A note to all my loyal readers/reviewers: guys, if you find any stories that are plagiarized (words or ideas) off this one, please let me know, okay? I'm sick of people stealing my ideas. Like, really, really sick of it; my stomach is tying itself in knots again.

Disclaimer: THIS PLOT IS MINE. MI-I-I-INE. Naruto? Not so much. But the plot is MINE.
Dedication: Eleni. I lurve you.
P.S.: "It's not a retard-kid, it's a dead body." - My mom, on the 'thunk-ing' sound in the backseat of our car. Not even kidding. My mom is win. Like, actually.

…---…

Down, down, down, down, down, everybody's falling down, down, down, down, down, everybody. Cherry-cherry, boom-boom…

…---…

The Mary-Sue Audi was still sitting quietly in the middle of the square, when the boys finally showed up. Shikamaru gave it the stink-eye, sighed, and turned to look at Naruto, pulling himself out of the silver Viper he'd gotten for his seventeenth birthday.

Really, that poor, poor car.

Shikamaru shoved his hands in his pockets, and waited for his friends to file out of the two cars.

"Where the hell are we?" Suigetsu muttered.

Kiba shrugged, his shoulders, and his voice, tense. "Downtown, somewhere. Doesn't matter. We have to split up and look for them."

Shikamaru shook his head. "Slow down, dude. Stop and think. They could only be in a few buildings around here."

The guys goggled at him. "What?"

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. Didn't they think? "Look, the building they're in has to be one of the ones that are lit up. We can probably rule out anything small; it'll be one of the high-rises."

"So, which one?" Naruto asked, his voice as quiet and tense as Kiba's had been.

Shikamaru sighed. "Think, Naruto, think. There are only three buildings that are actually lit up, so it has to be one of those three."

"Which one?"

"Go methodically. Start with that building there, that one on the left. Search it. They can't have gone that far."

"Good point. Let's go," Suigetsu muttered, a little annoyed.

"Shouldn't we split up? They're-, fuck, they're-" Kiba asked, his voice still very, very tense, the muscles in his neck bunched and taut.

"Hell no." Shikamaru said. "We don't know where they are. They might not even be here of their own volition. So don't blame them yet."

"Fine. Can we just go?!"

"Yeah, book it."

At a nod from Shikamaru, the boys headed towards the first building. It loomed quietly out the darkness, emanating emptiness and calm.

Sasuke didn't believe it for a second. He pushed lightly on the glass door; it was locked. "Try the back, Naruto," he muttered, and watched the blonde's head, glimmering faintly in the moonlight, give a vague nod, and then sprint off towards the back of the building.

It was eerily quiet for a few moments.

Then a shout of laughter, and sounds of violence. The guys didn't even look at each other, and booked it to where Naruto was, surrounded by unconscious guards.

The seventeen-year-old boy was grinning like a maniac, hands shoved in his pockets.

Suigetsu gave Naruto a deadpan look. "Dude… That's a little scary."

"What? I knocked three of them out, and then they, uh, realized I was here."

"Were you pretending to be a ninja again?"

"….No-o-o-o…"

Neji rolled his eyes. "Gentlemen, why are we here, again?"

"Wha-?"

"The girls?"

"Right, fuck, let's go."

The six males slipped in through the back door, unlocked and opened nicely for them. Of course, before they went in, they grabbed the guards' heavy black bullet-proof vests, and slipped them on. No reason to be stupid about things like this.

And considering the jobs they normally did, this was hardly decked out for body armor.

Neji quietly tuned himself into the constant hum of Tenten-radar he'd developed recently. He always knew where she was; even right now, he knew she wasn't hurting, and wasn't worried. She was probably pissed off, but not worried or hurt.

So he figured that it was best not to panic at the current moment. He had too much to deal with; but right now, Tenten was his top priority.

He cast his gaze over his friends quickly, taking stock of what they were feeling. Naruto was still grinning maniacally, but there was fear in his eyes. Kiba's whole body was taut with tension (Neji quietly wondered what had gone down between him and the loud, model-like blonde that he'd been so protective of). Shikamaru looked, well, bored. Suigetsu had Naruto's manic grin reflected on his lips.

And Sasuke was simply standing as still as a statue.

Well, there was really no mistaking that his friends cared too much for the weird girls who had slowly, but rather surely, wormed a way into their hearts.

His heart did an angsty convulsion as he thought of Tenten. Was she scared? Worried? Hurt?

He hoped to god not, and carefully steeled himself for more misery. Just in case.

"Let's find those crazy bitches," Sasuke said.

And in they went.

…---…

Sakura clenched her fists beneath the table.

It was a long table; and the girls were all sitting on the right side of it. Candle-light flickered, illuminating the dark room in shadows and make-believe stories. The table cloth was the deep red of spilled wine, and made of thick, expensive silk.

