NARUTO © Kishimoto Masashi • Shueisha • Studio Pierrot • TV Tokyo. All rights reserved. Non-profit fun ahead!
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Against the Tide
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Chapter Three
Naruto dare say he had never seen so much paper in his life.
"You take the left pile, and I'll take the right," Iruka commanded smoothly, not raising a single eyebrow at the incredible amount of paper stacked ceiling high in the room. Before he could move off yet, however, Naruto screeched at him.
"Iruka-sensei!! What in the world is going on here? What're all these... things supposed to be?!"
"Don't fret so much, Naruto," Iruka had already started moving his self-assigned pile around. "We're in this department, we earn our keep. Stop complaining and help me move them all into the shelves!"
Twisting his face into an unhappy pout, Naruto picked up the nearest pile of files and trotted to the nearly empty shelves by the walls. "But why?" He whined. "They didn't sign me out just to help out in spring-cleaning did they?? Why couldn't they get someone else to clean the stupid room up? And why is it so untidy in the first place?? Phew! And I thought /I/ was bad enough!"
"Kakashi-san and Sasuke's both gone to see Hokage-sama," Iruka mentioned, transporting another stack of papers into the shelf. "They need to submit the application personally before your official employment..." He jerked to a stop with an aghast look on his face. He then turned to Naruto and smiled sheepishly. "Err... yeah."
"Personal submission to the old guy Hokage?" Naruto's face, however, betrayed nothing but plain confusion. "Hah, if the old guy wants to give himself more things to do, I suppose I can't stop him. But heheh!!" He swept his thumb across his nose galiantly. "That means I must be next on his list for the Hokage title! Hah! I knew it! I /am/ going to be the next Hokage!"
A thick ring file whacked the blond smartly across his head. "Put that one in the clear shelf next to you, please," Iruka could hardly stop his vein of anger from showing. "If half the energy that goes to your mouth gets to your brain, you would have been issued your Tokubetsu Chuunin license by now!"
"Sensei! It's not my fault the judges are /biased/ against me!" Naruto retorted, shelving the ring file away as requested. "Anyway, even if Kakashi-sensei and the bastard Sasuke are both away, why can't anyone else from the department help out or something? You'd think that a department as popular as the Taiyoubu'd have enough wannabes trying to gain favour through little acts, no?"
Iruka continued working, his back against the complaining Naruto. He stacked three large boxes into a pile and stopped, a hand lingering over the cardboard.
To Naruto, he anticipated that his guardian was going to speak. But for the longest time, he heard nothing, not even a grunt, from the man. Finally deciding that Iruka was perhaps merely resting, Naruto moved to take care of the other files near him.
"There are only two serving in the Taiyoubu," Iruka suddenly said, quietly. He slowly resumed stacking papers one on top of the other. The unbreakable aura of slight despondency that surrounded him did not escape Naruto. "I think... it's been like that since what happened five years ago... since then..." Iruka trailed.
The duo lapsed into a deep, disturbing silence.
"How come you seem to know so much about everything, Iruka-sensei?" Naruto turned his nose up in semi-disgust. "I can swear on my seal that you spend just as much time as I do in the laboratory, but you seem to know twenty times more about the outside world than I do!"
This time, Iruka turned around. He shook his head. "Did you read that report I passed you at the briefing?" He waited. Seeing that there was no positive response from his protege, he sighed. "Knew it. You should take some time out to read it. It should make you more in the know. You can't always depend on oral reports to know everything, Naruto. And after we're done here, you can check out the blue shelf over there," Iruka pointed at a lonely blue sliding cabinet perched at a dark corner of the room. There was an uchiwa fan imprinted on the front, but otherwise, the cabinet looked boring. "That cabinet," Iruka explained, "contains the mission reports of the Taiyoubu for the past five years or so, since the change in management."
"Why the hell would I want to read those for?" Naruto griped, while shuffling some papers into a neat stack. "So that Sasuke can get an ego boost? I think not!"
"It's really up to you," Iruka smiled warmly at the younger Ninja, despite feeling slightly hurt at the blond's outburst. "They say that action speaks loud than words, after all. I think you may learn a few things from Sasuke's actions in those reports."
Naruto snorted, then grumbled under his breath. He did, however, steal a few wondering glances at the blue cabinet.
They spent the next few hours in companiable silence, shuffling papers and shelving files.
