WR: Alright. Fine. So I'm keeping up with my resolution and writing another chapter of this so-called story. Mostly because I needed to write something other than terribly fluffy "what did you like about WOW week" stuff.
Kibo: Moo (rams Desolate into the wall)
Desolate: Hey! That's mean, Kibo!
Kibo: Moo (jingles bells).
Desolate: I didn't know you had bells, Kibo.
Kibo: Moo.
Naruto: I gave them to him.
Desolate: Oh.
Kibo: Moo.
~*~
Naruto was what one could call, surprised. Scratch that, he was astonished, astounded, amazed – but certainly not in a good way. Why, just minutes ago he thought he could avoid Ino, seeing as the two would probably not be neighbors, and therefore, wouldn't run into each other. But now there was a humongous, 5 foot hole joining the two together in a drastic display of bad luck. For some odd, unprecedented reason, Ino had moved from her previous 15th story hideout and gone to his floor.
If there was some sort of Ramen god up there, he must certainly hate Naruto. Perhaps it was because the boy often stole ramen from the store; or maybe it was because Naruto had taken away all the Ramen God's food and replaced it with dust and atomic particles. Either way, Naruto was screwed, and he knew it too.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Ino glared, hands on hips as she dared to cross the boundary between the two rooms.
"I live here," Naruto rose up to the challenge, imitating Ino's frigid stance.
"Well you better un-live here or you aren't going to go on a mission anytime soon," the blonde's face turned a tomato red as she gritted her teeth. It was a rather disconcerting sight – much like a bull when presented with the color red. But Naruto wasn't one to comment about little anomalies such as that. Getting his head lopped off by Ino, of all people, was just not on his top list of wants.
"But Ino, dearest," he could not restrain himself, "why shan't I go on any more missions? Is it because you wish to bind me together with you?" It was safe to say that Naruto was to meet his grave sometime soon.
But Ino's reaction to his vitriolic remark was terribly unexpected. The crazy woman was laughing, for Pete's sake! At what, Naruto could not tell – but if his last comment was that funny, living next to Ino might not have been as terrible as he anticipated.
"For a guy who's just been kicked out of his girlfriend's house," Ino giggled, "you don't seem very sad."
"Maybe it's because I'm not," Naruto retorted, sending daggers in Ino's direction. What was it her business anyway? His problems with Sakura were for him alone to know – and even then, sometimes he didn't fully comprehend them either.
"Oh," Ino waved him off, "is little boy getting mad right now? Sakura's waiting at home wondering when the hell you're coming back and you've already rented a new apartment," she snickered, "is she that replaceable Naruto? Did you not love her? Are you not willing to go back to her?" she spat, breaking the invisible barrier between the rooms by poking his chest.
"Don't condemn me for what I do, Ino," he huffed, "it isn't like you're perfect either."
"Oh, and pray tell what I have done wrong," she replied, flipping her hair in all sorts of directions.
"Let's see," he counted his fingers, "remember Shikamaru? And that one drunken incident with Lee? Why, you thought that --…"
"Oh, shut up, Naruto!" Ino hollered, "that was long ago -…"
"When the dinosaurs roamed, I bet," Naruto dryly added. So the woman wasn't exactly his cup of coffee – it wasn't his fault, right? They had grown up alongside each other; they had fought and bickered and glared – but they had never conversed like two human beings. It certainly wasn't his fault that Ino was a pig-headed freak. And it really wasn't his fault that she could not get over her petty hatred of him.
"You," Ino seethed, "shut up! Right now! Shut up!"
"Nice, Ino. That's the best you've come up with all these years," he yawned.
"Argh!"
"That's right. Let out your anger. You are a free spirit. You shall rant and rave for as long as your soul wishes to remain angry," he repeated monotonously.
"Asshole."
"Once again, you are correct. Once an asshole, always an asshole," Naruto winked. "But really, if we're both going to live here, then we better make a compromise."
"Like sealing this hole, for instance."
"Actually," Naruto swallowed, "I rather like this hole. Besides, if we decide to repair it, think of what it'll cost us."
"Well, I'll pay for it!" Ino declared. Screw it if she was going to sacrifice her damned privacy just because Naruto was living next to her. Besides, her monthly Chuunin wage should cover the price, right? Granted that her boss oftentimes forgot to pay her, and that the cost of buying candles had soared, and that she still had to eat – she could still pay for reparations, right?
"Do you know how much that costs?" Naruto roared, "I mean, it's just so damn expensive! You can't pay for it with your little Chuunin wage!"
"Well then you'll just have to help me."
"No way. I'm leaving the hole right there," Naruto stomped his foot, "just think of it as a decoration."
