Naruto's panic peaked and his voice burst out in a yell. "Why do I have your breasts?"
There was a long, stunned silence that followed Naruto's outburst. His hands continued to roam over the body he was in. He wore a dress. There were the bandages. Here were bra straps. Eeek! He was touching Sakura-chan! (Yes yes! Ach! No no!)
"If you're in my body," Sakura's voice held the note of a person on the edge of hysteria, "then I'm in your body!" There was a brief rustling of cloth, and then a shriek of surprise. "I'm male!"
Naruto froze in mid-roam as his mind stuttered over the possibilities of that sentence. "Sakura-chan, did you just—"
Sakura leapt to her feet and hurried over the attic door where a thin strip of light crept through its frame, tripping over two trunks and one dropped broom hidden in the shadows. She yanked the door open. Light from downstairs filtered upstairs and filled the attic. She turned around. It was his body, with an expression of unadulterated horror etched on his face. His attention attracted for whatever reason, Naruto looked down at where he had cut her hand. The remains of the shattered Buddha statue lay on the floor. The face was unbroken though, and looked upward. A glimmer of red passed through its eyes, and Naruto stumbled backwards from it in surprise. "Wh-what?"
Sakura bound across the attic to Naruto's side. The look of Sakura-like rage did not seem to fit on Naruto's face. "Naruto!" She pointed an accusing finger at him. "What did you do? Give me back my body!"
"Me?"
Sakura grabbed Naruto by fistfuls of her dress material and hauled Naruto to her feet. His feet? He was in a body undoubtedly female (which, admittedly, wasn't really a new experience for him), but he still felt male, or at least certainly didn't feel female. This left him with the opportunity of creating a whole new pronoun regarding his accidental male-to-female-for-unknown-reasons switch.
"I didn't do anything!" He waved his hands frantically. "The last thing I did was touch the... statue…" His voice trailed off and they looked down together at the remains of the statue. Its evil aura still clung to it, and a shiver ran up and down the length of Naruto's spine.
"The attic is filled with dangerous artifacts," Sakura whispered with dawning horror, pushing Naruto away from her and pressing a hand against her forehead, directly over the forehead protector. "We touched the statue so we must have switched bodies!"
"Make it unswitch us!" Naruto scooped up a piece and held it out to her. "We touched it together, maybe if we touched it again...!" Sakura pressed her fingers against its edge, but nothing happened. Naruto glared at the shard in disgust.
"Naruto," Sakura said worriedly, "I think it has to be whole to work."
Naruto dropped to his hands and knees as he began to shove the shards together. "Then we'll make it whole!" He stared hopelessly at the pieces, knowing that he had no skill with superglue.
Sakura felt the blood drain from her head. She swayed on her feet as she stared at the broken statue. "What if we can't make it whole? What if we're stuck like this forever. We — we need to tell someone."
Naruto leapt to his feet to face her. In his body. "And who do we tell? Who can we tell?" He laughed nervously, bordering nearly on hysteria. "I like you, Sakura-chan, but not enough to be you."
Sakura nervously wrung her hands. "We have to tell Kakashi-sensei!" she decided finally. "Because he'll know I'm not you and you're not me!" Naruto blinked as he tried to sort through what Sakura just said. She hastened to explain herself. "We move differently, Naruto. We speak differently. We aren't the same, and people are going to know something is wrong, especially Kakashi-sensei, so we should tell him because he'll know what we should do," she added grimly. "He's our sensei; he's the person we need to talk to about this. There is no way I'm telling my parents about this!"
Naruto stood up, clutching the largest pieces of the statue close. "Come on!" He marched past her with his armload of statue pieces and stopped when a hand dropped on his shoulder.
"Best leave it all here for now," Sakura said, "so we don't lose any."
Naruto looked at them and nodded his head. "Right." Together, they neatly scooped up all the pieces they could see and laid them out on a shelf that was eye-level to them. With that done, they scurried clumsily out of the attic, bumping into one another and the walls while trying to contend with new senses of balances and heights. As they hurried down the attic stairs, a wave of dizziness nearly overwhelmed Sakura. She clung to the stairs banister and waited for it to pass, gasping lightly and leaning unsteadily to the side. Naruto loudly demanded if she were okay.
