Disclaimer: Neither of us own Naruto, and we make no profit writing fanfiction about it.

File Title - Shove a glue gun on muh dik

(AN - White): I wish people would stop asking me if I've abandoned my fics. I'll make it very clear if I do.


Thick tendrils of mist hung lethargically over the water, sprawling across the small island. Rocks and vegetation dotted the landscape haphazardly, mostly obscured by the dense fog.

"Perfect." Zabuza Momochi adopted a wry grin underneath a wad of bandages covering his face, cocking his head slightly as he sized up his surroundings.

"Zabuza-sama?"

The Demon of the Hidden Mist spared a glance for the figure behind him, long black hair framing the expressionless mask of a Kirigakure Oinin Butai. The faded crimson kanji for rain disrupted the pure white porcelain of Haku's mask. It sent a ripple of nostalgia through Zabuza's muscles. Old memories of a once upon a time where he was an eager young pup serving his nation's black ops.

"This is where it will be decided. The strong will always overcome the weak, Haku."

Zabuza planted his sword firmly into the ground, curling fingers around the hilt lazily as he gazed into the fog with a penetrating gaze, eyes widening slightly as he noticed a hint of red in the distance.

"Finally." the man growled.

Haku shortened the distance between himself and his master, betraying a need to protect the one who had saved him, with tensed shoulders beneath his baggy haori. "Are you sure about this, Zabuza-sama?"

Zabuza ignored Haku's worried question as he spared a backwards glance towards the group behind him. A collection of various nuke-nin he had accumulated after the chaos in Wave lined up haphazardly behind the swordsman and his protege.

Replacing the Demon Brothers had been relatively easy - hundreds of lost souls wandered in search of purpose among the isles of Water Country, and men without purpose had jumped at the chance to make something of themselves.

There was a sickness rotting the soul of Mizu no Kuni. Men who would once have fished the stormy seas and kept faith in their futures instead murdered each other for imagined slights and drowned themselves in cheap wine. Women who once would carry themselves with dignity now whored on the streets for coin and opium to dull the pain of their existence. At the root of the disease hollowing out the country laid that little shitstain Yagura - a man who the Demon of the Hidden Mist would make sure paid for his crimes.

"Are you alright, Zabuza-sama?" Haku asked cautiously.

Recoiling slightly, Zabuza realized with a string of his palm that he had been shaking from gripping the handle of his Kubikiribocho so tightly.

"I'm fine," the swordsman muttered dismissively, turning his eyes back on the rapidly approaching boat in the moment of truth approached.

The vessel appeared to be a retrofitted fishing boat, well-suited to slipping out of a harbor unseen, unnoticed. The Demon of the Hidden Mist counted three figures accompanying his rival. Zabuza performed a quick series of hand signals, and his renegade shinobi formed a semicircle around him.

Cracking his neck with a violent series of pops, Zabuza grinned, shivering with anticipation.


Terumi Mei stepped confidently off the boat, shoes sinking slightly into the waterlogged peat that covered the isolated island and wrinkling her nose. "Disgusting. Why did we agree to meet here again?"

"This used to be an old fortress during the Second Shinobi World War," Ao explained as he followed Mei. "I'm surprised Zabuza didn't call off this arrangement - it's rather exposed for him."

Old. Call off. Arrangement?

Standing stock-still for a moment, Mei smashed Ao's face into the surf with a clawed hand and knelt down to gently whisper in his ear, "Ao. Shut up, or I'll kill you."

Ao blanched, and without moving a muscle despite his mouthful of sand, waited for his mistress to cool down.

'"What did I say?"

Tsurugi and Yagyu Ran moored the boat against the soil, eyeing each other nervously before following their seemingly mollified leader.

Mei continued into the center of the small muddy isle, retaining her confidence as she stepped in front of the bandaged swordsman and his underlings. "I thought we agreed to only bring a small escort, Momochi-san?"