"Jackass," Ino muttered.
"I should give you a medal."
~*~
"Wait," Sakura needed time to breathe, "so he's living next to you now?"
"Yes."
"And has he mentioned anything of us?" her fingers trailed the phone cord.
"Nope."
"Well then, it's final," Sakura sighed. No matter how much Ino protested, she knew Naruto more than anyone. The only way he would ever finalize a matter was by shutting up about it – and Naruto was doing exactly that with their relationship.
"I still don't understand," Ino whined, "what the hell do you see in him? For all I know, he's a jackass."
"Naruto?" Sakura laughed, "a jackass? Nowhere near it. He helped me out a bit after the second Chuunin exams. Told me about…everything basically…so I could pass the next time. And for once," Sakura sighed, "for once it felt like I had an equal. Never mind that he was better than I was at everything," she bit her red lips, "never mind that I could never equate his abilities – he was just Naruto, inside and out. He was Naruto when he taught me, he was Naruto when he talked with me, he was Naruto when he went on missions and came back home wounded. And I suppose that's it."
"That's it?" Ino snorted. "All of that love stuff you kept on telling me about was the byproduct of that?"
"Well," Sakura hissed as she drew blood from her lips, "not just that. There was a whole bunch of stuff in the middle that I can't tell you right now…but that's a part of it."
"For what it's worth, I still don't like the guy."
"I kn--…"
What the hell? Ino grunted. Fucking telephone line! It died again!
~*~
It happened all of a sudden. He was cooking his beloved ramen over a cheaply made fire, and then, suddenly, BOOM! The fire died out, his ramen failed to cook properly, and now he was stuck eating semi-edible noodles. Electricity, as it turned out, was just like a nomad. It would wander around every now and then – but for the most part, it steered clear of staying in one particular place. Unfortunately the building's manager had a tendency to use his rentee's money for more…personal things, as Naruto would later find. But for the time being, he was one pissed off Uzumaki.
"What the hell do I do now?" he slurped his ramen, "crap! The bottom's still as hard as rock," he whined, poking the food with his wooden chopstick. To his dismay, the chopstick broke. "Damn it! That was my last one!" he proceeded to drink the soup out of the Styrofoam cup. If only Iruka were here right now – then his sensei would give him all the ramen he needed. He would have slept in a clean, free bed instead of the hard, squeaky mattress-thing on the other side of the room. He would have lazed around on a comfortable chair instead of the plastic kiddy's stool he sat in now. But there were limits to a man's hospitality - well, there were certainly limits to a woman's hospitality. The first thing that bitch did when she moved in was comment dryly about Naruto's shaggy appearance. So what if he wasn't exactly Mr. Gung-Ho with sleek tuxedoes adorning his arse? It wasn't like everyday was a bleeding party or anything. So he moved out and vowed never to come back again except when requested – which was on occasion.
For a while he had lived with Chouji, but when the guy's eating habits cornered Naruto to the point of extinction (and dare he say starvation) he decided to freeload off Sakura – which wasn't bad after all, considering the direction they had headed in. It was fast. It was furious. It was passionate. It was amorous. But was it love? Naruto doubted it.
"Ino!" he directed his voice to The Thing, "how the hell do you get the electricity running again?"
"Hell if I know!" she huffed. Naruto swore he could hear glass and other tidbits breaking in her room. "Damnit! And I was talking to Sakura-chan over the phone!"
"Oh," Naruto winced. He didn't dare ask Ino any questions about he pink-haired girl; discussing the topic of Sakura with Ino was like trying to push a three ton stone boulder off of its super-glue binding to the floor – completely impossible to do unless one had special powers. Other than that, he was still widely uncomfortable with the mention of her name around the house – it made him somewhat squeamish inside.
"Good for nothing piece of crap," Ino grunted across from his position. "So I'm supposed to hook wire A to wire B for secondary electricity routes and then…"
So Ino did know how to get the electricity on again. And she was reading the directions out loud too.
Thus Naruto went on his grim way and did what any guy would do: he went to work.
~*~
"Naruto!" Ino stormed into his room, "how did you get your electricity back?"
"You were reading the directions out loud," he grinned. "Why? You can't get yours back on?"
"Of course I can," Ino clenched her fists. "I just prefer to…do it slowly. It's an art."
"Of course it is, Ino – just like climbing up the stairs is," he nodded in approval.
"Well-…"
"You know I can always help you," Naruto said, "you just have to say the magic word."
"Go away?" Ino asked.
"Fine," Naruto admitted in defeat, "if that's the way you want it," he bowed as he disappeared.