"I'm fine," she said after the moment passed. She wiped her hand across her forehead and straightened her shoulders. "I'm just not used to walking around in a body like this." It was stockier than hers — more muscle, and the balance was off. She had to spread her toes wide and plant her feet flat. Everything felt smaller (but not taller), and she wasn't used to adjusting for new dimensions. She was acutely aware of how utterly foreign this body felt, of how utterly male she felt at the moment, if this was what males were supposed to feel like. In the back of her mind, Inner Sakura was chanting, "Score!" and giving Sakura a thumbs up, as well as several lewd suggestions of what to do with this male body when Sakura was all alone. When Naruto did not answer, she looked over her shoulder at him.
He was shuffling her feet nervously, but still managed to look smug. And to think of all those times and all those people who thought his sexy jutsu was useless; undoubtedly, Naruto had not originally intended the perverted technique to train him in walking around in a woman's body, but a ninja took advantage of what he had.
And Sakura certainly hadn't the advantage, and she wanted to kill him for it.
"Grandmother Puu? Grandmother Puu?" Sakura stood at the foot of the stairs and called for the old woman, but she neither heard an answer to her calls or the shuffling of the old woman's feet as she came to answer it. "That's odd." Sakura chewed the inside of her lip as she headed for the kitchen and Naruto wandered into the living room.
Naruto looked around at the furniture, wandered into the bedroom, found nothing, and wandered back to the stairs. He sat down on the stairs and scrutinized the hands that belonged to Sakura. The skin was far softer than he had thought (certainly softer than his own skin), although the tips and sides of his fingers were callused. He looked up when he heard approaching footfalls. Sakura appeared alone, shaking her head when Naruto stood up and looked expectedly. "We'll come back later," she said.
"Right. Now we have to find Kakashi."
The two Genins left the house, threading their way through the streets and jumping in surprise when a random passing person brushed against them. It took more than a few blocks to become used to walking around with bodies alien to anything they had ever felt, minus Naruto and his former experiences. When they reached a street that was fairly empty, Naruto spoke in a quiet voice: "Neh, do we even know where Kakashi-sensei is supposed to be?"
Sakura froze in mid-step and nearly fell over for it. A wave of dizziness swept through her again; she flailed her arms and rocked back and forth precariously until Naruto reached out to steady her. She grabbed his shoulder and sagged against it, a steady comfort in her now topsy-turvy world. "I'm not used to this." She reached a curved finger upward to twist a strand of hair, except the hair was too short to do just that. "Oh." An overwhelming sense of being in something far over her head was almost too much in which to keep from downing. Sakura's head drooped and she leaned once more against Naruto, waiting for the sense of being overwhelmed and the wave of dizziness to pass.
A tiny voice drifted from the shadows of the street. "N-Naruto-kun?" and then, slightly louder, "Sakura?" Sakura jerked her head upright and nearly fell over. Hinata detached herself from the shadows, the tips of her index fingers pressed shyly together as she glanced coyly at Sakura.
"Oi! Hinata!" Naruto cheerfully waved Hinata over. Her cheeks slightly red, Hinata shuffled to stand before them. She tried to look at who she thought was Sakura, but her eyes kept shifting over to who she thought was Naruto.
Painfully aware of how timid Hinata was (especially with Naruto) and even more painfully aware of how her own crush on Sasuke was mirrored through Hinata's crush on Naruto, Sakura opted to smile brightly at Hinata and not say a word. Naruto, unaware of most things girlish, plowed into uncharted territory.
"Do you know where we can find Kakashi-sensei? Sakura-chan — ouch!" Naruto rubbed his upper arm where Sakura had administered a nasty pinch. She glared at him and roughly jerked her head toward Hinata. Belatedly, Naruto realized his mistake. He stuck his hand behind his head and laughed nervously.
"S-Sakura, I mean, I," another pointed look from her, "and Naruto need to speak to him."