When at last, they cleared away enough files and paperwork so that the meeting table and chairs in the middle of the room could be seen, Sasuke and Kakashi returned from their meeting with the Hokage. "Yo!" Kakashi had greeted upon entering the room, his visible eye upturned. "How's everything going?"
Iruka almost dropped the pile of papers he was carrying, whereas Naruto - who had been leaning against the uchiwa shelf, fanning himself with a few wads of paper, merely glanced up in boredom at them. "Hey look." The boy deadpanned in a low monotone. "They're back, Iruka-sensei."
"I /know/ that, Naruto," Iruka frowned at the blond. He tried to maintain his smile. "Welcome back, Kakashi-san," the pony-tailed man mumbled, this time slightly nervous. "I hope everything with Hokage-sama went well?"
The silver-haired man did not answer, choosing instead to examine the by now slightly neater room. He walked towards the table and sat down on one of the chairs surrounding it. "Nice job so far, Iruka-sensei," he remarked randomly.
"Thank you?" Iruka replied, with a literal question mark hanging over his head. "What did Hokage-sama say?" The caretaker pressed on.
There was a lazy wave on the part of Kakashi. "Hokage-sama said okay." He mumbled through his mask. In the next second, his beloved orange book was in his hand and he began to slowly blush a pale pink flipping through its pages.
"Did he say anything else?" Iruka attempted to control the twitch of frustration in his brow. "And Kakashi-san, it's not nice to read that in front of the kids."
"True, true," Kakashi agreed, although he did not take his eyes off the book and did not seem like he was going to keep it anywhere concealed. If anything, the perverted blush on his face deepened. "I wonder why the kids are still around then?"
Previously nothing but a statue of stoic silence near the doorway, Sasuke got the hint instantly. He stood straight and spun around. "I'll be at the rooftop," he informed darkly, before stalking away.
All eyes were upon Sasuke until he turned the corner and could be seen no more. The room descended into silence.
With a sigh, Kakashi rose to full height, keeping his book away in a puff of smoke. He could always count on Sasuke to sour the most conducive of moods. Turning to Naruto, he explained, "Naruto, I need to talk to Iruka-sensei alone about something. So if you don't mind, go join Sasuke at the balcony or just head somewhere outside, okay? We'll come for you when we're done."
At this juncture, Naruto finally figured out what Kakashi had been trying to tell them. He gaped and in a loud voice said, "/This/ was what the hell all that porn reading, adult-talk thingie was about?!"
Plastering his visible facade with a silly smile, Kakashi nodded. "That's right!"
"Argh!" Naruto grabbed at his hair. "I don't understand adults! Sheesh!" Sticking his tongue out at the two older men, he turned and hightailed out, clunking along the route he had last seen Sasuke going in.
Kakashi blinked after the blond with incredulity, and Iruka scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "Sorry. I think he never grew out of being twelve, what with all the time he spent sitting around, sedated in the lab..." The voice turned sad.
Not entirely oblivious to Iruka's slight depression, Kakashi nevertheless ignored it. "Whatever age he is, as long as he delivers," he sat back down on the chair and gestured for Iruka to follow suit, "I'm fine and dandy. Now then, shall we get down to business?"
Iruka eyed the Jounin suspiciously. He grabbed a chair from nearby and sat down, his eyes never leaving Kakashi in case he could read something from his body language. There was none. Eventually he relaxed into the chair and gave a light shrug of shoulders. "Yes, sir. Absolutely ready for business."
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Wandering along the corridors of the storey, Naruto was struck at how empty the place felt. He could clearly hear his every step reverberating off the walls and into his ears, even long after he had taken two, three steps more. Although not completely dark, the corridors were only very dimly lit - making it seem hostile even in the bright afternoon sun. Twice Naruto peered curiously into some of the rooms situated along the hallway. Twice he was disappointed to find nothing but darkness, dust, and a couple of scared spiders. Eventually giving up, he walked towards a clear window, overlooking the compounds outside. The window was sealed by the sides and edges, but the glass itself was intact and, after a bit of wiping, transparent enough to see through.
Naruto gasped at the scene below.
The entire field that belonged to the police department - for whatever reason they needed it for, was visible in one sweeping glance. Beyond that, the rooftops of some of the taller buildings in the villages could be seen as well. Further down all of that, was the Great Konoha Forest itself. It stretched on for as far as the eye could see, and then vanished into the clear blue skies beyond.
