"Beyond Hearts and Minds"
by XyoushaX
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I don't own Potamos. I do not own any great quantity of money or property. I'm a STUDENT; that's why I'm poor, okay?
Jeez, I had not realized how long my chapters have been growing! The prequel to this story (Dimensional Exchanges, edited as much as I could and complete) had much shorter chapters, starting at around one-thousand to two-thousand words... and then later, four-thousand words, at the maximum. Now while writing this story, I discovered that my computer can't load more than around five-thousand-and-two-hundred words per chapter.
Well, I'll let the readers judge it for quality.
sapphirewitch: gasp! Thank you, thank you, for pointing out the mistake — I edited it to make it cleaner and accurate. The numbers will come out next chapter, as only final results are counted. Oh, and thank you for your compliments as well.
Timeshifter: you didn't miss Hinata. It's just that I couldn't fit her scene time in the last chapter, for reasons mentioned above.
RyuNanashi: thank you, and thank you for not killing me.
"Quotations"
'Inner Thoughts'
(( Flashback ))
Chapter 10: Detection
"Naruto, did you even see that?" Sasuke hissed.
"See what?" Naruto asked nonchalantly.
Sasuke looked at his rival in incredulous wonder. He leaned his head towards Naruto, and asked in a hoarse whisper: "Didn't you find that somewhat disturbing?"
"Be quiet," Naruto muttered. "Right now, we have a job of proctoring."
This situation was worth considering. It was more than suspicious. Throughout the test, Sasuke had been the one getting... upset... over certain details. Naruto, in contrast, was carrying out his job, not disturbed in the slighted by Sakura's actions. What was wrong with this picture? Naruto had always felt squeamish about using torture jutsu. He should have had something more of a reaction if he saw Sakura do that. The kunoichi had competency in genjutsu — but using that brain-freezing illusion, on completely defenseless genin in a non-battle setting, no less... wasn't it a push too far?
It was too weird how indifferent Naruto felt towards Sakura's actions. Yes, concentration was key for a good ninja. But the Naruto in front of him seemed a bit too much concentrated in the task of proctoring. As if he were a non-thinking entity, focused on one task, and one task only. Someone... with a one-track mind.
Well, Uzumaki Naruto did have a one-track mind when it came to a) ramen, and b) becoming Hokage. But that was beside the point! This situation did not apply to either. Thus, the Naruto in front of Sasuke had to be a) a phony using the Henge no Jutsu, or b) a Kage-bunshin.
The answer was pretty obvious.
A low, trembling breath of fury escaped Sasuke's mouth. "You..."
Naruto gave a sheepish grin. "I'm filling in for the real one," he whispered. "It took you a while to realize that, didn't it?"
Sasuke should have remembered: Kage-bunshin were created to do the job right. Although made of real flesh and blood, their psychological way of acting was a bit different from the original maker. If one ordered them to 'attack', they would attack. Naruto surely had placed his instructions on it before leaving. The problem was, although Kage-bunshin most definitely would carry out the request, it would not concentrate of matters outside of it.
In this case, the Kage-bunshin would not focus on Sakura. Naruto had ordered it to obey Ibiki, and Ibiki specifically told them to focus on the cheaters. It did not have the luxury to react to Sakura's actions, no matter how unusual they were. Extra work, both mental and physical, meant extra chakra. And to create Kage-bunshin somewhat independent and active for nearly an hour — even for Naruto, it was difficult.
From how thing were turning out, it looked like the original Naruto should have added the order: "Don't piss Sasuke off so much that he destroys you within the hour."
A now Sharingan-ified Sasuke raised his fist, ready to rip apart the Kage-bunshin. He was so frustrated and enraged for falling for that trick again. Not to mention that it was a replica of Naruto, and not Naruto himself, whom he had been talking to. The disappointment felt sort of like that of a child who had recently lost an imaginary friend, all because a parent or an adult told him that the entity did not exist.
With a panicked look on its face, the Kage-bunshin held up a hand. "No, Sasuke, don't do it!" it whispered in frightened urgency. "You'll get us BOTH in trouble!"
Sasuke dropped his fist, and his eyes went back to the deep obsidian. Shadow-replica or not, this copy of Naruto could use logic. The real fox-boy, if found out, would be more than scolded for not being there. As for Sasuke: well, if he revealed that he had not recognized a Kage-bunshin, after feeling its chakra for more than half an hour... Well, his depressive side threatened to reawaken.