It was really lovely; the room they were in, at any rate. Ebony and ivory and burgundy silk lined the room; made it beautiful. The company?

Not so much.

Their forced host was sitting across from them, smiling a cruel, destructive smile, his golden eyes flickering almost exactly the way the candles were.

Sakura flexed her fingers for the nth time that night, and contemplated just knocking the table over, sending food flying every, and just booking it the hell out of there.

Running away had always worked before, so why wouldn't it work now?

Well, actually, she knew exactly why it wouldn't work… There were guards at all the doors, and they all probably had guns.

Normally, this would not have phased Sakura; but then, she normally had a personal guard dog who was a hundred times more dangerous then any of the beings in this room.

Sakura's eyes drifted to the creep with golden eyes and the hiss lisp. Well, maybe more dangerous then almost all of them - that thing looked dangerous (read: more dangerous then a pissed-off Temari), and Sakura had no intention of putting herself and her friends at any sort of disadvantage.

And over-turning the table might induce a slight disadvantage.

Note the sarcasm.

So Sakura sat quietly, and glared down at the food in front of her. The creep was eating slowly, a rapists' smile on his lips.

The shadow-non-entity-boy was hovering anxiously at his side. Sakura rolled her eyes to herself. What an annoying person.

"Aren't you going to eat anything, girls?"

The hissed words sent shivers up Tenten's very, very awake spine. They were pleaseant words, said in a pleasant tone, but the way he said them… It just made Tenten shake.

The bun-haired Overlord of Melons could feel Sakura next to her, flexing her fingers. Tenten almost had the nerve to elbow her to get her to stop.

Now was definitely not the time.

"No, thank you," Hinata answered quietly. There were drugs in the food; how she knew, she didn't know. She just did. "We ate earlier."

"Ah," the creepo sighed. "How unfortunate. It is a pity really."

Hinata inclined her head barely an inch, and gently prodded Ino in the side. The blonde was still very close to falling back asleep, her head an inch from dropping onto Hinata's shoulder and falling back into the world of dreams.

The food was quickly cleared away, on a command that was unseen by the girls.

The pale man with the golden eyes smiled at them, and there was something horrific about the way his skin pulled up. It was a joker's a smile, a wild-card's smile.

And it was terrifying.

Sakura shuddered, and carefully linked her fingers through both Tenten's and Karin's, on each of her left and right side, respectively. She squeezed their hands to let them know that she wasn't going to be letting go of them any time soon.

Or so she hoped.

Instead of pondering the frightening alternatives, she looked the pale man in the face. "So, are you gonna tell us exactly who you are, or-?"

The horrible smile remained on his lips. "Ah, I entirely forgot. Introductions. They're such unnecessary things. But I suppose I ought to let you girls in on a few little secrets of mine."

"We just want to know your name. Well, actually, we really don't, but seeing as we're kind of stuck-" Sakura told him, quite frankly.

"You may call me Orochimaru," he said, and the girls all shuddered simultaneously. God, he was just so creepy…

It was Temari who spoke next. "So tell us why we're here. And where's Anko?"

He sighed dramatically again, and inspected his nails. What a moron (like, really, what sort of creep inspects his nails when he's basically threatening one with death?! NOT. COOL).

"My dears, really, why you're here is not of importance. But I suppose where little Anko is, is of some importance to you, yes?" he said, his voice whimsical, almost.

The girls sat rigidly, not moving, simply glaring at nothing and yet, at everything at the same time. They weren't looking anywhere particular, because if they did, they would all be glaring holes through the man called Orochimaru.

He was just such a creep.

He sighed theatrically, yet again. Creeper. "Ah, girls, girls, little Anko tells you nothing really, doesn't she?"

Sakura snapped her gaze to his face, and felt slightly revolted at the smug grin stretching across his lips. "What do you know, huh? No-thing. You don't know anything."

"Oh, little Sakura, I know rather a lot. Much more then you would think I would know. I know that you're afraid of the dark; I know that little Karin really should have been placed in foster care years before she was; I know little Hinata's aunt is currently married to her father, and I know why; I know why little Ino has never met her father; I know why there's a restraining order on little Tenten's father; I know that little Temari's little brother is mentally unstable-"

Temari snarled, and over-turned the table as she stood up (this was a feat, as the table weighed probably twice as much as she did).

Sakura silently cheered. No one insulted Temari's little brothers. That was on that 'List of Things To Never Say In Front Of Temari' that the girls had come up with in secret.

And it was true.

Temari just looked down at the creep, a completely disgusted look on her face. "You have no idea what you're talking about, you bastard. So. Shut. The. Fuck. Up."

He smiled at her in a sinister way, his slim lips pulled back over his teeth. "Ah, little Temari… you really have grown up so much…"