Naruto breathed with excitement. "Wow!" He muttered under his breath. "So cool!!" Quickly looking around himself, he eventually scampered down the corridor again, this time with renewed vigor and a fresh new purpose in mind. Very quickly, he found the dusty panel that said 'Roof Access', and without checking if it was locked - which fortunately it was not, pushed it wide open and stormed up the musty, dusty stairwell.
"Whee!!" Naruto sang out to nobody in particular, bursting out into the afternoon sun from the dark column of staircase. The rooftop door flew open noisily, crashing against the side in a splintered mess. Naruto grinned widely and quickly ran near to the edge of the roof, leaning dangerously over the walled parapet so that almost half his body lingered in a precarious position. His bright eyes sparkled with unbridled amazement and joy. When was the last time he was able to stand on such a tall place to take in the sights of an entire village? He doubted there ever was a time.
"This is just so cool!" Naruto spoke up again, to himself, not the slightest bit embarrassed. After all, he had been talking to himself for years already. Nothing new here. Holding a hand over his forehead, he grinned in a random direction. "Woah! That looks like the spot Iruka-sensei used to always bring me training in! I hope he knows about this place! It'd be great if we could have a picni-woah!!"
Naruto's voice tripped. And he tripped as well. Before long, he found himself hanging over the parapet by a mere finger, ready to tip over anytime. He gave a strangled yelp, realising belatedly that in his excitement, he had leaned too far out and was now in danger of falling all the way to the ground beneath. He gulped. This was not going to be pretty.
As he felt himself falling over, he quickly made a Chakra-molding seal. As his long-unused Chakra slowly concentrated on the soles of his feet, he quickly looked for areas on the adjacent wall that he could cling to. Exciting as it was, Iruka would probably scream if he suddenly walked in with a bloodied head after falling ten storeys from the police building. And he didn't think he was in the mood for yet another one of Iruka's screeching lectures. Yet.
He was surprised, however, to find himself suddenly suspended upside down in midair. This was surprising because he was out of reach from anywhere on the adjacent wall to have actually clung on to it. Wondering what was going on, he glanced upwards, just in time to see the horrified face of Sasuke looking down on him with obvious stress and anxiety. "What..." The Uchiha's voice was trembling slightly. "... the hell do you think you're doing, you clumsy oaf?!" The grip he had on Naruto's ankle tightened, and the blond could literally feel him shake with anger. "I /know/ you're stupid, but did you have to /prove/ it to me by falling to your death from the rooftop of the building, for crying out loud?! Do you /know/ what you're doing?? Is there nothing but air in between your thick skull?! Are you-... !!"
The boy was cut short when a pissed Naruto shook his ankle free from Sasuke's grasp, using the momentum to stick onto the wall beside him with his Chakra filled palms and feet. He then glared up at Sasuke, sticking his tongue out. "Gosh, you're an even worst nag than Iruka-sensei." He leapt away from clinging onto the wall and jumped easily back onto the rooftop, behind the stunned Sasuke. They both turned around to face each other, and Naruto continued, "I'm not a big baby, idiot. I can take care of myself! And it's not like you /really/ care if I die or not, anyway I see it," the blond made a face again. A look of pained sadness flashed by Sasuke's face when Naruto said that, but the Uchiha quickly replaced it with well-trained annoyance.
"I /do/ care if someone from my department is going to die because of his /idiocy/!" He snarled, sounding a bit too nasty even to himself. He knew it was his defence mechanism at work again, but he found himself unable to control it everytime. "What were you trying to prove anyway?! That you're really nothing more than a brat and a moron?!"
"Oh bloody shut up, you arrogant prick!" Naruto stamped his foot and yelled, drowning out Sasuke's panicked questions. "I already /said/ I can take care of myself! If you don't think I can even bloody conjure up enough Chakra to cling onto walls or break a damned fall, then why the hell did you sign me out in the first place?! I'm sick and tired of your stupid temper tantrums! The only reason why you're in the Taiyoubu at all must be because you hate the Youma, right?! The only reason why you're even /thinking/ of working together with me, a nasty, stupid Younin is because Kakashi-sensei asked you to, right??! If you really hate me so much, do both you and me a favour and terminate our contract immediately, why don't you?!" The blond knew he was ranting and raving by now, but he didn't care. He hadn't felt so seriously peeved in a long time. "Kakashi-sensei may be able to make you to do things, but you just have to say the word and we'll never have to see each other again! We've only just! Met! And you already won't stop getting on my case for the most trivial things! How the hell are we supposed to go on missions at this rate?! How--"
"You don't understand!" Sasuke interrupted, waving his hands about in frustration. "You've never seen the world besides your occasional mission outside the laboratory! You don't know anything! You don't know anything about the Taiyoubu! You don't know anything about /me/! So stop talking like you have every right to be angry at me!" Sasuke paused to glare sternly at Naruto. "Because you don't know shit!"