Besides, the final question was coming up. They would soon be done.
Hinata's rubbed her backside, which had hit the cold ground when she slid down. She immediately got up in the Jyuuken stance, Byakugan activated.
A human skull rolled at her feet. Hinata swallowed. She proceeded to the mass of a bluish substance, in which a certain child-ghost was trapped.
Hinata's white eyes carefully studied the jelling mass around Warashi. She lifted her hand, and focused some chakra to a fingertip. It began to glow an ethereal brightness. Hinata neared it ever so carefully toward the bluish glob. The miasma began to shrink slightly at her touch.
With a burst of courage, Hinata let her finger rip through one of the jelly-like bindings around Warashi. She exhaled in relief, knowing that there was some way of freeing the ghost. "Stay still, Warashi-chan."
The dead boy seemed to understand what Hinata was doing. "Be... careful..." he croaked out weakly. "Don't touch... it... with bare..."
Hinata withdrew her hand with a gasp. She momentarily had too little chakra in her fingers, making her fingers bare against the blue substance. The miasma stung like a burn.
Hinata tried again, powering up her fingers with white aura. Soon, she cut the slow-moving bindings from the ghost-child, like a surgeon cutting away tissue. The kunoichi remembered that some medic-nin could create chakra-scalpels — she was doing the same thing, only with a different type of chakra. Hinata had to do it quickly; Warashi was almost fading away, even in her advanced vision. At one point, Hinata discovered that if she used her index and middle fingers, she could snip through the material more efficiently, much like scissors.
Then Hinata noticed something behind her. A dark-blue mass loomed over the kunoichi, like a tsunami.
Hinata screamed as it crashed over her.
Morino Ibiki strode to the exit doors of the back — and slammed them shut. He turned around to walk back to the front of the room.
A deathly silence filled the area. All the genin looked towards Ibiki, waiting for the tenth question.
The head examiner surveyed the ninja. "Listen carefully. I have noticed some unusual things during this exam... And I want to say that they are low, and vulgar. As a result, this final question will have a special rule attached."
Potamos cocked her head to the side. 'Special rule?'
"Some of you are completely aware of what you have done wrong. And it is suspicious, not to mention despicable, behavior." Every word was venomous. Ibiki looked at the set of genin, particularly the two girls with freaky hair. "However..." Ibiki continued, a small grin tracing his face, "...we do make exceptions for those who give us information."
Minoru did not like the sound of this.
"I will give you the news straight." Ibiki unfolded a piece of paper — the same, crumpled up paper that he had gotten from the messenger bird — and displayed it out for the genin. "We have recently found out that some genin have illegally entered the Chuunin Exams."
One dark-haired kunoichi raised an eyebrow at this comment. She absentmindedly touched the beads around her wrist.
Several of the chuunin examiners held scrutinizing expressions on their faces towards Ibiki. The head examiner ignored them, and went on with the 'interrogation'.
"Not only that, I have spotted several forms of cheating, which my colleagues seemed to have missed." A knowing grin spread on Ibiki's face. His eyes glanced in the direction of Potamos.
A shudder traveled down the girl's spine. 'He knows,' Potamos realized. The seizing of her limbs was not from cold, for she hardly felt such a sensation as discomfort. 'He's pretty good...'
"That is why, we are offering a deal," Ibiki continued. "If you confess that you have cheated, or give information to us about your teammates: you will automatically advance to the second part of these exams, with a new and better team."
Minoru's blue eyes sharpened. He could feel the excitement vibrating from all around, enveloping him in crowd of quiet nervousness.
"If, on the other hand, you keep quiet, and it turns out that your teammates are spies..." Ibiki shot a terrorizing gaze on the genin. "...not only will you be disqualified, but I will send all three of you to the torture chambers."
A shocked silence resounded through the test-takers.
'Damnation,' Minoru thought. 'This Morino is using the greed and desperation of the genin to abandon their teammates.' He silently calculated the numbers: there were thirty-one teams left. 'But if he is indeed serious, and they do find us out... which could very well occur, especially when we have Potamos on our team... It would make things nearly impossible for our mission. Only one person going into the forest, while the other two in the torture chamber.'
