I don't. So, problem solved. Anyway. The reason I came to wake you is to let you know that we're going to Shuuya tonight after the show. We're just going to finish a bit early." the older woman explained and cringed a little when Aisa yelped happily with an almost ear piercing pitch.

"Yes! We haven't been there in forever. It's about time we go back." Aisa exclaimed, clearly excited and happy about being able to go to Shuuya tonight, since they usually weren't supposed to.

"I was rather enjoying not going there since forever." Misaki glared to one side, that being the direction that Shuuya was in.

"Well, you're just boring. I love going there. It's so much fun! We get to drink and dance for free since we work here." she said as she danced around the room happily, heading roughly towards her closet and when she got there, she immediately began to rummage around for clothes to wear and a few moments later, she dug out a nice top and a pair of pants and laid them out on her bed.

"Are you done? I'd like for us all to have some breakfast, if you wouldn't mind." Misaki interrupted her, but she didn't realise how much worse she'd made things until she saw that proverbial glint that Aisa got in her eye when she was planning something.

"You know, we're going to have to get you some clothes for this. You can't exactly wear a formal dress to Shuuya!"

As per usual, Misaki continued to groan and glare as Aisa picked some clothes out for her, while Kiba just watched with idle amusement. Eventually they found a nice pale grey-blue top, that had a black panther print on it. Misaki merely shrugged at the sight of it, which meant that it was acceptable so they picked out her size and moved on.

When Kiba saw a pair of long, black pants with several pockets, zips and buttons on it, he thought that Misaki would find it decent enough, and he pulled them off the rack and Misaki glanced at him before looking at the pants and smirking lightly. That was more her style. Aisa seemed to like them as well, so again they got the correct size and purchased both items before going back to the club.

Even though she knew Shuuya just annoyed the crap out of her, with all the young adults who were just completely intoxicated and had no idea of what was really going on around them and in the world, Aisa's excitement seemed to be getting to Kiba, since he hadn't been able to do something like this before, and that almost made her a little excited. That was until she realised how weird that was and promptly shoved her excitement into the back of her mind.

The only interesting thing about the place was that they never paid anything to get in, and they drank as much as they want for free. When Aisa told Kiba that they could drink as much as they wanted for nothing, he looked at Misaki and even she smirked a bit, letting him know that was the only thing she'd go there for.

"Sounds like it's going to be a fun night then." Kiba laughed and Aisa nodded in agreement while Misaki just stared off into space, as normal.

Soon enough, it was time for Misaki to start getting ready for the show, and Aisa went downstairs to do a few things that would make it easier for her to finish her jobs quickly after so that they could go straight over to Shuuya.

Kiba and Akamaru were in the bedroom and were watching Hitori do the insanely quick, but impressive job of make-up. Tonight, she had decided to wear the new dress that she had gotten last week, so she had kept her eyes dark and smoky, to accentuate the effect of the black dress and shoes she had to go with the outfit and it would suit the clothes she was wearing to Shuuya afterwards as well.

Since Aisa wasn't there to tell her, she turned to Kiba and asked him if she had done it evenly on both sides, and he froze for a moment, just noting the sheer difference and the beauty that she showed. She really knew how to bring out the silver in her eyes and he struggled just to nod in response to her question.

He watched as she did her hair and then went to get changed, being too lazy to go into the bathroom and untied her kimono and let it fall off her shoulders, before she stopped abruptly, and slowly turned her head to stare at him blankly until he realised what he was doing.

She finished getting changed after he turned his head away, and he was glad that she didn't need him to zip it up, because as soon as he looked at her, he knew that if he got within arms-reach of her, he couldn't be held responsible for what happened. The dress looked absolutely amazing, and he could see the pale skin of her back, as well as a fairly bad scar on the left side of her back which was about 20 centimetres long, but it was so faint that he could only see it because of the lighting in the room.

"Hey, how'd you get that scar?" he asked without even realising that he was speaking until after she turned around to look at him.

"Long story." she responded cryptically and looked back towards the mirror as she did the finishing touches on her hair and make-up.

"We've got time." he pressed gently, not wanting to anger her, but merely just let her know that she could speak to him if she wanted to.

