I'm sorry that this is late. Again. Things've been getting me down lately. Apparently, the US Post Office gets its jollies by losing stuff that's important to me.

But, as of April 11, 2007, the author Leviticus Lied is sixteen! I'm excited! I drive now!

Oh... and you'll like bits of this chapter a lot, I think. Other bits... not so much. You know how these things go up and down with your feelings.

Is everyone strapped in? Let the roller coaster begin!

(Please show mercy and patience, and continue to read happily!)

Six and a half months after Kiba and I made jounin, we were summoned to the Hokage's office. Even Akamaru was allowed to stand with us, though Shizune was off in one corner, grumbling about his presence.

Tsunade was at her desk, staring at us solemnly. Her arms were crossed and settled on the wooden surface, directly in front of her exposed cleavage. One eyebrow raised in annoyance as she shifted in her chair. "Shino-san, Kiba-san, do you know why I called you here?"

Kiba shook his head.

I opened my mouth to answer.

She raised her hand. "Alright, so Shino-san knows. Kiba-san, try to think. Nothing in all your experience with me has given you a single clue?"

Kiba tilted his head at her. Akamaru did the same. "Nope, sorry. I try to avoid thinking as much as I can. That's Shino's job."

Tsunade smiled to herself happily. "Times like these remind me why I like kids. Their lives are so simple." She blinked and turned to me. "That reminds me. Shino-san, congratulations on your wife's pregnantness. I was the medic to test her, you know. You left before I could say anything before."

I said, "Thank you, Hokage-sama." I turned back to the original subject. "I have a hypothesis about your reasons."

She waved her hand, inviting me to say it.

"There is a high probably that you are going to promote us."

Kiba turned his head to me quickly, completely shocked. He always expected the worst case scenarios, never anything fortuitous. Akamaru barked happily.

Tsunade laughed. "Yes, you're right. Well done. Just what I would expect from the newest ANBU members!"

Kiba breathed out in a long gust. "Really?"

Now she was simply smug. "Yes, really. You get to play with the big kids from now on."

Shizune stepped forward with a bow, offering us both scrolls. "You both leave tomorrow at dawn..." She paused and finished clearly, "…Separately."

Kiba blinked. "Whoa, wait. What do you mean, 'separately'?"

"As in not together," Tsunade clarified.

"I know what it means," Kiba said quickly, "but I want to know why?"

I said, "Our record and exams show clearly that we make an excellent team." I studied Tsunade carefully, trying to gage how accurate my hypothesis was. "Sending us on different missions will test our individual strength."

Tsunade smiled cheekily. "Close, Shino-kun. Very, very close. Yet also very conceited of you. I'm proud." She stood up, holding two scrolls that seemed to be copies of ours. "The teams will be made of one ANBU and two jounins up for ANBU rank. It's not just to try you out. We're looking at several people, here."

Kiba unrolled his scroll and glanced through it quickly. "So I'm on a team with Neji and… oh, gods help me. Do I have to be with Soro?"

Tsunade blinked and looked down at her scroll. "This Soro's good. Is there something wrong with him?"

Kiba pouted and complained, "If you consider an annoying speech pattern, oversexed personality, and the fact that he could've killed me in the prelims if Shino hadn't been there to all be neat little quirks, then no, by all means, he can be my new best friend."

I said, "Jata seems to have found the proper protocol in dealing with him."

Kiba nodded intelligently and then patted all of his pockets. "Damn," he pouted sarcastically, "I left my threatening needles in my other holster."

I looked at my own scroll. "Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto."

Tsunade waved her hand ornately, to get my attention. "Uzumaki. You keep that one alive, you hear me?"

Kiba said, "I don't know what's more dangerous, the enemy or Sasuke and Naruto together on a stealth mission."

"Why?" Tsunade asked, half-sitting on the forward edge of her desk.

I answered, "The situation may become volatile. I will remain attentive."

As we waited to be dismissed, the Hokage scrutinized us. As an afterthought, she said, "And you two can't discuss your missions before you get back from them. This is separate, mind. In fact, don't even spend the day together."