Hinata glanced quickly at Naruto. Sakura gulped as Hinata's eyes narrowed for just a moment, and then the girl shook her head. "No." The sound of her voice rose just slightly, at what could be considered a normal speaking volume for her.
Sakura stepped forward. "Do you know if anyone knows where he can be found?"
Hinata blushed and dropped her gaze. "K-Kurenai-sensei may," she said hesitantly. She looked as if she wanted to ask why they were looking for Kakashi at this time of night, but was too polite to say anything.
"Do you know where Kurenai-sensei is?"
Hinata bashfully peaked up, blushed, and dropped her head. "Yeeesss." The word was slowly drawn out. Naruto scratched his head in puzzlement at her behavior as he quickly glanced over his body. He always did think she was an odd person. Except now he was seeing it from a stranger's eyes (figuratively speaking, of course, since it was Sakura's body and therefore Sakura's eyes, but at least it could be considered seeing from an outside angle).
Did Hinata fear the color orange?
"She'd be at the Wakkon Grocery at this time," Hinata said finally.
Sakura wanted to take Hinata to the side and talk to the girl about her feelings, except this was hardly the time or place to do that. Instead, she gave Naruto a hard look and tried to telepathically convey that he should stay and talk to Hinata. "I'll go see if I can find Kurenai-sensei. Sakura, you stay here. I'll be back in just a moment."
"Wait!" Naruto raised his hand just as Sakura sprinted off. His hand remained in the air a moment as Naruto realized he was left alone with Hinata, and then he scratched his head. Hmm. What did a person say to someone who was scared of orange? "What are your favorite colors?" he asked. That seemed like a safe question, one that he was sure girls usually asked.
"Oh!" Hinata looked surprised at being addressed. She smiled and folded her hands behind her back. Her shoulders were still hunched, but at least she maintained eye contact with him. "I like the color orange." Once more, she blushed and glanced away; off to the direction Sakura had disappeared, oddly enough.
"Orange? Aren't you scared of it?"
Hinata took a step away from Naruto in surprise. She looked at him open-faced, and then her eyebrows lowered as she contemplated the strange question. "Why would I be scared of orange, when it's only a color? It's a nice color. At least, it must be, if Naruto-kun wears it all the time."
"So you like orange because it's a nice color and I — er, Naruto-kun wears it all the time?"
Now Hinata was looking curiously at him, not concentrating on the confusing sentence. "Sakura-san, are you feeling well?" she asked softly. "You don't look well."
"Me?" Naruto pointed at himself, thought quickly of what he should say, and came up with a blank. With an embarrassed laugh, he shrugged. "I feel fine."
"But you aren't acting like yourself."
Naruto froze in mid-laugh. "N-not myself?" He rubbed the back of his head self-consciously. "Heh. Why wouldn't I not be me? I mean, it's not as if I'm not Naruto or something."
"Sakura, I didn't say you were Naruto-kun." Hinata approached him slowly, her face and eyes filled with worry. Naruto leaned backwards, as if he could duck away from her scrutinizing him. "You — you wouldn't really be Naruto-kun, would you?" Hinata's face burned bright red as she stumbled backwards. She covered her mouth with her hand in horror, and angled her shoulders away from him. "You wouldn't be using Henge, would you?" Tears welled up in her eyes. "What a cruel joke!"
"N-no! Hinata! It really is me! Look, you could hit me, and I wouldn't change."
Hinata looked over her shoulder at Naruto, twisting her hands and looking mortified and depressed.
"I mean, hit me-hit me. Not with your gentle hand style, because that would hurt me, but if I were using Henge, the illusion would break, but since I'm not, I'll stay me." Seeing Hinata still distrusting, still ready to cry (and not knowing how to react if she did began to cry), Naruto dropped his hands and told the truth. "Tr-truthfully, I really haven't been myself, lately." Which was quite true, but only if one took consideration of how lately was actually just about an hour long. He tried to think of how Sakura would say this, what she would do with her hands. He clasped them before himself and twisted his fingers nervously, as he had seen her do so before. What was it that she had complained about earlier? "I mean, the whole attack on Leaf, not making it for the Chuunin exam, Sasuke and Naruto nearly killing themselves... It's been getting to me, I think. And then I had to clean the attic today and there were things in there that, well… Bad stuff happened." Naruto's voice trailed off as he tried to think of the best way to explain the statue that switched bodies without somehow implicating himself.
