Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto, I would be deliriously and estactically foaming from the mouth on the floor right now. Which would make typing in front of the computer screen an impossibility.
A good thing about living on the first floor in apartment C was that the community laundry center was only a short walk away. Each apartment had a slight advantage; apartment C was closest to the laundry center, apartment A was closest to the community pool, and apartment B was--well, it was just in the middle, neither far nor near to the laundry center and the pool.
Ignoring the paved cement path, she blatantly trudged across the lawn with the "DO NOT STEP ON GRASS" sign in the shortest possible route towards the gray one-story building that was the Community Laundry Center. Upon entering, she headed for the nearest available washing machine and proceeded to dump in her clothes.
While doing so, she accidentally overheard a part of the conversation between two of her neighbors. She recognized them as the lady from apartment C, number 110, and another shorter, squatter but also Asian woman, from apartment B. They were conversing in Japanese, and she automatically began to listen in to the now half-familiar foriegn language. Hey, her Japanese teacher had told her to get some practice over summer--this was as good a way as any, and besides, it wasn't as if she was listening in on some top-secret meeting.
"I think that someone may be going through the laundry when no one's here," one of them seemed to be saying to the other. "Just last week, my nine-year-old daughter told me she accidentally left her pokemon wallet and her Harry Potter book among her clothes, but when we checked afterwards, it was gone."
"I know what you mean!" The other exclaimed. "Even though none of the clothes were actually missing, there's always something that disappears. First it was a gold fountain pen my husband left in his shirt pocket. Then it was my son's retainers. If it was just that, then I would have thought they just misplaced it and thought that they had left it in their clothes, but yesterday, I lost my fine gauze curtains!"
"Your curtains?" the first asked incredulously. "Which machine were you using?"
"The thirteenth, the one in the corner. I figure if anyone planned to vandalize the washing machines they'd go for the ones nearest the entrance, as all thieves are lazy bums anyway" --Here, the girl snorted in derision-- "So I always use the one in the corner if it's not taken."
"Maybe it's something wrong with the machine..." the first neighbor offered tentatively. "See, I was using that one also..."
"--But curtains??"
By now, she had finished dumping in all her laundry and prepared to head out. As everyone else seemed to be paranoid and avoided using the machines and dryers near the entrance, the machine she used was still quite new, and always worked fine. She hid a smirk as she walked back out, leaving the two middle-aged women to cluck their tongues and gossip over everyday events they way middle-aged women do.
"This sucks."
"Quit complaining. The sooner you find the book, the sooner you can go home..." Kakashi said unconcernedly from the branch of a nearby tree. He was still reading Icha Icha Paradise, while his students roamed about the mountain path searching for the book of the Hokage's grandaughter.
Sakura didn't say anything, but secretly she agreed with Naruto. Even babysitting the Mayor's son would have been nicer than this.
They had been on the mountain for over an hour, looking for a tattered green book titled "The Hairy Potterer" or something, that had more than 300 pages and was supposedly the Hokage's granddaughter's favorite book.
"Isn't the Hokage-sama's granddaughter a little too young to be reading a 300-page book?" she asked, wading through a patch of waist-high grass near a cliff in order to inspect the ground they hid. While brushing aside some swordgrass she accidentally cut her hand on the edge of a leaf, and inwardly cursed the annoying kid. Stupid brat! What kind of a kid brings a book to the mountains while hiking, anyway?!!
Kakashi turned a lazy eye to his only female student. He suspected that she wasn't exactly thinking kind and charitible thoughts about the little girl whose book they were looking for, but he didn't voice his suspicions. "Well....she's only two years old. The book was actually found on this same mountain one day, and her mother brought it home and read it to her...apparantly, it's a weird book about strange stuff that nobody understands, but she likes it."
Naruto frowned. "Huh? ...'strange stuff'? What kind of 'strange stuff' is it, exactly?" he asked suspiciously. "Are you saying they let her read perverted books like the one you're reading??"
Kakashi gave him a repreminding glare. "For your information, this happens to be a very GOOD book. But no, they're not reading the IchaPara series to the little girl...The book we're searching for is about...." he paused, stratching the Konoha forehead protector that covered his left eye thoughtfully. "It's about a boy who tries to find some soldier's stone with a broomstick......something like that," he said, shrugging. "As I said, it's a totally weird book but the girl refuses to go to sleep without reading it. I heard that they had to use sedatives on her last night, so there's pressure on us to find it as soon as possible....." as he spoke, he scanned over the surrounding area, noting that Sasuke was nowhere in sight. Before he could become concerned, though, the missing boy's voice came trailing up from further down the steep cliffside.
