A/N: Fantastic reception last chapter. Knew you guys would appreciate that update lmao. Was definitely the raunchiest chapter of the story, even if it wasn't *too* explicit.
Also, for those of you complaining about the focus on the sexual element as of the past few, calm down. If you honestly think I'd turn this fic into a soap opera, you haven't been paying attention at all.
It's almost over, and the ending arc will be extremely different from the current chapters mood-wise.
Time for Chapter 60(!)
Enjoy!
"Never took you for a bar rat."
Satsuki looked up from the table in surprise. She was situated near the back of a rather packed tavern in the center sector of Konoha. It was a place of regular attendance for the Uchiha, though she kept that knowledge entirely to herself. Quite jarringly, she recognized the voice and face addressing her. At long last, she had been discovered. Standing over her with a glass in his hand was Shikamaru.
"Could say the same to you." she greeted her teammate, who looked very tired despite it being the middle of the day. Sitting down across from her, the Nara rested his elbows on the table.
"My dad knows the owner. I help clean up sometimes." he explained, drumming his fingers on the crystalline cup in his hand. He then eyed her curiously.
"How'd you even get in here?" he asked. Satsuki glanced over toward the entrance, where a tall, broad man stood checking the identification of all those who entered.
"I've been coming for years. I pay up front." she said. Shikamaru raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair.
"If I cared about this place half as much as my dad, I'd report that, but lucky for you, I've lost way too many weekends cleaning shot glasses." he said humorously. His nonchalance was unsurprising, as was his lack of desire to get her in trouble, but Satsuki still felt herself relax somewhat at his dismissal of her illegal entry.
"Doesn't look like you're helping out much right now." she pointed out, letting her silent question speak for itself. The shadow user nodded and leaned back over the table.
"My mom's cleaning, and dad's out of town on assignment. I would have asked one of you to do something, but I couldn't think of anything." he said. It was a simple enough reason. Perfectly mundane, and as an extension, par for the course for Shikamaru Nara. However, there was a slight hole in its logic.
"What about Haku?" Satsuki asked, applying no force to her words. Interestingly, much unlike the outward stress and tension the huntress had displayed at having been lightly questioned regarding their relationship, Shikamaru remained calm and unbothered.
"She got in trouble for staying out past curfew one too many times. She's stuck in her barracks till tomorrow afternoon." he said evenly. Finding that she preferred other topics to a rerun of a conversation she had already had once before, the Uchiha made no further attempts to press for details.
"I'm honestly surprised you've never seen me here before. I drop by once a week." she commented. Shikamaru made a wide gesture around the establishment.
"This place is packed most of the time. Even when I was out of the back room, I was mostly just cleaning up messes. Besides, it was just an occasional thing." he said. A small skirmish then broke out near the center of the tavern between two clearly inebriated men.
"I can see why you never picked this up as a career. Seems a little grimy for your tastes." Satsuki said jokingly. Shikamaru rested his cheek on the heel of his palm.
"Being a Ninja isn't the most fun thing in the world, but it gives me some variety. Working in a place like this would be too dull. Even for me." he said. It was an easily relatable sentiment. The life of a Shinobi was dangerous, often unforgiving, and wholly erratic, but if nothing else, it provided excitement.
"Fair enough. I get the feeling that it gets a whole lot more boring once we get promoted, though." the Uchiha said. Shikamaru tapped his foot on the floorboards listlessly.
"That's what my folks say. Apparently, it's just a whole bunch of peacekeeping and escort work." he said, his eyes drifting across the tavern slowly.
"But I don't think we should complain. Excitement usually comes from conflict. Where there's smoke, there's fire, as they say." he tacked on as an addendum. Perhaps born from how little they spoke to one another at length, Satsuki could not help but be surprised once again by the Nara's capacity for nuance. His intelligence was common knowledge, but his disposition belied his prowess as a thinker.