As Sasuke turned to storm away, Naruto's eyes dissolved into an angry red tint. "Well, you know what, bastard?" He shouted after the retreating figure of Sasuke. "You don't know shit about me either! So speak for yourself before you say anything next time! Jerk! Bastard!" He spat, but Sasuke was no longer within sight. "...bastard..." Naruto repeated, softer this time. His head was bowed and his fists were clenched.
They both knew that the other was right.
Neither of them truly understood what the other had ever gone through before, to be able to really comment.
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That night, Naruto found himself wandering back to the room with the mountain loads of paperwork - opening the uchiwa shelf to stare at some of the mission reports there. And in his own abode, Sasuke had picked up a book about the history of Youma-Ningen and the Kyuubi before he even realised it.
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23/8/2004
Part 4 of 16
(email XD!) XD (at) tougenkyou (dot) net
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Against the Tide
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Chapter Three
Naruto dare say he had never seen so much paper in his life.
"You take the left pile, and I'll take the right," Iruka commanded smoothly, not raising a single eyebrow at the incredible amount of paper stacked ceiling high in the room. Before he could move off yet, however, Naruto screeched at him.
"Iruka-sensei!! What in the world is going on here? What're all these... things supposed to be?!"
"Don't fret so much, Naruto," Iruka had already started moving his self-assigned pile around. "We're in this department, we earn our keep. Stop complaining and help me move them all into the shelves!"
Twisting his face into an unhappy pout, Naruto picked up the nearest pile of files and trotted to the nearly empty shelves by the walls. "But why?" He whined. "They didn't sign me out just to help out in spring-cleaning did they?? Why couldn't they get someone else to clean the stupid room up? And why is it so untidy in the first place?? Phew! And I thought /I/ was bad enough!"
"Kakashi-san and Sasuke's both gone to see Hokage-sama," Iruka mentioned, transporting another stack of papers into the shelf. "They need to submit the application personally before your official employment..." He jerked to a stop with an aghast look on his face. He then turned to Naruto and smiled sheepishly. "Err... yeah."
"Personal submission to the old guy Hokage?" Naruto's face, however, betrayed nothing but plain confusion. "Hah, if the old guy wants to give himself more things to do, I suppose I can't stop him. But heheh!!" He swept his thumb across his nose galiantly. "That means I must be next on his list for the Hokage title! Hah! I knew it! I /am/ going to be the next Hokage!"
A thick ring file whacked the blond smartly across his head. "Put that one in the clear shelf next to you, please," Iruka could hardly stop his vein of anger from showing. "If half the energy that goes to your mouth gets to your brain, you would have been issued your Tokubetsu Chuunin license by now!"
"Sensei! It's not my fault the judges are /biased/ against me!" Naruto retorted, shelving the ring file away as requested. "Anyway, even if Kakashi-sensei and the bastard Sasuke are both away, why can't anyone else from the department help out or something? You'd think that a department as popular as the Taiyoubu'd have enough wannabes trying to gain favour through little acts, no?"
Iruka continued working, his back against the complaining Naruto. He stacked three large boxes into a pile and stopped, a hand lingering over the cardboard.
To Naruto, he anticipated that his guardian was going to speak. But for the longest time, he heard nothing, not even a grunt, from the man. Finally deciding that Iruka was perhaps merely resting, Naruto moved to take care of the other files near him.
"There are only two serving in the Taiyoubu," Iruka suddenly said, quietly. He slowly resumed stacking papers one on top of the other. The unbreakable aura of slight despondency that surrounded him did not escape Naruto. "I think... it's been like that since what happened five years ago... since then..." Iruka trailed.
The duo lapsed into a deep, disturbing silence.
"How come you seem to know so much about everything, Iruka-sensei?" Naruto turned his nose up in semi-disgust. "I can swear on my seal that you spend just as much time as I do in the laboratory, but you seem to know twenty times more about the outside world than I do!"
