A/N: Yehooz!! Damn assignments and tests are outta the way!! I can finally get this chapter done with.

Ok, I realize this fic is doing really sadly… but oh well, I'm just gonna keep doing it. Only cuz I'm a very bored person with nothing much else to do. :S What, does my summary sound really cheap or something?? {sobz…}

Well, to my two loyal reviewers!! BIG "HI" to R.K.R and Neko!! Man.. I'm sounding as sad as my fic…

Chapter 5: Too Late

"You know… {pant}… this is taking… {pant}… a lot longer than I thought… {pant}…" Naruto stopped running to catch his breath. Being able to cover only a centimeter each step does slow one down a lot.

Sasuke himself was puffing rather heavily for a mouse, "We're just a few more…" He looked at the school back entrance, "Ok, a hell of a lot more corridors away from the back door. But we still gotta keep moving."

Naruto whimpered loudly. "Man, I wish I were Chouji. At least he could roll." Chouji had used his family technique and turned into a mouse-ball, and had shot all the way down the passageway like a tennis ball. He was currently waiting at the other end, trying to regain whatever chakra he had lost while using the technique.

The two mice had made it pretty far in less than a minute. It was just the countless steps they had to take to get there that tired them out. Mice were naturally quick on their feet, but Sasuke and Naruto had to learn how to run before they could crawl.

They were pretty much expert runners after the next twenty-five meters down the corridor, and Chouji was just about to fall asleep.

"Hey!" Naruto tried to smack the back of Chouji's head, but realized he couldn't really do it since he needed both his front paws on the ground.

"I'm up, I'm up…" Chouji yawned and scratched his neck with his back foot. 'Man, he got used to being a mouse pretty fast…' Naruto mused to himself.

Naruto shrugged, and then yelled with a great deal of enthusiasm, "Well, let's go and warn the others!!" He turned and before he could walk through the entrance, he ran smack into the now very heavy and massive door.

"GAAAHHH… PAIN!!!" Naruto squeaked, clutching on to his nose with his two tiny paws. Very cute. Chouji burst out laughing. Sasuke shook his head and murmured something along the lines of "Idiot…"

Them being an inch and a half high and the door being three meters, there was no way they could push it. But the crack under the door seemed like a possible means of getting through. And this was exactly what Sasuke thought. He squeezed his now even more flexible body under the door and the last Naruto saw of him was his tail. Naruto followed suit, and then Chouji. But let's use the analogy of squeezing a pear into the coin notch of a piggybank. No, not possible. And Chouji just wouldn't fit.

"Suck in, you birdbrain." Sasuke pulled one of Chouji's paws as hard as his own paws allowed him.

"You know, if you weren't so fa-" Naruto stopped himself before Chouji's eyes glazed over with animated fire, "…fantastically built, maybe you could have made it through." Chouji seemed to have taken the bait, and was back to trying to suck in his gut.

Naruto turned to look at the scene at the back of the school.

Everyone was there, at least everyone he knew. And there were more, students which he didn't know and hadn't met yet, some of which he had seen around the school. And soon, all of them were going to be mice.

Naruto spotted a familiar head of pink somewhere among the crowd of students, making its way to a stall. "Sakura-chan!!" Naruto exclaimed, earning Sasuke's attention.

"Where?" The black mouse asked, scanning the crowd and spotting her in no time, "We gotta get to her and warn her first. Or better yet, tell the nearest person we know on our way to her. The faster we warn everyone, the better."

Naruto nodded and off they went, leaving poor Chouji stuck in the door crack still trying to suck his tummy in.

It was actually quite scary, trying to make their way through the mass of feet in constant motion. It was almost like walking through a maze with moving walls that could come crashing down upon you anytime. The two mice darted around, avoiding getting squashed, and sometimes even hopping on someone's foot for a lift. And they soon reached their pink-haired teammate.

