She doesn't own Naruto…or Suriname (Cookies to whoever can find the author insert and tell me where Suriname is. From here on out, we have the geography question and the Author Insert question to all remaining chapters, just to save me A/N room. :lazy:).

Also, it's the two week mark, which marks the half way point! Thanks for all the reviews, my lovlies!

When Sasuke woke up, he actually felt a lot better. Tired, yes, but infinitely better. He sat up, shaking his hair out, and shook Naruto awake. 'Wait…Naruto?' the blond boy was still sleeping beside him. 'So much for playing video games behind Temari's back.'

"WAKE UP!" shouted the voice that Sasuke presumed had woken him up. "Are you guys awake yet? Spare the maids, the shower is so much easier to clean--" Temari, who had wandered into the room, was attacked mid-sentence by a fairly well thrown pillow from a still-slightly asleep Naruto. "Ow…damn! Hey, Sasuke, you're up. You well enough to come with us? Teehee, I said come…"

"You're drunk, aren't you?"

"Not really," Temari replied. "I had a half a beer. I just thought I could get away with making a crack like that, since we all know you and--"

"Don't say it!" Naruto shouted from under the covers. "Don't say a word, Temari Sabaku, or I swear, all of your one nights stands will come spilling out, type 72, comic sans, all over your college campus."

"What one night stands?" Kiba asked from behind her.

"Whatever. You don't have proof. I do, however, have pictures of you and Sasuke getting close, so even if its not true, those dumb high schoolers will believe all of it."

"You wouldn't."

"I would."

"I'm not dumb!"

"Inuzuka, find the value of X if X divided by negative eight equals six."

"You're right…high schoolers are dumb…"

"Told you Inuzuka! TOLD YOU! It's negative forty-eight, by the way."

"I hate you."

"I know. I love you anyway."

"HEY! Hinata and I are--"

"God…you're denser than Naruto!"

"I resent that--"

"I'm sure you d--"

"What's that sup--"

"Oh you know what it me--"

"Shut the fu--"

"Don't use that tone--"

"Le gasp, is my language interfering with your EBay moral--"

"Shut up before I make you all walk to Times Square."

Silence.

Neji stared around Times Square with a feeling akin to awe. "Wow…" he muttered. "It's nice."

"Nice? Well that's specific. We could be talking about mints too, those are nice. I like mints," Kiba said. Neji glared and rolled his eyes.

"I don't know what my cousin sees in you, Inuzuka."

"Oh, up yours."

"I'm sure Gaara's got that covered," Temari said with a laugh. Neji looked mortified. Temari rolled her eyes and gave Neji a playful shove. "Oh, you know I don't mean it any more than I mean it about Naruto and Sasuke. Which, come to think of it, is quite a bit."

"Oh be quiet," Gaara scolded. He fished around in his pocket and dragged Neji off to drop a few dollar bills in the hat of the man on the corner. The man looked up wearily from his post, staring over the street corners. He nodded to Gaara and smiled a smile full of crooked teeth, yellowed with age and lack of care.

"Thank you kindly," he croaked. A teenage girl passed him and dropped a ten dollar bill his hat. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Despite her friend's pleading looks, the girl sat beside the man on the corner and struck up a conversation with him. Gaara blinked at the girl, who looked oddly familiar, and walked back towards Neji to see how quickly he could make the white-eyed boy blush.

"Hey Neji," Gaara hissed in said boy's ear. Neji jumped, turning quickly, his eyes suddenly guarded. He relaxed, but he didn't seem to drop the look of shock. "Afraid of a little city? No one hear gets to touch you but me." He laughed almost humorlessly. "Just kidding Hyuuga, you don't need to look like someone ran you over with a truck. Unless, of course, I do this." Gaara smirked and pushed Neji against a strangely convenient wall.

"Gaara…what if someone sees?" Neji asked nervously. Gaara shrugged.

"What if they do see. I'll stop if you want me to stop, you know." Gaara pulled back. Neji shook his head in small circles and pulled Gaara back.

"No, wait, I didn't mean it like that, I just meant what if someone sees us and thinks--"

"Thinks what?"

"I don't know…"

"It's New York, 3000 fucking miles from anyone who knows us. So what if they think? What are they going to think? Is there a problem with what they might be thinking?" Gaara's kelly-green eyes searched Neji's face carefully. "Huh? Is there a problem with what they might be thinking?"

"No, no problem," Neji mumbled. "I still haven't gotten over…"

"I know, I know. I'm going to kill your Uncle when I get back though. We're not going to kick you out," Gaara said off handedly. He shrugged nonchalantly and pushed Neji back again into a surprisingly sturdy brick wall. "We promise."

Naruto was dazed. Sensory overload left him in a blur of colors and sounds, his blue eyes wide and spinning. He managed to latch on to Sasuke's arm and hold the raven tightly, his little blond head going around and around and around and around in infinite circles, around and around, the blue-eyed boy dazed by lights.

Sasuke let Naruto's hand go for a second. Just one second. The instant their hands disconnected, Sasuke knew he had made a mistake. He turned to see Naruto disappearing back into the alley. Sasuke chased after him and found him conversing with a man dressed in a black trench coat and thin black glasses. Sasuke sighed and dragged the boy away from the shady looking people in the one corner of the alley. People in alleys in large metropolitan areas with trench coats, dark glasses, big ugly hats and shifty eyes (if you can see them) generally don't have your best interests at heart. In fact, if they're holding that little packet filled with white crystals, you know for sure they're not.