Zabuza gave a low grunt in return, removing his massive cleaver from the earth with a swift motion and hefting it over a meaty shoulder. "Our little arrangement will remain solely between us, I assure you."

With a sweeping gesture of his left hand Zabuza continued, "They are merely here as humble observers."

Mei tossed back her crimson hair and laughed, before gazing directly into the Demon of the Bloody Mist's cold eyes. "I love a strong man who doesn't need anyone's help to resolve his problems. And I have wondered what you look like underneath that mess of bandages."

Giving a small pout as Ao silently rejoined the bodyguards behind the redhaired woman, Mei chuckled lowly. "Hmph. I suppose we'll find out soon enough! Are you ready to begin our little contest, Momochi-san?"

With a slow inclination of his head, Zabuza motioned for his party to remove themselves from the immediate battlefield, as Mei indicated the same.

Grinning ferally underneath his wad of bandages, Zabuza leapt back as his hands motioned a swift series of signs. "Kirigakure no jutsu!" Mist exploded out on the island, blanketing the island in white streamers.

Jumping back several feet, Mei's body tensed as she gazed around into the pure nothingness surrounding her.

Mei smirked, driving away her discomfort with pure willpower. "I thought you would be more inventive than this, oh infamous wielder of the Kubikiribocho." Rolling her eyes to emphasize her insult, the red haired woman stuck her tongue out at the roiling clouds of mist. "I suppose you can't teach an old dog new tricks!"

Pressing a finger against the plump curve of her pink lips, Mei spewed an enormous globule of magma in a roiling whirring cone, liquefying a tree that happened to stand in the way, its twisted, skeletal form obscured by the roiling fog.

Zabuza chuckled, his voice carrying ominously across the entire island. "Even a someone with as valuable a bloodline as yours cannot find me here. This mist is my domain, my home. You may know of the bloody mist, but I was born in it!"

Mei barely sensed a whoosh of air approaching her leg. Escaping being hamstrung by mere millimeters, the redhead lunged into a forward roll before she curled back unsteadily to her feet.

As she stumbled forwards slightly, the massive blade caught her forearm from the opposite direction, opening a shallow, freely bleeding wound on her left bicep. Red liquid poured freely from the gash.

Mei recovered by throwing herself backwards, slapping a hand wreathed in green medical jutsu against the burning slice that dug into her muscle, flexing her hand cautiously to make sure the recently healed cut hadn't damaged any nerves, the woman smirked in satisfaction.

Zabuza's voice boomed out from all directions at once, distorted by the chakra of mist jutsu. "So many places to strike. A slice at the jugular artery, or the femoral. A puncture of a kidney, the liver, or even the heart. So many places to strike. So many ways to die!"

Lashing out with a myriad of silent water jutsu, Mei sent bullets of compressed glimmering liquid flying at incredible speeds in a variety of directions, hoping to strike Zabuza with a lucky shot while she pulled up defensive sheets of water.

"But you are too useful to waste in a battle like this." Zabuza's deep voice sighed, sounding regretful at the missed chance for pure slaughter. "Yagura will be stopped, and you will help me seek retribution!" The swordsman continued, tone rising with every word. "Spare yourself the pain, and kneel, woman!"

An enormous disc of water flew at the redhead through the pale clouds, followed swiftly by the spinning form of Zabuza's enormous glinting blade.

Gracefully dodging the pair of missiles, Mei shouted, "Enough!" Releasing steam at an enormous rate, Mei boiled the air surrounding her, grinning victoriously as she heard a pained grunt to her right.

Whipping about, Mei swiftly launched a globule of lava where she last heard her opponent, substituting the deadly outpouring of acid steam with burning magma.

Zabuza rolled to avoid the attack, dispersing his mist to carry away the remnants of burning gas with it. Looking Mei in the eyes with a murderous scowl, the Demon of the Hidden Mist ripped off the melted bandages on his face, peeling away a layer of bubbling skin along with it.

