I have the day off today, so I am giving you all an update!

The week of August 15th, I will be on vacation. I am bringing my laptop with me to check my school e-mails, but I will not be updating anything during that period.

Because of that, I am updating today, plus possibly adding a new one-shot if I can get it finished and ready in time, but I'm not promising anything.

Read, Review, and Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does. He's better at coming up with a long and epic story than I am anyway.

Naruto sniffled in his sleep as he snuggled deeper into his blanket. He stretched his arms out and yawned, eyes still closed. He coughed lightly and turned from his back to his right side and hugged his pillow closer to his body. Daylight flooded into the room from in between the horizontal blinds and streaked the side of his face with stripes of sunlight.

Naruto's nose twitched. It was a very lazy morning, and Naruto had refused to wake up. He clamped his eyes together even tighter, trying to avoid waking up. It was useless. He was already fully conscious, and no amount of stubbornness would fix that.

He sighed and finally opened his eyes. He blinked the flecks of sleep from his eyes and curled up into the fetal position. He felt so tired and weak and couldn't understand why. He had never before felt so completely drained, not even when he'd managed to injure himself. Naruto lifted his head up slightly and watched his clock radio flip through the minutes until the alarm turned on.

As the little radio began to play some trashy rap song at a soft volume, Naruto felt his stomach start to churn. Not the gentle grumbles of hunger, but the uncomfortable groans of sickness. Naruto hoisted himself out of bed as gently as he could and made his way over to his bathroom. Once inside, he collapsed to his knees and heaved for a few minutes, trying to make the feeling in his gut go away. Naruto retched as he heard someone push the bathroom door open wider. He shuddered as he felt the bile rush up past his throat and purged into his toilet's white porcelain bowl.

"I told you having three chakras mixing around in your system was bad for you."

Naruto looked up to his bathroom door and found Sakura staring at him from the doorway as he rested on the bathroom floor.

"Sakura? How… why are you-"

"Let's see," she said grumpily. "I waited by the Uchiha Compound Gate for an hour and a half for you to show up. When you didn't I figured that I'd just come here and drag your lazy ass there myself."

Naruto averted his eyes from her steady gaze guiltily. He knew he'd forgotten something…

"Anyway, it's a good thing I showed up here. You look sick as a dog."

Sakura kneeled down to him, gently grabbed his arm, and pulled him back up to his feet. She draped his arm over her shoulder and helped him over to his kitchen table, and he sat himself down in his chair. He was already beginning to feel better, but the strange movement in his stomach wouldn't stop.

"You got sick as a side effect of reading the chakra," she explained. "I told you there would be consequences. Be thankful that it was just throwing up this time. It could've been much worse."

Naruto rested his elbows on his table and crossed his arms on top.

"Yeah, I know. Well, now that I'm up, I might as well get ready to go."

Sakura's face softened from anger to concern. She grabbed the pack she'd thrown onto his floor and pushed the door out of his apartment open.

"You aren't going anywhere just yet," she said. "I'll be right back in a minute. Don't go anywhere."

Naruto nodded silently and rested his head against his table. He briefly considered getting a short nap in, but he wasn't sure how Sakura would react to seeing him sleeping once she got back. She did seem to have some sympathy for him since he was sick earlier this morning. He doubted her patience would last much longer if he continued to milk his sickness this morning for her pity.

Sakura returned, as promised, just a few minutes later holding a small bottle in her hand.

"Oh, good God," Naruto exclaimed, backing away from the table. "You didn't get me any medicine, did you?"

Sakura's eyes narrowed in anger.

"What's wrong with my medicine?" she growled.

"N-nothing," Naruto stuttered. As if he would ever be stupid enough to tell her to her face that even though her medicine worked wonders, it was impossible to swallow due to its horrific taste.

"Whatever," she sighed. "This isn't medicine. It's ginger ale."

She grabbed a glass from one of Naruto's open cabinets and poured the bubbly liquid into it. Naruto lifted the glass to his lips and smiled when the bubbles popped and tickled his nose. Once the glass was empty, Naruto stood up and felt completely better.

"You go on ahead," he said cheerfully. "I'll get dressed and meet you there."

Sakura could only smile and nod. If Naruto was already feeling the effects of the chakra, who knows what would happen to him as time went on? She left and walked down the deserted road that no one used anymore, the road that led to the Uchiha district. It was silent, which bothered her. Some white noise in the background would've helped distract her from the thoughts of what might happen to her best friend. He was much too optimistic to consider the dangers that could befall him.

. . .

Sakura leaned against the outside wall of the house she was painting and wiped her sweaty forehead with a handkerchief. She took a quick look down to the paint tray she'd been using for the past few hours. It was coated in sticky, off-white paint, and was nearly empty. How could that be? She still had one more coat to paint onto the house! She sighed and walked back out onto the street.

"Hey Naruto!" she yelled. "Got any more paint?"

His head popped out from over the ledge of the roof and he tossed a paint can down to her. How long had he been up there?

"Thanks!"

She set the paint can down next to the tray and reached down for the paint can opener, only to find it missing.

"I need the paint can opener too, please!"

Naruto walked out from behind a wooden fence across the street and checked it at her.

"Thank…wait. Why are you over there? You were on the roof earlier," she called.