Sea Monkeys are the Devil.

Kiba hated pushing. He really did. And pushing a beat up van through times square was not helping. Granted, in exchange for a sandwich, Gaara had convinced the homeless guy to help. The dark-haired girl and her friend helped too, and a tall woman who Gaara got the oddest hate vibes from kept shooting the whole party murderous looks. The brown haired girl was enjoying that. A lot.

Gaara was a firm believer in the Sea Monkeys-are-the-Devil philosophy. Thirty minutes after disappearing into an alley with his supposed friend, he returned to his van to see his worst nightmare alive. "You HAD to get them. It couldn't be a puppy, it couldn't be a kitty, it had to be them. I can just pin the picking up of the shit on you. Oh sure. But you had them INSTALLED IN MY VAN?! IN MY VAN?! What were you thinking? They live, they die, they rot, and then they come back. What on earth possessed you to get them?" Gaara stared at Naruto with horror stricken eyes. "In. My. Dashboard. Do you know how much this will cost to get rid of them?"

"But they're cute! Gaara, look, it's waving…" Temari crooned. She leaned on the dashboard and prodded the glass behind which there were Sea Monkeys. They whirled and twirled and played in fromnt of the Plexiglas.

Kiba scrutinized it carefully, looking over the tank of Sea Monkeys carefully to see just what kinds of creatures they were. "Why are they red? With little horns on their head…Temari…I don't think its waving…"

They were driving. Again. They had to make Washington by midnight, and it wasn't that far really, the way Gaara drove. Naruto amused himself watching Kiba play with Lee. Gaara kept smiling sadistically to himself. He couldn't wait until they reached Gatlinburg and could finally get rid of the creature. 'Away, away, away,' he chanted. 'Soon you will be gone, be gone, be gone…soon you will be gone.' His smile faded when he caught sight of the Sea Monkeys. 'I'll get you my pretties, and Kiba's dog too.' Granted, Kiba's dog was 3000 mils away, but that's not really the dog's fault.

"Are we there yet?" Naruto asked.

Sasuke sighed. "No, Naruto, we are not there yet."

"Are we there yet?"

"No, Naruto, we're not there yet."

"Are we there yet?"

"No, Naruto, we're not there yet."

"Are we--"

"Naruto, you ask one more time and I will sic Lee on you. His youthfulness will smother your so-called happy. No one can compare to Lee's obsessive compulsive energetic power. He will crush you with his mighty fist of happy."

"You are aware Gai gave that as a present to TenTen, are you not?"

"TenTen?"

"Graduation present. Then she pawned it off to Sakura, who took a rather frightening liking to the creature."

"That would explain a lot. An ass lot," Kiba said offhandedly. Neji nodded and stared out the window at the lush landscape of the summer. It was beautiful, he notes dryly. Such a nonspecific adjective was beautiful. It was…stunning, evocative, mysterious. It made him want to write poetry. Neji Hyuuga didn't write poetry. He barely even read the stuff. But the woods they drove through, despite the highway, made him want to become the next Walt Whitman.

They stopped at the Hershey's factory. Naruto made them take the tour. The blonde-headed boy stocked up on enough chocolate to last them back to Ventura; Temari managed to steal a security guard's beer ("What? He shouldn't have been drinking on the job anyway!"); Shikamaru managed to memorize the entire process for making chocolate ("What a troublesome skill…") ; Sasuke and Kiba argued the whole way over some trivial matter ("No way, blue is so much cooler than red…"); and Neji and Gaara were Neji and Gaara. Actually, Neji and Gaara disappeared into the bathroom and didn't go on the tour ("Mrph…!")

When they were back on the road, having parked ever-so-smartly on a hill, Shikamaru was asleep, Temari was bored, Neji was spacey, Kiba was angry, Gaara was pensive, Sasuke was quiet and Naruto was hyper.

Naruto chattered away in Sasuke's ear for some time. "Wasn't that fun?" he asked with a grin. "Oh come on you know it was ooh look a bird isn't it pretty outside Sasuke isn't it great it's the most awesome place I've ever seen it's so nice and all the trees bend and doesn't it make you want to paint a picture because it's the greatest--" Naruto's rambling was cut off by Sasuke pinning him down and holding a pillow over the blond boy's mouth.

"Silence Loser," Sasuke ordered. He realized then that he was straddling the boy's hips. 'Oh my god…I'm going to jump him. Temari won't like that,' he thought. 'Must not jump him.' Sasuke fell promptly off Naruto and handed the blond boy the pillow dazedly.

"Are you okay Sasuke?" Naruto asked cautiously. "You're not getting sick again, are you?" Sasuke was caught between yes, no, and 'hot flashes'.

Sea Monkeys and Blonds are the Devil.

Surprise surprise, I'm the chick who talked to the homeless guy. You know, from now on, I'm going to let you all guess and see if anyone gets it right and tell you next chapter (ooh, it's soooo hard). Ditto geography question...(Suriname is in northeastern South America, bordering Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana and the Atlantic Ocean).

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