"Oh, not so pretty as I would have imagined!" Mei mocked sarcastically, curving one corner of her plump mouth into a sneer. "Although, I'm sure you're quite handsome when you actually have a face!" She laughed uproariously, doubling over as she wiped tears from her eyes.

Growling as he removed the Kubikiribocho from where it impaled a tree, Zabuza grimaced as he saw the lower end of the blade melted away, similarly to his exposed skin.

Slinging the half-destroyed blade over his shoulder, Zabuza rushed towards his foe, still wielding his half a blade with the impeccable skill learnt from years of combat.

Matching the incredibly fast strike with a raised kunai from her side, Mei shuddered under the impact of the sword as blazing yellow sparks scattered furiously through the muggy air. "What monstrous strength!" the redhead thought to herself as she struggled to pushed back the cleaver with shaking limbs.

The two combatants stood still for a moment, before Mei lashed out with a sweeping kick to Zabuza's legs.

Evading the strike, Zabuza reversed his grip and smashed Mei's in the nose with a brutal thrust of his sword's hilt.

Gripping her face with a tight hand, Mei scowled past the throbbing ache in her face as rivulets of blood dripped down her blue dress.

"I always repay my debts," Zabuza muttered grimly over the crack of cartilage, as his opponent snapped her broken nose back into place with little hesitation.

The two launched at each other again, Zabuza meeting Mei's overhand strike with a concealed kunai in his offhand, wielding his half-blade with one hand. With a vicious kick to Mei's stomach, the swordsman sent the dual bloodline wielder flying through a nearby tree, splintering it with her impact.

Rising quickly, Mei spat out a river of magma, creating a haphazard ring around the two shinobi. Wiping a mixed trickle of molten rock and blood from her mouth, Mei smiled wryly, "Is that all you've brought to play with?"

Zabuza rushed forwards, but was abruptly stopped by a wall of blazing lava that was spat out in front of him. Launching off the dried wall of rock to his right like a springboard, Zabuza met Mei in a flurry of shrieking shuriken, dark stars of steel bouncing off each other in random directions.

Deflecting a stray kunai with the base of his blade, Zabuza created a pair of water clones to surround Mei with a one handed seal and a surge of chakra. Each clone stomped in, swinging at her legs as the true swordsman launched a flurry of water bullets at his opponent.

Crouching to avoid the incoming missiles from the real Zabuza, Mei impaled the clones with a kunai in each hand, water splattering as the chakra forms gave beneath her strikes.

Zabuza looked up with satisfaction, then he darted with blinding speed to place his hand on Mei, dropping the battered Kubikiribocho in the mud to increase his agility. Creating a sphere of water around his redhaired opponent with both hands, the Shinobi Swordsman swallowed the urge to sigh with relief.

Laughing freely, Zabuza asked the erstwhile leader of the Kirigakure resistance, "Do you concede?" He truly looked like a demon, with patches of skin loosely clinging to burnt areas of skin across his body grotesquely and pink patches of muscle peeking through the blackened strips of skin.

Shouting something incomprehensible underneath the bubble, Mei pursed her lips into a spewing 'O'. The water clouded instantly, and Zabuza was forced to recoil from the intense heat underneath his palm.

Exploding outwards in a burst of heat and steam, Mei impaled Zabuza's hand with a kunai. The hit was reciprocated by Zabuza's reactionary slice to her side with a concealed knife, carving a burning line over the curve of the redhead's ribs.

With twin snarls of pain, the shinobi leapt backwards from each other, Zabuza recovering his blade from the befouled mud while Mei nursed her wounds gingerly.

Placing the seemingly irreversibly damaged blade against his crimson coated hand, Zabuza watched coolly as the Kubikiribocho drank the blood of its master, growing in length as it was restored to its previous condition.