"That's... that's illegal!" one of the genin shouted. "The Chuunin exams are organized between the village Kage. You can't put guests under such conditions like confinement or torture!"
"There is no such agreement," one chuunin pointed out. He flipped his clipboard, and showed a copy of the contract the genin had all signed to enter the examinations. He adjusted his glasses before resuming, "It says directly on lines five to eight: 'If there is any suspicion that genin are performing observational activities beyond what the tests demand, the host village has the allowance to hold said genin under custody, using any means necessary.' That includes torture."
"WHAT?" the younger one shouted out.
Sasuke rubbed the side of his forehead from the loud exclamation. "Didn't you read the fine print?" Sasuke murmured.
His statement was supposed to have been in an aggravating, know-it-all manner — yet the foreign kunoichi began to sigh in response, much to his annoyance. (And if Sasuke were not mistaken with his hearing, he was sure that an effeminate male or two had joined in.)
The other proctors glared at the Uchiha for being a damn-gorgeous distraction with his looks and voice. Sasuke only responded by covering his hand within his face, sorry that he ever said anything. The ravin-haired chuunin wanted this to be over. Now.
"What if we don't know if our teammates are spies?" another genin insisted. "Some of us are in mixed teams!"
"You should have noticed something strange, then!" Ibiki shot back. "For the sake of this village's security — if you have suspicious members in your team, you also must face the interrogation squad."
Sasuke glanced at the hunched form of Sakura. The kunoichi was slumped over her desk, extremely pale. Her eyes were not even visible. She probably knew the situation she was in: being in a mixed group, it was viable that her teammates were upper-class spies. If that were the case... Sakura herself could be locked up in the cold, dark chamber. It did not matter to Ibiki if Sakura was Tsunade's apprentice.
The raven-haired ninja felt a little annoyance towards the head examiner. Ibiki had not informed him, nor the other examiners, about this earlier. The rules were turning slightly unreasonable from Sasuke's point of view. Some of the other elite chuunin appeared to have the same opinion; they mumbled out comments quietly between themselves. Sasuke would have liked to put up something of a verbal protest — but what position was he in, as a proctor and former traitor? Sasuke had to play along with Ibiki's rules. The only thing he could do legally was to think. 'You paranoid, sadistic bastard,' his mind shot towards the head examiner. 'Just what are you planning?'
"That's friggin' unfair!" one ninja from the Cloud shouted. "Most of us don't even know our own teammates personally! And now that we're all together, especially with this mixed-group team — you want to rip it apart?"
The specialist-jounin pulled off his hitai-ate and the attached bandanna. What the genin saw silenced them immediately. Ibiki's bald, tanned head was patterned with crooks and rips. The scars, badges of previous torture, showed experience in the ways of cruelty. "Do you think I care about fairness? About diplomacy?" Ibiki asked in a threatening tone. "I have gone through hell, and the scars on my head and face is proof. Those who threaten Konoha security will earn double of that under my supervision."
Morino Ibiki was damn serious. In the eyes of both genin test-takers and chuunin proctors, he was a devil.
"You are ninja," Ibiki growled, "and as ninja, you are soldiers." He glared at Minoru, who watched him intently. "If you find yourself in the situation that your teammates are not who you think they are — then you are finished. What is your choice? Take the chance that your teammates are clean... or go ahead alone."
One proctor raised his pencil. "And if your teammates try to attack you when you decide to confess," he said smoothly, "you will be protected. All of the examiners you see: they are the elite of Konoha chuunin. We will intervene if there is violence in this place." A pause ensued. "Those who want to report, please get up, and report to the front desk."
Ripples of indecision went through the genin.
Minoru leaned back in his desk, slowly contemplating the choice. He worried about his teammates, and how this mission would fold out. This was certainly a strange turn of events. If Potamos were taken prisoner... the consequences could be dire. Even in this world, the Potamos could be a powerful being of Nature.
And Sakura... Minoru did not even want to think what could happen to her. If she decided to keep quiet, and the investigators found out their team's true identity — who knew what they would do to the young kunoichi during interrogation? She had certain skills to mentally defend herself against them... but only to a certain extent. She was only human.
The blond then froze in his desk. If Sakura turned herself in for cheating, he and Potamos would go free. As long as the charge was against herself, and not on her two teammates, everybody would safe.
'Sakura-san, we must go into the Forest of Death together,' he thought, attempting to mentally send the signal. 'DO NOT stand up. See what Morino truly wants.'
