Exodus: Part 2, Aftermath

ANBU Secure Hospital

"I feel like shit," Chouji groaned.

"I second that," Shikamaru muttered.

"Who knew Naruto could be so… brutal," Kiba mused, trying not to aggravate his injured back.

"Arf!" Akamaru agreed from the floor beside him. Aside from Sasuke and Neji, he'd received the fewest injuries.

"We're lucky we got off as easily as we did," Shikamaru explained as he sipped his his gingerly sipped his nutrition shake. The medics had been able to knit his jaw back together but he was still on a liquids and puree diet for a few weeks while the bones finished healing. Still better than a Rasengan. "She didn't even recognize us at first, we were just a threat. We all know she could have done a lot worse," Shikamaru pointed out, playing devil's advocate.

"I mean, yea. I get that," Kiba mumbled, still looking hurt. "But the doc says she damn near broke my back. We're friends? Kinda? I just-I don't know-I didn't-"

"You never expected something like this from Naruto," Neji supplied, staring blankly at the ceiling from his bed.

"Yeah…" Kiba muttered quietly, completely devoid of his usual bravado.

Shikamaru sighed. "Yeah," he agreed with a nod. Even at her lowest, Naruto had always been a kind soul.

"The snacks here suck," Chouji muttered miserably.

Sasuke and some of the others suppressed snorts of laughter at that comment. 'Poor Chouji,' he thought to himself, glancing at the chubby boy.

In reality, the food here wasn't all that bad, but Sasuke's mood made everything taste like ash and he imagined it was the same for Chouji. Could the young Akamichi crush a man's skull with relative ease? Yes. Did that make him any less soft hearted where his friends were concerned? Absolutely not. And the idea of Naruto, one of his closest and oldest friends could think of him as a threat made him feel horrible.

Sasuke… Sasuke could understand that. He may not have known Naruto as long as some of the others, but he had known her in a way none of them could. He understood her.

Well, he'd thought he understood her.

"Why'd she do it?" Kiba wondered.

Sasuke blinked, coming out of his thoughts. "What?"

"Why do you think she… you know?" Kiba hedged, looking uncomfortable. "Why do you think she ran?"

Sasuke tensed.

No one answered at first, an uneasy silence overtaking the room.

Ran…

It was the first time any of them had come out and said it. Naruto had run away. From Konoha. From them. From everything. It was such a simple word. Such a simple thing, but somehow saying it out loud made it more real.

Sasuke's gaze fell on Shikamaru who had been silent through the entire exchange. "What do you think happened Nara?" Sasuke asked, watching his team leader out of the corner of his eye.

For a long second, Shikamaru said nothing, just stared blankly at the ceiling. "Given her reactions… I think something scared the holy ever-loving shit out of her," he answered bluntly.

Kiba snorted. "Something that could scare Naruto?" he laughed, shaking his head. Not fucking likely. The girl had no sense of self-preservation whatsoever! "Ha! She's too damn stubborn to be afraid of anything. I'll bet good money she'd have walked up to the Kyuubi and kicked it straight in the nose if she had the chance!"

Shikamaru nodded, never losing the serious look. "That's the part that scares me," he replied gravely. That thought brought them all up short and forced the truth they'd all been denying to finally penetrate.

Sasuke said nothing, thinking back to the look on Naruto's face as Kiba and Akamaru had come at her from either side. She had been scared. Not just scared though, she had been terrified.

Something that could scare Naruto like that…

"Well, this sucks," she joked as Zabuza's ice using companion hit her with another volley of senbon.

"What's the matter, Scaredy Cat? Don't like snakes?" she sneered as she stopped Orochimaru's summon.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" she roared, breaking Gaara's hold on her and summoning an enormous Toad.

Yes, she'd been scared all those times, but…

Naruto's gaze flick to the side, fixing on Kiba. Her eyes grew wide, impossibly so as her pupils shrank in panic as a look of fear unlike anything Sasuke had ever seen crossed her face…

It has lasted for an instant so brief that without Sharingan he would have missed it. One moment it had been there and then it was gone. Vanished, buried under the kind of rage that had allowed her to face enemies like Orochimaru and Sabaku no Gaara… and wasn't that was a sobering thought?

Whatever this was?

Whatever had happened?

It scared Naruto more than an S-Rank missing nin and a demon that could topple buildings.

Clickclick… clickclick…

Sasuke had just enough time to register the purposeful sound of someone marching down the hall before the door to their room was thrown open.

"Hokage-sama!" Neji cried, hurrying to get up as Senju Tsunade stalked into the room, slamming the door behind her.

"At ease bratlings… gods I swear you little shits get smaller every time I see you," she sighed before leveling them with a serious stare. "Well, no point mincing words. As of this moment, the details of your mission are considered an S-rank secret. This never happened, Naruto did not go AWOL. You will all be released when you are all healthy. If anyone asks where you were? You are to answer that you were activated to pursue a target of opportunity but found nothing, a false alarm. If you are questioned about Naruto's whereabouts? You heard rumors that she was assigned to Jiraiya for an extended training trip."

"So that's why you sent us," Shikamaru realized, completely ignoring the threat of death. "A team of jounin or ANBU would have attracted too much attention."

"Yes," she answered.

"You think Naruto is still loyal, retrievable," Shikamaru pressed.