With a feral grin that exposed teeth sharpened to fangs, Zabuza launched forwards, oblivious to his seeping wounds, preparing a sideways swipe of his incredibly long cleaver.

Ducking under the blade, Mei launched upwards acrobatically to deliver a savage kick to Zabuza's chin, launching him into the artificial rock wall she created with a half hand seal to the sound of a horrifying crack. Taking a moment to recover, Mei straightened and watched Zabuza carefully, insuring that he was incapacitated.

Mei approached the unconscious form of Momochi Zabuza with trepidation, holding her kunai against his neck before whispering back to the man, "Do you concede?"

Mei's shoulder was roughly ripped out of its socket as Zabuza rose from the ground, whipping Mei across his shoulder, and slamming her into the ground with a violent thud and the faint pained squeak the red haired woman released.

Letting go of Mei's arm, which poked out unnaturally from the top of her rotator cuff, Zabuza slipped his heavily muscled arm around her neck and squeezed. The swordsman shouted gleefully, "Yield!"

Screaming her fury and pain, acidic steam poured out of Mei's mouth, forcing Zabuza to recoil after he experienced further burns on his previously injured skin.

Mei coughed up a mouthful of bloody saliva with an expression of pure rage as she rose to her feet and turned to face her enemy.

Coating her workable fist in molten slag, Mei approached her stumbling opponent with one outstretched arm, stopping her hand at the Demon of the Bloody Mist's throat. The smouldering appendage singed his neck with its proximity to the heat.

Zabuza had no defense, and merely dropped his weapons with arms raised to the side, glowering at the smouldering hand underneath his chin with unveiled animosity.

"I yield."

Mei's demeanor immediately shifted from murder to playfulness. "Good then! I look forward to working with you, Momochi-san."

Zabuza looked on, incredulous as Terumi Mei sauntered off, hips swaying as she leisurely blasted a hole in her rock wall, releasing a sharp whistle to indicate the conclusion of their confrontation.

As both parties arrived to the scene, jaws hanging open, Mei smiled happily, "It seems as though I've won. Zabuza's team here will be joining our resistance, as was the condition for his loss. Welcome to the Resistance! Oh, and we both will likely require medical attention."

Mei promptly sagged into Ao's quickly outstretched arms, and was hurriedly laid down to begin preliminary bandaging by Ran. The Yagyu kunoichi favoured her mistress' opponent with a sour look as she tied off the pale strips around Mei's wounds.

Haku and the mercenary shinobi rushed to Zabuza's side, where Haku rapidly began dressing Zabuza's wounds with crushed herbs and mint-green salves from her pouch.

Laying down with reluctant submission to Haku's doctoring and his own fatigue, the swordsman muttered, "She was strong, and I was weak. Perhaps she'll be the one to take Yagura's head before I do..." his voice trailed off as he relinquished himself to Haku's tender care.


Kakashi thumbed over the well-worn surface of his copy of the first volume of Icha- Icha Paradise. The orange cover was almost an old friend, and even though the jounin wasn't in the mood to dive into the fantastical world of smut, the familiarity calmed him.

Lounging in the hallway that lead down to the Hokage's office, Kakashi spared a side-along look for the Sandaime's steely-eyed secretary as the woman went about her business. Sasaki Umeko had chin-length green hair, a thick red scar curling up from the right corner of her lip to her cheekbone, and more rumors surrounding her than that of a skilled whore.

'Come' burnt through Kakashi's arm like a brand, and the ANBU Captain turned his back on the probable black ops agent manning the desk to politely let himself into the Sandaime's office.

The thick smell of spiced tobacco filled the air, given shape by the slow trails of smoke that spiraled out from the Hokage's nostrils. Orange light painted Sarutobi's white and red official attire as the dying afternoon sun reached gentle fingers through the windows.

None of it quite managed to draw attention from the hardness of Hiruzen's gaze. The visible steel of the Sandaime's eyes contrasted with the velvet softness and welcoming curve of his mouth.

