The Truth Be Told

The Truth Be Told

(Alternate Chapter Title: The Truth Hurts)

Ten minutes to midnight, and almost every citizen in Konoha is asleep. The nins entrusted to guard the village at night.

A pack of teen ninjas strolled down the dark streets of Konoha as quietly as they can.

"Sakura!?" Kiba asked, grumbling under his breath as he scratched the back of his head, "Why did you call us at this time of hour?"

"I was able to talk Tsunade-sama into giving us a secret mission extension, but under one condition," Sakura stated as she sighed loudly, "No one will know. Not even our parents…"

The others suddenly shot up, looking at Sakura. Shikamaru was the first to break the silence, "Any other conditions you're not telling us?"

Apparently, the first thought that jumped into Sakura's mind was the fact that Shikamaru noticed Sakura's restlessness. Before finally confessing, she let out a long sigh and looked up, "Well… Tsunade-sama told me to choose which of you guys will be tagging along. Some of you will be staying here to perform missions we missed last week."

As expected, negative reactions aroused from the group.

"Sakura-san, how can we help if we stay here?" Neji asked as he suddenly turned his head, as if looking for something.

"You can help by covering us up. If someone asks where we are, cover us up. At first, Tsunade-hime insisted in letting only girls to accompany me, but I kind of forced her into a battle and—"

"You beat her!?" Ino asked loudly, as she was as excited as everyone, except Neji and Hinata who seemed restless, "No… I was beaten like a pulp."

((((sweatdrop flood!!))))

"Anyway, there are reasons I chose those who will be coming. Considering the expected enemies we will be facing. Okay, before you came here, I'm quite sure all of you kind of… prepared in advance," and with a touch of embarrassment, all of them nodded. Sakura shook her head with a smile and sighed, "Figures… Anyway, Hinata will be going, considering that she IS one of the people who want to see Naruto alive and that she was the one who Naruto was with while I was gone."

Ino, being a close friend (and rival) of Sakura, gave her a questioning look. Sakura shrugged and exclaimed with her fist raised, "What!? She has a Byakugan!"

Over the two and a half years Naruto was out of the village, with Sakura the only remaining member of Team 7 in Konoha, Sakura was given more time to train with Tsunade… and become closer to the Rookie 9, specifically Ino, Hinata, Kiba and Tenten.

"And, of course, Ino because of your shadow… thing…" Sakura did this in purpose, just for irritating purposes. Ino's brows furrowed, gritting her teeth.

"As for the guys, for some reason, Tsunade-sama insisted on bringing Sai with us. I don't really know why, but," obviously everyone else knew why. Sai was the one travelling with Naruto as filling in for Sasuke, with Hinata as the temporary replacement of the busy Sakura. Sai knows enough about Naruto to understand him, and to be able to talk him into coming back. Although none of them are even sure if Naruto is still alive, they were assured by the council that he is either with the Akatsuki by now, or dead. The others are still unsure of what the Akatsuki wants with a brat like Naruto, at least that's what they think.

"Sasuke will be joining the search for Naruto separately. He says he has his own plans. He's probably near Suna by now. Anyway, I liked Tsunade-sama's suggestion of letting Shikamaru tag along. I chose to let him come instead of Neji, considering that we already have Hinata. Gomen, Neji-san. I know you wanted to help…"

"I expected as much. Anyway, I have no problem with that, as long as you succeed in your mission," Neji shrugged and smiled, receiving a smile back at him.

"Next are, none other than, Kiba and Shino. You probably understand why," Sakura stated, receiving nods as replies, "Well, looks like there is no need to team up and prepare. Let's go!"

Before Sakura can even get her feet off the ground, Neji called out and all of them noticed the cousins' restlessness "Mate! (Wait!)"

--

Naruto rubbed his cheeks with his right palm. His back was crouched as he sat on top of a rock by a river.

"Naruto, Itachi-san wants us to spar with two new kids," the red-haired former Kazekage quietly said as he walked over to Naruto, careful not to wake the two sleeping nins on the floor, "Now."

"Who is it now?" Naruto asked as he sat up and looked for something in his pouch. He took out what looked like a pill and swallowed it whole.

"I'm not really sure myself. All I know is that the first is a jinchuuriki, while the other one was an Akatsuki apprentice/trainee long ago, then he was used for an experiment. Oh, but Itachi asks that you go to him before going to the training grounds. He says adjustments are to be done to the both of us," Naruto then nodded and spoke, "Right… They haven't sealed yours yet. Mine is yet to be compacted in me."