"Who needs his help?" Ino punched the air. Time to get her ass moving.
~*~
Now that he had nowhere to go, Naruto felt quite exasperated. The ramen shop was closed for repairs (damn them). The grocery store had been attacked by a hoard of cattle (which they should have slaughtered and sold as beef). And as for other people's houses – none of them would welcome him in (as they were all sick with the 'flu'). So he decided to go to the forest – a place that he hadn't visited in a very long time.
On the rare occasion that his 'Pissed-Off Gauge" reached maximum, Naruto retreated to the forest to calm himself down. Not only were there no beings there that could irritate him to the point of extremity, but there were no responsibilities in the forest. There were no distractions; no Sasukes to tell him he was the almighty dobe-kun; no Sakuras to tell him what to do; no Iruka-wives to tell him he was too scruffy. The forest, it seemed, would accept him as he was.
Now where was that --…
"Naruto?" he whirled around, surprised at the sudden intruder.
"Sakura?" she gave him a faint grin. "What are you doing here?"
She shrugged. "I just like it here."
Fancy intruding my territory, Naruto tried to feign nonchalance.
"I can leave if you want."
Obviously his discomfort must have shown. So he did the noble thing and told her she could stay because the forest wasn't his anyway.
"Thanks," she nodded, sitting beside him.
Words were never their domain – neither of them could express heartfelt emotions, or preach about their days and missions. It was always the necessary hello and goodbye – and sometimes it was the odd 'how are you,' or two. But mostly they communicated through their silence. It was silence that bound them, silence that understood them, silence that embraced them.
And in this silence he could notice so many things around him. When the wind blew, it did not make a ghostly sound; when the leaves rustled, they did not whirl in a tornado; when the ants crawled up a hill, they did not walk in straight neat lines. And he saw her, and her sad smile, and her green eyes, and her medium-length hair and he wondered how he could not love this woman. But his thoughts ceased to ramble because he realized, for once, that he was going in a direction he did not wish to head in. So he watched the sun set with her, eyeing the blood red sky with a tinge of longing.
"Naruto?" she asked timidly, breaking the silence.
"Hn?"
"You want to come over today," Sakura bit her lip, "you know, just for dinner?"
"Umm," he stumbled, "I'm not particularly hungry tonight. Maybe, another time?" And it was the truth. He wasn't particularly hungry.
"Alright," she sighed. I guess, I'll see you around then," she smiled brightly – stupidly even. And in that instance, she left his sight.
When you were 12 you would have killed yourself for that opportunity, Naruto chuckled, now you're dying to turn it down.
~*~
"Argh!" Ino screamed in frustration, "Naruto, get your lazy ass in here!"
"I thought you wanted me to go away," he whined, burying his head inside his book. Kakashi had lent him Icha Icha paradise on strict conditions that he did not distribute it to the village children. So far, Naruto had upheld his promise.
"I do! But--…"
"You've got to do better than that, Ino," Naruto took off his jacket to reveal a pair of penguin-covered pajamas.
"Please," Ino whined sarcastically.
"If I were
a teacher, I would have given you an F for that," he grumbled, putting his copy
of Icha Icha underneath his
pillow.
"Well you're not, so you better help me out."
"Alright," Naruto showed her, grabbing a wire, "this is wire A," he demonstrated, "this is wire B. You connect the two together," he motioned, "and then you plug it into this circuit. And ta-dah, your electricity's on again," he raised his brows daringly.
"Oh."
"Yes, Ino, Oh."
"Well…" she trailed off.
"Hey! Is
that ramen?" he asked excitedly, eyeing a box in the far corner of her room.
"Yes it is," Ino took a stance, "and fine, you can
have some. But only because you helped me with the electricity."
"Thank you Ino!"
So he ate like no other, never minding the fact that he was not hungry at the moment. And if Ino were any other person but Ino, he would've hugged her on the spot.
~*~
WR: o__o;;this was just whacked. Completely utterly whacked. Yes, just dropping by to say that nothing's explained yet here – more events will occur, more of the past will be revealed, less fluff will be written…And now for the voices inside my head…
Kibo: Moo.
Desolate: Fine. So you can't believe that anyone actually reviewed. But still. Don't be so mean.
Kibo: Moo.
Desolate: Yes. I know I don't rhyme. But that's too bad for you.
Kibo: Moo.
Desolate: Argh, where's Naruto?
Kibo: Moo.
Desolate: He ran away?
Kibo: Moo.
Desolate: Because the story was too fluffy? Aw. Too bad. It's a good thing that I've got Naruto catchers everywhere.
Naurto: Woman!
Desolate: Oh. There you are.
Naruto: …