"Kakashi." Hiruzen greeted, ember coals glowing in the bowl of his kiseru as he took another short puff. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Swallowing down the bubbling panic over the fact that his student was enrolled into a notoriously psychopathic black ops program, Kakashi gave a grim smile behind the dark cloth of his mask. "There were some interesting developments on our mission, Hokage-sama, and I thought it was best if I came straight to you about them."

Hiruzen frowned, wrinkled corners of his mouth tugging fiercely down. "What sort of developments, Kakashi? I looked over your mission details myself. It was below your skillset and you would have had no trouble completing it. Did Naruto show some signs that his mental state is deteriorating again?"

Kakashi shook his head slowly, taking a deep breath before plunging right to the heart of the matter. "No, it wasn't Naruto. Sasuke was the issue, Hokage-sama. He deliberately planned our discovery by civilian guards for the express purpose of killing them. Furthermore, he cut trophies from their bodies. I confronted him on the spot, but he told me he had to do it, that he was required to. I examined his tongue myself, and I'm forced to conclude that he's been conscripted into the supposedly disbanded ROOT program."

"I know of Sasuke's involvement in Ne."

"You knew? Pardon the disrespect Hokage-sama, but if you knew then why haven't you done something about it? I was responsible for Tenzo - I know very well what sort of madness Danzo's little puppet program can infect people with."

The shadows under Hiruzen's eyes deepened as the Sandaime sagged forward slightly, bent under every one of his sixty-eight years. "Because it was a necessary sacrifice. Uchiha Sasuke's remaining innocence for Uzumaki Naruto's life. I am the Hokage, but that does not make me an unassailable dictator. The distribution of power in the Council makes Konoha more democratic than many other hidden villages, but it also ties my hands. A bargain had to be made."

Half-formed thoughts hopped back and forth in Kakashi's head, inferences slipping from his grasp like fragile mist. "A bargain with Danzo then? Was that wise, Sandaime-sama?"

"It was the only choice. Homura and Koharu have been less than pleased the moment I decided to keep Naruto entirely ignorant as to his heritage and status as a jinchuuriki. The ANBU Commander has expressed his reservations on the same issue numerous times. Rationally, I suppose I was wasting time thinking I could give Naruto-kun a proper childhood, especially when the adult population knows of his condition."

"It wasn't a waste…" Kakashi contested after a quiet moment, shuffling in place. Minato would never have wanted his son to be raised like a weapon. Maybe it prevented Naruto from gaining power as a shinobi early on, but innocence and years of clean hands were priceless.

Waving aside his musings with a hand, Hiruzen returned to the point with a sigh. "Ultimately, it was Danzo's support that kept Naruto from being disposed of and replaced with a more malleable jinchuuriki. But that support wasn't free. I had to buy it by permitting him to have access to Sasuke. I did put some caveats in place to protect him, but I've only had Danzo's word and your observations so far to provide proof they've been followed."

"What sort of caveats, Hokage-sama?"

"Sasuke is not to be conditioned as other agents in Ne have been. He cannot simply vanish into the shadows. He is to remain as visible in the village as the fame of his family name would demand. While he is 'affiliated' with ROOT, he is still an ANBU agent and his first loyalty is to the village."

Frustration boiled through Kakashi's veins. The ANBU forces themselves were a career that stretched a man's sanity. The constant cycle of murder, dying comrades, and back-to-back missions took their toll on the hardiest of men. The ROOT program was another basket altogether. Tenzo still woke from time to time with a cold sweat in the night from the nightmares, and he'd been out from underneath Danzo's shadow for years. If they left Sasuke under that man's guidance…

"Ne will ruin him."

Hiruzen rose abruptly to his feet, striding around the desk to stand directly before Kakashi and stare up at the jounin's masked face. A grim smile slashed itself over the Sandaime's aged face, and the Sarutobi clan leader set a firm hand over Kakashi's shoulder.