Gaara gave him a questioning and curious look, while Naruto returned a familiar, yet strange, look that is to be usually read as 'You'll see' which usually scares Gaara.

Just awhile ago, Gaara began having second thoughts, but he knows that what he is doing is for the best. At least he hopes it will be.

'Never mind,' he thought, 'At the very least, I know Naruto knows what he is doing… I hope…'

'I just hope we won't have to kill these two like the last batch,' Naruto thought as he jumped down and walked to the next field with Gaara.

--

"Neji-san? Hinata? What's the matter?" Ino asked with her curiosity rising. Neji simply looked back at Ino and quickly jumped up in the air, throwing a couple of shuriken at the empty sky. He jumped back, landing on a huge tree trunk that seemed to be dotted with little unknown features. "Hinata," he added "What do YOU see?"

"A blurry figure from afar, Neji-san," she added, "and it does not seem to be in a hurry to reach us."

"That means only one thing," Sakura, once again, prepared to jump of the ground and jump through the forest past Konoha, "We have to leave, now!" Sakura pushes the ground back, followed by the others, but once everyone has landed on their tree branches, a figure in a long black robe appeared in front of the pink-haired kunoichi "Not a very smart move to make, kunoichi-san. And I thought you were smart. It seems that I was wrong."

Ignoring the shock that was still present on her face, she seemed too alert to not notice the man at first, but considering what was on her mind, she was quite absent-minded. After that little encounter, a kunai was thrown flying to the air, followed by a huge dog and a teen on all fours jumping up to stop the man from lowering his hand onto Sakura. This represented the beginning of a fight.

"Now, now, is this really necessary?" asked the tall man in his solemn, yet creepy, voice. He raised his hand to his forehead and sighed "I mean we could all just head back to where we're all supposed to be headed to and--"

A blast of blue chakra formed into a perfect circle hit the back of the long-haired man. The man crouched with his hand on the branch, revealing Neji behind him. The stranger seemed to have muttered for a while, and before the others could react, he shouted, "Kaihou Gogyou!"

Immediately after, water seemed to surround the man, lifting his wavy hair up. The force of the water pushed back against Kiba, Neji and Sakura, pushing them off and onto the ground. It had enough chakra to dig them into the ground, but luckily for the chuunins, the others kicked chakra across the ground below them to prevent their fall.

Shikamaru threw a kunai at him and intentionally missed him by an inch, with the kunai hitting the tree he was on, "Kage Fuu!"

"Oh, shit," the man exclaimed as the tree began to shadow over him with flames engulfing the large tree. He jumped off, just a minute too late before the flames would have caught his robe.

"Tsk, have they thought chuunins these days to jump to conclusions? Where's the hospitality?"

He stepped out of the dark side of the forest, revealing his white eyes and pale skin, with his long hair tied at his back.

"O-otousan?" stuttered Hinata, as if her old self has returned with just one look at

"Hiashi-san," Neji stated calmly, as if a wind had just passed him without him even feeling.

"Don not worry, I will pretend not to have heard anything. That said, Hinata and Neji-san, please follow me back home," he seemed to have noticed Sakura start to argue, so he continued, "I am not taking them away from you, I am merely taking them closer to everyone else. A very important meeting is to be attended by these two. I would like to refer to it as a favour to a person dear to you..."

Hiashi walked off with Hinata and Neji looking back at the others with scornful frowns.

"Tenten, come on..." Sakura said, yanking her head.

"Oh, and one more thing," Hiashi said, a few steps from them, "I give you my blessing of meeting up with Naruto-san."

This surprised Sakura and the two Nejis more than the others. She has always thought that he did not like Naruto.

"I advise you to start looking for him somewhere where the forest is barely never used," he walked off with what seemed like a wink, leaving that sentence with the torturing irony left with them, where in fact, Konoha's forest is always used by ninjas.

--

Later that night, the team has reached as far as they usually can, but they tried not to go too far from Konoha, considering Hiashi's advice. Sakura refused to rest, but the others insisted that she needs the energy if she wants to find Naruto.

The strong wind and rain that followed made Sakura's stroll even harder for her. The path became muddy, and her vision soon blurred out as the fog thickened. She looked around her, seeing only vague shapes. She looked to her side where she thought she saw a figure of a short boy smiling at him. What she saw was indeed a boy that was very close to him. The boy was standing there, with blonde hair and a blue forehead protector and a ridiculous orange jumpsuit. She looked down at him as a tear trickled down her face.

