Arachnid Hero and the Fox Host

by SpinLord

Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Sandman and Venom... Spiderman had already defeated them one by one. But even fate wouldn't let him grieve the death of his best friend, Harry Osborn. Madam Web decided to send her disciple to Konoha. Mainly NaruSaku. RewriteofWSMF!

26. Chapter 25

Well, here's chapter 25 for you guys and girls! Before you begin the journey into the center of the eart—fanfiction!—I need to explain a few tidbits first.

First of all, there are going to be a few changes in the story. I've explained in the previous AN that Spiderman's Rasengan, the Rasraichi, has a name which is very much a nonsense when I think about it. It tranlates into 'S from lychee' in Google Translate-_-
Second, I've made a mistake on Spiderman's Bijuu seal. I first posted the prologue chapter with Madam Web sealing Raibi inside him and locking him in with Fuuin Jutsu: Kyu Tatsu Mon no Fuuin (Sealing Jutsu: Nine Dragon Gate Seal), which I created because it sounded epic. But as the story progressed, I realize that to continue with the story I have to change the seal. And so, when I repost my prologue, it will be Fuuin Jutsu: Tenchi Mon no Fuuin (Sealing Jutsu: Heaven-Earth Gate Seal) which pretty much refers to the yin-yang seal on Spiderman's stomach.
Third, Chapter 1 consisted of Spiderman fighting two ANBU (remember Cat and Hawk?). Sadly, I don't think I want to make Spiderman look all super-powered ninjotic hero all of a sudden by fighting ANBU when he first arrived, then gets beaten by Sasuke in this story arc. That's just...wrong. Furthermore, the usual gate guards were supposed to be Chuunin Hagane Kotetsu and Kamizuki Izumo. I'm going to rewrite it. And since I'm quite confident about my writing in action scene, expect epic fight :D
Fourth, I've made a mistake in Raibi's origin. Yes, I wrote that history didn't know how Raibi was cloned by. But I've done several thinking, and if I continue with that fact, the story would be mislead. I'm going to rewrite that part.
Fifth, I'm going to change this story's name. Another author and a reader of mine, The Spider Writer, had a story with the same name as mine. To prevent confusion, I'll change the name into...something. I haven't got the good name, currently.
Sixth, I messed up with Sasuke's and Sakura's birthday. Sorry, I guess I didn't really came prepared when I wrote the chapter about that. I'll rewrite it.

Oh, and also a little advice, the early part of this chapter goes very well with Naruto's Background Song: Naruto, Sad Song.

Review Reply:

BOBOBOBO (Is it already right now?): Hehey! Thanks a lot, that meant a lot for me. Yeah, I agree, Sasuke is too much of a (insert terrible words here) to actually have a copycat sword technique. Frankly, I think he already had too much power up given by Kishi-_-

Extra Note: ...I don't know why the hell I'm writing this note down, but I couldn't get it off my chest, so I need to take it out of my heart a bit. Sorry about this, if you want to skip this note and start the chapter already, feel free to do so by scrolling down. It's just that...I need to write this down.

Lately, I've been caught up in a Vocaloid syndrome. What is a Vocaloid syndrome, you might ask? It's a syndrome in which the victim suddenly has the urge, no, need to download every freaking song sung by Vocaloid voice synthesizers. In addition, to fanfic writers it urges them to make a fanfic about them; thus my plan to write a Naruto-Vocaloid crossover. Yes, I know, I'm just that crazy. But enough of that, what I meant to say was that I've been listening to a lot of songs sung by the Vocaloid synthesizer characters.

One of them, Hatsune Miku- Sakura no Ame, is a lovely song. At least, that's what I thought when I first listen to it. A while later, I searched for the lyrics for that song and...to say I was surprised was a gigantic understatement.

I had no freaking idea that it was a farewell song. It hit me in the heart pretty hard when I read the lyrics while listening to the music at the same time. All in all it made me think, 'Ironic. Somehow even the internet knows my condition.' Thing is, I'm nearing the end of my Junior High School year and...graduation day is approaching faster than I actually prefer to. Between me and my friends, I'm the one that's going to go to the farthest school. I don't exactly know why, but I almost felt myself tearing up when that fact, that feeling that I'm gonna be far away from my friends, coupled with the song itself...well, yeah. In short, I'm feeling a bit depressed. I know that I may be just bothering you guys and girls by writing this down, but please understand. The only other place I can open up like this, other than my family and friends, is in this site. In my own writing, I can feel like I'm the main character. Selfish, I know, but that's just how it is.

So, at the very least, let me say to those who bother to scroll down their screen slowly just to take their time reading this...thank you. And sorry for being emotional. You don't know how much it meant for me. Okay then, *clears throat* without further a do...

Disc; Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi and Spiderman is the property of Stan Lee, Brian Bendis, and much other writers out there that created him. I'm neither Kishimoto nor am I Stan or Brian.
Seeing that the Spiderman I'm using comes from the first three movies, that means no, I'm not Sam Raimi either.

xoxoxo

Chapter 25

Rainbow After the Storm

They were close. SO close to capturing Sasuke and bringing him back. To be frank, they were just a breath away.

They had been doing so well, with the help of Spiderman weakening Sasuke considerably. But then, just as they were rejoicing...in that one moment of weakness, they let that one chance slip by them. Sasuke attacked. Whereas his target was supposed to be Naruto, Spiderman stepped in between them and took the blow intended for the spiky-haired shinobi. A blow that had dragged the battered-hero to the edge of his life.

Sakura could only look on hopelessly. When did she let this happen? Why did she, a full-fledged kunoichi trained harshly by her master for 3 years, let herself bask in the warm feeling of relief when their enemy wasn't even down? Why did she, knowing that her chakra as well as all of her team members are as low as it could get, let her guard down while knowing full-well that their not safe here? 'Is this...how it supposed to end?' She thought, her heart clench with remorse. She should've been able to see through this! She was a medic ninja for Kami's sake; her team's lives were on her hands!

Naruto himself was in a state of shock. How couldn't he be? He just saw his teammate taken down right in front of his eyes, by taking a blow that was meant for him. He, too, cursed himself for not noticing the possible outcome earlier. "Sasuke..." The name he uttered, he uttered it with pure disbelief.

"You should've known better, Naruto." Sasuke said as he tilted his blade sideways, changing his previous reverse-grip into a normal one. "When I said I will eradicate you, I meant all of you."

The Konoha team captain, Yamato, gritted his teeth. He was supposed to be their leader, wasn't he? Why didn't he saw through all this? Now, better yet, he didn't even have another plan. Begrudgingly, he reached for his weapon pocket on his right knee for a kunai. 'Damn it...we can't defend ourselves, at this rate!'

Sai looked hard on Sasuke's sword as he raised it once more, ready to cleave it through Naruto's body. He reached out for his blunt-tipped wakizashi, knowing damn well that Sasuke's Kusanagi could cut through him and the short sword at the same time in one slash. 'I'll have to aim for his hand.' Sai thought, planning his attack silently. He tensed when Sasuke began talking again, "Now, since your last hope was put aside for the while...I'll kill you all."

As Sasuke's sword descended, however, it halted halfway to its supposed trajectory. Surprised, Sasuke looked to his side, only to see that the hand stopping him was owned by one pale-skinned Sannin. "Orochimaru..." Said person chuckled darkly, before hissing out his own words in a chilly tone. "Sasuke-kun, I don't remember telling you to kill any of our guests here." Every word spoken which had an 's' in it was highlighted, such was how snake-like he is even when he speaks.

"I don't remember you telling me otherwise. Now let go of my hand."

Another sound joined in the fray, this one much calmer and guarded. "Now, now, is that any way to speak to Orochimaru-sama? You need to learn some manners."

Sasuke's black eyes bore into Kabuto's spectacled ones, his anger quietly sent to him by eye contact alone. "You need to keep your mouth to yourself."

"Putting that aside, you know we don't want them dead as of now, don't you?" Kabuto smirked, righting his round glasses with his finger. "You are fully aware of Akatsuki's movements, yourself. In a sense, we need them; moreso because they're practically Akatsuki magnet. You don't want your revenge get hindered by another Akatsuki member, do you?"

Sasuke kept his unwavering stare at Kabuto, searching for anything that the spectacled man could be hiding from him. He saw nothing. "You and your ridiculous reasoning, Kabuto." But that's partly why he was so annoying, because he was so unreadable. Kabuto's smirk grew larger, knowing his bait had taken a hit, "If it is to raise your chance for vengeance, even by only 1%, you'll be willing to, right?"

The stare contest between them continued for several seconds before Orochimaru broke in, "We're leaving." He said while letting go of Sasuke's hand. The Snake Sannin then turned to the Konoha team, chuckling darkly as he saw Naruto's glare, "Now, as a token of appreciation for letting you all live a bit longer, I'll be expecting you to take down at least one more member of Akatsuki. You'll do that, won't you, Naruto-kun?" The boy in reference narrowed his eyes on the older man as he continued, "Especially since it would do yourself some good."

Sasuke 'hmph'ed as he sheathed his sword. As he raised his head, he was met with the anguish stares of his former teammates. He met them with his own emotionless stare. Deciding he would tick off the blond Jinchuuriki a bit more, he looked at him straight in the eye and said, "Those who can't even save their friends, can never be Hokage. Isn't that right, Naruto?" The boy in mention had his eyes widened a fraction, hearing Sasuke's jab at his own words from before.

"Unless you can keep that masked nobody alive, then I assume you will never be one...dead-last."

It was his last words as the three of them—Sasuke, Orochimaru and Kabuto—vanished from sight in near-transparent flames, leaving Naruto to stare at empty air. At the moment, however, Naruto wasn't sure whether he should scream or cry. He was too shell-shocked to do any of the two.

"...ruto! Hey, Naruto!" Thankfully, he didn't need to decide because Sakura's call brought him out of his reverie. He snapped his head up to see that all of his teammates already gathered around Spiderman's fallen body. He shook his head; now was not the time to space out. His teammate—his friend—was in critical condition. He ran towards his gathered teammates, squeezing his way through to have a look.

The blond was greeted with the sight of the battered hero, scars marring his torso; scars that were still profusely bleeding out. Sakura's palms were glowing bright green, a sign that she was trying to heal Spiderman's injuries with her medical ninjutsu. There was a strain on her forehead; apparently she was pushing herself just to heal the web-slinger. And she was supposed to be having the most remaining chakra, too.

"This is bad...he's losing a lot of blood."

Well, that fact was visible to the naked eye. Spiderman was literally gushing out blood all over his body. He seemed to be semi-concious, by the looks of it. His chest was rising and falling, but he didn't seem to be concious about the situation.

"Can you heal him, Sakura?" Yamato's stern voice broke in. He received a shook of the pinkette's head, "Not completely. The scars aren't the only thing we should worry about. His arm muscles were strained, it seems that he exhausted most of his chakra, and there's also—" She was cut off by a set of labored breathing coming from her patient. She snapped her head to face Spiderman's masked face. She widened her eyes in realization.

"Oh, no. The mask is preventing him to breath normally!" Sakura turned her head to Naruto, "Naruto, I need you to pull off his mask for me."

The request caught him by surprise. Naruto only blinked and gaped at Sakura in response, "What?"

"I said, I need you to take off his mask. I'd do it myself, but the moment I release my medical ninjutsu on Spiderman his wounds would only get worse." Seeing Naruto not moving, not even by the smallest bit, prompted Sakura to urge him harder, "Hurry! He's suffocating there!"

The panic in her voice was evident. The way she cried out to him, the hoarse sound that escaped her mouth, was very real. Naruto reluctantly nodded and moved to the side of Spiderman's head. In his head, he was having a dilemma. 'Removing Spiderman's mask...easier said than done. There's no way Spiderman would've let me take off his mask!' He knew Spiderman had a secret identity that he prefer to be remained as a secret, and Naruto respected that. For Naruto to remove the mask concealing his real face, even though it was already torn apart and showing a quarter of his face...it would be disrespectful and an act of betrayal.

'AAH! What the hell am I thinking? Here he is dying because of his mask, and I have second thoughts about taking it off!' Naruto's hands searched for a fold or the sort on Spiderman's neckline. As soon as he felt the fold, he tugged on it and pulled off the mask with one thought running through his mind, 'Sorry, Spiderman.'

After he pulled off the mask, he was greeted with the sight of a rather fair-skinned brunette. But it was that precise sight that made Naruto freeze in his spot once more, because he realized one thing.

The face he was looking at was the same one that the brunette from Spiderman's cellphone had, minus the glasses. But otherwise, they're identical. "C-Could it be?"

Yamato heard Naruto's strangled voice. Curious, he asked to the blond, "Naruto? What is it?"

"Spiderman showed me a picture, back when we camped out before reaching Tenchi Bridge. It's just...I never thought that one of the faces he showed me turned out to be his own, because he said that the guy with the face is his friend."

"For him to lie like that..." Sai muttered, voicing his curiosity. "He must be intending to not show his real face to any of us anytime soon. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like we've just crossed a boundary he made."

Startled, Naruto gasped as Sai's logic made complete sense. It was the same as his own train of thought before he removed the mask, that Spiderman never intended to reveal his real face to any of them. Now that they did, would he really be okay with that?

"Sai, I don't know about you, but when it comes to a matter of life and death, I'd say screw the boundaries!" Sai flinched at the tone Sakura used to scold him. Naruto heard it, too. It was the tone that she used too much already; one that was a sign that she was in 'doctor mode'. "Frankly, I don't care whether Spiderman wanted us too see his face or not. If he is dying just because he let his doubts of us kill him, I'll happily rip that mask off myself!"

All of them were taken aback by Sakura's harsh comment. It was irrational, at best; they all know better than to divulge another person's secrets. Yet, in a way, they sympathize with the pink-haired medic. She was, after all, trained by the Godaime Hokage; a woman whose first priority was to save lives. And Sakura was proven to be very serious in her work as a medic-nin. The Fifth's will to keep as much people as possible alive might have really passed on to her.

Yamato chuckled, "You certainly are Tsunade-sama's student."

Sakura let her pride motivate her to heal Spiderman further. She was doing pretty well, the scars had began to close. And the once labored breathing calmed down into a set of deep breaths. She sighed, the clench in her chest replaced with a feeling of relief. Her hands was still on Spiderman's chest, though, as she also tried to heal his internal injuries.

"Sakura-chan, you don't have to push yourself. You're exhausting your chakra..." Naruto said, concerned for the well-being of his female teammate. He noticed Sakura clenched her teeth to keep her focus intact, but still she smiled at him nonetheless, "I'm fine. It'll be just a little bit more until he's completely healed—"

Her words caught themselves in her throat. Her eyes widened in shock as a terrible feeling passed through her hands to her arms. "What...?" Her right palm moved downwards, towards Spiderman's stomach, while still exercising the Mystical Palm technique to track Spiderman's insides. 'That feeling...what was that?' As her right palm ghosted above Spiderman's abdomen, she stopped momentarily. She trembled, gaining the concerned look from all of her teammates, moreso when suddenly she jerked her hand away as small streaks of lightning tried to zap her palm.

Naruto saw what happened, and he was just getting more and more confused, "What was that?"

Sakura grasped her right palm with her left, healing slight burn marks that she had got from before. Those lightning streaks...it couldn't be. "I need to see his stomach." She pulled a kunai from her pouch and slowly cut the stomach part of Spiderman's costume. As she finished cutting the particular part in a circular manner, she was startled to see a glowing yin-yang shaped rune on Spiderman's six-packed stomach. Furthermore, it was glowing. "This is...!"

"His Bijuu seal." Yamato suddenly said, the surprise present in his voice as well. "It looks pretty new. But why is it glowing?"

Suddenly, lightning bolts started to shoot out from Spiderman's seal to the sky. The four Konoha ninjas jumped back by instinct, their eyes locked on to the squirming line of lightning connecting Spiderman and the sky above them. Just then, Spiderman's body twitched. No, scratch that, it looked like he was in the middle of a heart-attack. A hoarse grunt resounded from Spiderman, before followed by a loud scream.

"What in the world...? What's happening to him?" Naruto turned his head to Sakura, seeing her just as shell-shocked as he was.

Sakura had the same train of thought as Naruto. She didn't know what happen; she only felt the yin-yang seal crackled with lightning, scorching her hand a little bit, and saw that it glow a bright blue before shooting a kind of lightning rod to the sky. There's no explanation for that, however, and that just served to unnerve her more.

Fortunately, Yamato realized what was happening a lot sooner than his subordinates, and so he yelled out his hypothesis, "Something's wrong with the seal! I think it might be opening a bit, that would explain the lightning line!"

"Can you do that jutsu again, Yamato-taichou? I think that would be the only jutsu able to fix anything Bijuu-related!" Sakura asked, yelling out also as the lightning line's echoing thunder began to drown out her voice.

"I'll try." Yamato gathered his chakra, preparing to use the jutsu. 'This would drain me of my chakra...but I have no choice!' He turned to his other subordinate, "Sai! I'll need you to give me a little boost after this. The lightning is getting worse each second passed." He ordered.

Sai nodded and pulled out his painting kit. He quickly scribbled down a picture of a hawk before nodding to Yamato once more, silently signaling his captain that he was ready. Yamato formed several hand seal before yelling out, "Hokage Shikijijun Jutsu: Kakuan Nyuttensu Ishu!" He ran forward. Sai put his right hand in a single hand seal while his left hand spread the scroll he just used, muttering, "Ninpo: Chouju Giga!"

A giant ink hawk flew to Yamato's side. Seeing the ride, Yamato jumped on top of it and proceeded to advance on Spiderman. The lightning line had grown into something like a pillar, and it was crackling wildly shooting off random-targeting lightning bolts. The ink hawk climbed, dived, rolled right and left to evade the opposing lightning bolt. It kept going like that until Yamato was practically above Spiderman, where he jumped off the hawk and pushed his right palm to Spiderman's abdomen, particularly his seal.