"No," Naruto said slowly. "I think you're losing it, Sakura-chan. I've been behind the fence fixing the gate hinges since we got here."

"You were not!" she protested. "You were UP THERE!" she yelled, pointing up to the roof.

"I was not,"

Sakura turned around to hear the voice behind her only to see Naruto laying down some tiles in the house she was painting.

"You're not in there," she said. "You were over there," she pointed across the street. "And up there!" she pointed to the roof.

"I've been in here since we first got here!" he told her.

"No, you… wait a second." She stomped angrily out into the middle of the road and looked all around her.

"On the count of three," she yelled, "everyone here will show themselves, got it?"

"One. Two. Three!"

Sakura's eyes widened in shock when she saw several dozen Naruto clones pop up from just about everywhere in the compound.

"Wait," one of them said. "Were we supposed to come out ON three or on the beat AFTER three?"

"I don't think it matters now," another one answered. "We're all out here now."

"Ok," Sakura said. "Now all of you just…I don't know…poof away or whatever it is clones do so I can talk to the real Naruto."

"I AM the real Naruto!" one of the clones said. "Well, I'm part of the real Naruto, anyway."

"I mean it!" Sakura yelled.

Sakura stood out in the middle of the street tapping her foot in impatience as she watched all of the clones poof away in clouds of smoke. The real Naruto jumped off the roof of the house Sakura was painting.

"Naruto," she said, grabbing onto his shoulders and shaking him. "You can't use Shadow Clones to repair the district anymore. It isn't safe!"

"Of course it's safe," he told her. "I haven't hurt myself or fallen off of anything yet."

"That isn't what I meant!" she said. "A Shadow Clone is just as susceptible to reading the chakra as you yourself are. It'd be worse, actually, because a Shadow Clone would get overwhelmed doing it, and we don't know what would happen to you if it did."

"I'm careful not to let my clones get near that chakra if they can feel any around," Naruto mumbled.

"Please Naruto, for your own safety from now on do NOT use Shadow Clones."

"I won't," he said sheepishly.

"I want you to promise," Sakura said.

"I promise that I will no longer use Shadow Clones to repair the Uchiha District," Naruto swore. "Not like it matters much anyway. We're very close to being finished."

"That's all I'm asking," Sakura said, walking back to her paint can.

. . .

Kabuto pushed his glasses up further onto the bridge of his nose and began the walk over to Sasuke's room. No doubt he was sleeping again. Kabuto spent most of his time in the lab and never watched Orochimaru train the boy. He sometimes wondered what Orochimaru was teaching him that made him so tired every day.

Sasuke did not like being woken up. Not even if it was for a request made by Orochimaru. Kabuto shook his head. For someone so seemingly precious to his master, Sasuke was lacking in proper manners. It was almost as if the Uchiha didn't have a respectful bone in his body. How many times had Kabuto told him to be more polite to Orochimaru-sama? He never listened, so Kabuto had given up counting.

The last time someone opened up Sasuke's chamber while he was sleeping never came back, and when Kabuto went to investigate, he found the poor henchman pinned to the wall across from the door by a kunai through his head. Hearing the news only made Orochimaru smile to himself. He praised Sasuke for becoming even more violent as time went by. Kabuto wasn't quite as pleased as he thought he should've been. Of course, it might have been because Kabuto was ordered to clean up the bloody mess alone. Sasuke was never ordered to clean up after himself or to appreciate other people's hard work, because the next week when a different henchman was sent to fetch Sasuke, the same thing happened again.

Kabuto leaned his ear against the door of Sasuke's chamber and listened for sounds of Sasuke being awake. He heard some slight rustling noises from inside and deemed it safe enough to enter.

"Sasuke," Kabuto said as the door opened.

Sasuke scrambled while the door was still opening and shoved something away under the pillow on his bed.

"What is it now?" he asked warily.

"Lord Orochimaru wished for me to deliver this to you," Kabuto replied, holding out the Master Deed List.

Sasuke reached out and flattened the document carefully. He sat silently for a few minutes, his eyes darting back and forth over the lines written upon it before setting the document down onto his bedside table.

"What's the meaning of this?" Sasuke gestured to the document.

"The Master Deed List for any clan is only taken out of the archives when someone is doing major renovations to the clan's land," Kabuto reminded him. "Perhaps you'd like to go back and see who loves you enough to fix up your land?"

"Are you suggesting that Orochimaru gave me the Master Deed List to test me?"

"I'm not suggesting anything," Kabuto replied coolly. "I am merely asking you a harmless question."

"Asking a harmless question, or taunting me?" Sasuke asked.

"If that is the way you choose to interpret it, then I suppose there is nothing I could do to make you see otherwise. Goodbye, Sasuke." Kabuto backed slowly out of the room.

As the door closed, Kabuto saw Sasuke quickly reach back under his pillow for whatever he'd stashed under it before Kabuto came in. Sasuke never let anyone into his room any further past a few steps, and he'd seriously injured the last person that tried to touch anything. Sasuke took care of everything himself, from freshening up his bed sheets to doing his laundry to just cleaning up the room in general. Most everyone in the hideout was smart enough to keep away from going into Sasuke's chamber.

Kabuto walked back down the hall to Orochimaru wondering what the boy was trying to hide.