Perhaps searching an attic filled with items of questionable abilities wasn't one of Sakura's brighter ideas. Amidst normal-looking paraphernalia was a mink fur coat that tried to take a bite out of Naruto (who now had tooth marks on his Leaf's forehead protector, and mussed-up pink hair), a box of moving black and white obscene photos, a mirror where their reflections independently operated on their own thoughts (Naruto's reflection kept blowing raspberries and making vulgar gestures, while Sakura's mooned the two real Genins), and a music box that played sleep-inducing music. Sakura barely managed to close the music box before she and Naruto would have collapsed into sleep.

"There ought to be warning labels on these things," Naruto muttered from where he was beating down a flying carpet with his broom. Sakura was too busy trying to detach a stuffed monkey that was clinging to her leg and crying "Papa! Papa!" in a loud voice to tell Naruto this was exactly why Grandmother Puu had requested specifically for Sakura and Naruto — because the old woman had thought they were best suited to face such dangerous and powerful artifacts. Naruto had the strength to fight them off, and Sakura had the level-headedness to see to it that Naruto stayed out of trouble.

They threw back the canopies, clouds of thick dust rising in the air. Coughing and choking, they often made their way to the open window for a breath of fresh air. The only light came through the window, the open door leading from the attic, and the two candles Sakura and Naruto managed to find. They sorted through various boxes and trunks for something that could give them a clue. In the far corner of a room, Naruto discovered a trunk surrounded by a chain. The lock, rusted and old, crumbled into dust in his hands and the chain fell off. When he opened the lid, shadowy tendrils leapt out to wrap around and drag him within before the lid slammed shut.

"Naruto!" Sakura hurried over the trunk as it rattled and shook. Just as she reached it, the lid popped open and Naruto was spat out with a loud, "Yuck!" from the trunk. The lid slammed shut and the trunk, leaping on its four pegs as legs, dashed across the attic floor and jumped out the window. Sakura hurried over to the window and looked out of it to see the trunk disappearing into the distance, moving almost as if dancing with glee. She hurried back over to Naruto's side and helped him sit upright from where he was sprawled on his back, his eyes unfocused and his face pasty white. Large, bleeding tooth marks lined the inside of his arm where a mouth of razor sharp teeth had nipped him.

"Naruto, are you okay? What happened?"

Naruto slowly rubbed his arm before clenching his hand directly above the wound at his elbow. "That thing was about to eat me until it got a taste of you!"

Sakura didn't know if she wanted to be grateful her body wasn't food for some trunk, or upset that she would be found distasteful.

The stuffed monkey from earlier scuttled across the floor and once more attached itself to Sakura's leg. "Papa! Papa!"

Naruto glared down at it. "Do you mind?"

The stuffed monkey turned its head and looked up at Naruto with eyes of black glass. For a moment, it looked as if confusion flashed through its eyes. "Mama?" it said.

Naruto did a double take of surprise and scooted backwards on his rear, no longer concerned with his wound. "I'm not your mama!"

"Mama!" The stuffed monkey released Sakura and scuttled after Naruto. Naruto leapt to his feet and darted forward, only to trip over another box. He pitched forward and fell on his face, tipping the box over and spilling its content of books. The stuffed monkey jumped into the air and landed on Naruto's back. It wrapped its stuffed arms around Naruto's neck and snuggled close. "Mama! Mama!"

Naruto buried his face in his hands with a moan.


"Oi." The first Sound-nin, a six-armed man, looked at the second Sound-nin. "Do you hear something?"
"Hmm?" The second Sound-nin, a detestable air around her lending the image of one with an attitude that would have rivaled Sasuke's, barely glanced up from her handful of cards. She appeared to listen for a moment before slapping down a pair of cards face-up on the ground. "The wind is shuffling the leaves. Nothing to worry about. Gotta eight?"

"No. Go fish."