The lightning charred some of his skin, but Yamato paid no mind. As soon as he close the seal, the lightning will disappear. There was a slight mistake in his hypothesis, however, because as his palm made contact with Spiderman's stomach, he felt that this was something else entirely.

'This...this isn't the Bijuu in him trying to break out. Spiderman's chakra is just too drained to force his Bijuu's chakra down! This is bad. At this rate his Bijuu's chakra might overwhelm him any minute!' He thought as he fought back the urge to jump away from the offending lightning bolt scorching his palm. 'Unless...I give him some chakra to retaliate against his Bijuu's chakra. I'll have to try it!'

Yamato focused his chakra pathways to open wider, forcing the littlest bit of his chakra reserves out of his body and into Spiderman. At the second the chakra was successfully transfered, Spiderman's wild spasm as well as his scream ended and he slumped, seemingly unconcious.

Yamato's breath labored. He just gave Spiderman his last drop of chakra from his reserves, and he wasn't feeling so well. "I...think I overdid it...heh." He knelt down beside Spiderman before slumping down as well.

"Yamato-taichou!" Naruto dashed towards the fallen two, followed by his two other teammates. He looked down on both Spiderman and Yamato. The web-slinger was not spasming anymore, but he was still sweating bullets. Yamato, on the other hand, looked so ghostly pale. "What...don't tell me he exhausted his chakra!"

Sakura did a quick checkup on Yamato as well as Spiderman. After several moments, she stood up looking at Naruto, "They're exhausted. We need to get them to Konoha as fast as we can! They need serious medical attention!"

"But...how the hell are we supposed to do that? Konoha is at least three days away from here; and that's if we don't stop to rest!"

"Well, do you have any other plan? If you do, I'm welcoming it with open arms!"

The dispute stopped just as Naruto opened his mouth to retort, only to find himself biting his lips to hold his words back. Why was he arguing with Sakura? And why did he feel angry all of the sudden? 'Damn it! What's wrong with me? I've hurt her once, so why am I trying to hurt her further? Shit!'

Sakura saw the distressed look on Naruto's face, and all of the sudden she felt guilty for yelling at him. Why was she even yelling at him? It must be the panic; yeah, it should've been. All the stress of having two dying members with their lives in her hands was taking its toll on her, both mentally and physically. "I'm sorry, Naruto. I...I didn't mean to yell."

Naruto shook his head, casting his face sideways. If the hurt in his face was a solid material, it might as well be described as solid as a rock; just to describe how he really looked.
Sai, deciding that the argument wasn't taking them anywhere, decided to play the peacemaker, "Umm...if you don't mind, I also have an idea, myself."

That seemed to get their attention. Inwardly, Sai smiled proudly at himself for at least stopping the banter. He then said, "Naruto-kun, if I'm not mistaken Jiraiya-sama taught you Kuchiyose no Jutsu, am I correct?"

Naruto blinked at that. Not much people knew that he had signed the toad contract, and it only served to confuse him more because Sai never saw him summoning any toads. "Yeah, he did. But how do you know that?"

Sai smiled at the blond, "I read several files concerning yourself before this mission. Seeing that Jiraiya-sama himself is a toad summoner, you should've been one yourself." The pale artist shook his head, taking on his serious face for one, "But putting that aside, if you are able to, we need you to summon a toad big enough for us to ride on."

Naruto looked thoughtful for a moment. "The only big toad I know that I can summon is Gama-oyabun (Boss Toad)." His head was hung low when he continued, "But I don't have enough chakra to summon him, at the moment. That, and I don't think he'll be very willing to help."

Sai frowned, "I see..."

The depressive atmosphere however, was broken by Sakura as she said, "But if you can summon him, will you be able to persuade him to help us?"

Naruto glanced confusingly at Sakura, unsure of how should he take her suggestion, "Sakura-chan?"

"Leave the chakra for summoning to me and Sai, you work on persuading your summon to help us. Got it?"

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"Well, you're a smooth talker. Surely you'd be able to—"

"No, no! I mean, the chakra problem. How are you and Sai suppose to fix that?"

Sakura turned to the Root member, regarding him seriously, "Sai, do you know how to combine chakra?" Sai looked at her, surprised by her question. He opted to voice his surprise, "I do. But I'm surprised that you even know about chakra combining."

"It's something Tsunade-sama taught some time ago." She said, shaking her head dismissively, "But anyway, if you are able to, I need you to combine your chakra with mine. I'll then transfer it to Naruto."

"That sounds possible, especially with your excellent chakra control." He paused, taking a deep breath before exhaling it, "Let's do it."

"W-wait!" Naruto suddenly exclaimed. He looked at Sakura for a moment, "Sakura-chan, you don't have to do this. You too, Sai. I can summon out enough chakra from Kyuubi for this, he'll comply to me."

"Naruto, you can't use Kyuubi's chakra. Not right now. You've overexerted your own body by using it too much. If you use it again, it would only hurt you more." Sakura explained patiently. Truth to be told, Naruto's suggestion was pretty hard not to take, because...

"But if you give me your chakra, you will get chakra exhaustion!"

That. Yeah, if she and Sai were to give their chakra to Naruto to call a summon, they would run out of chakra. She chuckled, playfully jabbing Naruto's shoulder, "Hey, you made it sound like chakra exhaustion is a disease." Honestly, though, there was no other way out if they were to get to Konoha quickly. Naruto's summon might be their only hope. "Don't worry, Naruto. After a day of sleep, we'll regain our chakra back. It's always like that, isn't it?" She said, smiling at Naruto to try and calm him down. She knew the effect she had on him; the way she smiled would reassure him that everything would be okay. And it would be, of course.

"Sakura-chan..."

"Alright." Sakura turned away from the blond, afraid that she wouldn't have anything to say back if he pulls out a good argument. "Sai, you ready?"
She received a nod of compliance from the artist. Nodding back, she formed a ram seal as did her partner, and gathered her last reserves of chakra. She bit her lip to prevent herself from losing concentration. Sai wasn't doing any better, either. Though he still had a fair amount of chakra in him, in the end he would need every last drop of it to actually be adequate for a summoning jutsu.

'Just...a bit...more!' Sakura thought as she forcefully gathered her chakra into her hands. Then, she felt the cool feeling of her own chakra all focused on her hands. Visually, her hands were shining with bright, pink, flowing energy that was her chakra. She glanced at Sai, noticing him already pulling out of his chakra as well. Currently, his hands were shrouded in black, ink-colored chakra. 'His chakra really resembles his jutsu.' Sakura silently thought.

"You ready?"

"I am." Sai nodded, a smile adorning his face.

"Alright, lend me your hand." Sai did as he was told to and placed her hand on top of Sakura's, practically placing his chakra into Sakura's own. As he did, he suddenly knelt to the ground, sweating profusely. "You alright, Sai?" Sakura asked, concerned. Her hands were holding what seemed to be a mixture of pink and black light.

"I'll be fine. Just continue...your work." Sai said between labored breath. All his life in the Root, he never experienced chakra exhaustion in any of his mission. This one, he thought, might be a prime example for him not to forget that deep down he was still a human being.

Reassured by Sai's words, Sakura stared hard at the chakra mixture in her hands and began to combine it. At first, the pink and black masses of chakra refused to mix, but after a few swirling she did, Sakura managed to make a mixture of both Sai's and her chakra. "I...I did it..." She muttered. Suddenly, she giggled weakly, "To think I would be able to do it...at first try."

"Sakura-chan..." Naruto had to keep himself from grabbing Sakura's hands and prevent her from giving him her chakra. He could see, so clearly it hurts. Her legs were trembling, and so were her hands. She looked like she would break anytime soon. It took all that he had not to contact Kyuubi to lend him his chakra.

Sakura looked up at him, smiling softly at the blond. "Here...take it, Naruto..." Her hands moved towards his body, gently pushing the combined chakra inside him. "You can do it...I know you can. Just...please hurry." She said, pushing all of the chakra into Naruto completely. She lost her balance and began to topple forward. Her face would've met the ground if Naruto didn't scoop her into his arms, preventing her from making a face-fault. He didn't know what to say. His long time crush had just sacrificed every bit of her chakra for him, depending on him to save them all and bring them back. Back to their village.

"Arigato...Sakura-chan."

At the moment, his body felt rejoiced. Throughout his body was a surge of power that made him felt like he could level even the Hokage's building. He placed Sakura gently on the ground before turning his back towards her. His face was set, and his eyes filled with determination. He bit his thumb and smeared his blood on his right palm. He then formed the hand seals, focusing on the amount of chakra he would use and which toad he wanted—no,needed—to summon, before slamming his right hand on the ground.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"

If the gigantic plume of smoke that was roughly 20 stories high wasn't a shocker, than the beast inside it would certainly be. As the wind snuffed the smoke out, it revealed a gigantic red toad, which approximate height might not be so far from the previous smoke. The toad was wearing a rather human-like clothing—though with a HUGE size difference—which were a dark blue haori which had the kanji 'Gama' (Toad) and a white cloth acting as a belt as well as to support the giant tantó on its waist. Its left eyelid was split by a scar; though the eye itself was still useable.

The toad glared seethingly at the blond who summoned him. Being summoned between a drnking contest against another toad really struck a nerve.

"Brat, what the hell do you want now? I'm in the middle of a drinking contest before your untimely summoning brought me here!" The toad, Gamabunta, bellowed.

Naruto, however, was having none of it. It was bad enough that he just barely avoided using all of his chakra to summon the big-ass toad, now he had to deal with said toad's temperamental behaviour. "Gama-oyabun, I have no time for this. Sorry, but can you take me and my team back to Konoha? Two of my teammates need medical attention."

"Not only that you act all high and mighty saying you don't have time, you intend to use me as a carriage and ride me back to your village? You got guts, kid, I give you that."

Naruto growled. While he was arguing with his own summon, his teammates was dying right before his eyes! "Goddamnit, Bunta! I told you I don't have time for this shit! My teammates are dying! So either you give us a lift to Konoha, or I'll beat you down 'till you give us one!" And out came the angered words from his mouth. Instinctively, Naruto gasped as he realized what he just said.

Gamabunta's yellow toadish eyes narrowed at the small youngster and leveled a glare, "...That's some manners for someone who's supposed to be my subordinate for the past few years. You forget your place, gaki. I advice you do well to remember it."

Naruto lowered his head. He cursed himself; this was their only way out, and he was doing well in cutting that road off. "I'm sorry, Oyabun. But...they're really dying here. And if we don't hurry, they'll really die. I don't want that!" At the boy's words, Gamabunta's eyes softened. The boy sure had some very convincing words, and the matter of life and death wasn't really something he could ignore. Truth was, he was only testing the blond's respect for him.

"Tch...if that's the case, then get them all on my head and grab on. I don't want Jiraiya to lecture me about my carelessness as a summon."The toad lowered his gigantic head to the ground for Naruto to climb on.

Naruto, seeing this, began to carry his teammates to Gamabunta's head. Upon getting on top of it, however, he was struck with a painful realization.
With no chakra as well as conciousness, his teammates would fall off of Gamabunta while he leaps his way to Konoha. 'Damn, of all things to happen...' He thought. The only way to sustain them and keep them on board was for them to stick to Gamabunta's head. But they were unconcious; and even if they weren't, the chara exhaustion was still a problem.

'There's only one way to do this.' Naruto though again as he formed his hand into his favorite crossed-finger seal. "Kagebunshin no Jutsu!"

He made clones of himself, exerting a generous amount of the chakra mixture that Sakura gave to him. Four clones for four fallen teammates, each holding them tight against themselves and used chara to stick to Gamabunta's head. The real Naruto did the same, and yelled to Gamabunta, "We're good to go, Oyabun!"

"Heh. Then hold on tight! This is going to be a bumpy ride!"

After he said that, Gamabunta made a big leap out of the hole where the previous battle took place. Naruto winced; the wind and gravity was pushing him down to the Boss Toad's head, threatening to turn him into Swiss cheese. Then, there was a drastic change in the kinetic force as Gamabunta's jump lost its momentum, prompting the toad to free-fall to the ground. Naruto had to hold his ground and steady the flow of chakra on his feet just to keep himself from falling. He hoped that his clones were doing better than him, because he would hate himself if one of his clones lost grip on his teammates.

'It's been a while since Yamato-taichou gave his chakra to Spiderman. I hope there's still time!'

"I won't let you die...not any of you." He told himself.

The bumpy ride would continue one until who knows when, and he had to stomach it for the whole journey.

xoxoxo

Back in Konoha...

"Are you really sure about this?"

Tsunade had came back from the short break that her seal-breaking team was having. Jiraiya was the last one to come out of her office, and though he didn't directly show it, she knew that he had made a few discoveries. One of them being the assurance that the seal that Madam Web gave her was really a key. Or, in Jiraiya's statement, an additional seal which works together with another seal. Supposedly, the other seal would be Spiderman's Bijuu seal.

"I am, and I'm pretty sure about the other one, as well."

Second, was the fact that the yin-yang seal was actually a yang-yin seal; meaning, the drawing of the yin-yang caligraphy was reversed. Now, he had many experience with seal. The yang-yin seal, he deducted, was not an independent seal. In fact, the fact that the seal was reversed int the way it was drawed proved that it works in pairs. Piecing up that fact with Madam Web's instruction to use it on Spiderman, should he lost control of his Bijuu, led the two Sannin as well as the remaining members of the seal-breakers to assume that Spiderman had a yin-yang seal, known as well as the Fuuin Jutsu: Tenchi Mon no Fuuin(Sealing Jutsu: Heaven and Earth Gate Seal).

"Tenchi Mon no Fuuin...that's her original seal, isn't it?" Jiraiya asked, raising a questioning eyebrow to Tsunade who nodded affirmatively.

"You know about her seal?" She asked back.

"Well, I should. We were all on the same team, after all. However, I don't remember knowing it as a strong seal; at least when used to seal a Bijuu." Jiraiya said. "Tenchi Mon no Fuuin is usually used to seal other things of great importance. It may lack strength in locking in a Bijuu, but the seal's special powers lies in its security. It's so secure that some village leaders back in the past used this seal to protect important artifacts. The only thing that can open it is the reversed pair of the seal; and even then, it still needs the identic chakra with the main seal.

"The seal also includes a failsafe; in which if the seal ever breaks down forcefully, it will absorb chakra residues from the ground and air and form a protective barrier around the object which was sealed by this Tenchi Mon no Fuuin. As long as there's chakra residue in the area, it will only recharge again and again; thus breaking it with ninjutsu is next to impossible."

"Chakra residue?" Inoichi questioned.

"Chakra residues are leftover chakra, created after the use of a ninjutsu. After the usage of a ninjutsu, there should be leftover energy that was left, because jutsu are chakra transformed. When jutsu is used, it changes into any kind of ninjutsu one would use. After that, it transforms into chakra residues." Jiraiya explained.

Inoichi looked in awe, never actually heard the theory of chakra residue throughout his life. That was one thing that the Academy never taught him.

Then, Hiashi stepped forward and stared hard at the scroll with the seal which was once again laid on the Hokage's desk. He cleared his throat, before saying, "I'm actually familiar with this seal. Our past clan heads had inherited us the seal in special scrolls, entrusting us younger clansmen of the main family to protect the secrets of the Hyuuga techniques." His forehead bulged with veins as he activated his Byakugan, "Although, none of us really knew who had created the seal itself. Now that I see it, I must say I feel honored that the creator of this seal entrusted us with one more of her creations."

Tsunade looked at the seal. There was several moments that she left the seal-breakers to work alone, while she was having a nostalgic thought about a certain purple-haired ally that had left the Shinobi Continent all those years ago. As she was left thinking about the past, Jiraiya glanced at her every now and then to make sure she was following the discoveries that were made as he and the other seal-breakers kept working. She wasn't; and that prompted him to sigh. 'If it's true that Cynthia payed her a visit before, then that would explain why she would feel all nostalgic about this. Not that I blame her, of course. I myself am kinda missing that shock of purple-hair.' Jiraiya thought, visibly drooling as his thought drifted to his times when they were all younger. That, of course, meant a younger Madam Web. I leave the rest to your imagination, and Jiraiya's pervy mind.

"The Angel-Hearted Gaia Prison."

"Huh?" Jiraiya thought that he heard Tsunade talking, and he immediately shut down his pervy train of thoughts of the younger Tsunade and Cynthia, afraid that the buxom Hokage might see his drool.

"I remembered how she described to me once, about a seal that she dreamt of creating." Tsunade chuckled fondly at the memory, "She was pretty excited with her idea, back then. A seal that draws power from the earth in order to protect something of the sky. She dreamt of creating a seal that would keep an important object and protect it independently, and wouldn't stop as long as someone still tries to steal the important object it's holding."

She shook her head. At first, when she heard the idea from her purple-haired friend directly, she had laughed. Not at her, but because of what inspires her to make a seal such as that. "It was really funny, because she made that seal based on bedtime stories for children. She said that the seal was the prince, and whatever stored inside the seal was the princess."

Ibiki, who had stayed silent through the whole affair, raised his voice which was laced with amusement, "A bedtime story? Was this person really that childish, Hokage-sama? Or was she just eccentric?"

"Uh...a little bit of both, actually." Tsunade said, sweat-dropping as she remembered the pink bow-tie shaped ribbon tied to the envelope Madam Web used to deliver the summoning seal to her hours ago.

"That's a befitting name for the seal, indeed." Jiraiya piped in, "Though that's the first time I heard that she named her seal as that."