To Minoru's relief, he did not feel any waves of nervousness from Sakura. The pink-haired kunoichi seemed totally confident that their team would pass into the next round. Her psyche felt very peaceful. The blond relaxed himself in his green robes. They would get this tenth question, nice and simple.
Quiet gasps spread through the room. Evidently, someone decided to comply. Minoru looked up to see who it was.
To his horror, he saw that it was Potamos, slowly rising from her seat. The purple-haired girl was going to confess, so that Sakura and Minoru got off the hook. Minoru had not known of how strong her feeling for self-sacrifice could be.
'Devil-child! Don't do it!'
While the exams had been progressing, a blond shinobi was making his way through the northern part of the great forest surrounding Konoha. Naruto chuckled to himself. He wondered if Sasuke had figured out yet that he had left a Kage-bunshin to do the job of proctoring. If he remembered correctly, he had left the clone with the orders of "Do everything what Ibiki orders you to do", and "Show Sasuke up".
He did not regularly perform that jutsu to get complicated jobs done. It took a lot of chakra to keep something like a Kage-bunshin intact. Naruto could only hope that nobody handled the replacement too roughly while the first part of the exam progressed. It certainly would look uncool if one of the proctors of the test suddenly exploded, leaving only a cloud of smoke and an empty seat behind.
If Sasuke ever did figure it out in time, Naruto only hoped that his rival would not destroy the Kage-bunshin. Then again, it sort of seemed exactly the thing that Sasuke would do. Oh well.
Before the first exam started, Naruto had felt some sort of sign that Hinata was in a fix. Naruto went to the Hyuuga residence to see if she was there. The heiress had already left. He then rushed to the Hokage's office to see whether Hinata was off on a mission, only to be informed that she had not reported for duty yet. Tsunade scolded and booted Naruto out of the office, reminding him that he had an exam to proctor, and to not be too easy-going on her own apprentice.
The elite chuunin skipped off the branches, and jumped off a particularly large tree. Naruto rested a bit on the ground to regain a bit of oxygen. Slowly, his lungs took a great intake of air.
Something of a perfume reached his nose.
Naruto's blue eyes shot open. It smelled familiar. 'Hinata.'
Was that Hinata? It smelled like her dark hair... and perfect skin... her calloused, yet ever-gentle hands... 'I wonder what she could do with those.'
A burn spread through Naruto's face. 'No, no, no! You haven't even been going out with her for a whole week, and you already think about... Idiot, idiot, IDIOT! You're trying to find her!'
He had to mediate his senses. Naruto took another breath of air, this time through his nose.
Hinata's smell wafted around his face.
Naruto twitched. Oh hell no.
Wait a minute: how would Naruto know her smell? Did he have some sort of fetish involving the nose that he had not been aware of until now? Naruto scratched his head, trying to remember if he had sniffed her inappropriately while they had been hugging and kissing. No... He didn't think so... Unless he was doing something wrong without realizing it. If that were the case — he would be on the deathlists of Hyuuga Hiashi AND Hyuuga Neji.
'Maybe I should reread Jiraiya's books,' Naruto thought to himself. 'And actually pay attention to the text instead of skimming. Then I'd know what NOT to do.' He shuddered, thinking of what it would be like to take the Hakke Rokujuuyonshou — twice, with ten times the fury.
Naruto knelt down, and spotted a deepening in the moss. The tiny line of a footprint was barely visible in the patch. 'There's only one kind of person who can walk like that,' he thought. 'Someone light, with the graceful footwork of Juuken.'
The fox-boy vertically punched the air with a fist. Using the investigation techniques that Jiraiya had drilled into him all those years, Naruto figured out that Hinata had most certainly been here.
"Man's intuition!" Naruto shouted.
The crickets chirped. They were his only audience.
Naruto paused, and scratched his head. "Wait... wasn't the idiom, 'woman's intuition'?" he wondered out loud. The blond shook his head, remembering his objective. 'Ah, who cares? Need to find Hinata, need to find Hinata!'
The ninja sniffed.
Naruto felt kind of funky around the nose. Was it just him, or was he turning into Kiba?