"We came inches from not having the luxury to be bored. In any other world, that invasion starts a war." Satsuki pondered aloud. Even three weeks removed, the battle's tension aftermath lingered. Shikamaru brought his glass up towards his mouth, but stopped just before tipping it back.
"We got lucky. In more ways than one. I spent a few hours on border patrol, and from what we saw, their forces weren't exactly high in numbers. Just a few thousand." he said. A contemplative frown formed on his face.
"It almost feels like…it was never meant to be successful. There's no way whoever was running the show thought that a division that small could ever take us down on home turf." he said in a low voice, seeming to be speaking more to himself than Satsuki.
"Sounds like you've done some thinking about the whole situation. Care to share?" the Uchiha pressed. Shikamaru pursed his lips and set his glass down again.
"Something about the entire day felt off. Waiting to attack until the final round had already started was a weird call, given that security was bound to be high for an event that large. That, and the fact that we were able to respond instantly. It looked to me like somebody higher up saw it coming and prepared ahead of time." he said, his tone unusually serious.
"I feel like the goal of the attack wasn't even to take over the village. It was all a smokescreen. There was a more specific target." he cd, trailing off near the end. He then fell into silence. Satsuki nodded along, considering his logic all the way through.
"Let's say you're right about all of this. What does it mean?" she asked. Shikamaru looked up from the table.
"That's what I can't get a solid grip on. None of it makes total sense. There are too many missing pieces. All I'm sure of is that whoever, whatever, directed that invasion is willing to play with some seriously oversized pawns." he said, sounding slightly frustrated at being stumped. He then rubbed his temples.
"Let's talk about something else. This is giving me a headache." he requested. It was as animated as the Uchiha had ever seen the unambitious genin. He had clearly invested himself in the apparent mystery more than he generally did most things. Respecting his wishes, Satsuki pointed to his glass.
"What's in the cup?" she asked. Shikamaru glanced down into the depths of the glass and shrugged his shoulders.
"Sake." he said simply. Contextually-speaking, the answer made sense, but that fact made the news no less surprising.
"You drink?" Satsuki asked with a raised eyebrow. Shikamaru paused for a moment, an unclear emotion crossing over his eyes briefly.
"Not really. Just figured I'd try it a few times. They don't ID people much here." he said. While his tone did not sound dishonest, per se, it was clear that there was more beneath the surface.
"Don't make a habit of it. I already babysit Naruto half the time. I don't wanna start nagging you too." Satsuki said. Shikamaru took a sip of his alcohol.
"Unlike you two, I've got parents for that." he grumbled under his breath, freezing up the moment the words left his mouth. Unbothered by his slip up, the kunoichi held up a hand.
"You're good. Just watch it." she said. Relaxing once more, he took a longer swig from his glass. With little left in the cup, he studied the remaining liquid.
"This stuff is weak." he muttered absently. He then returned his attention to Satsuki, gesturing to her own glass.
"I'm guessing you're not drinking, then?" he inquired. The raven-haired girl barked a short laugh and shook her head.
"This is lemonade. I'm already screwed up enough. Adding booze would be a death sentence." she said. The girl had developed many unhealthy habits over the years, several of which still plagued her, but alcoholism had thankfully never been one of them.
"You know, it's kind of surprising that psychologists don't make more money than they do around these parts. You'd think our line of work would drive up the demand for therapy." Shikamaru mused. It was a fair point, and one the Uchiha had long wrestled with for more personal reasons.
"For a lot of people, opening up is about as traumatic as the experiences themselves. It isn't as simple as just walking into an office and spilling your guts." she said. Her teammate assessed her silently for a moment.
"You make it sound like you've tried it." he said. Satsuki sipped on her lemonade, which was as jolting and sweet as it always was.
"I checked myself in for sessions a few years back. I quit showing up after a week. The therapist they assigned to me was way too pushy. She wanted to get me medicated and crap like that." she recalled, scowling at the unpleasant flashbacks playing in her mind.