Tsunade smiled. Yes, the seal was made secret between her and Cynthia those days in the past. She kept it a secret because she hadn't been able to make such a complicated seal, even with her talent as a seal master. It took her years to work on that particular seal. At that time, Tsunade was quite amazed by her friend's tenacity in working on the Tenchi seal. She had questions about her strange, but close friend. She remembered having a conversation when they were younger, some time before the third Ninja War.

xoxoFlasback Time Machinexoxo

A younger Tsunade and Cynthia was in the training field, getting a rest near a tree after a spar that Cynthia had requested. Seriously, she was the only person in the whole Village of Konoha who was insane enough to taunt the blonde Queen of Slugs into a spar; which happened to be more of a fist-fight, actually. And everyone knew that hell breaks lose whenever Tsunade used her fists—her super-powered, exploding-chakra fists—in any kind of fight.

Cynthia looked at her blonde companion, one of her eyes closed in exhaustion and she was panting for air, "Mou, Nade-chan. Your strength is still hellish as ever!"

Tsunade glared at the purple-haired girl, also in desperate need of air after their sparring session, "I told you, I hate that nickname."

Cynthia snickered at the pig-tailed blonde's reaction. "Aww, is someone in a foul mood? You know you like that nickname I gave you, so why complain?"

The Shodaime Hokage's granddaughter scoffed and looked away from the grinning purplehead. She really despised the fact that Cynthia could always remain a child no matter what, even though they're practically adults, which irritated her all the time. Heck, even her clothing seemed childish.
Cynthia wore her favorite set of garments; a bright yellow t-shirt topped with a sleeveless red hoodie, left unzipped at the front. The hoodie was usually replaced by a Jounin vest in missions, but she preferred to keep it casual outside missions. She also wore a pair of cream-colored pants, which was tied with a white belt. Her purple hair reached to cover the nape of her neck. The way she wore her hitai-ate, however, only brought more of her childish side. She spread the cloth upwards so that it covered the top of her head, while she made a knot at the back of her head (imagine Izumo's hitai-ate).

Tsunade only gave her a critical look. They were Jounin for Kami's sake! Is she the only one of the two mature enough to wear standard Jounin clothing?

"Actually, no. I can be formal, too. But it's boring to always wear the green vest." Cynthia said suddenly. Tsunade blinked in response, realizing that she had just voice her thoughts.

She face-palmed her forehead, "Why can't you ever grow up, Cynthia? We're 30 for crying out loud!"

"Technically, we're 26 until next month, but if you want to grow wrinkles so bad then be my guest!"

They butted heads childishly. Yes, the would-be Madam Web's childishness was infectious. In fact, that was the only reason Tsunade put her guard down when Cynthia, as a stranger, first came to the village. Not only that, but she was directly put under the care of their Genin team's sensei as well as Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen. Hiruzen was the first one to accept Cynthia with welcome hands, saying that she was as welcome as the other people in his village.

Jiraiya came next, obviously, but she suspected that was only because Cynthia had a pretty face. Jiraiya practically welcomes anyone warmly, as long as they were good-looking girls. Or, at least, that was from her perspective.

Orochimaru was the hardest to convince, being the cold snake he is. He frequently brushed off Cynthia's attempts to befriend the pale ninja. Eventually, though, Orochimaru gave up pushing her away, saying that she was just too much of a child to take his insults seriously.

The four became close friends, albeit not that close with Orochimaru. Years passed and then, there they were, a team of full-fledged Jounins ready to take the war, hesitantly nevertheless. They were never fond of the idea of war; especially Cynthia, whose dream was to end wars. In her theory, and to be quoted, "Wars are horrible. They take so many from a person. Houses, treasures, friends and families...and more. That's why, my dream is to end war! I want to see a world filled with peace!"

But, nevertheless, war happened. They were lucky at that one time that it was only a civil war in the Fire Country, but Cynthia's words were true. Many people lost something—if not everything—to the war. Some treasures, while others...something more important.

That was what inspired Cynthia to create a tool to protect those people. A tool that would use anything to protect whatever it was used to. A seal to create a barrier powerful enough to withstand any kind of man-slaughtering ninjutsu. Tenchi Mon no Fuuin, the seal of heaven and earth. She'd work day and night to do it; in mission days, it was mostly night. Tsunade was somewhat perplexed by Cynthia's stubborness to actually exert herself by working non-stop like that, and she was further intrigued by the fact that her cheery attitude never got gloomy, even though she had many sleepless nights.

On several occasions, the purple-haired girl woman would brag to her blonde friend about the seal; going as far as naming it with such an overrated name, 'Angel-Hearted Gaia Prison.'

"I really don't understand you, Cynthia."

"Huh?"

The sudden comment drew out confusion from the purple-haired seal master. It's not unusual for her to hear Tsunade's insults such as that. No, the confusing thing was that she was looking at her with a faraway look, as if Tsunade wasn't looking at her at all. However, the confusion was gone when Tsunade smiled at her.

Tsunade then said, "I mean...when I think about it, you're not from around here, are you? You told me about that you were from the outer lands when you first enter my team. Now tell me, why do you care so much about a land like the Shinobi Continent so bad that you would make a barrier seal for us?"

Cynthia stared at Tsunade blankly, before scratching the back of her head while chuckling, "So it's still about the seal, huh?"

"Of course! It always is! Why would you promise to that family from the Hi no Kuni Civil War to create a seal for them, even though you're from the outside?" Tsunade asked vehemently.

This, however, only made Cynthia's chuckle grew into a full-blown laughter, "Hahahah! Wow, Nade-chan, I never thought you'd be so stupid!"

"S-Stupid?" Tsunade screeched, a nerve grew on her forehead.

"You don't get it, do you?" Cynthia smiled, "It's the least I can do to thank you all for accepting me here, especially since I'm from outside this Continent. Besides," Cynthia poked the metal plate on her forehead, "The moment I wear this headband on my head, I am and always be a Konoha ninja!"

That silenced Tsunade, as she looked at the purple-headed seal master in awe. She never thought about it like that, nor did she ever bothered to. To her, Cynthia was a friend, but since she was an outsider Tsunade knew that there would be a day that Cynthia would abandon them.

She never thought that the childish Oneiru would care so much.

"Oh, yeah! That reminds me, Nade-chan!"

"Yeah?"

"As a token of our friendship, I want to give you the Tenchi seal when it's finished."

Tsunade blinked. Cynthia could always surprise her like that. It's a talent of hers that the pig-tailed blonde despised so much. "What? Why?"

Cynthia grinned at her, "I want you to put away your grandfather's necklace and store it in the seal."

If Tsunade had blinked in surprise before, now she was gaping in shock. 'She is so full of surprises.' She thought. Before she had the time to give a response, Cynthia cut her off, "I won't take a no as an answer. Nade-chan, I know that necklace holds painful memories. And...I heard what happened to your brother and Dan-kun from Jiraiya-hentai." She looked up at Tsunade's shell-shocked face, "Please don't blame him. I was the one who asked him first. Now, I know why you won't let me borrow it, or anybody else for that matter. That's why...please, let me seal it away."

Perhaps it was the sincere request, the pleading tone, the sad smile that crept up her lips, that caught Tsunade off guard. Or perhaps it was the suddenness of the request that caught her by surprise. Either way, there was only one thing that went through Tsunade's mind, 'How could she be so humble to do a favour?'

Well, it's not as if Tsunade needed to know, anyway. Hearing the heartfelt request from her eccentric friend somehow lifted her spirits. And, for once since a long time, she let a smile to form on her lush lips.

"Thank you...Shinti-chan."

She didn't realize that it was also at that time that she, for once since a long time, let some happy tears wet her cheeks.

xoxoFlashback, Power Downxoxo

In the end, she never got to give the necklace to Cynthia. But, she was glad she didn't, because if she did she would never be able to pass down the necklace to the blond kid who saved her life.

"Well, we won't get anything just by reminiscing. If the seal is intended as a key, then I suggest we wait and see what it'll do when Spiderman gets back." Tsunade said, sighing tiredly.

"But didn't you say that Cynthia told you to use this seal in case of Bijuu chakra leakout?" Jiraiya asked. "Who knows what it'll do if we place it on Spiderman when he's just fine and kicking."

"If it comes to that, then we don't use the seal. Simple as that."

Jiraiya thought for a moment, before shrugging. Tsunade's words were logical; no need to use something that they didn't need.

Just then, however, a spiky-haired Chuunin came in bursting through the office door. He brandished a bandage that went crossing his face horizontally on top of his nose. "Hokage-sama, you're needed in the hospital ASAP!" He let out, his breath came in labored set of pants.

"Kotetsu? What's with all the hassle?" Tsunade asked with a concerned look. For a Chuunin to come in her office without knocking while literally breaking it off its hinges, that meant serious business.

The bandaged-faced Chuunin panted a while, before saying, after regaining his needed oxygen, "Team Kakashi...they're in critical condition. All of them!"

"What?"

xoxoxo

Several minutes earlier...

Hagane Kotetsu and his partner, Kamizuki Izumo, were on their usual guard duty. Having taken the permanent job as the literal sentinel of the gigantic Konoha Gate when they were younger and more naive, they were now cursed to do the boring job in their adulthood.

Fortunately, they've adapted to the boredom. Kotetsu opted take Shikamaru's advice to stare at clouds and go daydreaming. To quote what Shikamaru had said, "It's useful to raise the power of imagination." And seeing what a fine strategist the Nara clan member had become because of that, Kotetsu became interested to try. His partner Izumo, however, opted to do the simplest thing in the case of boredom; sleeping his ass out.

Kind of make us wonder how could a lowly-security village like Konoha be one of the Five Great Village.

"Oi, Izumo! You sleeping again?" Kotetsu called. He received no response, except for the snores. "Figures. With no cards to play thanks to Godaime-sama finding us out, he takes naps like a sloth."

He continued his staring at the cloud, realizing he won't be having any conversation with his partner anytime soon. Thankfully for him, the sun had just began to set, and the sight of the clouds above him was marvelous, though to him it was quite boring. "Haah...I don't really see how Shikamaru can stand just watching cloud pass." He squinted at the white puffs, "Power of imagination...let's see, that cloud right there looks like a candy puff. That one over there looks like a crocodile. Wow, I'm really getting good at this..." Kotetsu said with wonder, "That one...damn, that just looks like a plain cloud. That one looks like...Godaime-sama? Pfft!"

He contained the laughter that threatened to escape his mouth, fearing the Fifth Hokage herself could hear him. "Okay, okay, moving on. Say, what's that black cloud doing there?" He said, squinting his eyes on one particular dark cloud. He put his palm horizontally on his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun's light, thinking that the light was playing tricks on him, "That's funny. It kind of looks like a...frog? Pretty big, too. And is it me? Or is the black cloud is really growing?"

To answer his question, no it wasn't him. And yes, the "cloud" really is growing.

In fact, it grew so big that it frightened Kotetsu and prompted him to wake Izumo up, "Izumo! Oi, Izumo! Wake up you lazy bastard!"

"Guh...? What the hell is the matter, Kwotetswu?" Was all Izumo could say before he doze off yet again.

"Damn it, wake up!"

Too late. While Kotetsu was struggling to wake his sleepyhead of a partner, the supposed 'cloud' had already...landed in front of the gate? This received a startled, girl-like scream from Kotetsu and Izumo as both of them was shocked that the 'cloud' had seemingly landed on the ground and caused nothing short of a tremor that jerked Izumo awake. "I'm awake! I'm awake! Now where's the enemy?"

Kotetsu resisted the urge to plow Izumo's head in and took a good look at the thing that caused the tremor.

It seemed that he was right; the cloud did look like a frog. It was one from the very beginning. He was now staring at one of the Boss summon of Jiraiya the Toad Sannin, Gamabunta.

"Wha—Gamabunta? What's Jiraiya-sama's summon doing here!" He let out. Shortly after, the gigantic toad's yellow eyes focused on him. "We're here, brat."

It was then that a shock of yellow hair stepped down from Gamabunta's gigantic head, bringing with him several clones carrying one person on each of them. The real one of the doppelganger team looked exhausted, and sweating bullets down his face. "Na-Naruto?" Izumo let out, as he then ran forward seeing that the blond wasn't really steady on his feet.

"Thanks for the lift...Oyabun."

Gamabunta snorted, "That'll be a barrel of liquor from each one of you." And with that, he went up in a puff of smoke, teleporting back to his realm. The chakra that had fueled him, the chakra that was expelled from Naruto's body, had ran out.

The blond himself wasn't doing any better. His eyes were droopy, and he looked almost pale. Kotetsu and Izumo both caught him as he almost fell to his knees, "Naruto! Oi, Naruto, hang on!"

Breathless and drained of chakra, the only words Naruto were able to mutter was, "Hah...the...the others...chakra exhaustion..."

"Damn it, we're losing him! Izumo get the medical team here and get them ready to take these guys to the ER!" Kotetsu barked his order to his partner. Although he was not on the rank to be ordering another Chuunin, Izumo complied and used Shunshin to dash his way to the hospital.

Kotetsu cursed. With the hospital being five-minutes dash from the gate, the situation they were in was not looking good. He was then suddenly jerked down as Naruto's hand grabbed hold of his vest and looked at the bandaged Chuunin, his sapphire-like eyes seemed pleading.

"Spiderman...seal..." Was his last words before exhaustion took over, and he blacked out.

"Seal?" Kotetsu inquired confusingly, but to no avail as Naruto had faded into unconciousness. "Damn, what seal?"

His eyes travelled to Naruto's clones, who had burst into puffs of smoke as the caster was unconcious, and their cargo was dropped—surprisingly gently—to the ground. One person had his attention, however, because he was wearing the same hideous outfit as the guy that had kicked his ass some time ago.

Wait a minute. "That is the guy that kicked my ass back then!" After putting Naruto down gently to the ground, he closed in on the battered figure of Spiderman, "He looks like he been through hell. Just what happened to them?" Kotetsu's eyes squinted there and then, realizing another thing, "And it looks like he's missing his mask. Well, at least now I'm sure that he's no spy."

He observed the wounds that Spiderman had. Although there were several deep scars which were signs of deep cuts, it all paled in comparison to the throbbing scar on his six-packed stomach, visible through a round opening on his costume. On second thought, it looked more like a rune than a scar. Or, to put it simply, a seal.

"Is that the seal that Naruto was talking about?" Kotetsu wondered. He cursed at the unstability the seal looked to him, "Damn it, where's Izumo with that medical team?"

As if on cue, he saw a sprinting figure followed by several white-robed people behind him. Kotetsu sighed in relief; at least Izumo wasn't slacking in his job, he thought.

"Kotetsu!"

Said man nodded at his partner's call, "We need to put them under immediate medical attention. Four of them are experiencing severe chakra exhaustion, and the costumed one over there also has the same symptoms, but with the addition with an unstable seal on him. And judging by the way it's placed..."

The medical team looked exasperated as well as nervous, waiting for Kotetsu to reveal what he had discovered. One of them had their patience ran down and decided to ask, "What is it?"

Kotetsu looked up to the medic team, a grim expression on his face, "We have another Jinchuuriki in our hands."

xoxoxo

In the hospital, current time...

Medics were rushing in and out of the emergency room, each of them with their own tasks in hand. Inside the emergency room were even more doctors and nurses working one five patients, each of them sedated and had tubes stabbed into their wrists, and an oxygen mask covering their mouth to help them breathe.

The medics were going through a hard time working on their patients. While two of patients (Sakura and Sai) only have mild concussion and superficial wounds that went together with their chakra exhaustion, the other two (Naruto and Yamato) was almost literally empty of chakra reserves. And when I said empty, yeah, I meant that both Naruto and Yamato were running on their last drop of chakra.

The worst, however, would be Spiderman's case. Although Sakura did a great job to heal Spiderman's vital wounds, the deep scars had reopened in the middle of his spasms, resulting in him bleeding profusely. In Spiderman's case, the medics had to work hard on two tasks: They need to make sure that Spiderman was heavily sedated to prevent him from spasming again which would reopen his wounds, and they need to close said bleeding wounds. However, whilst they were working hard on these tasks, they neglected one simple matter.

Because they had already gave treatment for chakra exhaustion for the other four patients; which was to infuse them with chakra stimulator serum to give them temporary chakra reserves, they didn't have time to give the same treatment to Spiderman. They thought that his wounds were the one needing their full attention as of the moment. They didn't know that the wounds itself were superficial.

Well, compared to Spiderman's unstable seal, they were superficial.

With Spiderman running low on chakra to supress the seal's power, the seal was already in the brink of exploding. With the many medics using medical Ninjutsu inside the room, they have accidentally gathered a huge amount of chakra residue. As it was, Spiderman was mentally struggling to keep his seal in check. If he were to exhaust his chakra completely, the seal would once again rise in a pillar of lightning. Considering the fact that they were inside a building, a hospital at that, the effect would just as effective as a bomb detonating in a heavily populated hotel.

The medics were oblivious of the fact, of course. They didn't know what kind of seal that Spiderman had. And the only people that did were still outside of the hospital, trying their best to get into the emergency room as fast as possible. Considering Tsunade's position, that wouldn't be a problem.

"A Jinchuuriki seal? Are you sure? And are you certain that you saw it throbbing?" Tsunade asked to Kotetsu, just after the Chuunin revealed his discovery. The Chuunin nodded his head, albeit hesitantly. Not one person could NOT fear the Fifth Hokage, after all. "Yes, Godaime-sama. From the positioning, I'm sure it's a Jinchuuriki seal. And my eyes weren't deceiving me when I saw it throbbing."

"Why didn't you notify me about this sooner?" An angry Tsunade growled, eliciting a small squeak of fear from her inferior.

"T-They just got here some minutes ago, Godaime-sama!" Kotetsu said.

"Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it ALL!" Tsunade cursed repeatedly, "Jiraiya! You bring the scroll with you?"

"Yeah, I got it here."