With a click of her tongue against her teeth, the second Sound-nin reached down and snatched up a card from the haphazard pile strewn between them with more viciousness than the cards deserved. "I'm bored. One would think that the kid would be more depressed with how that fox-brat one-upped him. So why did we just trailed him all day while he wiped snotty noses and kissed bruised knees instead of talking to him?"

"Orders are orders. We watch. Gotta two?"

"No. Go fish."

One of the six hands reached down to grasp a free card. It was tucked into the fan of cards he held with two other hands. "Are you sure you don't hear something? Because I know I do."

"Gotta four?" The first Sound-nin handed the requested card over. The other rearranged her cards as she pulled a pair out and slapped it to the ground. "Nope. What does it sound like?"

"Gotta eight?"

The second Sound-nin looked up from her cards. She glared at her companion coldly. "I asked that earlier and you denied having it," she said in a dangerous voice. The first Sound-nin shrugged, not caring how upset the second may be.

"I drew it when you told me to go fish for a two."

"Right." If sarcasm could kill, the man would have been died six ways to Sunday with no hope in reincarnating even as a worm. She threw the card at him. "I hate playing you. I think you cheat."

"Do not. It sounds like the pitter-patter of feet, like a horse tromping through the woods."

The second Sound-nin listened. Her eyes narrowed again, this time in concentration instead of annoyance. "You're right." She laid her cards down, face-down, and looked over her shoulder. Her eyes scanned the surrounding brush and looked upward at the sky where moonlight from a quarter-moon drifted through the canopy of leaves. "I do hear something." They stood up together. "When are the others supposed to come back?"
"Soon."

That was when a trunk burst from the bushes and fell upon the Sound-nins, gnarling and gnashing its many teeth.

No one heard the screams.


"I am not your mama!"

"Mama! Mama! Mama!"

"Sakura-chan," she hunched her shoulders against Naruto's whining, "it won't listen to me!"

"Mama! Papa! Mama! Papa!"

Sakura tried not to any pay heed the dancing stuffed monkey and the whining Naruto-turned-Sakura as she crouched beside the box of books Naruto had tipped over. She swept a hand over the covers and glanced over the books. "101 ways to skin a cat," she read loudly as she picked up one; she flipped through the pages and saw some gruesome pictures of skinned cats. "Eeew." She set it off to the side. "Snow-white and Rose-red: the untold tale of a lesbian love."

"What's a lesbian?" Naruto asked from where he was batting away the stuffed monkey, which tried to scale his back in excited glee. Staring at the cover, Sakura felt her face glow red. She quickly placed the book under the 101 ways to skin a cat before Naruto could ask again. But he did anyway. "What's a les—"

"It's like a thespian, but not! Here." Sakura thrust a heavy book into his hands. "Read this and tell me if there's anything useful in it." She hoped it wasn't the sort of book that Kakashi-sensei read.

Naruto squinted his eyes as he opened the book and flipped through its pages. "Hmm. Hmm. Ack!" The book shook in his hands and he dropped it abruptly, leaning backwards on his knees. The monkey, seated on his shoulder, watched in avid interest as the book quaked, its pages flipping back and forth wildly. A twisted hand clawed its way free of the wriggling words and took a wild grasp at him. Naruto stood up, grabbed the heaviest thing he saw (a gigantic iron wok that gurgled and smoked orange fumes) and repeatedly slammed it down hard upon the book. The book screamed and the hand, pounded beneath the wok, spasmed and clawed at the wooden floor before finally becoming limp and lifeless. Naruto, breathing heavily, pressed his hand against his pounding heart and took a deep breath of relief as he dropped the wok squarely upon the book.

"Mama?" The stuffed monkey grabbed a pawful of pink hair and pulled itself higher on Naruto's shoulder. Its little tail twisted as it leaned closer to Naruto. "Mama?" Its voice was softer and its eyes were filled with something that Sakura was pressed to call love.

Naruto opened his mouth to tell the stuffed monkey off, but stopped as the monkey's lower jaw began to tremble and its eyes — glass buttons! — welled up with tears. He sighed. "Welcome to the family," he muttered, roughly patting the monkey on the head. The monkey squealed in happy glee and clung harder to the shoulder and pink hair.

