Sasuke woke to damp bedclothes, a searing headache, a dark room, and the distinct feeling that things were really, really not okay.
The first problem etched itself in the lightless seams of his bedroom door. Sasuke never turned off the corridor lights, not since his first night in the new apartment. After the second night, Naruto never turned them off either. Keeping his breaths even, Sasuke turned his head slowly, silently against the pillow, watching the stillness of his bedroom. There were no unusual sounds or scents and no misshaped shadows could be seen from his bed, but he knew better than to think that meant he was safe or alone. Shivering slightly as the night cooled his sweat-drenched clothes-which weren't pajamas, but the street clothes he had put on the previous morning-he reached under his pillow for the kunai he kept there.
It was gone. Trying to control his mounting panic was a lot harder with his head pounding the way it was. Forcing breath past his lips, he slipped his hand carefully between his mattress and the wall, biting back a sob of relief when his fingertips brushed against the rough canvas of his shuriken holster. He hadn't been completely disarmed, then. Feeling braver with cold sharp metal braced between his fingers, he sat up and confronted the silence.
"Show yourself!"
His voice sounded weak and scratchy and cracked in the middle, but that was no reason for tears to heat the corners of his eyes. Angry, dizzy, and humiliated, he wiped at them furiously with his shuriken-free hand, telling himself that this was no time to give in to childish weakness, flu or no flu. What would his father say if he could see him now?
The apartment stayed dark and silent and empty.
"…Naruto?"
Nothing.
"Oi! Dobe! Narut—" the last was swallowed in a rash of dry coughing that left his throat burning. No longer willing to huddle under his blankets, he stumbled to his feet and out his bedroom door, head swimming and limbs trembling with cold and sickness. It took two tries to get Naruto's bedroom door open, and before he was halfway through it he was slammed painfully against the doorjamb and then to the floor, a breathless shout croaking from his raw throat. Shuriken flew from his hand, clattering haphazardly against the bare walls of Naruto's room.
Heart and head pounding a painful duet of full-on panic now that he had stupidly thrown his only weapons, Sasuke stared madly around the room, crouched in the most stable defensive stance his trembling limbs could muster. There was nothing—nothing but the coconut-sized leather punching bag Naruto had apparently rigged to defend his bedroom door, swinging idly on its rope.
It was a good thing his vocabulary had recently expanded to accommodate a circumstance such as this. With no idea how else to cope with the situation, Sasuke mashed the tears from his eyes, sat on the cold wooden floor, and cursed out his flatmate with all the sincerity of a recently broken eight-year-old heart. Then he pulled himself to his feet, stumbled the short distance down the hallway to his own room, using the walls for support and carefully ducking the hanging punching bag, shivered his way into a dry set of street clothes and all the weapon pouches he possessed, and set his course determinedly, if a bit shakily, for the front door.
He had to stop to throw up again along the way.
iIi
Getting out of being tied up was one of the first things Sasuke had decided he and Naruto would work on as they set out to face old man Hokage's challenge head-on. Working on it had mostly consisted of Sasuke tying Naruto up as tightly and painfully as possible—and dangling upside down anytime he could rig it—and then smirking his stupid I-am-Sasuke-this-is-how-I-laugh smirk as Naruto flailed around trying to get out of it. When Naruto pointed out, loudly, that Sasuke also needed to practice breaking out of bonds, Sasuke calmly allowed himself to be wrapped in Naruto's most wicked knots with a beatifically bored cast to his arrogant face, Naruto circling him distrustfully.
There was a jutsu for that, apparently. And Sasuke had mastered it before he ever suggested anyone tying anyone else up. Of course.
Naruto had been frantically attempting to copy him ever since, and had learned a lot of tricks along the way—which side of a knot you could put pressure on without inadvertently pulling everything tighter, how to tense up your muscles while being bound and relax them to make that extra millimeter of wiggle room, how slowly you had to move when trying to slide out of ninja wire without getting skinned in the process—but he couldn't do that jutsu. No matter how hard he tried, he could not figure out that jutsu—but it was just a matter of time—
I have no time!
He was tied up, he needed to saved Sasuke, Sasuke was gonna DIE, he always knew Misuki-sensei was a bastard but what the hell was the bastard trying to do to him now? He had to make noise, had to get attention, he needed to tell Old Man Hokage about Sasuke, he needed those white-mask guys to come—
As Naruto thrashed and shouted and rolled on the forest floor, Mizuki felt his heart rate spike dangerously. He had never struggled with control in high-stress combat situations, but the enormity of defecting combined with the brazen theft of the village's only jinchuuriki raised the stakes to levels he had never personally shouldered responsibility for. There was no superior here to turn to and blindly follow. No teammates to curse for incompetence even as they absorbed the brunt of the threat. Mizuki had acted on his own, and whatever the consequences, he would face them completely and utterly alone.