"Good. We're going to need it sooner than I thought." Tsunade pushed through a double-door, nearly throwing it off of its hinges. Her walk could relate to a half-stomp, half-jog one as she was rushing to the emergency room. It would take some more minutes to get there at this pace, and the blonde Sannin didn't like it one bit.

Hiashi, who was following right behind her, couldn't help but shiver at the killer intent flowing out of his Hokage. The others were probably unaware of it, but Tsunade is one of the people that he feared, both in position and in stature. Shaking his head, he focused to the task at hand...but he abruptly froze when he felt a chilling aura in the air. When he stopped moving, Inoichi bumped into the back of his head nose-first.

Rubbing his nose, Inoichi glared, "Hey, Hiashi! Don't just stop so suddenly like that!"

Hiashi didn't give any response, which infuriated the Yamanaka Clan Head even more. Hiashi's stop in his stride eventually caugh Tsunade and Jiraiya's attention. Jiraiya then asked, concerned by the cautious look on Hiashi's face, "What's wrong?"

The Hyuuga Clan Head's answer to Jiraiya's question was to activate his clan's bloodline jutsu, "Byakugan!" And then he looked at a wall. To a normal person, it would seem that he was glaring at the wall, but in actuality, he was looking far beyond it.

His white eyes widened when he caught a flare of chakra, "Hokage-sama, I think the seal is becoming unstable! And it's..."

"It's what?" Tsunade exclaimed, "For Kami's sake, speak clearly, Hiashi!"

Hiashi gulped, swallowing a throatful of saliva, "It's getting ready to explode."

All of the people in the group tensed. Tsunade's face contorted into anger once more; this time really looking like she would punch someone's brains out, "Damn it! That's faster than I thought. Lead the way, Hiashi! And give me the shortest path!"

"It's just beyond that wall, Hokage-sama. But, the door is on the other side and we'll have to go back and take another route!" Hiashi reported.

"I'll make my own shortcut." Tsunade stated, an evil grin suddenly threatening to split her face in half, "It's just a wall away, isn't it?"

The five men in the group with her looked confused for a second, before they heard Tsunade cracked her knuckles. At that time, they realized that they need to clear the building quickly, or else they'd be in the explosion radius. They only hoped that the hospital got insurance.

Tsunade dashed towards the offending wall blocking her way to the emergency room with her right arm cocked back. And, needless to say, she really made her own shortcut. Preferably, one that was flashy and blew the wall in.

The medics inside were too shocked to move, too scared to say anything, and value their lives too much to actually yell in protest. How couldn't they? Their Fifth Hokage just punched a wall in, crushing the wall down and shook the very building itself. That, and Tsunade had a dark look in her eyes, as if declaring that she was terribly pissed.

She jerked her head towards the bed Spiderman was laid on. To her immense relief, the only reaction the seal was giving out was the crackling lightning coursing around the seal like a barrier, the seal itself was glowing red. She still got enough time, "Jiraiya!"

"I got it!" The toad hermit dashed past her and jumped over the other four patients, noticing that his godson was also incapacitated. Shaking his head, he landed just beside Spiderman's bed, scaring the medics away, and furled open the scroll in his hands. He proceeded to literally slam the yang-yin seal to its yin-yang counterpart on Spiderman's abdomen, chanting, "The Angel is safe. Gaia, go to rest! Tenchi Mon no Fuuin, synchronize!"

Almost as an immediate effect, the crackling lightning receeded and the seal stopped glowing. As if the seal had eyes, it stopped any activity whatsoever, prompting Tsunade to come closer to look, "So...that's it?"

"Wait for it..." Jiraiya warned. He let go of the scroll and left it on Spiderman's body.

As if on cue, the scroll levitated in the air and hovered one feet above its counterpart. Both the seal on Spiderman's abdomen and the one on the scroll spun counter-clockwise in their place. Jiraiya looked on in awe as the speed the seals were spinning at was increasing sharply, to the point where a mini-tornado formed in the gap between the scroll and Spiderman's seal. The mini-tornado shook the room, breaking a glass cupboard and seemingly extracting electricity from the lamps. It was a miracle that the other four patients of the same team were still sleeping soundly.

Eventually, the raging winds died down. The shaken doctors who were previously clutching the ground for dear life in fear of the tornado stood up, a dumbfounded look on their face. The three men from the seal-breaking team—Hiashi, Inoichi and Ibiki—came in shortly, their curiosity getting the better of themselves. The scene was quite comical, at the very least; the doctors had their clothing rustled and ripped in several places, the nurses were in some...suggestive position because of their preemptive fall, Tsunade picking herself up before punching Jiraiya upside the head for trying his luck to grope her. Said three men would've chuckled at the amusing sight if the tension in the air wasn't just as high.

When Tsunade raised her head high enough to actually take a good look at the result of the previous tornado, she was more than genuinely surprised. She thought that the seal in the scroll should've repaired the unbalanced seal and turn it back as it were. She was wrong.

In place of the yin-yang rune of the Heaven-Earth Gate Seal, was another seal replacing the previous seal. What had Tsunade intrigued was that the seal didn't look anything like the previous seal. The seal had literally transformed; from the previous yin-yang seal into a seal which consisted of four lines put diagonally, each of them paired with another line facing each other across what Tsunade deduced as a circle. What made her curious, though, was the fact that the circle in the middle had an Uzumaki swirl on it. Also, on the circle's south, north, west and east part were a pair of right triangle, angled so that the diagonal line of the triangle was facing the other triangle's one.

In the eyes of an amateur, and if Tsunade didn't know better, the seal looked similar to the Konoha's symbol on one glance. At the same time, however, it was different. Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion, "What in the world is that suppose to be?"

Jiraiya eventually raised to his feet as well, but his reaction when he saw the strange seal was one of surprise, rather than confusion. The outcome wasn't as he predicted, where just like Tsunade he expected the seal to revert back to its yin-yang form. 'What seal is that? I never seen anything in this type of complexity before, nor have I heard of it. Is this suppose to be Spiderman's real seal?' Question ran rampant in Jiraiya's mind. He was unable to comprehend what just happened; one second he put the inverse version of the Heaven-Earth Gate Seal, the next second it transformed into a tornado, and the next one the seal changed completely. What confused him was that this wasn't mere transformation, as the basis of the new seal was completely different from that of the Heaven-Earth Gate Seal, or so his experience told him.

Unless...of course!

"I get it now! So that's what she did!" He suddenly exclaimed, eliciting a shocked gasp from Tsunade.

"Damn it, Jiraiya, you almost gave me a heart-attack! What do you mean you get it?" She asked, glaring at the white-haired Sannin for shocking her.

"I mean I now understood what Cynthia did when she used the Tenchi Mon no Fuuin! You see, previously I thought that my experience in sealing has been getting dull since it has been a long time since I last practised it. I thought that I may have made a mistake thinking the seal she used was just good for storing objects."

Tsunade quirked an eyebrow at that, "Well, isn't it? Hiashi said it himself that the seal's capacity wasn't big enough to seal a Bijuu."

"It is, but I figured that the Tenchi Mon no Fuuin wasn't used to seal a Bijuu in the first place." Jiraiya rubbed his chin, "The purpose of the Tenchi Mon no Fuuin is, as both of us know, to store and protect artifacts and other objects. A Bijuu, being the mass of chakra they are, won't fit in the seal. The only thing that can supress a Bijuu's chakra is a Bijuu seal, like this one." He pointed at the new seal on Spiderman's abdomen. "The rest, well you can connect the dots."

It took Tsunade several seconds before her eyes widened, a conclusion in her mind, "That means..."

Jiraiya nodded, "Rather than using the Tenchi Mon no Fuuin on Spiderman to seal a Bijuu in him, Cynthia used that Tenchi Mon no Fuuin to store another seal in it. In this case, the 'other' seal would be this new seal." He held his breath. His eyes were filled with awe at the revelation he had just made, "She used a double-layered sealing method. She placed one seal on Spiderman to seal a Bijuu inside him, and then she covered the Bijuu seal with her original creation, the Tenchi Mon no Fuuin. In order to protect the Bijuu seal from outside disturbance, she placed it in a seal with probably the most secure barrier." The toad hermit couldn't help but to crack a grin, releasing a shaky breath that he held out of excitement. "It's almost as effective as the Yondaime's method of sealing. It's...amazing."

Throughout the explanation, Tsunade was rendered speechless; not just by the revelation, but also by thinking about her purple-haired ally's ability. Who would've guessed that her powers as a seal master had already shot through the roof? Jiraiya even said that Cynthia rivalled the Fourth Hokage in sealing prowess, and the Fourth was a genius of a thousand years.

'Cynthia...I never knew you hid such a talent in you.' She thought fondly.

She shook her head. Reminiscing always brought tears to her, and now was not the time to shed unnecessary tears. Her patients—the team she had dispatched, to be precise—were in critical condition, and she as a medic needed to tend to them. "What's the status of the patients?" Tsunade turned to one of the doctors. The doctor, noticing who he was speaking to, straightened up and spoke in a rather stammering manner.

"U-uh, patients Haruno Sakura-san and Sai-san of ANBU were experiencing chakra exhaustion when they got here. We've taken care of that with some chakra stimulators. There's also several mild concussions and bruises, but we've covered that up as well."

Tsunade nodded, "You've done a good job, thank you for that. What about Uzumaki Naruto and Yamato of ANBU?"

The doctor continued, "They both experienced a more severe phase of chakra exhaustion. We had to sedate them both to prevent their body from overusing their chakra unconciously. Yamato-san's case was easy enough, as the only thing he had other than chakra exhaustion was a piercing wound on his shoulder, which was thankfully superficial despite how bad it sounds like. Naruto-san...well, he experienced severe chakra exhaustion, and also a strain in his chakra pathways. The symptoms were the same as patients with forced chakra injection. We assumed that Naruto-san had received chakra from his teammates, thus their chakra exhaustion and the strain in his chakra pathways."

'Must be the chakra combining technique I taught to Sakura...that's dangerous, but thanks to her quick thinking she saved the whole team.' Tsunade thought. She nodded once again, obliging the doctor to continue.

"And our other patient...Spiderman, I assume? His was the worst case. When he got here, there were scars on his body. We tried to work on his chakra exhaustion, first, but then he spasmed and his scars reopened. Because of that we had to delay the chakra exhaustion treatment and work on the wounds. We realized that the seal on his stomach was glowing, but we paid it no mind because we were focusing on closing his wounds. It was by the time that the seal started to crackle with electricity that you came in, Hokage-sama."

Closing her eyes, the Fifth Hokage sighed. It was all a matter of luck that she came in time. "Thank you for your hard work, doctor. I see that my assistance isn't needed here."

"N-nonsense, Hokage-sama! We are only doing the best we can, and that's not much compared to what you can do." The doctor exclaimed.

"But you've already taken care of the patients. That is enough, as all we had to focus are on our patients, am I wrong?"

"N-no, milady."

Tsunade smiled at the male doctor. He seemed like he was a newbie in the hospital, thus his nervousness. It was a wonder that even a newbie like him could mantain a dire situation like that. Konoha was so full of talented new leaves, indeed.

Jiraiya stepped up to her, armed with a frown on his mouth, "Hey, Tsunade..."

"What?"

The large-framed Sannin gulped, afraid for his life as he was going to reveal one matter that the Hokage had overlooked.

"You...do know you're paying for that wall, don't you?"

At this, Tsunade blinked. She hadn't thought about that, actually. But there was no way in hell or heaven that she'd give up her sake money to repair the hospital's wall. After all, she DID broke down the wall for the good of all humanity in the hospital, whether they realized it or not. So in the end, she shrugged the problem off of her shoulders and proceeded to walk away from a poker-faced Jiraiya.

To her, all and all it's just another brick in the wall.

xoxoxo

Hospital, patient room #38, thirty-six hours later...

A groan resounded throughout the room, the source being the mouth of one blond-haired patient who was clad in white hospital robe. The blond sullenly cracked his eyes bit by bit, wincing when the light pierced through his retina. He groaned again, "Where the hell am I...?"

"Awake, sleepy-head?" A feminine voice said, amusement lacing her tone.

Naruto tilted his head to the side, and was surprised—in a good way—to see a shock of pink hair on the side of his bed. "Sakura-chan." He muttered. Said girl smiled at him while continuing to peel off an apple's skin in her hands with a small knife, "Good to see, too, Naruto."

Naruto rubbed his head as nausea came to him like a tsunami, and groaned for the third time that day, "How long was I out for?"

"Not that long, I guess. I'd figure we were only out for like a few days." She suddenly grinned, "I was up and about way earlier than you. You were sleeping like a hibernating polar bear!"

Naruto pouted cutely at the remark, "Hey, I lost more chakra than you did, so that's only natural!"

Sakura giggled at Naruto's childish behaviour. She knew of his dislike of losing, and that fact had never changed even when he had matured. At times, she wasn't annoyed of that. In fact, she was greatly thankful because that meant she could tease him so much.

Naruto glanced sideways at the pink-haired girl sitting next to him. Unknown to her, he let himself smile when she giggled. There was this nice feeling that he always gets when he made her laugh, probably because she was his first crush. And because personally, he liked the face she made when she laughed. When they were younger, Sakura was never the type to actually let herself go, let alone laugh so openly like he always did. It was a shame, though, because he thought that she was most pretty—beautiful, even—when she was laughing openly. It was like her letting her inner emotions out.

To him, the sight of when she was like that was precious.

Beautiful.

"Excuse me?"

Naruto blinked, surprised by Sakura's sudden question, "Eh?"

Sakura stared at the blond, her eyebrows raised in curiosity, "You said beautiful. What do you mean?"

It took him several dumbfounded seconds to figure out he had just voiced his own thoughts. He gaped, stammered, and at the end he awkwardly pointed at the sky through the window on his right side, "Oh, um, ah...I-I mean the sky is beautiful today! Yeah! The sky is beautiful today, just as beautiful as—" His hands flashed upwards to cover his mouth. Cursing the pit of his probable doom that was his mouth, he forcefully clamped his jaw tightly, missing his tongue by a hair's breadth.

Sakura, for her part, stared at the blond boy incredulously, "As beautiful as...? You're breaking up there."

"Um, well, aah..." He stammered again. 'What's with me and my mouth? Does it really has a mind of its own!' He thought furiously. He concluded that, perhaps it did, and now it was taking its revenge because Naruto hadn't fed it ramen for what felt like a week.

"A-as beautiful as..." Naruto's eyes darted to the window again and caught a sight of a full-blooming cherry blossom tree. Unable to think anything else, he blurted the first thing that came to his mind, which was the only thing he could do as of the moment in his still groggy state.

"As beautiful as the cherry blossom (sakura) under it!"

Now, Naruto was a person who always made many misunderstanding between people. Several people had seen it firsthand, only to see the blond either gets pummeled to the ground if the person that misunderstood him was a woman, or to see him gets into a fight with a guy who misunderstood him. In any case, Naruto's mouth WAS literally his personal pit of demise.

And, even for Sakura who was used to the whiskered blond's idiocy, she blushed at Naruto's words. Taking in the probable idea that Naruto was praising her was the first thing she did. Which wasn't her fault, by the way. I mean, Naruto DID technically said "sakura"; whether he meant the literal tree or the cherry-haired girl beside him, she had no idea. The grin on his face made it even harder for Sakura to cool the heat on her face down, so instead she bonked his head harshly while looking to the side.

"BAKA! Don't say things like that so suddenly!"

"EEH? But what did I say?" Naruto inquired, rubbing his bumped head soothingly.

Sakura shook her head violently, almost making her throw the apple in her hands in process, "AAAH! Never mind! Now eat this!" She roughly slammed the apple into Naruto's wide-opened mouth, effectively silencing him. Naruto gagged; gagged as he tried to breath, chew, and swallow the apple the size of his fist. Tears were coming out of his eyes dramatically.

Sakura ignored the struggle and stood up quickly, almost making the metal chair she was sitting on fall on the floor, "When you finished eating that, get ready to leave. We're going to pay Spiderman a visit." She said, her back facing the gagging blond. Said knuckleheaded blond stopped his flailing arms almost automatically when he comprehend what Sakura had just said. He tried to speak, but his voice was muffled by the apple. Annoyed, he bit down hard on the apple—which almost cost him his jaw muscles—and chewed the apple as a whole.

Sakura could only stare at her teammate with a poker face, 'Leave it to me to forget how big his mouth actually is.' She thought, mentally face-palming.

"I forgot about Spiderman!" Naruto exclaimed as he had devoured the apple completely, only to gag once more and coughed out the apple's center. Sakura cringed; the piece of apple Naruto just coughed out was covered with his spit. Utterly disgusting, to her at least.

"Where's Spiderman now?" Naruto asked anxiously.

"If you'd just shut up," Sakura growled, grabbing Naruto's wrists harshly and pulled him out of his bed, blanket and all, "And follow me, it'll be much easier."

Naruto's eyes darted from Sakura's face to her hand holding his, an apparent blush crossed his face. He narrowed his eyes and looked to the side, 'This isn't following. You're practically dragging me!' A slip of annoyance crossed his mind. And in that one second, his mind went haywire, showing him images that...he wasn't prepared to see. His eyes widened, and he promptly retracted his left hand from Sakura's grip as if it was burning him. Confused, the pink-haired medic turned and stared at Naruto, confusion written all over her face, "Naruto?"

Naruto was seen clutching his head with his right hand, his dishelved hair being messed up even more by his hand's clutching. He was visibly sweating, and his eyes were tightly shut as if he was preventing any light to invade his eyes. After a short while, just before Sakura was worried enough to actually shake him awake from whatever nightmare he was going through, he opened his eyes. He shook his head, and then faced Sakura who was beginning to get worried.

"Sorry 'bout that. I had a headache suddenly." Naruto said, as if nothing serious actually happened.