"Mama!"

Naruto pointed at Sakura. "That's Mama. I'm Papa." In all rationality, stuffed monkeys were incapable of giving people dirty looks (as well as prancing around and calling people Mama and Papa), but that was what the stuffed monkey did. It jumped from Naruto's shoulder in disgust and climbed up the neat stack of books Sakura made from what she had already looked at. The monkey watched Sakura with avid interest, pointedly ignoring Naruto.

Sakura looked up from the pile of books, more cautiously exploring it since she had not only seen Naruto "kill" the book, but also the deep marks the fingers scoured into the wood when it clawed. After a brief moment of hesitance, Naruto joined her. No more books attacked the two as they were sifted through in silence. It was broken only with the occasional, "Meep!" from Sakura as her face would glow bright red from some of the books she looked at. Naruto didn't see what was so embarrassing about them. The ones he got to look out mostly consisted of cooking (of course, that 83 ways to bake, boil, and baste human organs was probably more than he expected) and machinery (the one on nu-clee-er power detonations from the Dummy's Guide to Building Your Own Bomb from Ordinary, Everyday Ingredients obtained at the Local Wal-Mart was interesting. Not that he knew what a Wal-mart was, but the pictures were neat).

At the far bottom of the pile, with what looked to be only a hundred pages, was a battered and worn book with a leather cover. Naruto picked it up and carefully wiped the dust from it. He squinted his eyes at the faded letters and slowly read them out loud. "Love Potion #9 and other great mysteries of the Universe." Switching bodies had to be a great mystery. He opened the cover and looked at the faded table of contents. He barely made out the kanji, jutsu. Ah! Even if this book didn't contain the solution to their problem, he could still learn a few new things.

"Anything yet?" Sakura asked him quietly. Naruto looked up from his book, surprised at the sound of his voice.

"I don't know," he answered truthfully. "This book may have something."

"It's getting awfully late," Sakura said as she pulled her knees close to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She rested her chin in the crook and regarded Naruto with tired eyed. "We'll have to come back tomorrow and finish looking."

Naruto looked around the attic. "And cleaning," he added as he waved his hand in the general vicinity. While he and Sakura hadn't exactly ransacked the attic in their search for a cure for their predicament, they certainly hadn't been too neat about it. The dust had been disturbed so thoroughly that they were both gray from head to toe, and the canvases were sloppily thrown in various corners and crooks. In short, they had failed at their mission to clean the attic.

"What will we tell Grandmother Puu?" Sakura regarded her surroundings as Naruto stood up and put his hands over his head, knitting his fingers together and stretching until he felt his spinal column crack. "Well, there was too much to do in one day," Sakura said finally. She stood up too, and the stuffed monkey crouched and leapt from its stack of books to her shoulder.

"Papa!"
Sakura giggled as the stuffed monkey nuzzled her throat. "We need a name for you," she told it affectionately as she tapped it on the nose.

"How about Annoying?" Naruto asked as he glowered at the stuffed monkey.

It blew a raspberry at him.

"What? Why you—!"

"Naruto!" Sakura held her hand up in the universal sign for Stop. "You leave the little monkey alone!"

"But, Sakura-chan—"

"No." Sakura looked at the stuffed monkey as she rubbed the stuffed monkey's chin. "She needs a name. What should we call her?"

"She?"

Sakura glared at Naruto. "Yes. She."

Naruto glanced to the side, somehow pouting and sulking at the same time.

"Hmmm. How about, M-chan!"

Naruto thought about that. "M-chan?" he asked under his breath in disbelief.

"Yes. M-chan is a good name."

Naruto glared at 'M-chan,' who smirked smugly as him. "Ugh." He turned his head away. "Let's go then," he said, heading for the door. Sakura followed, and closed the attic door behind them. Although the lights in the house were on, Grandmother Puu was still not present. Sakura left a note (smudged with dust) on the kitchen table where she hoped Grandmother Puu would see it and read how they would be back later the next day.

