After Naruto was finished eating he sat back in his seat and folded his hands in his lap and just sat there enjoying the company that he was in as he digested his food while Kakashi got up to go and pay for the food. Shay looked at Naruto who looked like he was starting to doze off and chewed on her bottom lip for a second and silently debated with herself on whether or not she should go to the bathroom since she had been holding it for the past forty five minutes or so.

She wanted to tell Naruto that she needed to go to the restroom, yet at the same time it was sort of an embarrassing subject to say to a guy that you didn't really know all that well. After another second or so she carefully slid herself out of her seat and quietly made her way to the narrow hall way across from the kitchen where the bathroom was and started to slip inside when someone came out of the men's room.

Shay froze and stared at him for a second and recognising him as one of the guys that had exchanged words with Naruto and Kakashi. She blushed and quickly skirted around him, not really wanting to explain her need for the ladies room and slipped through the swinging door and found herself an empty stall.

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Naruto was dozing when Kakashi returned to the table and laid a hand on his shoulder and scanned the patrons before leaning down and whispering. "Naruto, where is Shay?" Naruto's eyes snapped open and his body jerked under his former sensei's hand as he planted his hands on the table with a bang as he scanned the faces at the tables and booths.

"I don't see her anywhere."

"Yes. I know. I can't see her either." Kakashi said quietly as he scanned the room again as Choza came walking up, a frown on his face.

"Is something wrong?" The man asked curiously as he looked around the room absent mindedly noting that Shikaku wasn't drinking in his booth.

"Shayera is missing." Naruto hissed in a low angry tone, his mind going through some scenario's that could explain why the girl was missing. Choza blinked and looked around the room again wondering if someone had managed to snatch the girl and if so, could they still be in the restaurant?

"Do you think she could have slipped away to use the ladies room?" Choza asked as he scratched his cheek. Naruto scowled at him. It was a possibility that Shay had gone to the ladies room, but he was sure that she would have said something since she knew that there were people around who would hurt her if she gave them a chance to get their hands on her. So that left the question, why had she left his side without saying anything?

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Shay stood at the sink washing her hands when a woman with shoulder length blue hair wearing skimpy teal silk oriental style dress walked in and walked over to the counter. Shay looked over at her, she just couldn't seem to help herself. For some odd reason or another she just seemed to be digging the bright colors and designs around her. Almost like a raccoon liked shiny things, her eyes were simply drawn to things that looked interesting or pretty.

"Well. Your pretty." The woman said as she pulled out a little tube of ruby red lip stick. Shay blinked and looked away, blushing a little bit and unsure if the woman was talking to her or her own reflection until the woman set her lip stick aside and looked at her.

"Your new around the village." The woman said as she looked Shay over from head to foot. Shay suppressed the urge to shiver as she looked at woman's eyes. She would have been stunningly beautiful if it wasn't for those cold mint green eyes.

She had the eyes of a shark or something. "Uhh...y-yeah..." Shay said nervously as she turned off the water and looked around for a paper towel or something to dry her hands with when the woman asked.

"Have you made any new friends?"

This was a trap. Shay sensed it the second the woman's question left her lips. Her heart slammed against her ribs in alarm and she suddenly felt that she couldn't turn her back on the woman so she stood very still and wiped her wet hands on her capri pants as the woman went on. "I saw you sitting with some little blond-" Her unnaturally sweet voice slowly becoming venomous. "He looks nice. He has that...boy next door look that kind of pulls you in and hides his true nature. Tell me honey, do you like associating with the village demon?"

Shay's temper spiked a little bit and she stared at the woman as if she'd like her to burst into flames. Just who the hell did she think she was talking about Naruto like that. Nasruto had been nothing but nice and kind to her the whole time that she had been in the village. He was a genuinely kind and sweet natured person!And Shay would be lying if she said that hearing someone refer to the blond as a demon didn't bother her. Because it bothered her a lot.

The woman laughed softly, obviously amused by Shay's anger. "Naruto is a nice guy. He doesn't deserve to be called a demon-" Shay started to say when the woman's hand shot out and caught her across the face. Shay's head jerked to the side and her self defense training took hold. She turned her head to look at the woman, her mind going blank as her hand shot out and caught the woman's cheek with her palm.

The loud crack of flesh hitting flesh sounded so distant over the roaring of blood in her ears. The woman looked at her for a second and smiled a very creepy, very chilling smile and grabbed the front of Shay's shirt. Shay retaliated by grabbing her wrist and planting her fist in her face, the blow causing the woman to lose her grip on her shirt and stagger back a step or two, pissing the woman off even more if the way Shay suddenly found the woman's foot in her stomach was any indication at all.

The air rushed from Shay's lungs and everything went blank as her temper reached it's boiling point.

When all sense of self returned Shay stood over the woman, panting. Her wrist and shoulder throbbing painfully. Jesus Christ. Just what the hell had she done? She wondered when she felt a hand fall on her shoulder and turned her head to look at the scared face of the man that she had passed when she had first come in here. "Y-You-"

"Damn girl. I knew that there was going to be trouble, when I saw her walk in. But I guess I shouldn't have worried about Naruto's little tiger."

"Don't call me that."

"Don't call you what? Naruto's? Or a tiger?"

"Either. I'm not Naruto's and I'm not a tiger." Shay said as she shrugged his hand off of her shoulder with a small winch. The man got an amused look on his scared face and looked around as the broken tile's on the wall and the woman bleeding and unconscious on the floor.