However, it was clear to Sakura that somethind DID happen. And one thing told Sakura that what Naruto had wasn't just a normal headache; that is the neutral expression on his face. Something about it kind of reminds her of Sai when he was first introduced to the team, minus the ever-annoying smile. The eyes Naruto used to look at her were the same as Sai's at that time; emotionless and empty. All of his silliness and exuberant nature diminished, all in a blink of an eye.

Silence reigned the hallway, and Sakura realized that she was staring at the blond. Throwing her glance to the side while shaking the oddity that is her teammate out of her mind, she said hesitantly, "Well...this way then."

Awkwardly, they continued their walk to Spiderman's room. And in the awkward continuation, there was an awkward silence hanging in the air. Sakura's face harden, herself thinking about what the hell just happened between her and Naruto. What's with him jerking his hand away from hers so suddenly, anyway? If it were the normal him, he would gladly accept the contact and just allow her to drag him like a helpless puppy. Realizing the train of thought she had, she mentally cursed at herself. How could she think so selfishly like that? If Naruto didn't want his hand being held, who was she to protest? Maybe...because he was still healing the pull she exacted on him had hurt him, that's why he jerked his hand away.

Founding a need to clear the tension in the air, she opted to say something, "Sai had woken up earlier than both of us. He's already waiting for us in Spiderman's room. Yamato-taichou had apparently ran off to Tsunade-shishou, saying he needed to give her the mission report." Sakura paused for a moment, as if remembering something, "Oh yeah, that's right! Spiderman is in the same room as Kakashi-sensei!"

Naruto raised an eyebrow, "Spiderman...with Kakashi-sensei? How the hell did they got mixed up in the same room like that?"

"I don't know about it, either." Sakura said, shrugging, "Both Spiderman and Kakashi-sensei were still sleeping the last time I was in the room. I don't think they've talked to each other, yet. The only one concious in that room is Sai, who insisted to stay in the room."

She found herself being extremely glad that Naruto chuckled, beofre he said, "Now that worries me. Sai had been prancing on and on about our penis the other day." The blond suddenly shuddered, "I suggest we better hurry there before he does some experiments that I DON'T want to know about."

Even though the previous tension cleared away, thanks to Naruto's joke, the room's temperature dropped a good few degrees. Sakura's eyes were as wide as plates as of the moment, "He wouldn't DARE."

Naruto just shrugged, "I don't really know. But let's just say, we need to prevent that from happening."

Terrified by Naruto's statement, Sakura sprinted towards Spiderman's room with Naruto tailing behind her. Both were sweating bullets, afraid if what Naruto had deducted was true, and Spiderman would be under severe trauma of harrassment and he would never be the same. The idea itself was enough of a boost for Sakura and Naruto as they picked up their pace, ignoring the screeches they made on the floor and the screams of the nearby nurses about "No running in the hospital."

Eventually, as they reached Spiderman's room's door, Sakura immediately broke through the wooden door, "Sai, STOP!"

Inside the room, sitting on a chair beside Spiderman's bed, was Sai with a small canvas on his left hand and a brush on his right one. A tray with a bottle of ink was situated on a table beside Spiderman's bed. Sai turned around, and only gave a neutral look to the pink-haired as an evidence that he was surprised before his face broke into a friendly smile. "Oh, Sakura-san, you're here. And you brought Naruto-kun as well, I see." Sai said. Sakura also saw a silver-haired figure who's hair seemed to defy gravity by its style alone sitting upright and with an orange book in his hands on the far side of the room near the window.

Kakashi was awake, it seemed, and he looked lazily at his pink-haired student with his left eye (his Sharingan, in case you don't know) closed; a visible scar ran down his left eye. "Hm? Sakura? What's with the ruckus?" He said, to which Sakura ignored completely as she set her eyes on the Root member in the room.

"Sai," The green-eyed medic breathed, "Whatever it is you were doing, just stop."

The pale artist blinked once, before shooting off his annoying smile again, "I might as well, but I'm nearly finishing it. So if you could just wait a few more minutes, I'd be grateful."

Sakura's face turned aghast as she stared at Sai disbelievingly, her fairly pale skin tone paled even more—nearing Sai's skin tone—as she froze in place. Naruto, who was standing beside her, was looking at her with a confused expression on his face.

"Sai..." Sakura began, an evident threat in her voice.

"I SAID STOP IT THIS INSTANT!" And just like that, Sakura tore off the canvas from Sai's grip, who was too surprised by Sakura's burst of speed to actually do anything about it. He could only exclaim, "My canvas!" As Sakura glared at him and, comically enough, a black miasma seemingly rose behind her. "Sai, I know what you were doing, and I suggest you stop it before anything bad happen."

Once again, Sai blinked in surprise. Being taken into Team Kakashi had given him more surprises than Danzou's escort-ambush training, and that was saying much. With out so much of keeping his emotions in check, because he had little to none in his arsenal, he said, "How could my painting of an injured patient do something bad? I'm not intending to summon it out with my Choujuu Giga, if you're wondering."

Now it was Sakura's turn to blink in surprise. She turned her head to get a good look at the canvas in her hands. Truthfully, much to her surprise, it was nothing like she had expected. As Sakura was expecting something more...inexplicably horrid picture, the painting Sai made was actually a nice one, if not a freaking masterpiece. The painting was that of a person garbed in hospital robe, sleeping peacefully on a bed. She figured that Sai's painting was about Spiderman. That, and there was more to the painting than meets the eye.

Sakura had seen Sai's painting before. Back when she saw him painting abstractly in the morning when they were staying at the Onsen Motel in the previous mission, the painting itself was artistic. However, that painting lacked something that the painting in her hands had. Whereas the old painting Sai made was dull even though it was still a meaningful abstract painting, the one in her hands had more...emotions in it. She couldn't really tell what it really is, but she could say that the painting was far better than the previous ones.

Furthermore, Sai had captured the peaceful expression on Spiderman's—in this case, Peter's—sleeping face perfectly, and he even added sunlight lines and the darkening on the side of Spiderman's un-highlighted face to further perfecting it. And, although Sakura hated to admit it, the painting took her breath away. "Sai...this painting is amazing!"

"I'm glad you like it. But it's still not finished. I still haven't added Kakashi-san into the picture." He said, smiling as he did.

"Hey, I told you it's fine without me in the picture." Kakashi lazily reminded the artist, "That's more preferable, anyway."

"It's not right to leave something out of the painting when it's still in your line of sight." Sai said, his annoying smile gone as he regarded the one-eyed Jounin with a serious look. "Besides, the more the merrier."

Kakashi visibly sighed, 'All I want to do was to read this new Icha Icha Tactics in peace. All that was crumbled just in one day that I was awake and not lazy enough to just doze off because of an additional patient in my room, and the fact that this new patient seems to be in a friendly relation with my team.' He glanced sideways while acting like he was still reading his perverted book, 'I wonder who this guy really is, though.'

"Kakashi-sensei." Kakashi lifted his head to meet Naruto's gaze at him, smiling beneath the mask. "Naruto, huh? What's up?"

Naruto shook his head, "Nah, nothing. It's just that I didn't expect you to get well this fast. And why the hell did the hospital guys let you wear your own clothes while I'm still dressed in a downgraded hospital robe?" He suddenly yelled out in frustration, seeing his silver-haired sensei in his usual sleeveless dark blue undershirt which was connected to the mask he was wearing; the mask covering his mouth and nose as well. It pissed the blond off to see his sensei able to wear usual clothes rather than the—according to Naruto—shitty hospital robe.

Kakashi shrugged, "Probably because I'm already in a better state, and I've been here longer than you." He said offhandedly.

Naruto grumbled something about the shitty doctors having favoritism while casting his look to the side. Sakura shook her head at the blond's behaviour. Inwardly, she smiled as she thought of how fast he could shift personality so fast. She handed the canvas back to Sai's awaiting hand, eliciting a smile from the boy. Sai continued his painting, much to Kakashi's demise as he knew that Sai would put him into the picture. It was an amazing sight, though, Sai was painting so fast that it kind of looked like he was scribbling.

Eventually, Naruto broke the comfortable silence with a question, "How long...do you think it will take for Spiderman to wake up?"

The question wasn't actually directed to any one individual; rather, he asked to all of the room occupants and wanted know their opinion on the matter. Sakura detected the guilty voice Naruto used, and somehow she couldn't help but feel the same. All this happened because they couldn't hold their grounds against Sasuke. No matter how strong they've become after those three years of training, Sasuke had become even stronger.

And they depended on Spiderman to fight him. They depended on another person who wasn't even a shinobi of Konoha, who wasn't even a shinobi of any village, to clean up their mess. And this is what they get for entrusting him with such a burden; a hero on a hospital bed, previously hanging on the edge of his life after fighting the Uchiha.

"...he'll come to, eventually." Sakura said, trying to ease out the clench of guilt in her heart, "The doctors said that he's well on his way to fully recover. Besides, he won't die...he's too strong for that. Right, Naruto?"

Naruto smiled at her and nodded. Somehow, he had a feeling that he could believe in Sakura's words. She is, after all, a medic—one of the best—and she of all people should know about all of the medical things. "Yeah. After all, he is...just like me. And guys like me won't be staying long in a freaking hospital!" He let out, suddenly ecstatic. Both Sakura and Sai smiled at the blond, founding themselves believing in what the blond said.

Kakashi, however, was curious to what the blond had just said, "Just like you? What's that suppose to mean, I wonder?"

Reluctantly, Naruto explained the whole ordeal with their previous mission. He couldn't just straight on explain about how they saw Spiderman activated his Bijuu's powers, because Kakashi had insisted for Naruto to explain everything about Spiderman. To Kakashi, Spiderman was a complete stranger placed on the same room as him. At the end of Naruto's explanation, Kakashi sighed heavily.

"I never thought that Tsunade-sama would go as far as requesting backup from the outer nations for this mission alone. She must've been especially cautious of Orochimaru." He commented. He glanced at the sleeping form of Spiderman, observing the stranger while thinking, 'He surely has a face of an outsider. If I didn't know better, I would've called him a gaijin1 at first sight.'

He broke his stare on Spiderman when he realized that the other three people in the room—Naruto, Sakura and Sai—were also staring at the bed-ridden hero. "Hm...he must be very interesting for you guys to stare at him like that." He said, making the three break out of their thoughts.

"Well, he is actually VERY interesting." Sakura answered, "But the reason we're staring at his face is because he wore a mask throughout the mission. Hell, he never took off his mask, not even once. He's like a second you, Kakashi-sensei."

"A second me, huh...?" The one-eyed Jounin muttered. He eyed (no pun intended) the three teammates, knowing that they wouldn't be going out of the room anytime soon. "Why don't you two take a seat, Naruto, Sakura? I have a feeling that this guy is one heck of a sleeper."

xoxoxo

In Spiderman's subconcious...

Humans always say that Tailed Beasts are animals (albeit an oversized version of one). The reason that they called the gigantic chakra beings as such is because they behave like one. For example, Ichibi no Shukaku had the form of an oversized tanuki. Tanuki (some sort of racoon, if you may) always cause trouble here and there, either stealing human food or wrecking their farms, even in the most superficial way. The worst would be a full-grown tanuki eating a rabbit which a human took care of. Ichibi behave as such, only with a wider understanding of trouble.

Another example would be Kyuubi no Kitsune, otherwise known as the Nine-Tailed Fox. Foxes (in Japanese history, anyway) tend to cause mischief not unlike the tanuki. Known as well as the greatest symbol of mischief, foxes are quite hated by humans. Now, in the case of Kyuubi who is a gigantic version of a fox, just like Ichibi his understanding of mischief is wider than most.

Strangely, for a wolfish Bijuu like him, Raibi was considered the most humane of the beasts by his brothers and sisters. Even though he had the form of a wolf AND even though he was Kyuubi's clone, his appearance betrayed his behaviour. He would be, if people found out about it, the Bijuu with the most patience of them all. That, and his humane train of thought made him somewhat a problem child in the eyes of his brothers and sisters.

However, just like the fact that no rock is unbreakable, Raibi's patience had its limits. And right now, it was dangling in the edge of its last thread.

No matter how the nine-tailed wolf dislikes it, Spiderman wasn't waking up even though the chakra exhaustion treatment had been given. Even in his mental world Spiderman was sleeping; like currently, in which he was sleeping in front of Raibi's cage with the blue-furred wolf staring blankly at him. Once a while, Raibi would blow at the sleeping hero to try and wake him up. If it wasn't for the cage, he would've bitch-slap his Jinchuuriki just to rouse him from his sleep.

'This is taking too long...logically, if he's sleeping in the real world, he should be awake in his subconcious.' Raibi muttered. The knowledge that this predicament wasn't dangerous whatsoever calmed him down a bit, but he was getting fed up by the young Parker's laziness.

'I hope this'll work.' Raibi said, before putting both of his paws in front of him and clapped it together, making it look like a handseal, 'Meiton: Ikari no Kengen!'

Raibi expelled a dark cloud of miasma from his body, which moved through the bars of his cage and glided towards Spiderman sleeping form. Just as he was several feet away from Spiderman, the miasma spun around like a twister with a resounding thunderclap. The dark twister eventually receeded, revealing a humanoid figure. Raibi sighed when he saw it, 'Just wake him up. I don't particularly care about how you do it.'

The figure, now being discernable as a costume-wearing person with the inverse pattern of Spiderman's costume; in which it was blue rather than red in several places and white web pattern, cackled, 'hAh! tO tHiNK oUR KiNg wOULd bE sOmEoNe sO wEaK! I'LL dO yOuR diRTy wORk jUsT tHiS oNcE, sPaRkY!'

Raibi sighed again after hearing the nickname Nega-Spiderman had gave him. Bringing out the inverse web-head was a troublesome idea, indeed. The 'dark side' tended to go yelling out stuff which more often than not caused headaches to Raibi. Actually, Raibi didn't really want to rely on Nega-Spiderman to wake up the real Spiderman, because there was a chance the inverse entity would not as he told him to.

As in, try and take over Spiderman's body and control it.

Fortunately, as long as Raibi's there, that kind of incident wouldn't be happening. Nega-Spiderman is, after all, part of Raibi's chakra.

True enough, Nega-Spiderman did nothing fishy. All the while he was trying to wake up Spiderman; starting by yelling out 'oU-sAmA!' right in front of Spiderman's unmasked face, tickling his sides which seemed to have no effect, and outright bitch-slapping him across the face several times. The last one was actually funny, to which Raibi chuckled and considered cheering for Nega-Spiderman to keep it up. In the end, however, Spiderman had yet to wake up and Nega-Spiderman had already tired himself out after a long combo of bitch-slaps.

'jUh...jU-jUsT wHaT tHe heLL iS KeEpiNg hiM aSLeEp?' Nega-Spiderman yelled out.

'He's probably too busy dreaming about a certain redhead.' Raibi muttered, disappointed that the Spiderman's inverse version didn't succeed in waking him up.

'yOu tHiNk wE sHoULd uSe a hOwL oN hiM? I cOuLd reaLLY uSe sOmEtHiNG tO wAKe hiM uP.'

'At the level he's currently in, his soul won't stand a chance.' Raibi said, completely disagreeing the idea Nega-Spiderman had, 'Plus, I think it would be better if we show it firsthand when he's ready.'

'yOu mEAn hOwL iT, riGHt?' The dark entity joked, 'sUrE, wHY nOT? iF hE cAN kEEp hiS aSS uP aFTEr yOU hOwL aT hiM, oR bETTer yEt, iF hE cAN hOwL fOR hiMsELf, hE'LL bE a wOrThY cOmPeTiTion fOR mE!'

Raibi frowned at Nega-Spiderman, even though what the inverse-clothed entity said was actually what he had in mind. The problem, though, was that Nega-Spiderman saw Spiderman as a competition. That means...

'You still don't think of him as your king?'

Suddenly, Nega-Spiderman laughed out loud, 'hAh! yOu tHiNk tHaT tHe tHrOnE oF tHe KiNg oF hiS miND wOuLd bE sO wiLLiNgLy giVeN? aS LoNg aS hE hAs a dArK siDE, tHeRe wiLL aLwAyS a fiGhT fOr dOMinAnCe!' He cackled again, 'hEcK, hE bAReLy wOn aGAiNsT hiS oWn pOwEr; tHaT bLAcK sUiT oF hiS. iF hE eVeN dReAmS aBoUT tAkiNG mE dOWn, hE'LL nEEd eVeRy dRoP of pOwEr hE cOuLd gET!'

Raibi and Nega-Spiderman then locked in a stare contest, with the wolf frowning and the false webhead grinning like mad. Eventually, Nega-Spiderman let down his stare and let himself disappear slowly; transforming into a cloud of miasma and flying back to Raibi. Raibi was silent even as the miasma merged with his body, and his eyes was kept staring at the sleeping Spiderman. Eventually, he said, 'That he will, my friend...that he will.'

Sometimes Raibi wondered about the dark entity that is Nega-Spiderman. That insane entity was, regrettably, his own creation by using his Manifestation of Rage. Ironically, he was the most successful of all Bijuu in that particular jutsu. He didn't actually took a liking in his talent, at all; if successfully manifesting an insane, unstable dark side of his Jinchuuriki is considered a talent, anyways.

'Guy sounds pretty sad, don't you think?'

Raibi raised his head to see Spiderman, the real one, arousing from his sleep and trying to sit upright. 'So you finally came to, huh?' Raibi asked rhetorically. Spiderman chuckled, before rubbing his cheek slowly, 'It's hard to keep asleep after that last slap of his.'

'Really? I thought you were still sleeping at that time.'

The web-slinger stared blankly at the giant wolf, 'You try slapping Kyuubi in the face and ask him if it stings.'

'Ah.'