Alone except for the demon.
It truly was a demon, he could see without doubt now. Whatever fraction of being that could have been claimed as human had long since burned away and reformed into a masterful mask—as the kitsune in the ancient stories, the kyuubi no yoko had wrapped itself in human disguise, and thrashed and shouted now on the forest floor even as it wriggled masterfully from the bandages its stubby childish limbs were bound in.
There were holes in Mizuki's soul, holes shaped like the people he had lost—and all but one had been lost on a single say, within a single hour. Holes that never healed, never lightened, never shrank. He had learned to walk around them, to avoid and ignore them. He could do that. What he couldn't hide from was the fear. Mizuki did not believe that anyone who had not stood in the presence of the fully manifested Kyuubi no Yoko would ever truly know fear. In his mind it was a color, burning red-orange, putrid and paralyzing, rising in dreams and never fully shunned even in the brightest part of day—and with it the certainty that everything you are, everything you have, everything you love—it can be obliterated in less than a heartbeat. It was that fear that froze his limbs now, and the source of that fear that thrashed and struggled at his feet.
There were no more thoughts of gain or escape. The prize of potential ransom no longer held any appeal. Alone, he had a chance—not much of once, but a chance—to reach another border, to evade the hunter-nin long enough to negotiate new alliances. There was no entry for him in any village's bingo book, no bloodline inheritance to keep secure, no significant intel worth a great price to protect. Mizuki was no fool. He knew his own worth in the eyes of the world. It was his insignificance that drove him to betray a world that had already rejected him, and that same insignificance that might protect him.
There was something he had to do first.
How many seconds had passed? Three, four? The demon was still screeching—that was the first problem to solve. A kunai appeared in his hand and reversed into slashing position with less than a thought; a second later he was kneeling on the demon's chest, one hand fisted in its hair and yanking back, exposing the throat. Just cutting the throat probably wouldn't be enough—he'd already poisoned the container and learned that even a lethal dose couldn't so much as keep it unconscious—but not even a demon could scream for help if its vocal chords were ripped out.
The rest would be figured out once the nine-tails was silenced.
Blue eyes caught his, flashing in abject terror before fixating on the kunai. Something hot and wet flooded against Mizuki's ankle where it fell between the demon's legs, momentarily distracting him; then the smell of urine reached his nostrils, and he laughed. The laughter was uncontrolled and painful; but who knew? Even a demon would wet itself before the hand that takes life. How many times had he watched in disgusted amusement as his opponents were reduced to this? And all those hardened killers, those elite, those true shinobi, had any of them brought the Demon of Demons down? Felt it trapped and trembling under their hands, soaking in its own piss? He alone could do this—this that the Yondaime himself had been unable to do.
"Fear me, demon."
Kunai bit into skin. Demon's blood spilled.
iIi
I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming—
The moment the medic appeared, ANBU Squirrel was out the door.
It wasn't even a med-nin—just a civilian doctor unable to use chakra, often preferred by jumpy post-mission ANBU—so she shouldn't have left, she knew it, and she did it anyway. But the Uchiha wouldn't be left alone, the medic knew how to summon help, and if her logic-be-damned gut feeling was right, she was already too late.
She ran in the direction the previous sentry had indicated, senses stretched to the max for any sign of someone small and bright-headed and distressingly good at hiding—but he shouldn't be hiding. He had gone to look for Umino Iruka, whom she knew by sight.
The Academy was dark, locked and empty. Her next stop would have been Umino's apartment, had she any idea where it was. Did Naruto know? If he hadn't found Umino at the Academy, which was most likely where he had searched for him, what would he do next? Had any other teachers been around? Would he have sought anyone else's help? The assumption was that he was worried about the Uchiha, and Squirrel had observed enough of their interactions to know that all of the Uzumaki's boundless energy and enthusiasm would be focused on helping his flatmate. And he wouldn't be doing so quietly. So why can't I find him?
The area between Naruto's apartment and the Academy had been thoroughly covered, so Squirrel went the opposite way. She would just make a quick sweep—she could think of no reason for Naruto to head towards the outer wall—but search patterns existed for a reason, and she had failed to determine a higher priority search area, so—ah. There was something going on at the west gate.
"Report."