"Where's home?" Naruto asked as they stood outside in the street, both looking up at the stars and moon overheard. M-chan looked around in delight, clinging to Sakura's blond hair and bobbing her head and tail excitedly. "Your home. Should I worry about your parents?"

Sakura looked at Naruto in shock.

"What?" he asked defensively.

"Home?" Her voice was a tiny whisper as she suddenly realized that if they weren't going to tell anyone but Kakashi, then certainly they couldn't tell her parents. She wasn't sure how they would react, because they had been rather upset to learn that Uzumaki Naruto was to be her teammate, which was barely outweighed by the greater pride of being taught with Uchiha Sasuke and by copy-ninja Hakashi Kakashi. Although she had never been able to learn why, her parents had an underlying and unexplained bitterness toward Naruto.

Somehow, Sakura felt as if she was sending the lamb into the lion's den. "Naruto," she said, just before they parted ways, Sakura for Naruto's little apartment, and Naruto for Sakura's house and family. "Don't be alarmed by what you see, because then they'd really know you're me." She nibbled the inside of her lip, trying to tactfully warn Naruto of what lay ahead.

"Screw that," Inner Sakura declared with a dramatic gesture. "Naruto wouldn't know what tactic was even if it mugged him in bright light with its name tattooed across its forehead." Inner Sakura had a point; it wasn't subtle and a person could skewer him or herself on it, but it was a point.

"Naruto," Sakura said, her voice frank, "my parents do not like you."

"Huh?" Naruto tried to recall if he had ever egged their house or rigged the steps to collapse, but he never recalled Sakura beating him up in school for it, so he must not.

"They don't like you because, well, I don't know why. They won't tell me, and they don't like you."

Oh. Naruto felt a chill run through him much like a bucket of ice-cold water poured upon his head. He knew why. He glanced sideways at his body; if Sakura didn't know about the nine-tailed fox, then what did it mean for her to be in the body it dwelled in? Naruto fought down another wave of panic. He didn't even know about the nine-tailed fox until he was told, and he only once spoke to it, so she wasn't likely to find out. He clung to that bit of hope. She might, if she were really lucky, be able to draw upon the fox's chakra, but the chances of that were slim indeed.
He sighed in relief as he reached his final conclusion. As long as Sakura never got his body into a life-threatening situation where only the fox's chakra could help, and as long as she never managed to figure out the connection (not that he himself ever did), then they were safe. "Should I expect anything else besides not being liked?" he asked. He could handle with not being liked. He did it for years, after all.

Sakura watched him for a few moments, still uncertain and still uncomfortable with the situation. She shook her head. "No. Not at all. So I head this way?" She pointed and Naruto nodded.

"Door's not locked," he said. "Don't have anything worth stealing. And we meet at the bridge bright and early in the morning just in case Kakashi comes. Bye." He held his hand up in the air as he walked off in the direction Sakura had directed him to. Sakura watched after him for a moment before she went off to Naruto's apartment, an unshakeable feeling of doom looming over her head.
She tried to think of the situation as best she could. She never really gave thought to why her parents disliked Naruto. She had always supposed that he was a brat and, while that wasn't unwarranted, he did have his good moments. Like that one time where he... Uh, and then there was... Um. She'd think about it some other time, when she had the energy.

She tried to twirl a lock of hair around her fingers, except she realized belatedly that her hair was too short. "Ah." She looked at her hands and arms. She was covered from blond head to uncovered toes with dust, dust, dust everywhere. She clapped her hands against her arms and great clouds arose. She sneezed. Looked like she was going to have to give this body bath.

As Sakura walked to Naruto's apartment, Inner Sakura chanted, "Booyah!" and gave her the thumb's up.