Spiderman shook his head. Although he wouldn't admit it, Nega-Spiderman's slaps had caused a nasty headache for him. Raibi wasn't lying to him when he said that Nega-Spiderman would be several times stronger than him. 'How long was I out for?'

'A few good days. Opening the seal took a toll on both you and your mind; which might explain why you were sleeping even though you're in your mindscape.'

'How're the others?'

Raibi sighed, 'They're faring a lot better than you, actually. Both Sakura and that pale-faced dude didn't really suffer any fatal wounds. Naruto almost gave all his chakra to summon a ride home, though he's not in imminent danger anymore. That Yamato guy exhausted his chakra just to support your seal, because the Tenchi Mon no Fuuin's security system activated and tried to attack your teammates.'

'Security system? How the hell could a seal have a security system?'

'I guess Cynthia-baachan never get to tell you before, eh?' Raibi exhaled, his breath almost blowing Spiderman off of his feet. Spiderman cringed, once again smelling the smell of the charred meat in Raibi's breath, 'Seriously, go brush your teeth or something...' He muttered.

Raibi either ignored, or he really didn't hear Spiderman's remark, 'That seal...Tenchi Mon no Fuuin is a seal original from Cynthia-baachan. She made it herself before, when she was still fighting alongside Konoha ninjas, and completed it when she became a Spider Sage.'

'So...the data on that file in Konoha's library is true, then? That Madam Web is a resident of Konoha?'

'Was, I would say.' Raibi corrected, 'That was a long time ago, around the times of the Second or Third Great Ninja War, I guess.'

Silence reigned the sewer-like mindscape. Spiderman took a good amount of time to take all of the information in, though he himself wasn't liking it one bit. Madam Web never told him about this; not the seal, nor the fact that she had once lived in Konoha. There should be a reason that she kept it a secret; a secret that she didn't even reveal to her only apprentice. It unnerved Spiderman to think about it. Just how long did she kept it away from him?

He broke out of his musing as he caught something from the corner of his eyes. He looked up at the seal holding the bars of Raibi's cage together and...

'Raibi...what the freaking hell happened to the seal?'

Raibi lifted his head so that his muzzle pointed to the seal holding together the cage he was being kept in, 'So you finally realized it.'

The seal was, to say the least, identical to what Jiraiya and Tsunade had seen previously (I'm kind of lazy to describe it again, so I'll leave it to your imagination.). The shape of the seal was so different from the first one that Spiderman saw. To say he was surprised would be a lie, because he was completely shell-shocked he couldn't even form words with his tongue.

'...exactly what happened when I was unconcious?'

Raibi growled while looking at the wet sewer floor beneath him, 'Something life-changing, if you really want to know. This might be Web-baachan's doing, seeing that the seal on the cage is another one of her original seal.'

'Life-changing?'

Raibi became silent once more, to which annoys Spiderman further. Whenever he asked something about what Raibi said, the Bijuu would always go silent like this. Before he could complain this fact, Raibi suddenly chuckled. 'What's so funny?'

'It seems that you DO have good friends...'

'...okay, I lost you there. What the hell does that suppose to mean?'

'Wake up, and you'll see what I mean.'

Spiderman grumbled, 'You're just using excuses to not answer my questions...'

Spiderman's mental form walked towards a door before pushing said door open...only for it to not budge. Spiderman raised an eyebrow in confusion; he didn't remember making any locks for his mind doors. He pushed one more time, this time more forcefully, but the door still stands still. Spiderman glared at the door, activating his Raiken and slammed his fist to the door, but the stubborn thing didn't move.

'...not sure if I'm being trolled, or doors do have minds of their own.'

'Have you tried pulling?' Raibi suggested sarcastically.

And as Spiderman followed Raibi's suggestion, it proved that the blue wolf was right. The door moved when he pulled it, and opened wide for him. Spiderman cast an irritated look on his Bijuu, to which Raibi replied with an innocent smirk.

'I seriously think you're too human to be a Bijuu.'

'Well that's funny...sometimes, I do, too.'

xoxoxo

In the real world...

Even though Spiderman's conciousness had finished talking with Raibi, the human figure of himself was having a hard time to crack his eyes open. The muscles moving his eyelids were too cranky and lazy to comply to his brain's orders. The more Spiderman tried to open his eyes, the more he felt like his eyelids were glued shut with some ACME super-glue.

'Aaah, looks like I won't be waking up anytime soon.' He thought, 'Oh well, back to dreaming about Mary Jane, then.'

But Fate had a sick sense of humor, because as Spiderman was ready to dose off to his dreamland, he heard voices ringing in his head. Actually, there was more ringing in his ears to which affected his head. Judging by the sudden fan-girlish squeal that shook his eardrums, his hypothesis was correct.

"Kyaaa! He's cute!"

What.

"Ino, shut it! He's sleeping for crying out loud!"

The.

"Sakura-chan, you're not less noisy than Ino, yourself."

Freaking.

"SHUT UP!"

Hell?

"You three, shut up. *yawn*"

"ALL OF YOU SHUT UP!"

"WOOOH! IT IS UNYOUTHFUL TO DISTURB SOMEONE IN HIS SLUMBER!"

"LEE, SHUT IT!"

Can't anybody get a peaceful sleep these days? And this was supposed to be a hospital...yeah, right. No hospital would sound like Hitler's office when he was arguing with his subordinates. Half-heartedly, Spiderman went backtracking from his journey to lala-land and back to reality. Groggily cracking his eyes open, he was greeted with the sight of multiple blurry colors. His eyes eventually re-focused, clearing the images and revealed...several people.

He took notice of several people he knew; Naruto, Sakura, Sai, Ino and...Tenten, isn't it? Yeah, the girl from the weapon store. 'And those two...I remember them coming in the infirmary when me and Naruto finished our fight in the Chuunin exams. Err...who are they again? White-eyed, pale-faced family members of Hanabi's family?' Naruto and Sakura were seated beside his bed on a metal chair, both dressed in hospital garments and looking a bit exhausted; though that diminishes in the instant Spiderman woke up.

"You're awake!" Spiderman blinked and looked to his left, seeing Naruto with a huge grin facing him.

Spiderman groaned, seemingly in pain while his hands raised to his face, looking like they were shielding his eyes, "Ah, great. I felt like I was in coma for a few days and the first sight I got was an ugly face? Poor me." He joked. Naruto's grin vanished and was replaced by a scowl while a tick of a nerve formed on his forehead comically, "WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

His joke somehow elicited several chuckles and giggles from everyone in the room, the latter coming from the girls. Only one of them outright laughed out loud, and that person gained Spiderman's attention.

"Man, just a minute passed since he woke up and I already like this guy!" The boy who laughed out loud before said.

Spiderman tilted his head sideways, confused by the boys appearance; or preferably, the red fang-like tattoo which adorned his cheeks. Feeling a little awkward by being surrounded by several strangers, he spoke, "I...don't believe we've met. Who're you guys?"

"Ah, yeah, that's right. You haven't met some of them." Naruto answered, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. Spiderman shook his head, "The only ninjas I've met and currently present are you, Sakura, Sai, Ino and...Tenten, right?" He guessed. Tenten nodded her head excitedly, grinning proudly as she noticed Spiderman remembering her name.

"I guess this calls for a crash course introductions. Well, guys?" Naruto asked them all.

"So, what, tell our names and stuff?" A...somewhat tubby boy said in the middle of his munching on a bag of potato chips. The first characteristic that Spiderman picked up on him was the swirls on both of his cheeky cheeks, which looked ridiculous to him.

"Yeah, that and all the other stuffs. You know, likes and dislikes, the usual." Naruto replied.

"That sounds troublesome..." A boy with his hair tied up in a high spiky ponytail said with a lazy tone in his voice. The boy, to Spiderman at least, looked plain as he only sported the standard outfit of a Chuunin, complete with the vest. His hitai-ate was tied to his left bicep.

"Well, seeing as you think it's so troublesome, why don't you start first, Shikamaru?" Naruto shot a smirk of triumph as the ponytailed boy seemed like he was caught off guard by the request. He muttered something about troublesome blonds and their antics, but it was too quiet for Spiderman to actually discern what the boy was saying.

"Fine, then." The teen finally said, "Although it's too much of drag, I'll go first. The name's Nara Shikamaru, Chuunin-level shinobi of Konoha and member of team 10." Shikamaru saw Spiderman raising an eyebrow in curiosity. "Team 10?" The bed-ridden hero asks. Shikamaru sighs, "We're grouped up in teams of three with a Jounin team leader. My team is called Team 10, consisting of Ino and Chouji." He pointed at Ino and the chip-munching boy behind him. Spiderman nodded in understanding, looking satisfied by the explanation.

Shikamaru paused, glancing at Naruto who cupped his mouth and mouthed "likes and dislikes" to which Shikamaru sighed at, "I like non-troublesome stuffs and dislike troublesome stuffs."

'That's...pretty plain.' Spiderman thought, dropping a comical bead of sweat at Shikamaru's laziness even in introductions. 'Shikamaru...I'll codename him Droopy.'

Shikamaru rubbed the back of his head while sighing tiredly for the umpteenth time that day, turning around to the other members of Konoha Eleven, "All right, who's next? Let's just get on with it so I can get some sleep."

"Oh, oh, pick me! Pick me!" The fang-tattooed boy exclaimed childishly, to which Shikamaru sighed and waved lazily at. The boy wore a black jacket as well as a pair of black pants, which Spiderman noted that both of them looked like leather. His hitai-ate rests proudly on his forehead.

"All right!" The tattooed teen said as he stepped forward. As he did, Spiderman noticed a...wolf-sized, white-furred dog trudging beside the boy. '...look, Raibi! It's your father!'

'...you're lucky I'm bound to this prison, kid. Otherwise, I would've pulled that annoying tongue out of your equally annoying mouth.' Raibi growled back mentally.

"That's...quite the big dog you got there."

The dog-owner grinned proudly, "Yep. He's one of a kind. My name's Inuzuka Kiba, Chuunin-level and member of team 8. This guy here," He clamped his hand on the big dog's head, ruffling it slightly, "Is Akamaru, my familiar."

"But he's white." Spiderman stated, a sweat-drop once again forming on his forehead.

Pretending not to hear the statement, Kiba continued, "I like my family, Akamaru, my team and pretty much all of my friends. I dislike a bunch of other things, but what I HATE are people who treat others lower than themselves, just because they're not human."

'We got ourselves an Ace Ventura, here.' Spiderman thought. "Glad that we're on the same page, dude." He said, mentioning Kiba's particular dislike. There was actually a lot of people who would've made themselves in Kiba's hate-list; preferably the mutant-haters. Hell, Wolverine might actually like the teen.

Kiba grinned, before turning around and looked at his two teammates; Hinata and Shino. Deciding he would choose one of them to do the next introduction, he eyed both of them. A while later, he broke into a grin, "All right! Hinata, you're up next." Said Hyuuga girl promptly yelped in surprise at the sudden call. "M-me?" The girl had dark-blue, borderline indigo hair which was long enough to reach her middle back. Her face was pale as porcelain; actually, almost every girl present is like that, Spiderman noted. She wore a loose white-blue hoodie and a pair of standard issue blue pants which only reached her ankles. She wore her hitai-ate like a necklace, in which it encircled her neck with the metal plate facing front. And while Spiderman was no pervert (that side of him either never existed, got thrown out of his mind by MJ since the start of his puberty, or being completely taken in by Nega-Spiderman), he couldn't help but notice that Hinata's...assets, looked somewhat big. At the very least, it was able to push up the loose hoodie she was wearing.

"Well, d'uh. How much Hinata is there in this room, anyways?" Kiba rhetorically asked.

"Umm, one?" Naruto suddenly answered, scratching the back of his head while looking as oblivious as he ever was.

"Do you really have to answer that?" Kiba said, sweat-dropping. As he stepped away and let Hinata take the spotlight, he noticed that Shino had a dark aura around him. "Hm? Shino, what's wrong?"

The hooded teen gave a passive stare—which may be the result of his black sunglasses blocking his eyes—as he talked slowly, but clearly, "I thought, Kiba, that you would've picked me. Why? Because out of the whole Rookie 9, I thought I have a better teamwork with you." Kiba cringed at the tone Shino was using. Slow, dark and somehow depressing...this tone is the sign that meant Shino is sulking.

Back to Hinata, "A-ano...we've m-met before, ha-haven't we?"

"Well, yeah, back in the Chuunin Exams in the infirmary. How could I forget that? Unfortunately, neither of us had actually gave each other a proper introduction." Spiderman said.

"U-um...I guess so." Hinata stated in a hesitant tone, her nervousness dominating her once again as she began twiddling with her pointing finger. Spiderman sweat-dropped at the so-so statement, still not believing that this girl was supposed to be a ninja. 'How Fury would go all military-like to shy girls like her...' He thought, somehow picturing a battle-hardened Nick Fury shouting at Hinata to 'man up', even though she's female.

"M-my name is Hyuuga Hinata, Chuunin of team 8 along with Kiba-kun and Shino-kun. And, uh, about the things I like..." Hinata's pupil-less eyes diverted to the side ever so slightly, the movement escaping the notice of everyone except Spiderman. He followed the direction of her glance and found himself staring at... 'Naruto? Is she staring at Naruto?'

Suddenly, as if he just solved the famed Da Vinci code, his eyebrows shot up, 'I see...my cupid-senses are tingling.'

'You have another extra sense other than your spider-sense?' Raibi asked mentally, amused and interested by the sudden thought his Jinchuuriki just made.

'Uh, actually it's just common sense. Everyone would've picked up the fact that our Hyuuga princess here has got a crush on Naruto.' Spiderman looked up at Hinata when she finally continued, "I-I mean, I like my family and friends, and my village as well. I dislike p-people who look down on other people, and people who doesn't see someone as who they really are."

'People who doesn't see someone as who they really are, eh? She might've picked that up from Naruto being a Jinchuuriki.' Spiderman thought hypothetically. "A-and..." Hinata didn't look like she was finished, so it made Spiderman curious to what she had to say. She finally said, after a long string of stammer and stutter, "I was never able to thank you properly for what you did for Hanabi-chan. S-she changed for the better, because of you."

At the thought of the little future clan head, Spiderman grinned so wide his eyes scrunched up, "Yeah, I can see that. It seems fighting me has got its perks, after all! Anyway, how is she?"

Hinata smiled, "She's doing very well. Th-thank you for asking, by the way."

"Still on her way to be a clan head, I presume?"

"H-hai. B-but, she's trying to d-do it differently, now. Uh, I mean, she's trying t-to be a little more responsible."

Suddenly, Spiderman felt the urge to grin widely, which he did. He felt a speck of pride which gradually swelled inside his chest. What the others didn't know was that Spiderman had actually thought of Hanabi like a student of his, having explained to her his nindo a while ago. To hear from her sister that she is actually following his dictum made him proud.

Spiderman nodded at the Hyuuga princess. After Hinata finished her introduction, she turned around and was surprised to see Kiba looking at her pleadingly. "Oi, Hinata, can you please pick Shino next?" Hinata blinked, and then noticed Shino leaning to a wall behind Kiba with a dark aura around him. "Ah. I see...Shino-kun? D-do you want to go next?"

Shino, hearing his name called, leaned away from the wall and nodded, "Yes, I think I do. Thank you, Hinata." Shino, as noted by Spiderman, was wearing a grey hooded jacket with a tint of green on it over a black, high-collared shirt. The collar itself was so high it masks the lower half of his face, leaving his eyes—which were also covered with a pair of black sunglasses—and ears being visible. Because of Shino wearing the hoodie over his head, Spiderman couldn't see his hair, but he guessed that Shino's hair color was dark brown judging by the small tresses falling near his forehead. That, too, was covered by his hitai-ate. His pants were black, with his ankles being covered with bandages.

'...which Pharaoh is he?' Spiderman thought, accidentally picturing a mummy fresh out of a tomb. Hell, even just by looking at him Spiderman felt sweaty, and Shino didn't even looked like he was feeling hot.

"Say, what's with the clothing? You look like you're going to kidnap someone's children." He stated. There was a visible twitch on Shino's left eyebrow, but Shino himself stayed impassive as he answered, "My clan jutsu involves my body being a hive for the insects I control. As it is, it's too much of a gory sight if I were to show the parts of my body."

'And they say Pym needs pest control...' Again, an anime sweat-drop formed on Spiderman's forehead. This group of people seemed to have a lot of surprises, that much he was sure of.

Shino cleared his throat, "My name is Aburame Shino, Chuunin level shinobi and a member of Team 8. I don't particularly like a lot of things. Why? Because liking a lot of things could be a hindrance in a mission. But I care for my teammates and friends, as well as this village. I don't actually dislike anything. Why? Because yet again it could be a hindrance in a mission. But I particularly hate pesticides, as my insects are vulnerable to it."

Spiderman had a "dafuq?" face at the end of Shino's explanation, his mind thinking only one thing, 'This is definitely the reincarnation of Hank Pym! His love for insects is ridiculous. It's...it's...!'

'It's what?' Raibi said, getting annoyed but curious at the same time.

Spiderman, mentally, was silent when Raibi asked him. Suddenly, he trembled before striking a pose with his one leg raised, the other standing on its toes, his left arm crossing his chest while his right arm was pointing to the sky as he suddenly screamed, 'OVER NINE-THOUSAND!'Which prompted Raibi to sneak a tail through the bars of his cage and proceeded to smack Spiderman on the head with it, rather comically might I add.

Shaking his head to clear the sudden headache he got (clearly, Raibi's tail-smack was powerful enough to hurt Spiderman's real form), he noticed that Shino hasn't made any movements since he finished explaining; probably because he was expecting a reaction from Spiderman. So he gave him one, "I...I see. So I assume that the vegetables you eat are, um, garden-fresh?"

Shino actually raised a curious eyebrow at Spiderman's question, "Actually, yes, my family grew several to avoid eating the ones normal farmers grow, since they seldomnly used pesticides."