Uh-huh. He thought as she slipped around him and out of the bathroom. He looked around the room one last time and made a small mental note to tell Choza that he'd pay for the repairs since he doubted that Naruto could and slipped out of the room behind her so that he could tease her a little more.

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Naruto shrugged off Kakashi's hand and slipped out of his seat and was about to go down the narrow hall a few feet away and look for her when he saw Shikaku coming out of the hallway behind Shay. The man was slouching a little bit, sort of like Kakashi did when he was trying to lure someone into a false sense of security so that he could knock them around. He leaned over Shay a little bit and said something that made her turn her head to glare at him as he straitened his spine a little bit and snickered as she growled something back to him before leaving his side and returning to the table.

"Shayera? Are you okay?" Naruto asked as she finally reached them, he held out his hand and waited until she took it before pulling her into his arms and doing a quick stock of things to make sure that she was really okay, noting the way she flinched when his hand reached her shoulder blades. All in all the small display of affection took no longer than a second or two, and to anyone looking, it would see like nothing more than a hug between friends.

But it had been enough for him to catch the faint traces of blood on her skin and to know that she was hurt. He just wasn't sure how badly she was hurt.

"I'm fine Naruto." Shay said with a tight lipped smile and Naruto looked at her for a second, his brows slanted down in an almost angry frown before he looked at Kakashi who simply shrugged though he could understand the teens confusion.

Something must have happened that Shay didn't want them to know about. It was easy to tell that she was hiding something from the way that she was acting.

"I'm ready to go. Are you guys ready? I'm ready." Shay babbled for a second before grasping Naruto's hand then slowly made her way to the door before Naruto could so much as say a word.

That is the absolute last time that I ever use a public bathroom. Shay thought as her eyes started to burn a little bit and she hastily wiped at her eyes to make sure that the tears didn't slip as images of the fight flashed through her mind.

Her left shoulder and right wrist were both throbbing from where she had been slammed into the red and cream tile wall just under the napkin dispenser. And she wasn't completely sure but it felt like her back had been cut by the broken tiles or something, she could pretty much feel the blood starting to leak through the rips in her shirt.

Naruto followed behind her and looked back at Kakashi who was talking with Shikaku in whispered tones, obviously trying to figure out what had happened before he followed them out. Which gave Naruto enough time to pull her into the alley just outside of the restaurant and forcibly turn her so that her hands were braced on the brick wall in front of her and started to pull her shirt up so that he could see her back.

"Naruto?"

"Hush, don't draw attention to us. Just let me see how bad it is."

"I'd really rather not." Shay said softly as she rested her forehead on her arm.

Naruto gave a quiet humorless laugh. "Yes. I can see that. Now please be quiet and let me see how bad it is." Naruto said gently as he pulled the back of her shirt up a little more and lightly ran his finger tips along the middle of her back, right over her spine where he could see and feel little gnashes in her skin.

He narrowed his eyes and slipped his hand a little further up, and froze when she flinched away from his hand.

"Where does it hurt the most?" He asked as his fingers came into contact with something warm and sticky.

"It hurts everywhere." Shay hissed as he hiked the back of her shirt up a little more and nearly screamed when Naruto seemed to dig his finger nails into her skin. She made a funny sound and jerked away from him, trying to escape him. Naruto muttered something under his breath and moved himself closer to her until he had her completely trapped between his body and the wall.

"Naruto-"

"Hush Shayera." Naruto said in a rough voice as he put a hand over her mouth to help her be quiet as he hiked her shirt up around her shoulders and gave a low feral sounding growl as he pressed his body just a little bit closer and used the fore arm of his free hand to push her front against the wall in front of her completely as he caught sight of a jagged piece of glass sticking out of one of the deep cuts on her left shoulder and tried to dig it out knowing that the wound would get infected if it wasn't taken care of.

He could dig it out now then go and take Shayera to see Tsunade so that she could take care of her back properly. Shay grabbed the hand covering her mouth and made a strangled sound as she dug her finger nails into his skin as he worked the piece of glass out of her back a little bit at a time and held it in his hand.

Shay was shaking and crying, her finger nails had clawed away at some of the skin on his hand and he was bleeding as he threw the piece of bloody glass aside and let Shay's shirt fall back into place and pulled her back away from her wall and held her against him, making sure to keep his hands close to her waist so that he didn't accidentally hurt her even more than he already had. "I'm sorry Shay." He said quietly as he rested his cheek on the top of her head for a second and tried to control his impulse to go back into Choza's restaurant and murder the one who had hurt Shay.

Kakashi stood around the corner waiting for Naruto to calm himself. To be perfectly honest he was just a little bit sceptical of what Shikaku had told him about Shay taking on a woman in the ladies room because of something she had said about Naruto.

Shay didn't seem like the type of person who would lose her temper and get into a knock down drag out fight with some chunin level nin in the bathroom. But he found it fascinating that Shikaku obviously thought that that was what had happened.

Maybe I should keep a closer eye on Miss Michales from now on.

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Wow. This was a long and sucky chapter...

I'm sorry but I was trying to lead up to a trip to the tower where Shay would meet Tsunade and Naruto would be sent off on a mission that would take him out of the village for three or four days, leaving Shay in the care of Kakashi.