Senju Aramaki sighed as he flipped through his magazine. It had been a rather slow week. Come to think of it, it had been a rather slow month. As he was reading an article on baking tips for housewives, the bell above the door tinkled. He turned around to find Uchiha Sasuke walking in. Uchiha Sasuke whose arrogance and bad attitude put most of his late - and rather unlamented in his opinion - clan to shame.
"Uchiha-sama." he said in his "trying to be nice to customers he'd rather have drop dead" tone of voice. "What can I do for you this afternoon?"
"I came to talk to you about a set of pest control seals that were supposed to be good for a decade." The Uchiha boy said, sounding as if he were barely restraining a great deal of anger.
"What about them?" he asked.
The Uchiha boy slammed a rather sizable dead rat down on the counter. From the looks of it, it had been taken out by a Kunai.
"Can you explain why there are thousands of these running around the district when father had those seals put in only eight years ago?" the Uchiha boy asked.
"Thousands?" he squeaked in a totally manly fashion.
Great, just fucking great. Kaneda had cut corners again and he was going to have to pay for it. His family had been exterminators for three generations and were the best in Konoha, so good that the Uchiha had chosen to ignore the fact that they were Senju in both blood and name when they had contracted for their services. Thanks to Kaneda's lazy ways however, that reputation was seriously slipping. The last thing they needed was a scandal the likes of this one seemed to be shaping up to be.
"The extermination service will be free, as will the replacement seals which I will see to personally." he ground out as he handed the boy the standard set of pre-extermination instructions.
"Good." the boy said as he turned and left.
The next time he saw Kaneda, he was a dead man. Brother or no, there were some things you just didn't let slide.
&!&!&!&
Naruto yawned as he answered the door. His team had a day off, and he had been catching up on sleep. He probably should have gotten up earlier considering the fact that it was mid-afternoon, but he felt that he deserved a lazy day in bed considering all the shit he'd gone through recently. He hadn't had one of those in a good long time. When he opened the door, it had been to find his cousin on his doorstep with a couple bags at his feet.
"Can I stay with you?" Sasuke asked.
"Why?" he asked, though he had a sneaking suspicion as to what the answer might be considering what he and Sasuke had been doing the night before.
"The exterminators are going to be spraying the entire district with rat poison, and it won't be livable for the next week or so." Sasuke replied.
"Yeah. Sure. Whatever. I hope you brought your futon since all I've got is the bed, and I'm not sharing it with you." he replied as he moved aside to let his cousin in.
&!&!&!&
Aramaki sighed in relief as he went from house to house. Everything had been properly sealed away and stored somewhere before he arrived. He couldn't count the number of times he'd been forced to sit there waiting for a homeowner to finish putting their crap away before he could get his job done. The Clan Head's residence which looked to be the only lived-in house was properly emptied as well.
He carefully skirted a suspicious looking stain on the floor as Kaneda arrived in the middle of his inspection of the Head's residence. Seriously, what sort of messed up kid willingly lived in the same place in which his parents had been slaughtered.
"Guess who gets to clean up all the bodies this time?" he chirped mock cheerfully as Kaneda picked up an envelope which had been addressed to him that had been left on the kitchen counter.
"Not funny man." his brother said with a shudder as he opened the note that had been left for them.
"What the hell?" Kaneda said as he read the note.
"What's it say?" he asked.
"Don't forget to get under the seventh tatami mat from the far right in the Naka shrine." Kaneda replied, looking confused.
"Whatever." he said. Some people had the strangest places for hiding crap they thought was valuable.
&!&!&!&
"So, what do you think this is?" Kaneda asked as he inspected the strange stone slab in the room beneath the Naka shrine that they had decided to take on first.
"Don't know, don't care." his brother Aramaki replied as he sprayed poison and lay down several traps.
The rats in the Uchiha district were exceedingly vicious, much like the Uchiha themselves had been. He'd discovered that when he'd accidentally knocked over a rusted trash can in an alley, sending several of the damn things attacking rather than fleeing like normal rats. As they say, you are what you eat, and those rats had been eating Uchiha homes for years. Something had to have rubbed off on them.
He really shouldn't have cut corners on those effing seals in places he didn't think anyone would notice, even if the ten-year seals were a bitch to make. If he knew that anything that lived here would mutate like that back then, he'd have gone through all that trouble and then some. He could see beady red eyes peering out at him from a hole in the corner, and he was willing to swear that there were tomoe in them.
"Lets hurry up and get out of here. This place is giving me the creeps Nii-chan." he said, shuddering.
Aramaki stopped and stared at him. He knew why. He hadn't called Aramaki Nii-chan in a good long time.
&!&!&!&
The ANBU commonly known as Monkey scowled as he peered into the Uzumaki boy's window to make sure the brat was okay and not plotting Konoha's imminent destruction, as that was part of his patrol on this route. He had been put on the route that he'd avoided like the plague for years after Rat had broken his leg in the middle of his patrol. He hated this route with a passion, and for good reason.
He and the Uzumaki hadn't hit it off on the few times they'd encountered each-other face-to-face, and it didn't have anything to do with the Uzumaki's unwelcome tennant. To say that the Uzumaki disliked him was an understatement, and frankly the feeling was mutual. After the little misfire that had landed Uchiha Itachi in a dumpster while he'd been recovering from another mission in the hospital, the Uzumaki had come after him with a vengeance.
Nothing less could be expected of the offspring of the Red Hot-blooded Habanero.
He still had nightmares in which that boy's mother came back from the dead to beat the shit out of him for calling her Tomato.
The Uchiha boy was over, and he was scowling at the dinner the Uzumaki prepared. Apparently Instant Ramen wasn't good enough for the prima donna that according to rumor was related to the Uzumaki. Considering the fact that the Uzumaki was now wearing the red and white uchiwa, he supposed that rumor was fact.
It figured. No-one could hold a grudge like a Uchiha.
&!&!&!&
Sparrowhawk sighed as she did her patrol of the Uchiha district. The place was empty and dead. Nothing ever happened here these days. Patrols were much more fun a few years back when she and the others could take bets on who was cheating on who and the like. There was none of that now. There was just emptiness, emptiness and desolation, emptiness and desolation and the Senju Exterminators running screaming from a house as an army of rats pursued them.
Wait, what?