"Seriously, Shino? I never knew that you can do gardening!" Exclaimed one surprised Yamanaka Ino, who clearly wasn't expecting the fact that the most enigmatic member of the Rookie 9 could do such a thing.

"I can plant vegetables, if that's what you're asking. Other than that, I consider pointless. Why? Because risking our backside to lean down and plant the seeds has the chance of resulting in backaches during a mission."

If anything, Spiderman's opinion of the people around him being strange was tripled. '...whole my life I thought of ninjas as cool, silent-deadly assassins. I guess Uncle Ben gave me the wrong book about ninja fairy tale if the real ninjas can actually do FREAKING GARDENING!'

"Well, that's the end of my introduction. Next is..." Shino looked around, trying to find the appropriate person to go next, until his eyes landed on Chouji who was still munching on his potato chips. Strange thing was, the pack of potato chips had a different brand on it, which means that that's a new pack he was eating. "Chouji, if you would be so kind?"

"Oh, okay!" Chouji exclaimed, putting down his favorable snack on a nearby table, albeit a little hesitantly. Spiderman began taking mental notes of Chouji's appearance. As he had seen before, Chouji had red swirls—a tattoo, perhaps—one on each of his chubby cheeks. What he didn't realize before was that Chouji's spiky brown hair was long enough to reach his mid-back between his shoulder blades. He wore a set of what looked like a large breastplate with a kanji painted in red on it, covering his chest and belly while other metal pieces such as the forearm guards were placed at their respective position. Underneath the armor, he wore a red kimono-like clothing, though Spiderman couldn't really tell with the breastplate covering almost the entire clothing. For the legs, Chouji wore a matching red loose pants, the holes where his feet should stick out from was covered with bandages from his ankle to his shin. It was then that Spiderman decided that the bandages were the mainstream type of clothing for ninjas. And that's not to say that the shinobi sandals Chouji wore wasn't mainstream, either. His red-clothed hitai-ate was tied to his forehead.

"My name's Akimichi Chouji, Chuunin-level member of Team 10 along with Shikamaru and Ino. I like my teammates and friends, but the main thing I like is FOOD!" The way Chouji's eyes lit up at the mention of food left Spiderman gaping, "The two best kind of foods I like is yakiniku from Yakiniku Q and ramen from Ichiraku Ramen!" At that statement, both Chouji and Naruto gave each other a high-five, to which Spiderman sweat-dropped at.

'At least he has a high respect for food.' Spiderman forced himself to grin, "Oh, I see...so that's why you're so fa—" Suddenly, Naruto's hand slapped itself on Spiderman's mouth, silencing him effectively. Naruto leaned forward and glared at the bed-ridden hero and whispered dangerously to him, "Webhead, you don't want to finish that sentence. You never, and I mean never, call Chouji 'that'. It's taboo for him."

Thank God Spiderman's mouth was covered, thus his voice was muffled. Chouji eyes sparked dangerously, as if his fat-senses heard the word, "...did you say something?"

In the background, Lee suddenly let out a shout, "WOOOH! Chouji-kun has descended to the path of hipness!"

Naruto ignored Lee's comment and smiled nervously at the 'big-boned' teen, "Err...nothing Chouji! He didn't say anything!" Chouji raised an eyebrow of curiosity, before turning around and muttered something about gaijins not talking clearly. He thought a while, trying to choose the next person to do the introduction, until his eyes landed on a still lit-eyed Lee. "Lee, I guess that's your turn." He said, offering the spandex-wearing boy a smile.

"YOOSH! I will introduce myself as well as the Springtime of Youth to the youthful hero that is Spiderman!"

On the bed, Spiderman cowered under his blanket in fear. Just who the hell is this boy who had his teeth sparkle everytime he grinned? 'Damn, that almost blinded me. And his tights are worse than mine!' True enough, Lee wore a green spandex-like bodysuit which was his overall clothing. The only other clothing he wore are his light green Chuunin vest—which was lightly-colored to avoid being blended with his green spandex—orange leg warmers which had thin black stripes going vertically, and the blue-clothed Konoha hitai-ate tied to his waist like a belt. What Spiderman first noted, however, was the extremely thick pair of eyebrows Lee had, as well as his black hair in a bowl cut.

'...I assume that something lives in those eyebrows of his. And I've only seen so much green since the Hulk; and he's almost butt-naked with his green skin!'

"Alright! To start my youthful introduction, My name is Rock Lee! I'm a Chuunin-level ninja of team 9 with Neji and Tenten. I have no experience in using Ninjutsu or Genjutsu, because I can't use them!"

"I-I see..." Spiderman once again stared disbelievingly at one of the members of the Konoha Eleven. Hearing Lee's straightforward statement about him not being able to use Ninjutsu and Genjutsu was...kind of awkward, actually. Not much people would admit their weakness that easily. He was, however, surprised yet again by Lee suddenly boasting again, "However...I've trained what little talent I have in Taijutsu so that I become a Taijutsu specialist! I'll show to everyone that one can become a great ninja, even without the use of Ninjutsu and Genjutsu!"

Several people chuckled at Lee's statement; Neji and Tenten's being a bit louder while the latter shook her head, muttering, "There he goes with his dream again."

"Well, well...that's a nice dream. I didn't know being a ninja without being able to use Ninjutsu is possible, at least not until you told me that." Spiderman said, impressed by Lee's speech. Lee nodded at him before speaking up again, "My sensei, Gai-sensei has shown to me the path for those who work hard. He believes in me, that I can be a talented ninja by training my Taijutsu to its utmost capability."

"That's impressive." Inside his mind, the brunette that is Peter Parker thought, 'He became Chuunin only by using his hand-to-hand combat jutsu? That's no simple feat, even I know that. Hell, if it's true that the only thing he knows is Taijutsu and that he only trains himself in that department, he'd give me, Matt, Logan and Iron Fist a run for our money.'

Lee seemed a little confused when Spiderman fell silent, who unbeknownst to him was actually in deep thought. He turned a little sheepish when Naruto reminded him by mouthing "likes and dislikes, Bushy Brows!", so he continued, "My likes are training with Gai-sensei, going on youthful missions with my team, and impressing Sakura-san with my youthfulness!" At the last comment, Spiderman was caught slack-jawed, and a literal writing of 'Dafuq?' hanging in the air beside his head, while Naruto was caught gritting his teeth angrily, a vein popping near his temple. Sakura, for her part, allowed an anime sweat-drop to form on her forehead.

'You can't impress a girl with youthfulness! It's IMPOSSIBRU!' Spiderman screamed mentally, mentally raising his fist up as a gesture of his objection.

'Keep your hands away from Sakura-chan, you Centipede Brows!' Naruto thought, himself.

"My dislikes are unyouthful people doing unyouthful actions, and people who look down on other people's dreams!" Lee declared, fire blazing in his eyes throughout his speech. At the sight, Spiderman was hard-pressed not to think about a certain hell-biker who's eyes looked just as 'fired-up' as the spandex-wearing teen in front of him. "O...kay...hey, what's with the numerous mentioning about youth? Surely you don't use it for every sentence you use, do you?"

"On the contrary, actually I do. The reason I always say youth is because I'M MASS-DEMONSTRATING THE EFFECTS OF THE SPRINGTIME OF YOUTH!" On cue, Lee's eyes fired up yet again. In response, Spiderman had to make a rewrite of his thoughts. No, Lee didn't resemble Johnny Blaze the Ghost Rider, at all; the constant 'flame on' at the word youth actually resembled more to Johnny Storm the Human Torch.

Suddenly, a gloved hand clamped down on Lee's shoulder and proceeded to shove him out of the way, revealing the hand to belong to a pissed-looking Tenten, "All right, Lee. I think Spiderman already got the enough about this 'youth' thing. Look! You're scaring him!"

True, the fact that Spiderman had come to fear the idea of spandex-wearing teens screaming youth in his every step. No one knew that this occurence was a big turning point, where Spiderman had to rethink about his costume, which was also, more or less, a set of tights. '...I still think my costume is just as good as it gets, but I may have to change the design a bit.'

"You are correct, Tenten! Spiderman does look a little frightened, but it's because he hasn't got the taste of the Springtime of Youth!" Lee exclaimed.

"Enough with that!" Tenten did a hand-chop at Lee's head, a nerve growing on her temple. "Now, since you got your turn, that means Neji's next." Tenten gestured towards Neji, who looked back at her impassively. Lee nodded his head vigorously, agreeing with Tenten's suggestion, "And that he is! Neji, will you be so kind to give a youthful introduction about yourself?"

"I don't need you telling me to do it." Neji said, closing his eyes as if being in touch with a higher power. Despite the cold response, Lee wasn't fazed by it. It was the Hyuuga's natural talent to be strict and unfeeling, but well, Neji's been like that since the beginning. Lee had gotten accustomed with the white-eyed boy's cold responses and curt nods, having being his teammate since his Academy graduation and all.

Spiderman once again observed the teen in front of him, this time realizing that said teen's eyes are similar to Hinata's. Neji's hair was straight, long and dark-brownish, reaching his lower back. A pair of strands fell down framing his face. There's a strange kind of binding at the ends of his hair strands, to which Spiderman thought, 'Reminds me of Saruman's beard in terms of length. And by the binding around the ends of his hair, it's potentially longer than he lets on.' Neji wore what seemed like a white, single-buttoned yukata which had its button line diagonally crossing to the other side. His sleeves were loose, the circle of his sleeve getting bigger near his wrists. He also wore something that resembles a battle hakama, which reached his knees. Underneath it, he wore a pair of white long pants. He wore the same pair of sandals like the other ninjas. His hitai-ate was tied to his forehead.

"My name is Hyuuga Neji, Jounin-level member of team 9 with my teammates Lee and Tenten. As for my likes and dislikes, I don't really have much to tell about." He spoke. Still on the bed, Spiderman quirked an eyebrow at Neji. 'Brief and to the point, eh? Quite the grasp on military aspect for someone so young.' As Spiderman finished thinking, another thought passed his mind, 'Wait a minute...'

"Hey, uh...did you say that you're a Jounin?"

Neji blinked in surprise, obviously not prepared for that kind of question as that info was already known by a lot of his friends, "Yes, I did. Why?"

"Ah, nothing. It's just that, Jounin's above Chuunin, right? Why are you the only one being Jounin while your other two teammates still Chuunin?"

As if on cue, Tenten stepped forward with an excited smirk on her face, "Well, that's because Neji here is a prodigy! He's the only one of us who passed the Jounin Exams with flying colors."

Neji simply closed his eyes, thinking nothing of his achievement, "I simply think that fate made it so."

At the statement, Spiderman tilted his head questioningly, "Fate?" His question was left unheard as Naruto suddenly spoke up, his voice swallowing Spiderman's, "Oi, Neji, I thought we're already over this fate crap." An annoyed scowl formed on Naruto's lips. In response, Neji stared at him impassively, saying, "That's what you think. I myself don't remember making any promise about that."

'So we got a kid with a god complex, huh? Typical.' Spiderman thought, mentally clicking his tongue. To prevent further argument between the Hyuuga teen and Naruto, Spiderman interjected with a question, "Ano...you're a Hyuuga, too?"

"Yes, like I've said in my introduction. However, unlike Hinata-sama, I was born as a member of the branch family. And since Hinata-sama is my cousin who was born as a member of the main family, I'm tasked to be her servant."

Hinata flustered at the background, "A-ano, Neji-niisama, I...I don't think you a-as my serv-servant."

Neji smiled softly at her as he turned around, saying, "That's fine all the same, Hinata-sama. But whether you prefer it or not, that's who I am."

Meanwhile, Spiderman looked thoughtful as he cupped his chin with his thumb and pointer finger. A smile made its way to his face when she saw the exchange as he thought silently, 'It seems Hinata is too nice of a girl to actually order someone around.' He grinned before speaking again to Neji, "Well, your clan sounds a little complicated. I mean, with the main and branch thing in your family, you'd think that it's like the era of the warring states."

"You could say that." Neji complied, shrugging his shoulders.

"What's with that system, anyways? Can't you all be normal brothers and sisters?"

"I'm afraid we can't." Neji said, his tone opting a more sagely one as he closed his eyes and continued, "Fate made it so."

Yet again, these teenage ninjas made Spiderman drop an anime sweat from his forehead. To be honest, he had enough detail to make an outline of this ninja world which he first thought was filled with utter awesomeness.

They're a bunch of funny guys and girls.

Hell, if he didn't know better, they looked like some high scholars with a strange sense of fashion.

Seeing Spiderman nodding dumbly at him, Neji nodded back in reponse. As he turned around, Neji spoke up again, "Well, I guess that's all of us. Tenten, Ino, you've both met Spiderman before, haven't you?"

"Yup." Tenten answered.

"Then further introductions is unnecessary." Neji finished.

"What? Aww, but I didn't get to tell Spiderman my likes and dislikes!" Tenten suddenly exclaimed, while Ino came up beside her and backed her up, "Yeah, just because we've met him doesn't mean we already told him about ourselves."

Neji, seemingly unfazed by the two girls pleas, asked in a nonchalant way, "What's there to tell?" His question left Ino and Tenten fuming and glaring at him. Now, although Neji's a prodigy—also a darn talented Hyuuga to top it off—he couldn't understand the reason why the girls did so. But, hey, Byakugan is the (almost) All-Seeing Eye, not the All-Knowing Eye.

"Actually I have to agree with Neji, here." Spiderman said, surprising everyone especially the earlier angry girls. Before anyone could put up a response, he continued, "Not to be rude, but I've already known enough about you two."

"Oh really?" Tenten asked skeptically, her right eyebrow rising higher than the other mockingly, "Then please do elaborate, Mr.I-Know-Much."

"Well, for starters," Spiderman stretched his arms a bit forward, groaning as he did so, "Kureuzu Tenten, Chuunin-level kunoichi on the same team as Neji and Lee. Likes weapons, dislikes bitchy customers." At Spiderman's sudden statement, Tenten blushed as she was surprised that he knew that much. Several people in the room was surprised to hear Tenten's surname, which sounded foreign in their ears. Lee, for his part, exclaimed how "youthful" Tenten's surname is. In the end, she was left stuttering about how that wasn't entirely correct, "W-well, I don't really hate customers with an attitude. It's just that they're really annoying."

"Yeah, I get that a lot, too." Ino said sympathetically. Being a fellow seller, she completely understands what Tenten was going through. Costumers who asks for an 80% discount always struck a nerve; moreso when they're old hags who insults them for not giving any.

Unknown to them, Spiderman nodded sullenly. He, himself, had felt that kind of annoyance long ago. His career as Peter Parker, freelance photographer, had met many obstacles. One of them being one newspaper director trading his pictures for small cash. Coughing, he shoved that memory away from his thoughts. 'Now is not the time to think about Jerk Jonah Jameson.' He thought.

"Alright, moving on," Spiderman continued, "Yamanaka Ino, Chuunin-level kunoichi on the same team as Shikamaru and Chouji. Likes flowers among other things, dislikes bitchy customers."

"That's the same hypothesis as what you gave to Tenten!" Ino retorted.

"Well, isn't it true?" Spiderman shot back.

"...it is." All of the present ninjas sweat-dropped at the exchange. Logically speaking, all of a seller's dislike leans towards customer with an attitude, whether they want to admit it or not. Inwardly, Spiderman laughed proudly, thinking, 'Never underestimate my observational skills!' He may no be at Stephen Strange's level of sorcery, but even without magical powers Spiderman is one well-informed kind of guy.

"Well, that's all of them. Unless there's someone else coming in, I guess that's enough." Spiderman said, receiving nods from all the room's occupants.

"Wait a minute," Sakura suddenly spoke, "If that's the case, then that means you already knew Kakashi-sensei?" She pointed at the silver-haired, mask-wearing figure who was also bed-ridden on the bed next to Spiderman's; Kakashi's bed being closer to the window. As Spiderman looked to his side, preferably at Kakashi, he realized that he didn't even felt his presence there. His right eyebrow raised in curiosity, thinking about how did the silver-haired man who was reading an orange book slipped through his senses.

"Actually, I haven't. Strange, I didn't notice someone being there." Spiderman said, scratching his head sheepishly.

"Well, that's to be expected. Kakashi-sensei's presence is quite thin, after all." Naruto explained deductively. Meanwhile, Kakashi looked at him lazily and looked a little disappointed because of what Naruto said. "So I have a thin presence, huh? That's new..." He muttered.

Spiderman this time analyzed Kakashi's description. The man—he deducted that he looks and sounded too old for a mere teen—had silver hair, spiked in a way that it went sideways and somehow defies the law of gravity as it seemed to be stiffly raised. Trailing down, Spiderman noticed that Kakashi had only hi one right eye opened while the left one was closed with a scar trailing down vertically on his eyelid. A confused frown came up to Spiderman's lips as he once again delved into his thoughts, 'That scar...I guess not all things in this ninja world is as innocent as it seems.'

His eyes once again looked at Kakashi. Now, the other thing that caught his attention was the dark blue face mask which was covering the lower part of Kakashi's face; starting from his nose down to his neck, and seems to be knitted together with his dark blue sleeveless undershirt. At the sight of Kakashi's mask, Spiderman sweat-dropped while thinking, 'That's so straight out of Mortal Kombat.' After that, Spiderman's eyes landed on the peculiar book Kakashi held. The cover had a white, faceless humanoid figure with some thinking clouds which had pictures of hearts being crossed. Unfortunately, that was all that Spiderman could decipher as the book's title was imprinted in katakana.

'Urgh, these Japs and their ridiculous hand-writing! Raibi, I'll be borrowing your eyes again!' Spiderman yelled mentally. His tenant inside his subconcious nodded while saying, 'Knock yourself out.'