He even noticed how gross and filthy his clothes were... Oh, yeah, he had taken his week-length used suit, straight from the laundry basket, because he had forgotten to wash the other sets. Naruto made a mental note to take a bath before allowing himself to cuddle his girlfriend again. Love was wonderful — but a lack of hygiene usually signified a lack of respect. Hinata would probably faint from the stench.
The ninja trod through the grass and leaves. He found a dirt path, and followed the light tracks with the scent.
It took a long time, though. Naruto was slightly confused with where he was going. Pretty soon, he was becoming nervous as he jumped through the trees. 'Hinata, where ARE you?'
A booming voice nearly knocked Naruto off his feet.
'You are a failure at detecting your own kind!' Kyuubi roared. 'How can you not find your OWN MATE'S SCENT? You are a disgrace as a male!'
Naruto clutched his ear with one hand, much like he'd do when Jiraiya would give him a hard scolding for learning dangerous jutsu. His hand did not really help drown out Kyuubi's voice, because the fox-demon sent out his complaints directly to Naruto's brain. The ears played no role in the communications link between them. The youkai was trapped within the boy's naval, after all.
'Look, Demon-Fox, I'm trying my best to master tracking, okay?' Naruto shot back irritably. 'Even Jiraiya says I'm making progress.'
'Jiraiya is an idiot.'
Naruto thought about that for a moment. 'Okay, he is an idiot,' the blond shinobi agreed. 'But he does know his ninja skills.'
'And you, like the Yondaime, have no sense.'
Naruto growled. 'Hey, stop insulting my teacher and the Yondaime! The latter was the one who kicked your ass, remember?'
A loud snort of distain echoed from the youkai. 'He sealed me. Nothing more.'
'He kicked your ass, you shit-head fox.'
'So you want to become like the Yondaime?' the Kyuubi asked, his voice turning into something of laughter. 'Even when he died, fighting against me?'
'Damn straight,' Naruto resolved. With those words, his stomach jolted. The feeling was extremely weird, as if a hook sunk in his bellybutton and was yanked backward. A wave of burning chakra streamed into his normal reserves.
'I suppose you already figured out what I did.'
'Yeah.' Naruto's nose wrinkled. 'You're making my sense of smell so hypersensitive that a skunk would be my death.'
'Like what happened to the dog-boy when you farted in his face, right?'
Naruto decided not to comment any further. Instead, he went straight to the point. "What the HELL did you do to my nose?" he demanded out loud.
'Nothing drastic,' Kyuubi answered. 'I just willed some of my chakra to make some your nose and hearing a bit like my own species.'
SNAP.
Naruto quickly make a fighting stance. He looked down, and saw that his foot had stepped on a tiny twig. The blond stared. Was that the loud snap he just heard?
"I'm going to go deaf before I'm thirty," Naruto mumbled to himself, in as low a voice as possible.
'You can adjust it, Idiot,' the Kyuubi growled. 'It just takes good control over my demonic chakra.'
'You're mutating me!' Naruto thought.
'It's a gift. If you are as great as the Yondaime, then this tiny amount of chakra should be no problem at all.' His voice was mocking.
The roaring bursts of laughter faded out. Naruto shook his head in dismay. SWISH. Oh, jeez — even his short hair was making noises. Naruto took a deep breath, ignoring the fact that it sounded like the wind of a typhoon. His hands curled into an In, and the shinobi closed his eyes. 'Control,' he chanted in his mind, letting the position of his hands absorb some of the extra ki. 'Control. If I'm going to find Hinata-chan, I'll have to learn this quick.'
The ninja sniffed. The perfume died down to a comfortable level, but strong enough to give him a trail. Naruto opened his eyes, and looked to the southwest. He noticed something of a wooden structure.
A stone bodhisattva stood erect, protected underneath a roof.
Hinata's scent was all over it. And by all over, Naruto meant all over.
As he drew closer, Naruto noticed something else. The smell was a mix of the wind's weather and Hinata's hair, but also... a strange aura. It seemed to grow stronger and more nervous with every step Naruto took towards the stone sculpture.
The chuunin looked up at the statue's face. He noticed that the eyes of Kannon glowed.
'What ails you, Child?' a voice asked.
For some odd reason, Naruto did not act very surprised that a statue was speaking to him. Threads of blue chakra began to swirl around Naruto. He glared up at the figure. "Where's Hinata?"
The statue was silent in response. Yet guilt hung around it like a strung-up man.