Hinata looked thoughtful for a moment, nibbling on the inside of her lip, and then nodded to herself, as if she came to terms with what he said even if she didn't still agree. "Yes, these are difficult times." She turned her back to him and trudged away. When she had reached the edge of the street shadows, Naruto took a step forward.
"Hinata, wait!"
She twisted about to look at him expectedly. Naruto studied her face and posture a moment, and then smiled. "I think you'd look cute in orange." Hinata's face turned red, and she ducked her head as her hand came up to cover her mouth.
"Would Naruto-kun think I'd look cute in orange?" she asked timidly, glancing shyly at "Sakura." Naruto was taken aback by the question. When did this come back around to him again? Then he looked at her openly; orange wouldn't be a good color to go with her hair, but maybe it would bring the roses out in her pale cheeks. Anything might be better than the dove-gray she usually wore.
"Y-yeah. Yeah, I think he would."
Hinata smiled gratefully at him, and then stepped into the shadows. Naruto listened to her fading footsteps, and then shook his head as he crossed his arms before himself. If Hinata wasn't so shy, Naruto was sure she would be his number-one stalker.
"This."
"Nah. Gai prefers this brand."
"I prefer this one. It's cheaper."
"That's a generic brand and it tastes like cardboard."
Long pause. "Asuma-kun, how would you know what cardboard tastes like?"
"You're being awfully miserly. And I don't, but it's pretty bland so I imagine that's what cardboard would taste like."
"Is there any reason why I have to buy instant ramen for someone who pops over at my place to mooch because he never bothers with buying his own food?"
"It's not our fault the school never taught us men practical things, like cooking."
"Without burning down your apartment at the same time, you mean?"
"That only happened once, and your couch was the only one I was sure that didn't have mutated things lurking beneath its cushions. Besides, I've apologized about that before, and I'm sorry. But you're the only person who I could stay with until I found a new place!"
"There was Gai."
"Yes, there was. Except he never has any food. Even I knew that. And those couch cushions I was referring to are his."
Sakura cleared her throat. At once, Asuma and Kurenai turned from where they had been jabbing fingers at each other and loudly arguing in the way that showed it was an ageless argument brought up many times before, and looked at her.
"Yes, Naruto-kun?" Kurenai said. With her attention diverted elsewhere, Asuma silently switched the generic brand of instant ramen for the packets he had in the basket her arm was looped through and resting against a hip. He winked at Sakura when she blinked in surprise.
"Er, Hinata said I could find you here, and that you might know where I could find Kakashi-sensei."
Kurenai frowned. "Is something the matter?"
Sakura felt her face turn red. "N-no. Nothing is. Why do you think that?"
Both Jounins were silent as they studied Sakura closely. She found herself shuffling her feet nervously and wishing the floor would open up and swallow her. "It's just that," Kurenai said carefully, "you seem different."
"Ah, uh. Well. Sakura and I have to speak to Kakashi about an important matter. It can wait, of course, if he's not around, but it is sort of important."
"I'm afraid Kakashi is still on his mission and won't be back for an undisclosed period of time." Kurenai pressed a hand to her chest and then shook her fingers at Asuma. "Is there anything we can help you with? What with the teams being shared between the Jounin now that some teams are broken up due to a Chuunin graduation or inability to fight any longer, I am here for you."
"What?" This was news to Sakura. "Are the teams being split?"
"No, not being split - shared. Hinata cannot fight in her current condition, Shikamaru is now Chuunin, and Rock Lee's future of being a ninja is questionable at best. We have also been given missions separate from the team, which is why Kakashi is not here." Kurenai frowned suddenly. "Hasn't Kakashi told you this, already?"
Sakura vigorously shook her head and worried her bottom lip. "No. We've heard nothing."