Spiderman narrowed his eyes as it transformed from brown to bright green with slits. Unbeknownst to all of the ninja present in the room, the web-slinger began scanning the book's cover.

Now, if one were to explain—in an awesomely bad-assed Terminator style—what Spiderman's mind was processing, this is the result, 'Targetting: Strange orange book. Origin unknown. Zooming...Targetting: Book's title. Warning! Foreign letters sighted. Translating...' Although on the outside, Spiderman was silent as he seemingly stared at the book (which prompted the group of Konoha Eleven to look at him like he's crazy while the girls, thinking that Spiderman is interested in the perverted book, gave him a disgusted look.), in his mind he was processing informations in a speed that made Tony Stark's Iron Man suit looks like an old computer. 'Translating complete. Result: Icha Icha Tactics. English translation report: Make-out Tactics.' At the revelation, Spiderman gave Kakashi a look that kind of resembled Barrack Obama, then proceeded to give him the 'not bad' look.

Kakashi, realizing that Spiderman was checking out his book, raised his eyebrows in surprise, "Hmm, it seems that you noticed the book. Judging by the look you have on your face, I'd say you want to borrow it."

"That depends. Is the content of the book as vulgar as the title?" Spiderman asked. Kakashi eye-smiled at the freshly-promoted Chuunin, which was the equivalent of a smile in Kakashi's case since his mouth is covered by his face mask. "It is, plus a set of other things." Now, though Kakashi said that with an innocent tone, all of the kunoichi in the room shuddered and gave him a glare. Clearly they were feeling scandalized.

"Hmm...maybe I should—"

"NO! Absolutely no!" Sakura suddenly exclaimed, surprising Spiderman by the bluntness. "That book is downright perverted! It's bad enough that we have one pervert reading it, and I don't want anyone else reading that! Understand?"

"Err...but Sakura, that book couldn't be that bad...ne?"

Sakura leveled a glare at Spiderman, to which he suddenly quivered at. Somehow, the glare made him feel tiny. "Do you understand or not?" Sakura growled, cracking her knuckles while a dark shadow came over her back. At the scary sight, Spiderman was once again reminded how scary women could be.

"...h-hai."

"Good." Sakura huffed. The others sweat-dropped at the scene, individually thinking about the connection between the Icha Icha Tactics book and Sakura. Actually, Sakura hates all of the Icha Icha series. Hell, if she ever get her hands on the author she would rip his hands off and make him eat them.

(In another place, Jiraiya sneezed. Then, he looked at his hands and felt the urge to throw up; which he did.)

"Well, I guess I should get starting, huh?" Kakashi said, sighing tiredly before closing his orange book. At the exact time, something seemed to disappear from Kakashi's lone eye. Spiderman thought it was only him, but he could swear that that thing that disappeared from Kakashi's eye was his life force. Spiderman frowned, inwardly sweat-dropping again, 'Is that book of his so important to him that it almost rivals his life's importance?'

"Hmm, how should I start? My name is Kakashi. Hatake Kakashi, to be exact. I'm Team 7's Jounin team leader as well as their sensei."

"Oh, I see. So Yamato-taichou really is just a stand-in." Spiderman said. He unconciously sat straighter; meeting Naruto's team leader had somehow made him a little nervous, and the fact that Kakashi looks mysterious didn't help.

Kakashi eye-smiled at Spiderman, something that the American hero thought he should get used to that miniscule gesture of friendliness. Then, as Kakashi felt several eyes looking at him, he opened his right eye and realized that several, if not all, teenage ninjas looking at him expectantly. Naruto and Sakura, in particular, looked with starry eyes as the blond then said, "Kakashi-sensei, remember! Likes and dislikes!"

The silver-haired Jounin looked at Naruto helplessly. Somehow, his eyes conveyed the message just so, because just by looking at his right eye anyone could tell that he wasn't prepared for that. However, Kakashi prevailed, and eventually spoke up again, "Hmm...likes and dislike, huh? Well, I like a lot of things, and I don't particularly dislike anything."

The combination of the following sweat-drop that the other ninjas produced—Spiderman included—could rejuvenate the Sahara desert to the point it'll be turned into a rainforest. Well, metaphorically speaking, anyway.

Naruto sighed disappointedly, mentally groaning while thinking, 'I guess some things won't change...'

Sakura's sigh soon followed, coincidentally continuing Naruto's thoughts, 'In the end, all we get to know is...'

Somehow, Spiderman's thought was also coincidentally a continuation of Sakura's though; thus, if drawn comically, forming a connected thinking bubble, 'JUST HIS FREAKING NAME!'

"Well, now since that's been taken care of..." Kakashi muttered lazily, flipping open his orange *cough*perverted*cough* novel and continued reading it where he left off. Spiderman's eye twitched at the sudden change of situation. He couldn't even begin to understand why people like this are selected to be ice-cold, cold-blooded, blood-bathing (enough with the Shiritori, already!) ninjas. Damn, not even Tony Stark is this much of a pervert.

"You guys...are not what I expected you to be, honestly." Spiderman admitted.

"Well, what exactly do you expect? Being unexpected is what we ninjas do." Sakura said, looking at Spiderman incredulously. Spiderman sighed; the fact remains that he couldn't get an actual picture of the ninjas he has allied himself with. "Still, that doesn't explain about you guys. Heck, the closest idea of ninjas I had in mind resembles Kakashi; and that's minus the pervy book in his hands!"

"Exactly how do you picture ninjas in your mind? I'm getting kind of curious as well." Tenten suddenly pointed out.

"It's not just me. Every other people in my nation, heck, the whole dang world thinks you all as ice-cold, mask-wearing mercenaries." Spiderman explained, stressing the point about being mask-wearing mercenaries boldly. He then huffed, "The more I think of it, the more I believe that I'm the actual ninja here. What, with me wearing a mask and all, Japs would recruit me in their ninja battalion had I been born in the era of warring states."

There was a pause. At first, Spiderman thought that they were looking thoughtful after hearing his statement. Instead, when he looked at the teenage ninjas, all he got were blank looks and blinks of surprise. Suddenly, Lee raised his right hand as he seemed wanting to say something, "Uh, if I may, Spiderman...although it's youthful of you to think yourself as a ninja because you said you're wearing a mask, the youthful fact is you're not."

"What?" Spiderman let out.

"You're not wearing your mask." Ino answered.

"Come again?"

"FOR KAMI'S SAKE, JUST LOOK AT A MIRROR OR SOMETHING!" Sakura shoved a mirror with a handle towards Spiderman's chest, receiving a surprised grunt from the man. Glaring at the pink-haired girl for doing that (remember, he's still wounded, and his wounds are heaviest at the chest area.), he grumpily raised the mirror in his right hand's grip. He half-expected to have a reflection of his triangular-eyed Spiderman mask to look back at him, to which he would be grateful, if not a bit annoyed that he was being trolled at.

Sadly, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, what he saw wasn't the reflection of his Spiderman mask, at all.

He saw himself. From the dark, lazy brown hair, the brown eyes, the pointed nose, the gaping mouth which was held in place by surprise...it's all his. Well, it all belongs to Peter Parker, to be precise. As Peter raised his hand to his face, disbelievingly caressing his cheek and his eyes widened in shock, all he could let out...well, he didn't let anything out in the instant per se; rather, he sat there as if frozen.

Eventually, Peter laughed dryly, gaining confused looks from the other occupants. As his laugh receeded, Peter spoke up again, "Reeaal funny guys. You think I would be so easily tricked by placing a picture of a face on the mirror? I think not. And that's a rather similar face to mine, as well..."

Just how dumb does this guys gets?

That thought passed through the minds of the inner circle of team 7; Naruto and Sakura, to be precise. The others...well they thought the same thing, too. Sakura suddenly looked annoyed if the nerve popping on her temples means anything, then grabbed the mirror out of Peter's hands. She then proceeded to yell at him, "You think it's a trick? This is real, and you're really unmasked! And even if it was a trick, how could we make a perfect copy of your face without knowing how you actually look like?"

Peter's face stayed blank for a moment, making everybody think that he was losing in this banter. When he did speak up, he put his right fist on his left palm as if he just realized something, "Point taken." Then suddenly, he face-palmed, "Well, dang it, I guess I am unmasked."

The others sweat-dropped seeing Peter's anti-climactic reaction. After an awkward silence, Naruto voiced his curious thoughts that has been going through his mind throughout said silence, "So...that's it? Just like that?"

"Just like...what?"

"THAT! JUST LIKE THAT! So you're gonna take you being unmasked just like that? I thought you'd be angry."

Peter shrugged, "Well, what happened, happened. I can't change that. Just one question though, who unmasked me? Oh, oh, and where's my mask? I'm a bit over-possessive about my belongings, so I would like to take it sooner than later."

Naruto flinched visibly. When he noticed that everyone had their attention on him because of that flinch, he looked at his lap with his fists clenching. Everyone—safe for Sakura and Sai—looked confused and wondered what is wrong with the blond-haired Uzumaki. In the background, Hinata looked concerned by Naruto's reaction. There was a look of distraught that crossed his face just now, and even though she didn't have her Byakugan activated, she could see that.

Eventually, Naruto opened his mouth and talked, "I...I did. I took off your mask." He looked up at Peter who had a confused look on his face, "I took it off when you were injured after fighting Sasuke."

"Ah, that time when I was unconcious, huh?" Peter inquired.

Naruto just nodded, "Sakura-chan was healing you, but your mask was making you hard to breath. I had no other option but to tear it off so that you could breathe properly." Naruto was expecting Peter to hit him, yell at him, or at the very least look at him in disappointment. He knew what the risks of taking a hero's mask are. However, that time was not one to think about risks. Peter's live was in danger, and the only way to save him was to take off his mask.

But now that he's safe, and the truth being inquired, Naruto didn't know whether he could be forgiven or not.

"Really, now? Heh..."

Naruto blinked. That wasn't the reaction he was expecting. Peter didn't seem angry at all; rather, he looked...well, Naruto can't describe it clearly, but Peter was grinning playfully at him. "You should've let Sakura take off my mask. Letting a guy take off my mask is like letting a guy take off my clothes, and I'm proud to tell you that I'm straight and I'd like to keep it that way."

Eyebrows raised in amusement, blushes travelled upwards to the girls' cheeks, and a laugh came from one Inuzuka Kiba, "Man, I told you that this guy is cool!"

"Wha...you're not mad?" Naruto asked to Spiderman.

"Mad? Why should I be? Unless of course, you did something funny when you take off my mask, if you catch my drift." The joke caused Kiba's laughter to return. Naruto looked at Peter in surprise and shock, while Sakura just stared at him with an interested look on her face. She, too, thought that Peter would be angry that they took off his mask without his permission. Suddenly, she formed a question in her mind, "Wait a minute. You're not angry that we took off your mask without your permission? I thought you need it to cover your identity. And don't all of the Avengers make a great deal out of it?"

"To answer your questions, Sakura," Peter cleared his throat to add effect, "Not all of the Avengers wear masks, though the majority of us do. And about me getting angry at you for taking off my mask...well, I'm just not."

"But why?" Sakura asked again.

"We super-heroes do make a great deal out of covering our identity, because we have to protect our precious ones from our enemies. If they ever know who we are, they'd target our families first, then our friends and so on." Spiderman explained, proudly giving himself a mental pat on the back for finally speaking for all the super-heroes, or the majority of them, at least.

"Then why?" Suddenly, Sakura stood up from her chair, nearly knocking it over, "Why trust us, a group of people you don't even know? How could you trust strangers like us when we have the probability to become your enemies?"

Beside her, still seated, Naruto blinked in surprise. He, too, was confused to why Spiderman was a little too carefree about his face being exposed, but Sakura's reaction was unexpected. Why was she asking these things? Why say that they could be Spiderman's enemies? And what's with the raised tone she used?

Surprisingly, however, Peter didn't retaliate. Instead, he grinned widely. Perhaps he is amused by the sight of Sakura's distressed face, or perhaps he noticed something strange that Sakura had said. Anyhow, he just grinned at the pink-head, prompting to catch her off-guard. Peter then spoke up, "But, Sakura, you're not strangers. None of you are."

"What?"

"You see, at first, I have my doubts about having you all see my face. People...bad people had seen my face one time too many." The American shook his head before laughing lightly, "But you, all of you, gave me your names so readily. Not only that, but even your personal information. Try to think it like this; has it ever occured to you that by giving me your names and affiliation I might use it and turn against you?"

At the revelation, silence ensued. Truth is, no one did. Part of it was because Spiderman is a well-known hero, and him being the bad-guy type is near impossible to them; but that is no excuse. In the end, for the ninjas—excluding Naruto, Sakura and Sai—Spiderman is the stranger. Heck, Ino and Tenten didn't even know him that well.

"N-no..." Sakura let out, feeling her energy leaving her.

"Exactly. In the end, letting you see my real face is the least I can do in exchange for your trust." Peter paused. During that pause, he looked a little solemn as he smiled a bit. Unbeknownst to anyone but himself, Peter was reminiscing his past memories. The ones he was looking back at was the ones of his younger days, when all he knew and came to believe was taught by his aunt, May Parker.

Yes, if it wasn't for the diligent old woman, Peter wouldn't be who he is.

"Thank you for that. And, just to let you know, I trust you enough to let you see my face; so explain to me how I should be mad again." Peter said, making Sakura fall silent and slowly backed down on her seat. She was dumbstruck; how could someone be so trusting with another, to the point where that someone would entrust his secret to a group of strangers? And she wasn't the only one being amazed. Kakashi, in particular, now had his eyes looking curiously at the brunnete.

In general, all eyes were on Peter now.

A warm feeling came over the room. A feeling of gratitude, one that spread its warmth throughout everyone's body. To them, for someone like the amazing Spiderman to trust them that much...it's an honor.

Ino, feeling daring, shot a question of her own, "Then, do you trust us enough to tell us your name?"

Aaand that warm feeling went down the drain as the room's temperature dropped. Glares were sent at Ino, Sakura's being more prominent as she hissed at the blonde girl, "Ino! That's taking it too far! We should be grateful that he let us see his face." Ino's face dropped in disappointment. She suddenly felt guilty for even daring to ask such a question. She couldn't help it; cute guys tend to make her more interested.

"It's okay, Sakura, don't blame her for being curious." Peter smiled at Ino, who blushed in that instant. Peter's eyes suddenly widened, as if he realized something. He then spoke up again, this time with an excited smile, "You know what? I think telling my name is a wish to be granted, after all!"

"Y-you mean..." Ino stuttered.

"Yup! So, uh...how do we do it, err, likes and dislikes too, right?"

Now, if anyone was surprised before, they were utterly shell-shocked now. Not only he was okay with them seeing his face, but now he wants to tell his name? His real name, by the way?

Naruto frowned, "Are you...really okay with that?"

In turn, Peter smiled, "Of course! We're all friends here, aren't we? I trust you enough to at least know my name. That is, unless you're a super-villain bent on destroying my entire life..."

"NO!" The entire room shook. Peter smirked; it seemed that he now had their attention. It was amusing how they are so curious about his identity. Usually, he doesn't give out names, not his real one. But something about them made him feel comfortable. It made him feel...welcome. And for that alone, he'd give up his identity. Hell, if the members of team 7 risked their lives to save him before, telling his real identity pales in comparison.

"Alrighty, then. How should I begin...?" Peter rubbed his hands together, which ceased the next second he talked again, "My name is Peter Parker, amateur photographer, and a member of the Avengers. My codename is Spiderman, for those who haven't known about it. My likes are web-slinging, going out with my pals, and kicking major butt! My dislikes are super-villains who hurt my precious people, and flying gliders."

"Flying wha?" A confused Naruto let out.

"Trust me, you'll hate it when you see it, too."

The room exploded in laughter. Some of them were reserved chuckles, others...not so reserved, at all. There was an unexplainable happiness that overcame them all when Peter gave the introduction. What that is? Like I said, it's unexplainable. But the teenage ninjas didn't take the matter so seriously. In any case, they were happy. Eventually, a grin formed on Peter's face. He, too, felt that warmth of unexplainable happiness. Somehow, after telling them his identity, he felt a weight lifted off of his shoulder. If it wasn't for his injuries, he was sure he'd do cartwheels around the room. Fortunately, Lee has done it for him.

As the day progressed, that warm feeling didn't disappear. So warm was the feeling, that it somehow affected the sky.

Yes...as a rainbow formed after a heavy rain, everyone basked in its radiance.

End of Chapter 25

xoxoxo

If anyone finds the chapter a bit corny and rushed, trust me, so do I. I'm not really cut out for writing dramatic scenes, just as I'm not actually talented in writing about emotions with inexplicable depth.

...okay, that sounded too much like Sai.

Sakura: Damn right. What was holding you for the update, anyway? I knew you were slow, but I didn't know that you're a freaking snail!
Me: So mean...TT_TT I was on holiday to Australia when I wrote this, and the freaking hotels didn't give any free wifi's. Freaking guys even try to charge anything miniscule, like watching a movie!
Sakura: Good thing I'm Asian.
Me: Correction. You're an Asian cartoon.
Sakura: Grrhh! Why you-!

Now, before Sakura kills me for telling her what she really is, let me close this chapter first. Err, how should I do this? Oh, yeah! Keep tuning in, and R&R!

Sakura: COME HERE!
Me: GYAAA! Help me, somebody~!

1) Gaijin: It literally translates into "stranger". I read in a book that this word is used as a harsh calling for a stranger, but I think all Japanese in general might've used this word for every stranger. And since Spidey IS a stranger, so Kakashi called him so.

P.S: If anyone's wondering about Spidey's new seal, I'll be starting to make a drawing of it later. Don't expect anything epic, though, since the app I'm gonna use is Paint. Freaking PAINT which doesn't really gives so much thought in putting drawings into HD quality.