"Do you think it would've helped?" Shikamaru asked. Satsuki tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear and sighed.
"Maybe, but I don't wanna live my life tied to some bottle of pills. It wouldn't have solved anything. It would've been a crutch." she replied. The Nara nodded, a thoughtful expression on his face.
"You picked a tougher road than most people would. I can respect it, though. I could probably use the therapy myself." he said candidly. The conversation then fizzled out for a time, with both genin wordlessly watching the mundane happenings of the tavern. In the midst of the break, Satsuki let her mind wander. Having been set on the topic, she delved into her mental and physical state several years prior for the sake of comparison.
Her brief venture into therapy had occurred just over three years ago. She had been shorter then. Just barely over five-foot-four. Far skinnier as well. In fact, her trigger to finally seek professional help for her multitude of long-standing issues had been a sudden development of an eating disorder. For reasons she could no longer fully recall, she had cut herself down to a single meal per day. Whether it had come as a fearful response to overblown weight gain, or raw stress, she did not entirely remember.
As she had recounted to Shikamaru, her commitment to treatment had been tenuous at best, and completely nonexistent at worst. The moment the possibility of pharmaceutical intervention had arisen, she had completely abandoned the path. She had done what she always had, and dealt with her problems in solitude. Though many recent months and years melted together into a flavorless soup within Satsuki's mind, she could at least recognize that her nutritional issues had sorted themselves out. She had been eating at least twice per day for quite some time.
In all, she had been an utter mess. Malnourished by her own hand, roundly depressed, and as volatile as she'd ever become. Bringing her thoughts back around to the form she currently found herself in, it was quite shocking to find just how much she had changed. She had grown several inches, now standing at five-foot-eight, and she was in better physical health than she had perhaps ever been thanks to her constant exercise and related need for food. Even on the mental side of things, she broadly felt much happier and more grounded.
And yet, for all her improvement, she could not shake the sinking feeling in her gut.
"Have you ever felt like you're slacking off, but you can't quite put your finger on why or what for?" Satsuki asked out of the blue, drawing Shikamaru's eyes back to her.
"You're asking the wrong guy, but let's say I have. What's on your mind?" he replied, downing the last of his sake mid-sentence.
"That's the thing. I don't know. I just feel like I'm forgetting something. Everything has felt too easy. I can actually sleep these days, I wake up in a good mood sometimes, and I don't feel as down as I used to. But there's still this feeling that I'm on borrowed time." Satsuki said. Her teammate gave her a sympathetic look.
"I think that's just your anxiety talking." he said. The answer was logical. It made perfect sense. Despite its strength, Satsuki found herself doubtful of its validity. Suffering from a laundry list of undiagnosed mood disorders for years on end had given her an unwanted familiarity with needless nervousness. The unease needling her from the deepest corner of her mind felt distinctly different. Far more real.
"I hope you're right." she said after a long pause. Shikamaru pushed his glass to the edge of the table as a server walked by, prompting them to retrieve the cup and take it away. He said nothing in response, simply staring off into open space. His demeanor was odd, and had been from the start. He had never been the most talkative person, but he usually had something dry to say. Now, there was something distinctly worn about him. He almost seemed melancholy.
"What happened to you during the invasion?" Satsuki asked bluntly. It was rude to prod so directly, and she knew it, but she lacked the patience to push more gently. Shikamaru shot her a sideways glance.
"I did my job." he said vaguely, his eyes making it perfectly clear that he preferred not to discuss the topic further. His answer revealed practically nothing specific, but conclusions could still be drawn from it. None of which were pleasant. Downing the last of her lemonade all at once, Satsuki rose up from her chair.
"Well, what matters more is that we're all still in one piece, don't you think?" she said. Shikamaru held his silence for a short time, but managed a weary smile.
"Yeah, that's true." he conceded. Initially turning to walk away, the Uchiha paused and looked back over her shoulder.