Kurenai muttered something under her breath about ninjas incapable of keeping track of time, and Asuma nodded his head in agreement. "Well," Kurenai said in a bright tone, "now you do know." She once more looked concerned. "Is there something wrong? If there is anything I can help you with, anything at all, I would do so gladly."
Sakura shook her head and tried to smile past her once-more rising hysteria. If Kakashi was gone, what could she and Naruto do now? "Thank you for your offer." She bowed respectfully, and then hurried away.
Asuma nibbled the end of his unlit cigarette as Kurenai's head tilted forward in silent thought. "Is Naruto usually that polite and that quiet?" he asked finally.
"No. I was just thinking of that myself — Oi!" Kurenai spotted the ramen in her basket, and back they went to their interrupted argument.
Sakura hurried back to where Naruto was. "What did you tell Hinata?" she asked him eagerly. Naruto sat on the top of a garbage can, his arms folded behind his head and his legs sticking out in two different angles. The red dress that Sakura always wore rode up an unsightly distance on her thighs. Sakura snarled, glowered at him, and then yanked the skirt down. "What are you doing flashing my stuff to the world?" she demanded hotly, pointing an accusing finger at him.
Naruto blinked. "Flashing?"
Sakura jabbed a finger at the dress. "You don't show so much skin in public!"
"You don't? But you have shorts under it." Naruto lifted the hem of the skirt to peer underneath, but Sakura slapped him lightly across the head. "Ow."
"You aren't wearing this, Naruto!" Sakura grabbed two fistfuls of his orange jumper and shook them. "You can't act like you are!" Naruto looked down the length of Sakura's body, still puzzled. Sakura slapped her forehead and shook her head. "Figures," she muttered. She shouldn't expect much from the guy who transformed himself into a naked girl. "You and I are going to have a long talk regarding the way we act. Asuma-sensei and Kurenai-sensei both noticed I — as in you — weren't behaving normally."
Naruto nodded in agreement, a serious look on his face as he jumped off the garbage can. "Hinata said I, being you, was acting strange, too."
"They also said that Kakashi-sensei is on a mission and they don't know when he'll be back." Sakura was about to tell Naruto that the teams were now being shared, but decided to wait on. They needed to concentrate on the matter at hand. "We should go back to the attic and see if there is anything – anything at all – that we can use. Maybe some books, or some other statue. And we'll wait to see when Kakashi comes back." She peeked at Naruto through the blond bangs that drifted into her vision. "We may have to tell someone else," she said softly.
Naruto scrunched his face up in thought. Sakura felt a sense of displacement, a shattering of reality, like seeing Naruto in a dream when she saw his characteristic expression on her face. It was disjointed hybrid of her and Naruto, because her facial muscles were not used to being used in such a manner. "And just who do we tell?" Naruto asked finally, his voice almost sulky. "Sasuke?"
Sakura entertained a brief image of Sasuke learning that his comrades had switched bodies. She could imagine him staring at them in shock, and then smirking in humor. She couldn't imagine what he would say, but she had a sinking feeling that it would be something along the line of, Better you than me. She sighed. "No, you're right. We'll wait until Kakashi-sensei comes back. Let's go back to the attic."
"Why don't we try Henge?" Naruto asked suddenly. "We could disguise ourselves as, well, ourselves and then we wouldn't have to worry about it."
Sakura slapped her forehead. Why hadn't she thought of that? "We could!"
Naruto grinned. "Heh. Let me try." He crossed his hands and folded his fingers as he closed his eyes. "Henge!"
Sakura waited.
"Henge!"
And waited.
"Henge!"
And waited.
Naruto opened his eyes. "Funny," he muttered with a puzzled frown before trying again. "Henge!"
Sakura crossed her arms before her chest and tapped her foot impatiently.
"Henge! Henge! Henge!"
"All right, I see, give it up, Naruto," Sakura said with a resigned sigh. "You're using someone else's chakra and you don't know how to access it."
Naruto's frown deepened. "But it's there," he said resolutely. "I can feel it."