Kiba's mouth dropped open again. "That's not fair!"

"And I'm Hokage. I get to do whatever I want."

"Sadist!"

Now she was nearly singing. "Ho-kaaaa--ge!"

I said, "I will leave first. Kiba."

He turned to me, expecting to hear...something.

I said, "May you find glory and peace on your journey." The standard, traditional maxim.

Whatever he had expected, it wasn't that. "R-right. And you..."

I bowed to the Hokage and touched Akamaru's head, and then left the office.

Mira sat up when I began preparing for the mission. "Shino, the sun doesn't rise for another half hour, what are you doing up?" she murmured drowsily.

"I may be late," I said. "I must be at the East Gate at dawn."

"Why?" Her disoriented confusion evaporated instantly. "Is something wrong?"

"No. I have a mission."

She opened her mouth for a moment. "When did you get… No, how long will you be gone?"

"It is difficult to say. Possibly only one night, if nothing goes awry." I took a visual count of my weapons, secured them in the thigh holster under my right hand, and faced her. "I'll go."

That was not what she had wanted to hear. Mira stuttered, "M-may you find glory and peace on your journey..."

I nodded and turned to go. The screen's wooden frame rattling on the tracks drowned out her next words, but I caught:

"…ve you."

I moved quickly down the hall.

At dawn, Sasuke and I stood at the East Gate.

Three minutes passed, and then Sasuke announced, "There's no point waiting for him. Let's go."

For a brief moment, I though thtat we would leave for the mission without Naruto, our teammate. As the recognized leader and highest rank, such a decision was Sasuke's prerogative.

But he walked back into Konoha proper. "We'll have to wake the idiot up ourselves."

I had never personally been to Naruto's apartment before. It was on the fifth floor of a low-rent building. He had lived alone all his life, because Naruto was an orphan.

The village supported orphaned children of ninja without question. Generally, the child would be adopted by a relative or understanding family.

No family had wanted to take Uzumaki Naruto in. He had lived eighteen years in the lowest-rent apartment the city could find for him.

Now, Tsunade had a soft spot for him, and Naruto himself earned enough to tmove to a more extravagant area. Naruto had chosen to stay.

Sasuke knocked on the hard wooden door and nearly took it off its hinges. "Oi, dobe! Get up, you shiftless loser!"

Naruto's voice sounded back almost immediately through the wafer-thin walls. "Ah – yeah, okay. Just a few seconds. Okay?"

Sasuke blinked at the door, and then his black eyes narrowed in anger and suspicion. He moved to the door to the right and knocked more politely.

And old woman answered. "Oh, Sasuke-kun! How are you this morning?"

"Obaa-san," Sasuke greeted her respectfully, "I'm going to be taking Naruto."

"It's about time," she said mildly.

Sasuke fidgeted and finished, "…On a mission."

She shook her head sadly. "One of these days, Sasuke-kun, you'll make my retirement interesting."

Sasuke moved on. "I have to ask, Obaa-san. Last night, did the idiot have any company?"

She didn't understand for a moment and then nodded and said, "There were voices, yes, but I didn't hear anything like that."

Finally, the blond crashed though his door, yelling, "Dammit, I'm ready, alright? Stop asking my neighbors about my personal life!"

Sasuke rolled his eyes as the woman made some vague allusion to Naruto being 'ready' and then disappeared pleasantly into her room.

I looked past Naruto, past the ramen cups and half-unrolled scrolls, past the conspicuously numerous articles of feminine clothing…

And nodded a greeting to the pile of sheets that had Hinata's pearlescent eyes.

Naruto saw the motion, and then saw what I was looking at and blushed. "Nothing happened, okay?"

Sasuke looked into the room. "There is just no way that's the truth."

Hinata was visibly shrinking, now completely hidden in Naruto's red sheets.

Naruto stammered, "O-okay, something happened, but everything didn't happen." He carefully spoke only to me. After a few seconds he risked a glance at Sasuke.