"I'm home!" Naruto peeked his head through the front door and looked around. All the lights were turned off. He didn't want to admit to Sakura that he was reluctant to meet her parents. Of course, he would have to one of these days, but after he had proven himself to be unworthy of the hatred everyone gave him. After all, it wasn't like he asked to have the nine-tailed fox implanted in his belly-button; people ought to at least give him that much credit!

"Hullo?" He looked around. The house was small, but kept very pristine and neat. Next to the door were a mirror and a vanity table; upon the table was a note propped up against a flower vase filled with some noxious weeds. He picked the note up when he saw it addressed to Sakura.

"Dear Sweetie," it read. "We're sorry you had to work with that AWFUL DISPICABLE boy cleaning that DIRTY DIRTY attic. We shall be home late this evening. Don't forget to take a bath, throw your clothes in the washing machine, and DON'T YOU DARE track dust and dirt through your father's CLEAN house. Love, Mama."

Naruto stared at the letter with pointy eyes, and dropped it on the table. He flinched at the dirty marks left on it, and then glanced around with new understanding. The house wasn't just pristine and neat — it sparkled! The colors were blinding and the whites overpowering; everything was perfectly color-coordinated in amber and honey and caramel tones of color. Not a single speck obscured any surface or space.

Feeling guilty, Naruto carefully tiptoed across the hallway to the stairs. He wasn't exactly sure where Sakura's bedroom was, but he had a good guess that it was on the upper level. He looked over his shoulder and winced at the dirty footprints left behind. He'd have to come back later and see to it that they were wiped away. He carefully made his way up the stairs on his tiptoes, not touching the banister or the walls lest he leave dirty prints on those as well.

The upper level was just as clean as the lower level. While the walls downstairs had been bare, the walls upstairs were covered with pictures, big and little. Naruto paused in his search for Sakura's bedroom to look at some of the pictures. He had no difficulty recognizing Sakura, even when she was only a year old, her face covered with chocolate and the piece of cake before her on the tray smashed beyond recognition while a candle somehow clung still to the frosting. The one beside it had a nude Sakura of two years dashing through this very hallway, dripping wet with soapsuds in her hair and determination bright in her green eyes.

He grinned. Blackmail material! All right! He knew Sakura wouldn't want this picture in, say, Sasuke's hands. Hahahahaha! Now she would have to go out on a date with him!

Unmindful of his fingerprints, Naruto scooped the picture off the wall and hugged it close to his chest as he tiptoed down the hallway, quickly glancing left and right in case someone saw him. He skidded past a room decked out in pink and peach, several dresses carefully folded on the bed. He peaked past the doorframe and looked around. It looked like Sakura's bedroom; there in the closet were the same dark pink dresses with the bull's eye on the back. He entered the room cautiously, feeling like an intruder, but swung the door shut behind him.

He dropped the picture and the book of jutsus on the bed and carefully worked his way out of the dusty dress. He rolled it into a tight bundle and dropped it on the floor next to Sakura's bed. He looked at his hands and the skinny arms. How little her muscles were compared to his. Gosh, no wonder why Sakura wasn't very strong. Naruto's gaze moved up the arms to—eek!

Naruto straightened so fast there was a quick sense of vertigo. Feeling like a voyeur, he yanked the padded white quilt with pink primroses from the bed and wrapped it around Sakura's body before looping the trailing end over his shoulder, toga-style. And then with a start, Naruto realized he was going to have to take a bath.

Being in Sakura-chan's body was going to be a little tougher than he had originally anticipated


The troubles of the day took its toil on Sakura by the time she reached Naruto's little apartment. She closed the door behind herself and fiddled with its lock for a moment before it clicked. She leaned against the doorpost and scrubbed her face with one dirty hand; she was too tired to care if she was dirty. All she would do is change clothes, wash her face and hands, and go to bed. M-chan leapt from Sakura's head and scrambled, squeaking with delight, through the apartment, and upsetting the furniture and rugs.

All she had to do was summon the energy that M-chan had to push away from where she was leaning and seek out the sink in which to wash herself .