Naruto's fists clenched. His eyes were still blue, but they burned with fierce rage. "GIVE HER BACK!" he roared. He threw a glowing Rasengan at the statue. Sure, it was sacrilege, and a waste of a cultural artifact — but Hinata's life was more important.
'Eeeep!' Almost instantaneously, a large hole opened up near the foot of the stone. Naruto's glowing sphere whizzed out.
"Ha!" Naruto quickly jumped into the hole. "I KNEW that being stubborn on something always got you somewhere!"
As the hole closed off, a silence wind blew around the statue. An eerie sort of sigh joined in with the breeze. 'He really is an idiot,' the voice commented.
Naruto tumbled onto a dry, sandy ground. Several hard objects were in his way, and he rolled over them in all the wrong places. "Ow, ow, ow!"
The blond shinobi looked up. He discovered that the things that had bruised him were human bones. He hissed in disgust.
Naruto suddenly clutched his nose. It reeked terribly of blood and rotting flesh. 'Don't power-up the fox nose unless absolutely necessary,' he mentally noted to himself. 'I think that I should have more respect for Kiba's clan for putting up with this their entire lives...'
The place he was in was a gray wasteland. There were mysterious puddles of goo around. They seemed to form a path to a mountain.
"Hinata-chan!" Naruto called out. "Can you hear me?"
As Naruto walked, he saw that the mountain was made of the same substance. It was moving slowly, and nothing to be taken lightly. There was so much chakra coming out of it that Naruto could see it with his bare eyes. But what was most strange about the mass was that at its center, something of a white spot pulsed.
A hole formed within the mountain. "Why are you heeeeere, Huuuumaaaan..." a voice spoke out. It began to give short, spaced-out chuckles. "Soon, you'll fade away... And your body will be miiine..."
Naruto glowered. "Where's Hinata-chan?" he asked.
A stream of more jerky laughs. "The Priestess...? I... already... took her..."
Naruto's face twisted. "Where. Is. She."
"I already... told you... I consumed... her..."
Naruto finally realized what that pulsing, white light at the center of the mass was. Directly inside was holy aura. His face darkened.
"This girl's strength... is incredible." Something began to step out of the incredible mass. Dark-blue eyes set themselves on Naruto. Something like a beak formed around the area of the mouth. "And soon, I will have you."
Naruto opened his eyes. His hands were already in position. "Kage-bunshin no Jutsu."
With an exploding sound and a burst of chakra, the multiple clones of Naruto charged towards the monster. "GIVE HER BACK!" they shouted in unison.
The monster was stunned, as the very real bodies kicked him from all directions. That was impossible — a human body could not last under a minute within this place. They would disappear, leaving only their souls. The Priestess of Souls was an exception; her powers were still quite strong as she held a barrier inside the medium.
But this blond kid was still here. Indeed, although his blue aura was getting sapped, just like a drop of water in a vast desert... something else replaced it. A red something.
The monster, now taking the form of a tall being with the head of a bird, kicked away the Kage-bunshin. He then felt a hand grab his foot.
"Gotcha." The real Naruto grappled the youkai's ankle, pulling it upward and causing the demon to fall. He noticed that the demon's legs had feathers covering it. And the beak... 'This must be a tengu.'
The strange being's chin smacked onto the gravel. He — or it — then realized that its beak got chipped in the blow. A harsh screech rung in Naruto's ears.
The blond winced at the noise. "That's IT!" Naruto signaled to his remaining Kage-bunshin: it was time to start the Uzumaki Naruto Rendan. "You're going down, bud!"
Then, without warning, all of the Kage-bunshin disappeared in a poof of smoke.
Naruto was perplexed at their spontaneous disappearance. They had been freshly created, and the tengu had not attacked them at all.
The eyes of the monster crinkled, indicating a smile of triumph.
Naruto realized that this environment sapped people of their strength. So that's why the Kage-bunshin were canceled without physical damage — it took chakra to hold them up.
"Just hold still," the tengu said. At least there was one benefit of separating from his energy source: he could send out words and language a lot quicker. Pretty soon, this yellow-haired brat would add to his supply. "You cannot win here, for it is my place." A chirping sort of laugh escaped the demon. "Even the Priestess should be devoured by now."
Those words made something in Naruto crack. A growl sounded out from his throat.
Notes:
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please tell me! If I suck, by all means tell me. In an intelligent manner.