Sasuke was regarding Hinata critically, and then prompted, "The mission, dobe?"

"Oh! Right!" Naruto waded across his room and kissed Hinata quickly. "I have to go, love."

"I'll see you when you get back," Hinata said, hand moving to the blue stone at her throat. She had the sheet tight around anything important, but her pale shoulders and upper chest were starkly visible against the red.

I said, "And I will see you when you are... less nude, little sister."

"More's the pity, right?" Naruto aid dreamily as he came back to join us. "I mean, Hinata's really pretty!"

Sasuke said, "We're leaving."

Naruto stuck out his tongue. "You're pissed because your wife's a month away from babydom and you are… um… sexually frustrated!"

Sasuke's voice was cold, emotionless, and sharp as a katana. "There's only so much I can take, Naruto."

The blond flinched.

The moment passed and Sasuke drawled, "And stop getting your insults from Sakura. For the record, Itari is still, for lack of a better word, Itari."

I asked, "Won't this indiscretion be far from unnoticeable?"

Naruto motioned for me to stop talking, and then whispered, "Tenten spent the whole night over there. It's a fair trade." He looked uncomfortable and added, "And nothing very major happened, right? You be sure to tell Kiba that. I don't want fleas or anything."

I said, "Kiba is not the one from whom you should fear an infestation."

Naruto looked green around his eyes for a moment and then hurried forward with an "I'll stop talking now" thrown over his shoulder.

Sasuke yelled after him, "Oi, you were late, so you're carrying the tent in your pack!"

Hopefully, Kiba was off to a better start.

Naruto, Sasuke, and I covered an amazing distance in the first day; to other the village and halfway back. The mission was normal for ANBU, a clean, in-and-out assassination. We set up the tent, which plagued a ninja's existence, and settled down for the night. Two men would sleep the tent and one would stand on watch, in four-hour shifts.

At one-thirty, I was on watch. Nothing had moved for three hours, and I had resorted to arithmetic problems to keep myself alert.

Then, I felt a dampening of chakra. The ambient feeling of it suddenly decreased dramatically.

That was less than ideal.

I was instantly stretching my senses for threats. The bulk of the chakra had been Naruto's, because he had a massive internal supply and wasn't trying to suppress it. Now he was. Sasuke's had been overpowered from the start, but suddenly it was nonexistent.

Obviously, something was happening. Being on watch meant that I had to investigate.

Keeping behind the trees made it possible to send a kikai. The action was useless if my unattended body was left in the open.

I navigated my way around trees and wide leaves. Anything with even a minute amount of chakra flared out at me, and I resisted the instinct to indulge. I must not take any but my Abu's chakra unless he ordered me to.

Two infernos assaulted my vision, one much more intense than the other. They were familiar – my Abu's brothers, Uzu and Uchi, descended from the queen Tsuna of the colony Konoha…

They were speaking words. Human words, not the clicking and rustling that I understood.

No, I did. "Sasuke, I love you."

"You're an idiot."

"No, I know that you love Itari and all that. I just – I mean, it wouldn't be fair if you didn't know. You know?"

"You are love with Hinata. That was her in your bed this morning."

"I love her separately. And for different reasons."

"You wouldn't have the higher brain capacity for that kind of thing."

"Would you just listen to me? I love you!"

"Fine. Is that all you dragged me out here for?"

"Well…yeah. I mean… Yeah! Do I need another reason?"

"I can think of one. But you probably set off Aburame's sneaking sense." The Uchi's eyes lit up with chakra and saw me. I filled with chakra he sent me, and then there was more and more and too much-

I returned to myself.

Sasuke had used his Sharingan technique, a blood limit trait similar to the Hyuuga Byakugan. He had pinpointed my kikai, forced his chakra into it, and killed it. It displayed a higher level of chakra control than most.

Interesting.

I still needed to keep watch over my teammates, of course. I stood stiffly from my position against the tree where my body had settled awkwardly.

Long minutes of working out my kikai's path frustrated me, but were necessary. The forest was very different in a human mind compared to a kikai's.