"It won't, because you will be there for him."

"Hokage-sama?"

"Be there for Sasuke." Hiruzen commanded, heat flaring in his dark eyes. "Now that you know the truth of Sasuke's circumstances and what he will find himself being forced to give up in the process, I want you to be there for him. Facilitate his missions. Push his training and development as a warrior. Support him when he finds that his world is starting to crumble down around him. Sasuke does not need to remain in ROOT forever. Only as long as it takes Naruto to prove the value of his life. So until that day, Sasuke will need someone to be there for him. Can I count on that person being you?"

Snapping into a crisp military salute, the ANBU captain met Hiruzen's gaze with equal fire. "Hai, Hokage-sama."


The two fingers tucked away in his kunai pouch had just begun to swell up with rot and the stink of death. They were unbelievably heavy for such small things. Or perhaps the weight was all in Sasuke's mind. The weight of his sins.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Sasuke slunk into The Den, slipping through the sewers of Konoha and into ROOT's headquarters like a thief in the night.

Two nameless agents with white and purple hair, respectively, were sparring. Ferocious movements were carefully observed by the Uchiha's target. They broke apart after one final exchange of fists, panting with the exertion.

"Again." Danzo commanded even as he turned away, single visible eye piercing through the darkness to settle on Sasuke's quiet form. The sound of flesh striking flesh rose again, and the ROOT Commander silently crooked a summoning finger to the Uchiha before leaving the room.

Sparing a glance at the operatives of the ROOT program, Sasuke thinned bloodless lips beneath the porcelain of his mask before turning to follow after Danzo. The councilor and Ne recruit did not travel far, only shuffling down two hallways before the Uchiha was urged into a storage room.

Silence hung in the air for a long moment as Danzo cursorily scanned the cramped storage room, making Sasuke's lip curl beneath his mask with a dark tang of amusement. Even in the heart of his own power, it seemed that Danzo was never one to let his guard down.

"You have completed your assignment." Danzo stated coolly in a tone that brokered no argument as he held out a weathered palm. Waiting only long enough for Sasuke to drop the bloated knuckles that had been cut from the corpse of his first kill, the ROOT Commander inspected the rotting keepsakes.

Passing the pair of knuckles back to the Uchiha, Danzo affixed his visible dark eye on the genin and gave a low rumble of inquiry. "Were you discovered?"

Sweat prickled on Sasuke's palms as his heart gave a sudden lurch. He'd already made his decision the moment Kakashi had confronted him in the shadowy warehouse about his little 'trophies'. But it was one thing to decide on guile dozens of miles away, and another to have to do it to the Warhawk's face.

"I wasn't." Sasuke lied, thankful for the concealing porcelain that was pressed to the clammy skin of his face. Not a single twitch of muscle escaped from Sasuke's iron wrought control, each beat of his heart a silent chant. 'Liar. Liar. Liar.'

After a silent searching moment, Danzo grunted in assent. "Acceptable. Dispose of those trophies. They are unnecessary and holding onto them would be a useless sentiment."

Sasuke could barely contain the rush of relief that weakened his knees. Not trusting his voice, the Uchiha forced out a smooth nod of assent.

"Come." Danzo ordered after a beat, turning away and striding away from the room with the clicking of his cane on the stone floor. "Now that you have been successfully blooded, it is time that we turn your focus ahead to the upcoming Chuunin Exams. In four months Konoha will be hosting three of the Five Great Shinobi Countries, as well as several minor villages. As such, the upcoming exams will be an extremely important event. Do you understand why?"

Red eyes blinked as Sasuke stepped around a kneeling ROOT agent that had prostrated at the sight of her commander. "With so many villages in attendance, everyone will be watching."