"Over here. I think I've found something..." Sasuke's voice called up.
His teammates and teacher followed his voice down the cliff, until they reached a small narrow ledge hidden by the overhang. The ledge led to a small dark cave.
"In here." came Sasuke's voice again.
They stooped and entered the cave to find the spiky black-haired boy waiting for them inside, his arms crossed. In one of his hands was the book they had been searching for.
"Ahhh. Good job, Sasuke," Kakashi praised happily. His eye crinkled into a merry little curve that showed he was smiling under his mask. "You found the Hotty Pear book..."
Sasuke peered at the book's dirty and tattered cover. "Harr-y Pot-ter," he corrected. "It was thrown on the ground near the entrance of the cave. I don't see how it could have fallen there. Obviously, someone took it and threw it here on purpose...and I found some more strange things over there." He jerked his head torwards the back of the cave.
"Why would anyone throw the book here on purpose?" Naruto muttered. Curious, he snatched the book from Sasuke's hands, earning a glare from his rival, which he ignored. Flipping through the book carelessly, he picked random words and read them. "Dumbodore...Maddam Poofy? ...What the hell? This book is a total piece of junk!" he declared. "There's nothing in here that makes sense, and WHAT the hell are all those people doing with those broomsticks??" The only reason he could come up with was that all the people in the book were cleaning fanatics, but that didn't make sense, either.
Kakashi just shrugged. "I already told you it was a weird book. The little girl is the only one who likes it, or else they would have thrown it away when they found it a week ago. Anyhow...as long as we're here, we might as well check out what else Sasuke found...."
"Hn." Naruto surrendered the book to Kakashi-sensei and put his hands behind his head, unimpressed.
They moved in a little deeper inside the cave, where in the dim light they discovered a small, perfectly round hole set smack in the middle of the cave floor. The hole was large enough for a child or slim adult to fit through, and seemed to be very deep. Around the hole was littered various oddities.
Kakashi bent down to inspect one of them. "Hmm.....a gold pen...."
Sakura picked up a flimsy strip of cloth and inspected it. "This looks like some sort of curtain..."
Naruto shook a round canvas pouch, producing a metal clinking noise. "Some weird kiddie toy thing with a demented-looking yellow rabbit on it..."
Sasuke went over to take a look. "That's not a rabbit..."
Sakura came over also get a look at it. "It's some weird creature with black-tipped ears and a jaggy tail..."
While his students marveled over and amused themselves with the assortment of strange things inside the cave, Kakashi stepped back out and surveyed the area around him. This isn't part of the secret trails the Anbu use, he thought. He turned to find Sasuke standing at the entrance of the cave. "Sasuke, did you go down the hole in the cave before we got here?" he inquired of his student.
Sasuke shook his head. "No."
The Jounin nodded. "Good, because I--"
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!"
--a shriek of horror interrupted him.
Alarmed, Kakashi and Sasuke immediately rushed back in to find Sakura alone and frantically peering down the hole, calling Naruto's name.
"Sakura?! What happened?" Kakashi demanded.
"I-I-I-I-I-I...." the girl had her head in her hands and was swaying from side to side in a state of helplessness. "I-I mean, Naruto was still trying to figure out that thing he found, so I suggested that he try to open it...so he did but....it suddenly burst open and all...all these things came flying out, and one of them rolled near the hole, and-and Naruto tried to catch it and....and the next thing I knew...." she trailed off, looking at the hole. Despite the fact that she was unable to do anything to prevent the disaster, inside she couldn't help but want to scream "Naruto you big IDIOT!!".
Kakashi held back a sigh. Crouching near the edge of the hole, he peered down into darkness. "Naruto!" He called out. He put his ear to the edge and listened hard for any reply, but there was no sound except for a distant kind of whirring noise. "Naruto?" He called again. His voice echoed repeatedly down the hole, but there was no answer. #$!... He muttered under his breath, then turned to his two remaining (and more sensible) students. "As much as I'm tempted to leave that moron down there to repent his idiocy, it's getting pretty late already," he annoued. "So, I guess there's no choice for us but to go down and get him."
Not waiting for them to reply, he grabbed first Sasuke then Sakura and threw them down the hole, jumping in quickly after them.
A/N: Ehh...did everyone get the pikachu joke?