Once I was sure of my path, I followed it as silently as possible, which took even more time. I had ot be careful to conceal myself from Sasuke – he might try to do to me what he had done to my kikai. He was ANBU, after all.

The precautions turned out to be both needless and detrimental. When I finally arrived at the clearing, only Naruto was there.

He was curled up in the center of the clearing, knees pulled up to his chin. This, in Kiba's lexicon, translated to 'fear' and 'protecting oneself'.

Most of his clothes were in pieces around him.

If I looked more critically, there was blood around him, as well as other fluids.

Naruto looked up at me and grinned the grin that had been permanent through our younger years. "So I guess I lost a friend. Or… I dunno. He said, 'I've got what I wanted, and it still wasn't as good as with her.' Does that mean that he's just sort of cutting off…everything…?"

His steady, flat delivery alarmed me. Naruto usually yelled whatever he was saying.

I asked, "Are you injured?"

He said, "The actual tears are already healed, but my…um…" He paused, stopped telling me what he had intended to tell me, and then picked up the sentence. "My fast-healing-ness is a bit finicky. It only heals things that bleed and the life-threatening stuff. Bruises and aches are my own fault."

I asked instead, "Can you stand?"

Naruto shrugged. "I tried. It hurts a lot, from the middle of my back down."

I took off my jacket and offered it to him. He took it in one hand and I pulled him into something that resembled standing with the other. Wincing, he pulled the jacket over his arms and zipped it up and then began to fall. I grasped his elbows, keeping him up but rocking back on his heels.

"Owowow! Alright... I'm very sure that I can't walk. Fuck."

I wrapped one arm across his back to grab his waist, keeping the other on his elbow. He moved forward, most of his weight on me.

When we were halfway to our makeshift camp, Naruto said conversationally, "So, I was just raped."

I didn't know what he wanted me to say. "How can I help?"

He pushed against me in the places where we touched. "It's already helping. The physical contact, I mean. It feels like I should try to get away from it, but I can't let myself do that. It's part of retraining my body, right?"

I persisted. "Nothing else?" I was uncomfortable, because all of my skin was exposed – or it felt like it. Naruto had my jacket.

Naruto shook his head. "But, um, I think I'm okay. Emotionally, I mean. You know how you hear about people having weird emotional issues? I haven't got any of those. I'll be fine."

He was in the 'shock' stage of recovery.

Naruto said, "But, um, if I start trying to figure out why he did it, it hurts."

I asked, "Do you have a theory?"

"Well, obviously, he doesn't want to be my friend anymore…"

Instantly, Sasuke was next to us, spitting, "You're really fucking stupid, Naruto."

At the sound of Sasuke's voice, Naruto's knees failed. I carefully helped him sit, but he gasped and I laid him out on his side.

Naruto saw his best friend's ankles and ground out, "...Sasuke..."

Sasuke squatted down in front of him. Without inflection, he said, "I love Itari."

Naruto couldn't raise his eyes to look Sasuke in the face. "I know that. I love Hinata."

Sasuke tilted his head, studying Naruto with eerie, snake-like movements in the dark. "I don't love you."

Naruto tried and failed to shake his head. "I don't need you to."

"Then what do you want?" Sasuke whispered almost desperately.

Naruto was breathing hard, mouth working, no expression. "I want…"

There was a long moment, and Naruto was confused. His hand slid forwad and his fingers brushed Sasuke's ankle.

Sasuke twitched and looked away.

Naruto's brows came together and he sighed, "I want this to not change…us."

Sasuke asked softly, "Is that possible?"

Naruto chuckled weakly, "Quitter. You can't get rid of me that easily." His blue eyes closed, and his brething evened out.

Sasuke looked at me. It was a Jata look.

I said, "I will continue my watch until dawn."

That was apparently not why he was glaring at me.

I finished, "And events occurring on a mission are not to be related."

I was closer.

"...Some should not even be mentioned in such things as mission reports."