The chuunin on duty took in her mask, her tattoo, the fiercely focused force of her chakra, and snapped to attention. "Hai! A distraction appears to have been staged. We are determining the cause."
So you know someone's up to something but don't know the someone or the something.
"Call for backup," she commanded, and disappeared past the gate and into the woods. A heartbeat later she was back. "The backup—get someone with dogs. Inuzuka. Hatake. Or any decent tracker. NOW!"
"Wait—mission code! What's the mission code? We can't accept the order without-"
"I don't have one. Report that too." And she was gone.
iIi
"Sasuke! What are you doing out here? Do you know how late it is? Where's Naruto? …Are you sick? You are! Come here—"
Umino Iruka tended to get gregarious after the third beer. He didn't drink often, and always in moderation, but the stress of his "volunteer" tutoring on top of his Marking Slave duties had led to a less-hesitant-than-usual acceptance of an invitation to have a few drinks with his genin-day buddies. The only ones missing were Team 12, due back from a B rank in two days, and Mizuki, who was in a perpetually foul mood since the shake-up at the Academy. The night was going well until they spilled out The Poisoned Kunai on their way to The Yellow Toad and nearly tripped over an extremely irritable Uchiha Sasuke—who was, on closer inspection, white-faced, sweating, and very upset.
"Where's Naruto?" for an eight-year-old, he was scarily successful at making a basic question sound like a threat.
"Where's Naruto? That's what I just asked you—ah. How long has he been missing? Oh, wait, you're barely standing—let's find a place to sit down—"
And wearily waving his impatient comrades away, Iruka resigned himself to returning to the duties of teacher-ing.
iIi
"Unauthorized exit and call for backup by an agent took place at the West Gate. Small explosion blamed on faulty explosive tags reported shortly before—minimal damage, but one of the tags was noxious. Chuunin on duty reported suspected diversion tactics, immediate investigation instigated. Unauthorized ANBU agent requested tracker-nin, preferably dogs, for backup."
"Which agent was it, who called for backup?"
"Squirrel, Sir."
"Send backup. No, wait—I'll go. Handle this for me, will you?"
A hefty stack of paperwork changed hands.
"Aw, Captain—don't go just to get out of paperwork—I'm not technically cleared for this, you know—"
A single grey eye glared coldly.
"Squirrel's on babysitting duty tonight," drawled the Captain, already snapping on his second armguard. "If she called for backup, she needs backup. Alert Team Delta. Report to the Hokage. And—" the subordinate gulped, sinking under the unexpected gravity of the situation, "—don't forget to finish all that paperwork. And file it. No, don't file it. Your forgeries of my signature are pitiful. Really, you must work on that…"
Deft hands completed the series of seals, and with a chakra-laden slam, a motley team of nin-hounds slipped into dimension. "Start with a 50-meter radius of the West Gate," came the command, "track ANBU Squirrel and any other familiar scents. Scatter!"
Obeying his own order, ANBU Captain Inu disappeared.
iIi
"I know what time it is, but this is something Hokage-sama must be aware of," gritted Iruka, feverish kid dangling from one hand and scary don't-mess-with-sensei tone scaring even his fellow chuunin into leaning warily away. "There are meant to be ANBU monitors on these two children at all times. One child is missing and the other is unmonitored. This is an issue of village—no, national security. Get your butt in there and report it or so help me—"
"Ah, Iruka-kun," came a deceptively gentle voice, and both chuunin jumped back in alarm before bending hastily into bows as Sandaime Hokage appeared regally before them. "I have just received an ANBU report that may be related to your concerns. Did I hear you say that Naruto-kun is missing?"
Hiruzen did not waste much time hearing the report; as soon as Sasuke's account was given and a messenger dispatched to summon the civilian medic who should have been with the boy, the Hokage left him to Iruka-kun's capable care and excused himself to make immediate use of his scrying crystal.
Where are you, Naruto-kun? May assistance and protection find you quickly; may they not be needed… I find myself wishing for this to be one of your foolish pranks…
iIi
In the moment before the blade descended, the screaming stopped. Flesh split as wide blue eyes narrowed in sudden concentration, blood bloomed from a slim neck as a small but capable hand deflected the final plunge of the blade. Something tugged at Mizuki's thigh as he began to pull back in surprise—the demon had changed—
As childish howls of shock and fear sounded from the base of a tree meters away, the hand of Uzumaki Naruto plunged a stolen kunai deep into his attacker's belly, and twisted.