-

Sakura hated herself. She was doing so well on her carbo-diet and now she had just ruined it by cramming down four bars of chocolate. If that didn't make her feel sick, it sure made her feel fat. Come to think of it, she really was feeling queasy. She was desperate to sit down somewhere and a nearby bench looked rather appealing at that moment. "Ino, I'm gonna take a seat. You guys go on ahead." Ino and Shika nodded and walked off, while Sakura went toward the bench and was about to sit down when she felt something brush across her toes. She looked down, and screamed.

"AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

Thankfully for her dignity, her scream didn't get very far as the crowd was already as noisy as it was. But that didn't stop her from screaming some more. "RAT!! GET OFF MEEE!!!" She jumped onto the bench and kept screaming. Then she felt a wave of nausea come over her. She used the backing of the bench for her support, and she could feel something brewing within her. She closed her eyes and could feel her body… reshaping? Impossible as it seemed, but that was exactly what it felt like.

And that was exactly what it was.

It was quite painful, but she opened her eyes again, and the landscape she saw now was very different to the scene she had last seen before closing her eyes. And she was now staring at two giant mice.

She screamed even louder, "THEY'RE GROWING!!! MUTANT MICE!!"

"Sakura-chan." The light colored mouse spoke up.

Wait. Did the mouse just call her name? And its voice sounded a lot like…

"It's me, Naruto!"

Yes, it was Naruto.

"Naruto??? Why are you a mouse??"

"Sakura-chan. You're a mouse too."

"Eh?" Sakura looked down at her hands… no, paws.

"No… It can't be… I'm… I'm a…"

Naruto plugged his ears in the nick of time.

"RRAAAAAAATTTTT!!!!"

"Mouse, to be exact." Sasuke remarked impassively.

"IMPOSSI- Sasuke-kun??" Sakura stared at the black rat with white paws standing not far behind Naruto. "Sasuke-kun, you're a rat- I mean, mouse too?"

Sasuke chose not to answer the question. The answer was quite obvious after all. He turned away too observe the rest of the school body in the candy fair.

Sakura swooned. Even though Sasuke was a mouse, he still looked so handsome and cool…

"Sakura-chan." The voice snapped her out from her daydream.

"Eh, Naruto?"

"We have to warn the others about the substitutes." Naruto proceeded to tell her everything he and Sasuke had went through.

A series of screams were suddenly heard. Sakura and Naruto whipped their heads around to see a commotion going on amongst the crowd of students. Soon, heads were disappearing, and more screams were heard.

"Too late." Sasuke muttered.

The students were turning into mice. It has begun, and they were too late. Sakura stared as she saw more smoke and less people. Squeaks replaced screams and pretty soon, everyone was turned into mice.

Rodents scattered around as far as her eyes could see - which wasn't very far, considering how close she was to the ground. She saw Naruto start running toward the mass of mice, "C'mon you guys. We gotta find the other teams!"

It was absolute pandemonium as the three mice made their way through the crowd of mice of various shapes, sizes, and colors.

-

Neji had been one of the last people to turn into a mouse, being as he had only taken a single piece of candy. He hated candy. And he hated candy fairs even more. It was bad enough that he was dragged to a candy fair by his two annoyingly sweet-tooth teammates, but now he was a mouse. This was all their faults. Damn them and their constant whining about his inflexibility. After all, this was about tastes, not skills. And the whole transformation had hurt quite a bit too. Oh, just wait till he got his hands… ah, paws on them…

It was rather strange he wasn't overreacting to the entire situation. He should actually be thinking about what on earth was going on, who was in charge of this whole thing, why everyone have turned into mice, why he was a mouse, and whether or not they could all change back into humans again. Yes, it was strange he was calm about the whole thing. But he wasn't ever one to panic. Others said that if you panicked, you couldn't think straight. Sure, he agreed, but whether or not that was the case, he just didn't like panicking.