She turned towards him and went to glare, but the genuine concern that was in his dark eyes melted her icy glare and her expression softened as well. For a few moments, she toyed with taking this opportunity to tell him what she had been trying to pick her moment to tell him all day, but when Aisa knocked on the door and opened it, saying that the sound check was ready to go, she looked at him as if to say that they'd talk about it later, and just went downstairs instead.

Kiba being dressed and ready for the night ahead trailed behind, leaving Akamaru, much to the ninkens dismay, by himself in the bedroom. As Misaki walked out the back towards the back-stage area, she tried to get the image of Kiba out of her head. When he had questioned her about the scar, it was the first time she had seen him since he'd gotten ready, and she was a little shocked, so to speak.

He was wearing his long, black dress pants, with a nice pair of leather shoes, and he had a crisp white shirt on with faint grey stripes here and there that he had purchased today, when they went out to buy Misaki's outfit for later on. As per usual, he didn't wear his hitai-ate and was clean-shaven, but there just seemed to be something different about him. His hair was still scruffy and he looked the same as he normally did, but she just couldn't put her finger on it.

She glanced just over her shoulder at him as they parted ways, since he sat out the front, acting as a undercover bodyguard and security, like always. He went over to the bar and took his usual seat, and Aisa served him a beer, and smiled at him kindly while the small sound check went on just to make sure everything was working correctly before they started playing. It only took a few minutes because nothing ever changed, and customers were already pouring in.

Half an hour later, they lights dimmed as they normally did, and the band walked out of stage and began playing a quite tune as they lights came back on. Kiba nearly died at the sight of Misaki's new dress and he absolutely went crazy over how low cut it was and how much skin it showed. He was surprised she actually was game enough to wear something like that.

Everything went well, up until about half way through the show, when a clearly drunk man walked in the door and took a seat near the front of the stage. Kiba could tell that he was very intoxicated so he kept an eye on him, but after he had another drink he started making a scene and making noise throughout the song that the band were currently playing and he was already on his guard and ready to be at her side in at a moment's notice and half-standing up.

When he realised that no one was paying any attention to him, he threw a beer glass at Misaki, who avoided it and caught it in her hand without it smashing at the last second. Both Kiba and Aisa watched with concern, knowing how pissed off she would be, and the band stopped playing as the man starting stumbling up towards the stage.

Kiba was over there in a second, but Misaki was already taking care of it. She stepped down off the stage, grabbed the man by his collar and threw him down onto the nearest table, very nearly breaking it in half with the force of the impact. Jinochi had also come out of his office to see what was going on and was watching the whole scene unfold from the door of his office, which looked down over the club floor.

"Hey." Misaki whispered very quietly and with venom in her voice. "You don't come in here and disrupt my show without getting the shit beaten out of you, but you don't ever...make a fool of that man up there," she said, pointing towards the leader of the Tora, who was glaring down at the man with cold eyes, "and live to see another day without begging for your life. Juran, take him to Jinoichi." she called out to a security guard who grabbed the man by the back of his shirt and dragged him towards the man now coming down the stairs.

She brushed herself off and flipped her hair back to it's original position, and went to go back on stage, but Kiba caught her hand and stopped her. It took her a second to realise why she couldn't move forward, but she turned around and saw him looking incredibly worried. He went to speak, but it didn't come out the first time.

"...you okay?" he eventually got out and she almost smiled at the shaky voice he spoke with.

With a single nod, she reassured him that she wasn't hurt, just a bit frustrated, and he let go after a moment and she stepped back up onto the stage and apologised to the other patrons about the disturbance and continued on with the show, finishing an hour early as organised.

Quickly she bolted out back-stage after they finished, and got changed into the new outfit that Aisa had left on the small table for her, and Aisa left all her work to one of the other girl's who was known for slacking off, and her, Kiba and Misaki went out the side door of the club, and headed off towards Shuuya.

I was going to make this chapter longer, but I thought that if I didn't stop there, I probably never would! :P
So you'll just have to wait for the next installment! :D

As always guys, I'd really love to know what you think so far!

Til next time!