The cry of horror and pain lurching from Mizuki's gaping mouth burned to rage as the body beneath him shifted. Scarred, baby-round cheeks and wide terrified eyes became a painted porcelain ANBU mask; short, helpless limbs became long and powerful and sure; and as hot crimson continued to fountain from a cut-open neck, the hand at Mizuki's belly wielded blood-slick metal with fatal precision, gutting the traitor with his own kunai.
"Why-" gasped Mizuki, "Why—for a monster—for the demon—"
Rough hands seized Mizuki's shoulders, toppling him to the unyielding forest floor, where the pain burned and churned his existence into unrelenting agony, voicing itself in bellows and moans that tore his throat with the last of his breath. To die like this…
"Stay with me," ordered a voice framed in harsh authority, and an ANBU captain was kneeling over his dying subordinate, pushing her mask aside and applying pressure to the gash at her neck. Nin-hounds were arriving from all directions, moving into patrol patterns, nudging assuringly against their first-aid-administering captain, crawling sorrowfully up to the sobbing child hidden in the roots of a tree, where they licked the tears and snot from his death-pale face.
"You did good." The captain's gruff voice. "You did good, soldier. Just hold on a little longer. Help is coming. This is an order. An order from your captain. Can you hear me? Show me that you hear me!"
ANBU Squirrel's fingers twitched. Her lips moved; blood bubbled there, and she choked, unable to speak or breathe. Her fingers moved again, lifting feebly towards her captain, shifting slowly through the signals—
Official… request… dismissal from… ANBU…
"Granted," whispered her Captain. "Anything you want. Just—"
The hand fell.
iIi
Alone in the shadows and the chakra-glow of his seer crystal, Sandaime Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen let his weary head fall.
He had seen it all. Seen the murderer's mortal strike, seen the ANBU appear at the edge of the vision a second too late. There was no time—no time for clones or projectiles or distractions or substitutions. His ANBU kunoichi had time for one act—most nin would not have had time even for that—and she chose the simplest of answers; henge and kawarimi, the transformation and replacement techniques taught to Academy students.
She replaced herself with the demon-child and accepted his death-blow with his face.
Uzumaki Naruto had seen it, too.
Barely visible in the depths of the glowing ball, a little boy huddled and sobbed as nin-dogs chewed away the last of his bonds and rubbed wet noses over his tears; meters away, their master knelt between two broken bodies, and tried desperately to force life back into one.
iIi
"You can see him now, Sasuke-kun."
Still weak and sore-jointed but feeling much better than he had the last time he'd seen his errant roommate, Sasuke tiptoed around the doorjamb and lifted his eyes apprehensively to the figure seated listlessly on the hospital bed, face turned to the window.
"Naruto," he called, uncertain.
Blue eyes whipped around. "Sasuke! Are you really okay? Iruka-sensei told me you didn't die but I couldn't see you because—because—" the rough voice cut off suddenly, and Naruto's eyes lost focus, skittering around the room. Sasuke saw that his hands were trembling.
"Iruka-sensei told me that you got sick too," he offered. It was a lie and Sasuke knew it, but he would go along with it until the adults started leaving them alone again. It had been a day and a night and half a day since Naruto went running off to look for Iruka-sensei, and while Sasuke was miserable and useless with fever and chills for most of that time, he was not oblivious. "Do you have a fever?"
"No," said Naruto.
"Do you wanna go home? Iruka said we could go home if you want to."
Naruto looked at him. What he was looking for, Sasuke couldn't guess, so he just stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked back.
"…Okay," said Naruto. "Yeah. Let's go home. Go out for a minute, I'll get changed."
As they started down the long fluorescent-lit corridor, hands in pockets and shoulders occasionally bumping, one of Hokage-sama's chuunin assistants ambling casually along behind them, Sasuke turned to Naruto with a frown.
"One thing," he ordered. Naruto glanced at him from the corner of his eye. Sasuke huffed. "Ramen. I don't want to even look at it. Or smell it. No way am I tasting it. No more ramen."
"WHAAA?" cried Naruto, hands coming up in distress.
Sasuke smirked. "You heard me."
"Bastard!"
iIi
A/N: Just a shout-out to all you wonderful people who haven't given up on me yet. I'm doing my best increase the update speed. Thank you so much for the alerts, favorites, and most of all the REVIEWS! Keeps me addicted to writing this stuff, y'know? Arigato gozaimasu!
On a separate note, my Naruto/Harry Potter crossover, My Other Son, is being turned into a challenge. I'm still figuring out how to make that work, exactly, but I know I won't be able to continue it in the foreseeable future and I really want to see it continued, so… if you have suggestions for creating a successful challenge/want to take up the challenge, please let me know via PM or review. Thank you!