"Are those tears another one, Haruno?"

The voice seemed familiar to her, but she felt that hallucination was actually catching up to her, considering her deceiving surroundings. She finally lost it when the voice spoke again, "Quite deceiving and convincing, just like your sweet face, but a scornful one in reality."

She turned and looked at the boy who as, for some reason, growing taller until she noticed that it was growing taller than her... and farther from her. She reached for his shoulder, and then he shrugged it off. One thing she noticed was that he wasn't moving away... she was.

She came out of her trance and found herself lying on the ground with her face splattered with mud. She pushed her hands against the ground, trying her best to stand. She noticed that it was truly raining, and that the wind was strong, and that it was foggy. She began to think that it wasn't a dream. She looked around for her comrades.

'I will never travel alone again. I don't want to see that, ever again...'

"Why is that, Haruno-san? Guilt trips you now?"

She turned her attention to the tree on the other side of the tree she leaned onto. She looked at him closer and realized who he was looking at.

"N..." a tear trickled down her face, "Naruto... What are you..?"

"A demon, that's what I am," he spoke calmly, as if he was used to this.

"I've been wanting to tell you something since before, Sakura," he paused, torturing Sakura even more, "Do you want to know why I stayed at Konoha? Do you wanna know why I've been willing to retrieve Sasuke from Orochimaru?"

'Because you wanted to fulfil your promise and you think of Sasuke as your brother. Because you wanted to make Sasuke return and not become evil. You removed the curse seal. Obviously, that's the reason, right?' Sakura thought. Behind Naruto's growing grin was a sinister smirk.

"It's not for Konoha, or the teme, especially not for you," he paused again to emotionally kill Sakura, "It's for me! For my own good! And you wanna know what, I'm gonna die soon, so be happy. You might never see me again."

Naruto was lying. He wanted his existence to be erased. He wanted the memory of him to be erased from everyone else, because he is erasing his memory of everyone else.

"Naruto...kun..."

Naruto jumped off the tree and ran towards her. Sakura just stood there, waiting for Naruto to hug her. What happened next seemed too unreal to Sakura.

As Naruto ran towards her, he began reaching for something beneath his cloak. As he went past her, he whispered, "He gonna come, so don't worry too much," and a grin became visible on the corner of her eye.

She fell to the ground with her trying to exert all the remaining energy she had left to turn her face and look to where Naruto was. She screeched in pain and soon rested her head. All she saw was Naruto crouched on the ground, tucking in a bloody dagger into his cloak and standing up before completely closing her eyes, seeing Naruto's happy grin turn into a sad and angered look and, finally, feeling dead.

"Sakura! Sakura, wake up!" was the voice she heard next. 'Naruto..?' She opened her eyes to see a black-haired boy in a blue and white jacket and black ninja pants in front of her.

"I gotta take you to Konoha! Hold on!"

He carried her up and put her on his back, running all the way back to Konoha.

"The others met up with me, asking if you were with me. I cam looking for you, and I sent them back to the village. We're too late, Sakura... We can't bring him back now."

For that while, Sakura hoped it was Naruto saying that he had lost hope taking Sasuke back. She would have felt better. She wouldn't have realized how much the truth hurt.

--

What a long chapter for a comeback!

--

Peace out to you, people… By now you would have noticed many errors in this fanfic of mine, and I know it's causing me to lose readers and such. (Besides, I kind of worked on some of them now. Please honestly tell me if I have more errors) First off, I've been out of my 'zone' lately. My inspired side drifted off and stuff, especially since I only received two reviews last time… THEN I wasn't able to update after all this time because of my tight school schedule (and considering that I am currently having my vacation in Philippines, too busy having coughfuncough). And I have recently stopped reading fanfics which is another thing that gives me inspiration. I MIGHT update after this chapter if I get satisfied with the results. Anyway, REVIEW and vote in my poll…

Oh, and yeah… I've read the next manga chapters and noticed that it is quite far from my fanfic. If you hate fanfics that doesn't follow the story flow (non-canon, in short) then don't read. Flame, if you must. I will appreciate it, too. I will follow Itachi's reason of killing the Uchiha, and Sasuke will find out in the latter part of my fic, but he will not destroy Konoha and go on with his team Eagle (check it out in or (:D)) Anyway, this is my first ever VERY VERY VERY VERY SHORT battle scene, so please comment, and teach me if I need some improvements. I only wrote this just to test my battle sense thingy. It's okay if you wanna say it sucked, I think so, too..! Anyway, THANKS!!