After a few moments, Sakura finally did begin moving. She shed her clothes as she walked from the front door to the bathroom. There was a sense of freedom as she shook the jacket off her arms and tossed it in the direction of where she perceived the bedroom to be. The water ran dark from the dust she scrubbed from her arms and face. She wondered a moment if she should take a bath, but when Inner Sakura began to chant, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" she swiftly changed her mind. Tomorrow, she would be back in her body, and then Naruto could wash his own self.

She froze just as she began to turn the water off. She ducked her head, and then straightened. "Naruto," she growled as she made a fist and shook it at the mirror at his reflection, "if you so much as leer at my body in the mirror, I'll . . ." Whatever she did to him would have to be done to her body, and if she made Naruto's body suffer, then she'd feel that.

This was going to be tougher than she suspected.

Sakura made her way into Naruto's room. She scowled critically at the mussed-up bed as M-chan dashed past her and jumped onto the bed. The stuffed monkey cocked her head to the side and watched Sakura curiously, before looking at the bed in question.

"I am not sleeping in those sheets!" Sakura told M-chan firmly. She rooted through the various cabinets and drawers until she found a ragged pair of faded blue sheets. Like all the furniture and the clothes Naruto wore, they were worn and aged. Sakura had a feeling that the Konoha Orphan Fund didn't give its wards much, and that was barely helped with the Genin ninja stipend that she knew Naruto received monthly.

No wonder why he lived off ramen. It was cheap and could be bought in bulk.

"Good grief," she muttered to herself as she carried the sheets over the bed. She set them off to the side and grabbed two handfuls of the blankets. M-chan hooted in disbelief as Sakura yanked the bedding off and sent the stuffed monkey flying. M-chan climbed the wall to the ceiling lamp and chattered disapproval. Sakura ignored her as she swiftly made the bed. After she fluffed the pillow, a well-aimed shoe switched the light off and she crawled beneath the covers. With a sigh, she fell into a deep sleep.

And Inner Sakura fell further.


"Where are those two?" One of the Sound-nins pulled a watch from his pocket and looked at it. The other Sound-nin, three times his size, shuffled his feet in worry.

"It's not like them to be late for the shift change," he said.

"No. You better investigate." The Sound-nin braced his elbows against his knees and laced his fingers into a bridge to support his chin. "It's worrisome that they should neglect their duties," he mused softly under his breath as the other Sound-nin disappeared in a silent poof of smoke.

In the forest, a trunk loped along, pausing only to spit up a bone or burp in contentment.


author's notes: Someone mentioned how the Japanese speech patterns for different genders could prove to be a dead giveaway to Naruto being Sakura and Sakura being Naruto. The problem with that is Naruto does not take place in Japan; it has the Japanese language, writing, mythology, and culture (because, well, it's created and voiced-over by Japanese), but it doesn't take place in Japan, but rather an alternative world of sorts. Besides, I am not a firm believer in mixing Japanese phrases into my English writing, unless it is a very, very awkward translation (like Sasuke-kun to Mister Sasuke). So, for clarity's sake, I just have to work within the boundaries of the English language. Gender-specifics of the Japanese language does not translate well with the English language, no matter how much I or anyone else would prefer such.

As for Sakura and Naruto pairing off . . . I don't do romances. If romance occurs, it's something that happens as a side-affect to the plot. In otherwords, if it happens, it happens. (People, these are thirteen year old children! Chances of their finding meaningful love and having an intimate relationship that lasts through life is somewhere in the decimal hundredths because people change immensely from when they first enter adolescence and then finally stabalize in their early to mid-twenties.) It is a Naruto/Sakura friendship fic, but not romance.

The trunk is loosely based off the luggage in Terry Pratchet's Discworld books. I hadn't realized it at the time, though. So credit of the basis for the trunk goes to this brilliant author of satire. He is my god of writing. Sort of. At least with satire, since almost all my fanfiction is meant to poke fun at current cliches and/or ideas of the related fandom.