Well, everyone else sure didn't share the same views as himself. All the people-turned-mice were definitely panicking, very badly - evident by the way they were running around in no particular direction. He could see horror etched over their mousey faces, if it were even possible for mice to express emotions through their faces. Actually, the whole thing would have been quite funny if he himself wasn't a mouse.

He should start thinking about the previously mentioned questions he was meant to be asking himself. Ok, fine. What on earth was going on? Dunno. Who was in charge of the whole thing? Dunno. Why have everyone turned into mice? Dunno that either. Why was he a mouse? He was sure it had something to do with that stupid candy… Maybe his body had some allergic reaction to candy… Hey, that was great news. Now he had an excuse to not get pulled into candy-fests with his teammates anymore. But wait, everyone turned into mice too, so does that mean everyone else has an allergic reaction to candy too? Ok, he should stop playing around and get serious. What was the last question… Could they change back into humans again? Now that was an important question in need of pondering. He didn't want to be stuck as a mouse forever. Who ever heard of a ninja mouse? He wanted to be a human ninja. He wanted to learn more techniques… Speaking of techniques, could he still perform any of his own? Ok, perhaps he should try something basic… like jutsu. Didn't work. Ok, maybe the jutsu. Didn't work either. Damn paws can't make seals properly. Ok, one last try. Perhaps his bloodline limited would do. After all, it was in his blood. If that didn't work, he didn't know what would. He couldn't make the seal, so perhaps concentrating may work…

"Byakugan!"

He felt the familiar veins around his eyes dilate with a mixture of chakra and blood, and his vision took off, shooting through the mass of still scuttling mice as far as he wanted it too.

Catching sight of something slightly out of the ordinary, his sight zoomed past and then back up upon a rodent dashing through the crowd. The mouse was of a blondish color, with long whiskers and a very long fox-like tail, and the creature resembled something more of a… gerbil?

-

"Shikamaru?" Naruto peered through his squinted eyes at the other boy.

"Naruto? How'd you know it was me?" Shika, sitting at the side of a candy stall, asked, his voice in the usual lazy drone.

Naruto proudly replied, "One, you look like you. Two, you're standing in the middle of the terror-stricken crowd like it was too troublesome to run. And three, your dull and monotonous voice just confirmed it. Now, how do you know it was me?"

"One, you just look like you. Two, you're running around with two mice who look like Sasuke and Sakura, and three, your loud and annoying voice just confirmed it."

Naruto glared.

"Anyway, just what the hell is going on around here?" Shika asked.

"We all turned into mice." Naruto remarked.

"Really? Now, why didn't I realize that?" Shika snapped sarcastically.

Naruto glared again.

"Where's your team?" Sasuke asked Shika.

"Ah, no idea. Must've got lost when the crowd went berserk."

Naruto saw that Sasuke was looking at him, or more like behind him, and he himself spun around to find out what Sasuke was looking at.

"Hyuuga Neji?" Naruto said aloud.

"What?"

"Oh, no, I wasn't asking you a question. I was just… exclaiming… your name…"

Neji was as black as Sasuke, but without the white paws. Instead, his eyes shone the same vacant white which all of the Hyuuga blood had.

"What the hell is going on?" Neji asked, then looked at Naruto, "I'd imagine you're probably behind all this."

"WHAT?" Naruto spat, "I had nothing to do with this!!"

"I'll explain what we know so far later. Now, we find everyone else first." Sasuke finally spoke up.

"Granted." Neji said, and Naruto thought the white-eyed mouse was planning ahead on something. (Which was what he was going to do to his two nags for teammates.)

"Usually, we'd spread out to cover more ground. But this time, I have a feeling it'd be safer to stick together." Shika said, his unseemingly great mind working away.

"Where do we start?" Naruto asked.

"HELLO!!" A spark of white teeth, a twitch of thick eyebrow, a shift of bowl-haircut.

Naruto and the others cringed.

---

A/N: So, my two readers, how was that?? :D:D:D

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