"Don't get drunk. Your mom would kill you." she suggested. The Nara swatted a fly that had landed on the table.
"I hear you. It tastes like piss anyway." he said. Satisfied with his answer, Satsuki made her way out of the tavern and out into the town square. Taking in the fresh air, she looked up at
'A hike might be nice.'
Naruto slowly came to as a cold, unpleasant sensation dug into his body. As his senses oriented themselves, his surroundings and current state slowly fell into frame. The ending result was a confusing one, to be sure. He was seated at a booth table, with his ankles chained to the dense floor beneath his feet. A single lightbulb hung from a ceiling that he could not see, providing the only light to what was otherwise a black void. More unsettling than each of these singular details was the person joining the blonde at the booth.
"You sleep heavy. I envy you."
Immediately snapping to rigid attention, Naruto immediately identified whom he was sharing his table with. With a voice as coarse and hollow as the desert wind, and a pair of frigid blue eyes, Gaara sat calmly across from him with his arms folded across his chest. He wore a look of malignance, as he always did, and he was adorned in an identical tunic to the one he had been wearing throughout the extended Chunin Exam. His gourd was nowhere to be seen, but Naruto could still feel the itch of sand on his skin.
"Where, why, and how?" he asked confrontationally. Gaara gave him no visible reaction to analyze or build his verbal attack upon.
"Somewhere quite familiar to you, but somewhere you tend to do your best to avoid." he said ambiguously. With no substantial retort with which to fire back, Naruto shelved his confusion for the time being.
"You're not as clever as you think you are." he said. His fellow Jinchuuriki's eyebrow curled up, hinting at amusement.
"Insults already? I don't even need the wit, from the sound of you." he shot back. As per usual, the redhead was unnervingly composed.
"What do you even want? And what's with the shackles?" Naruto questioned, struggling in futility against his lower-body restraints. Gaara shrugged his shoulders.
"You made them yourself, but let's not bury the lead." he began, folding his hands and resting his chin on his interlaced fingers.
"Why can't you stop dwelling?" he asked vaguely. Naruto scowled at the unclear query. What exactly he was being accused of hanging onto, he could not decipher.
"On what?" he said in response, seeing no other option but to play along. The lightbulb flickered ever so slightly.
"Me. What I did to you. What you couldn't do to me." Gaara said with characteristic relish. Naruto snorted derisively.
"I put a hole in your chest. Not much more I could've done to you." he said with disdain. The redhead leaned his head off to one side.
"And how many extra chances did you need to make that happen? Two? Three? If I'd wanted to, I could've killed you the moment you arrived. But I didn't, because I wanted to see just how deep your well ran." he said, eliciting a clenched jaw from Naruto.
"By the time I'd grown bored of kicking you around, somebody far stronger than you stepped in and saved your life. Even with her on your side, you only managed to scrape by because I dented myself for you." Gaara continued, growing more bullying with every word.
"Don't run your mouth like you know what I think of it." Naruto growled, aggravated through and through. The redhead smirked.
"It's easier than you'd think. You've buried it deep, but at your core, you're starting to wonder whether or not I have the right idea. Whether, maybe, just maybe, you've been too lenient on those who've wronged you." he said, cutting deeper into the lesser Jinchuuriki's psyche.
"But even then, nothing terrifies you more than letting loose. Even faced with me, you never let yourself run wild. You feared what you may become. That you may prove them all right, the way I did my people." he added. Naruto once again strained to free himself, but to no avail.
"You're full of shit." he spat. Gaara chuckled and began slowly leaning across the table, the grin never leaving his face.
"Would you like to know how I know I'm right?" he asked with obvious rhetoric. The leaf genin met his eyes defiantly. His sturdiness was shaken badly by what came next. In a transition that was far too organic for Naruto's comfort, Gaara's face morphed into a mirror image of his.