"This is true," Danzo agreed in a cool tone, "But that is not a complete answer. The strength of a village is its shinobi, and to the public, the village that dominates the chuunin exams must have the strongest shinobi. When a client hires a village, he prefers the most skilled of their operatives, and where are the most skilled ninja from? The village with the strongest shinobi."

Leading Sasuke to the Den's suiton training room, Danzo came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the grey iron bridge that arched over the flowing sewer canal. "Once upon a time Konoha could count on the Uchiha clan and its Sharingan to provide strong contenders for many Chuunin Exams. Now, there is only one Uchiha left to Konoha."

The ROOT Commander's dark eye drilled into Sasuke's crimson gaze. "You cannot simply be an Uchiha. You must be the Uchiha. You must show such ability that it is clear to the enemies of Konoha that there is still strength left in its founding clans. Over the next four months you will train until your hands bleed, and then you will train further. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir." Sasuke bit out, squeezing his hands into fists as his spine straightened with a mixture of anticipation and pride. He would be lying if he claimed not to be at least slightly intimidated. But this was exactly what Sasuke had hungered for. A regimen that would beat strength into his bones come hell or high water.

"Good. Now," Snapping his weathered fingers, Danzo summoned a vaguely familiar rat-masked Ne recruit. "Remove your masks."

Porcelain peeled away from two similarly pale-skinned faces beneath strands of equally dark-tinted hair. The rat masked recruit was half a head shorter than the crow masked one, but despite the height difference they could have believably passed for fraternal twins.

"Recruit Uchiha, this is Recruit Forty-Three - codenamed Sai for the duration of his assignment to Squad Gamma-3. He will be the third member of your three man cell for the first two tasks of the Chuunin Examinations. I expect the two of you to offer one another your full cooperation on fulfilling mission objectives."

"Yes sir." Sasuke murmured in unison with Sai. It was unnerving to come face-to-face with a boy that in another life could have been him. Similar hair and eye colour, with a similar skin tone and even similar aristocratic bone structures to their young faces. The only significant difference between them was that while Sai's coal-dark orbs absorbed light like dull ink, Sasuke's revolved between dark steel and blazing red - lit up by a spark of inner defiance and life.

"Dismissed."


Wood slammed into plaster with an enormous crack as Naruto sauntered into his apartment. The blonde peeled off his ANBU gear, dumping the sweat coated cloth and porcelain in a tangled mess on the floor.

It seemed like every muscle of his body ached, remembering the punishing pace that Kakashi had set when they're returned from their mission. It was a bit silly, as far as Naruto was concerned, since they'd completed the mission and it wasn't like anyone was hounding after their asses. But old 'Hound-One' was the boss, and when the boss told him to jump, he jumped.

Digging his tongue into the cracks between his teeth, Naruto gave a last ditch automatic effort to find any lingering pieces of ramen before the blonde threw himself into the shower.

"Ahh, that's nice!' Naruto moaned, laying down in a boneless heap and letting the pitter patter of water droplets beat into his skin. For the first time in a long time he felt - not happy - but at least satisfied. It was such a small thing, but completing a mission as a team without problems or blood meant something to him.

Blue orbs cracked open, staring dully at the faintly dirty white tiles cheaply glued to the wall. Naruto wanted more of the lethargic feeling bubbling up between the frayed ends of his nerves. It wasn't love or joy or amusement. It was simply completion. The sensation of Kakashi's firm hand on Naruto's shoulder and a deep voice murmuring 'well done'. No pain. No complication or confusion or thinking. Just accomplishment.

Closing his eyes, the genin rolled on his back and sucked a wet breath in through his nostrils. Sakura-chan surely couldn't begrudge Naruto this, could she? He wasn't happy. He didn't have friends or people to love and be loved by. He just had the vague pleasure of serving the village his pink-haired teammate had died in service of.

Surely, Uzumaki Naruto wasn't denied at least this?


(AN - Ajax): 5000 words here bois and gurls. Important things are happening in the world, gears are turning in the massive world machine of the Elemental Nations.