He nodded, and then carefully began to carry Naruto to the tent.

"An apology might soothe some wounds," I said as unobtrusively as I knew how.

Sasuke said, "You saw him. He's not holding grudges, reportedly."

"He isn't the only one with wounds."

Sasuke's eyes flashed with anger. He negotiated Naruto's entrance into the tent, and then stalked back to me. "Now, I know that it's not my place to say it or whatever the fuck Itari made me swear, but you have no right to talk about wounds with that fucking kicked dog following you around everywhere. So, why don't you shut the fuck up and think long and hard about 'friendship' and 'love', Aburame. Lord knows a hell of a lot of people in your life would benefit from it."

I didn't say anything, and he went back into the tent.

What did he want to hear, in that situation?

Kiba was already back and waiting at the Gate when we returned. Sasuke released me from his command, and the three of us – Akamaru included – made our way through the winding streets.

Kiba asked, "How did it go? Think you got in?"

I hadn't been thinking of the mission as a precursor to ANBU. "I don't know."

Instead, I asked Kiba, "What is the difference between friendship and love?"

Kiba turned to me sharply. "What?"

"Uchiha Sasuke told me to consider it, and made a reference to a 'kicked dog', which may or may not have meant you."

His mouth quirked up in an exasperated smile. "You don't have to worry about it, Shino."

"I am curious."

He had stopped walking. A small crowd was gathering to see why the Inuzuka had such an unguarded expression.

"I guess…there isn't. A difference. Not big enough to be important."

I asked, "There are differences. You are not the same as Hinata or Mira."

Kiba took a deep breath and didn't let it go. He made a gesture to Akamaru and the dog sat in place. Then, I was being led away by Kiba.

We were in a deserted niche between buildings before he stopped. Hesitantly, he asked, "Shino… do you know how to tell…that you love someone?"

"No. How do you tell?"

He shrugged and set his shoulders on the stucco of one building. "I don't know either. I keep trying to figure it out. But…"

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and then reached up for my glasses and then I was up against the opposite wall and he was kissing me very, very slowly. He leaned his forehead on my shoulder, and said, "I do know that… I love you, Shino."

"I…" I didn't know that I was saying, or trying to say. What happened next? With Mira, I would kiss her, but that had already happened, and that didn't feel like it applied to Kiba. "Love is that close to friendship?"

He took another deep, shaking breath, and let it out. "Yeah, whatever. Sure. Why not?"

"I…" Was this appropriate? "I love…"

Kiba shook his head viciously. "No, you don't. Don't you ever say anything to me just because you think I need to hear it. I'm not Mira."

He rubbed his face on my jacket. "Ugh. I have a headache now. I'm… I'm gonna go, okay?" My glasses were pressed back into my hand.

I bent and kissed him briefly, and said, "Wait."

He grinned. "Always. I'll see you later, okay? Lemme know when you figure out the meaning of life."

He left and I was holding my glasses too tightly and why had that 'I love you' feel so final compared to Hinata's or Mira's?

I put my glasses back on, carefully avoiding my throbbing temples. I hadn't slept in something like two days.

It would make sense... at some point.

After rest, when I could think logically.

That was for certain.

Until then, I could only drift in the direction of my home and my pregnant wife.

Wow. Suddenly, I've shown an unexpected streak of benevolence, and may have to do some major restructuring of the future of this story. I had originally intended to have neither Shino nor Kiba say the words 'I' and 'love' in the same clause toward each other. Ever. But apparently I'm not the complete sadist I thought I was.

And did anyone take the time to compare Mira's reaction to Hinata's when they both found out about the mission on I'm-leaving-right-now notice? Oh. Heheheh, and Hinata's finally scurried her way into Naruto's flamboyant orange trousers... only to have him be raped the same day. Did I mention I was sorry for that? ...And you all know that Naruto could've fought him off if he'd wanted to, right?

I got bored and let a friend interview me about this chapter. To read it, go to reviews - chapter 26 and then the very oldest (first) review is... fun to read. You don't have to, though.