"This is all in your head." the doppelganger said, his voice identical to Naruto's. The jarring transformation brought the dark world around them crumbling down, and when it finally gave way to what lay beyond it, Naruto's eyes snapped open to reveal the familiar layout of his bedroom.
All indications were that he had been dreaming. It certainly explained a number of things, and it was a relief on several levels, but regardless of his regained mobility and firm grasp on where he was, his mind was not at peace as he sat up against the backboard of his mattress.
"Why…" he whispered, checking his hands to ensure that claws had not sprouted. Thankfully, his body was unchanged. Taking a cursory look around the room, he found that his sheets were strewn about chaotically. He had been thrashing in his sleep, it seemed. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Naruto threw his legs over the side of the bed to sit more comfortably.
'That wasn't fun.' he thought to himself grimly. His memory of the vision was vivid, and he recalled every word. It was all uncomfortably on the nose. An expression of his inner turmoil spelled out against his will. He was no stranger to such nightmares, but few approached the pointed skittishness his most recent had instilled in him. No sunlight shone through his window, heavily suggesting that it was still the dead of night.
He momentarily considered making the journey to the Uchiha sector, but quickly ruled it out on multiple grounds. His thinly-defined partner of sorts was prone to crankiness when awoken prematurely. Beyond that, he was far from sure that he could find consistent rest again that night. Sleep was bound to be a hurdle now. Standing up groggily, Naruto trudged out of his bedroom.
'Couch it is.'
Hiruzen frowned as he looked out over the forest from atop the highest peak of his village's monument. Something was amiss. The winds had changed, and there was a distinct buzz in the air. He had noticed it several days prior. The disturbance's beginnings had been humble. A bird's song out of place, a breeze blowing the wrong way. Over time, the hidden tension had built up on itself until now, the old man could not ignore it. It had shaken him from his slumber, and brought him up the steep trail to where he now stood.
Something was coming. Something with a potent enough presence to shift things the slightest bit with no direct intervention at all. Narrowing his eyes and pushing his senses out further beyond the trees, Hiruzen felt the presence increase in density. He was on the verge of being able to apply characteristics to the signature. Less than a minute later, the oncoming force fell within range, and a minor few of its details were unveiled. The picture that slowly began to paint itself was an eerie one.
Cold chakra, with a depth and breadth that nearly made Hiruzen back up a step despite the distance. His mouth pulled into a thin line. As the seconds came and went, he began to pick up on a second signature of similar, but lesser strength. There were two entities, both approaching at rapid speed. They were still well over a country away. Hundreds of miles. Holding the brim of his hat as a gust of wind blew across the cliff, the Hokage strained one last time. His senses had dulled somewhat with age, and now more than ever, that fact frustrated him to no end.
His efforts were not in vain, as he was able to glean a clearer image of the advancing party. Of the pair, one of them was completely foreign and unfamiliar to Hiruzen. The other, however, did not fall into such a category. He had sensed the very same chakra before, though never at such an unbound level. It took him little time to deduce the identity of the familiar signature, and when he did, a contradictory combination of even greater unease and an underlying calm came over him. For a commodity to be known was a boon in and of itself, but in this case specifically, said commodity had the potential for explosive reactions if mixed with certain other factors.
Hiruzen took a deep breath, held the air in, and then released it. Time was short. Unless there was a marked change in pace or trajectory, they would be upon Konoha within seventy-two hours. He had been unobservant, and they had slipped past him. Preparation was necessary, but potentially futile. Turning back toward the winding path, the Hokage took his first step down toward his village.
'This does not bode well.'
A/N: Alright, so this is the shortest chapter in quite some time, but I'm treating it as a transitional piece. You all know what comes next, and I've done most of what I wanted to do character-wise in the interim.
Things are about to change dramatically.
Also, I apologize for uploading this so late at night. I just refuse to make you all wait more than seven days for a chapter. I hope it's not TOO inconvenient.
Leave me a review if you have thoughts. I read every one of 'em :)
I love you all
See you on Friday!