"Like I said, you don't know how to access it. And I'm not even going to try with yours. You have a lot more than I do so I might accidentally call up more than I need, even if I could access it." Sakura paused in speaking as she watched Naruto's face grow pink with embarrassment as he placed a hand behind his head and smiled nervously.
"Yeah. Uh, a lot more," he said in agreement. Sakura made a mental note to follow that line later on, after all of this was addressed.
"And what if Kakashi-sensei doesn't come back for a long time?" Sakura asked Naruto again. It bothered her to wait without telling someone; Naruto may be used to handling problems without asking for or seeking help, but Sakura wasn't used to being that independent. She still looked forward to and appreciated adult supervision. "It's possible to be gone for weeks at a time on missions."
Naruto frowned. "But, Sakura-chan, who can we tell?"
"Kurenai-sensei," Sakura said immediately. If there is anything I can help you with, anything at all, I would do so gladly. Sakura knew the Jounin meant it; she had seen the sincerity in the woman's eyes, even if Asuma was distracting.
Naruto scrunched his face up in thought. "Who?"
Sakura rolled her eyes. "Kurenai-sensei's the Jounin instructor for Hinata, Kiba, and Shino."
"Oh. The one with the freaky red eyes."
Sakura put her hands on her hips. You're one to talk, she thought agitatedly, all too aware of the whisker-like markings on his face. "She said the teams are being shared now, because Hinata can't fight, Lee may not be able to be a shinobi, and Shikamaru isn't a Genin anymore. The teams are all lopsided and the leaders also have missions separate from the Genins. So we're being shared now, and so she's someone we could tell, as well as Gai-sensei and Asuma-sensei."
Naruto resolutely shook his head. "But, I — Sakura-chan, it doesn't feel right to tell them."
"There's also Iruka-sensei," Sakura added quickly, hoping to crack Naruto's stubbornness at keeping everything secret. "He knows us and we know him. We can tell him, right?" Naruto looked uncertain, so Sakura pushed even further. "Naruto, we can't even use our chakra, we're in two different bodies — as ninja, we're pathetic! We couldn't be able to fight!"
"Three days!" Naruto stubbornly held up three fingers. "What is the point of telling them if we can find something in the attic that will change us back? Let's look for three days first and if Kakashi-sensei isn't back, we can tell the one with freaky red eyes. But, Sakura-chan," he added, his stubbornness becoming nervousness, "they wouldn't send our team leaders away for a long time, would they? So Kakashi-sensei has to be back soon."
"I don't know, Naruto. They're sharing the teams for a reason. But at this point, we don't even know if there is anything in the attic to help us."
"Which is why we gotta look. Why would the old man keep something as dangerous as that stupid statue in his attic if there's nothing to counter it?"
Sakura opened her mouth to retort, but fell silent as she considered that. If they did tell, even the older Jounin may not know what to do or where to look. To worsen matters, it might remove interest from the attic, and if the cure was there, they could be sending people on a wild-goose chase and it would be a useless bother. Sakura struggled with the issue to hand this momentous problem off to someone who was more likely to know what to do, versus demanding attention from people who were needed to help in the effort of rebuilding Konoha. In the end, the problem that was so gigantic for her and Naruto was probably nothing compared to the rest of the village. "Three days," she said finally.
"Beginning tomorrow," Naruto added.
Sakura glared at him. "That's pushing it."
"We need at least one day to search the attic besides tonight — and, Sakura-chan, we do still have to finish cleaning it."
Sakura rubbed her head. She wasn't too sure if she could be Naruto for three days and have no one suspect a thing. "Two days," she said, holding two fingers up. "If we find nothing then, we can spend the third day trying to explain everything to Kurenai-sensei. This is the sort of problem that may have to be explained six times over before anyone understands, and we may have to produce proof that this did happen."
Naruto appeared to argue the matter once more, so Sakura made a plea to his crush. Normally, this wasn't something she did, except she felt desperate, tired, and confused. "Please, Naruto, do this for me."
He hesitated, and then nodded his head reluctantly. "Two days," he said. "Starting tomorrow, though."
Sakura smiled gratefully at him. "Thank you."