Tsunade rolled her eyes as she gave a derisive snort. "That excitable little street urchin managed, through sheer grit and enthusiasm, to convince a bitter, cynical, old bitch who had spent decades at the bottom of a sake jug wallowing in her own misery to become Hokage," she drawled. "Mind you, she did this after I lost my entire extended family to Konoha and suffered a nervous breakdown from my brother and fiancé die in service to the Village."

Sasuke goggled at her. Naruto had been the one to convince Tsunade to become Hokage? Seriously?!

"That's… really?" Neji wondered, baffled.

"I assure you, I'm sugar coating it," Tsunade replied blithely. "At one point, that little psycho quite literally threw herself in harm's way and nearly got herself killed, to prove a point. Short of some systematic betrayal of epic proportions on the part of Konoha and her friends, there is nothing on this earth that could shake that kind of fanaticism. Which tells me that there are extenuating circumstances that we are not aware of. So, whatever else may be going on? Until I am served irrefutable proof that Uzumaki Naruto has turned traitor, this is her home and she will have a place here."

Shikamaru frowned. If that was the case then why… "Ma'am, why did you tell me that we would be receiving backup when you never intended to send anyone but us?"

"Because I didn't want you doing something stupid and getting yourselves killed," she drawled.

That made most of the boys frown in confusion. "Um… What?" Kiba asked intelligently.

For a long moment, Tsunade stared at them, quietly assessing them as she thought something over. "Do any of you know how I came to be Hokage?"

Most of the boys all blinked, sharing confused looks.

Shikamaru frowned. "I know that Jiraiya-sama was sent to get you after the elders voted for you to take the position."

"Naruto was on that mission," Sasuke added.

Tsunade nodded, acknowledging them both. "I initially refused the position," she told them. "It was Naruto who eventually convinced me… by facing off against one of Orochimaru's lieutenants and using the Fourth Hokage's rasengan, which she had learn to use in less than a week, to mortally injure him."

Silence like the grave answered her explanation as the boys stared at her, uncomprehendingly.

"The thing you have to understand," she continued, "is that Naruto, when cornered, is one of the most dangerous ninja in this village. By herself she has more chakra than anyone else in this village with the possible exception of myself and Jiraiya. Within a year she will handedly surpass us both in that regard. She possesses a powerful summoning contract and is capable of summoning assistance capable of combating one of the Biju. In order to graduate from the academy, she learned an A-rank forbidden ninjutsu in a night. She possesses an A-rank assassination technique powerful enough to liquify a ninja's chest cavity through body armor. Frankly, she's not overly deficient in any form of ninja combat and she has a habit of compensating for those deficiencies she does have with an overapplication of explosives and brutality."

"Or she talks them into joining her," Sasuke muttered.

Tsunade snorted. "Yes, her much dreaded Therapy no jutsu. According to one of my sources, there are elements within Kiri that are convinced that she is related to the Yamanaka after that stunt she pulled with Momochi Zabuza." The evil glint in her eye left them wondering if she had done anything to quell those rumors.

Considering she was distantly related to Naruto, Sasuke was pretty sure that the Hokage was more likely to have encouraged them for her own amusement.

"Put simply, with the proper motivation Naruto could have killed all of you," Tsunade told them bluntly. "However, so long as she felt she had other options, she wouldn't."

"And as long as we felt we had other options, some level of failure was acceptable," Shikamaru filled in.

"Yes," Tsunade agreed. "Now, one last thing. Definitions have become a little blurred as my sensei got sentimental in his old age and you are all gennin with one exception so I will ask just to be sure. Are you aware of the implications in regards to S-ranked secrets?" When she got a round of uneasy negatives she continued. "Put simply, it means that if you breathe a word of this to anyone for any reason without my expressed, spoken, written, and sealed permission? I will execute you and any person you told on the spot without trial and then your next of kin to make a point. Am I clear?"

"Yes ma'am!" the boys chorused.

"Good," Tsunade said with a satisfied nod. "I'm sure it won't come to that with you boys, but I had to be sure. I didn't want there to be any unfortunate miscommunications… or stupid political bullshit from other people within the village who should fucking know better." The last comment she grumbled more to herself than to them as she turned to leave. Just before the door, she paused. "Any questions?" she asked, looking back at them.

The boys exchanged glances.

"What do we do if we encounter Naruto at some point?" Sasuke blurted before he could stop himself.

Tsunade quirked a brow at him. "You bring her back," she deadpanned.

"But… what if she doesn't want to come?"

Tsunade's brow ticked ever so slightly higher as a knowing smirk split her face. "I hear you've got a bit of a silver tongue where she's concerned?" the Lady Hokage drawled. "Convince her."

Sasuke choked on his own spit as Tsunade strode out of the room.

"What the fuck was that about?" Kiba wondered as they were treated to the sound of the Hokage's laughter echoing down the hallway.

"N-nothing!" Sasuke stammered even as a hot blush crept up his neck.

"That's a lot of blushing for nothing," Shikamaru observed with a calculating eye.

Damn his Uchiha complexion! Damn it to the pit!

"I won't ask," Shikamaru said in a voice that made it clear that no one else should ask either. "Just know that if you did anything to make Naruto uncomfortable and it was why she left? I'll start with your thumbs."

A/N

Just a little something to wet your whistle while I polish up the next bit where I actually answer wtf is going on here. See you in a couple weeks ;D