This time, Iruka turned around. He shook his head. "Did you read that report I passed you at the briefing?" He waited. Seeing that there was no positive response from his protege, he sighed. "Knew it. You should take some time out to read it. It should make you more in the know. You can't always depend on oral reports to know everything, Naruto. And after we're done here, you can check out the blue shelf over there," Iruka pointed at a lonely blue sliding cabinet perched at a dark corner of the room. There was an uchiwa fan imprinted on the front, but otherwise, the cabinet looked boring. "That cabinet," Iruka explained, "contains the mission reports of the Taiyoubu for the past five years or so, since the change in management."
"Why the hell would I want to read those for?" Naruto griped, while shuffling some papers into a neat stack. "So that Sasuke can get an ego boost? I think not!"
"It's really up to you," Iruka smiled warmly at the younger Ninja, despite feeling slightly hurt at the blond's outburst. "They say that action speaks loud than words, after all. I think you may learn a few things from Sasuke's actions in those reports."
Naruto snorted, then grumbled under his breath. He did, however, steal a few wondering glances at the blue cabinet.
They spent the next few hours in companiable silence, shuffling papers and shelving files.
When at last, they cleared away enough files and paperwork so that the meeting table and chairs in the middle of the room could be seen, Sasuke and Kakashi returned from their meeting with the Hokage. "Yo!" Kakashi had greeted upon entering the room, his visible eye upturned. "How's everything going?"
Iruka almost dropped the pile of papers he was carrying, whereas Naruto - who had been leaning against the uchiwa shelf, fanning himself with a few wads of paper, merely glanced up in boredom at them. "Hey look." The boy deadpanned in a low monotone. "They're back, Iruka-sensei."
"I /know/ that, Naruto," Iruka frowned at the blond. He tried to maintain his smile. "Welcome back, Kakashi-san," the pony-tailed man mumbled, this time slightly nervous. "I hope everything with Hokage-sama went well?"
The silver-haired man did not answer, choosing instead to examine the by now slightly neater room. He walked towards the table and sat down on one of the chairs surrounding it. "Nice job so far, Iruka-sensei," he remarked randomly.
"Thank you?" Iruka replied, with a literal question mark hanging over his head. "What did Hokage-sama say?" The caretaker pressed on.
There was a lazy wave on the part of Kakashi. "Hokage-sama said okay." He mumbled through his mask. In the next second, his beloved orange book was in his hand and he began to slowly blush a pale pink flipping through its pages.
"Did he say anything else?" Iruka attempted to control the twitch of frustration in his brow. "And Kakashi-san, it's not nice to read that in front of the kids."
"True, true," Kakashi agreed, although he did not take his eyes off the book and did not seem like he was going to keep it anywhere concealed. If anything, the perverted blush on his face deepened. "I wonder why the kids are still around then?"
Previously nothing but a statue of stoic silence near the doorway, Sasuke got the hint instantly. He stood straight and spun around. "I'll be at the rooftop," he informed darkly, before stalking away.
All eyes were upon Sasuke until he turned the corner and could be seen no more. The room descended into silence.
With a sigh, Kakashi rose to full height, keeping his book away in a puff of smoke. He could always count on Sasuke to sour the most conducive of moods. Turning to Naruto, he explained, "Naruto, I need to talk to Iruka-sensei alone about something. So if you don't mind, go join Sasuke at the balcony or just head somewhere outside, okay? We'll come for you when we're done."
At this juncture, Naruto finally figured out what Kakashi had been trying to tell them. He gaped and in a loud voice said, "/This/ was what the hell all that porn reading, adult-talk thingie was about?!"
Plastering his visible facade with a silly smile, Kakashi nodded. "That's right!"
"Argh!" Naruto grabbed at his hair. "I don't understand adults! Sheesh!" Sticking his tongue out at the two older men, he turned and hightailed out, clunking along the route he had last seen Sasuke going in.
Kakashi blinked after the blond with incredulity, and Iruka scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "Sorry. I think he never grew out of being twelve, what with all the time he spent sitting around, sedated in the lab..." The voice turned sad.
Not entirely oblivious to Iruka's slight depression, Kakashi nevertheless ignored it. "Whatever age he is, as long as he delivers," he sat back down on the chair and gestured for Iruka to follow suit, "I'm fine and dandy. Now then, shall we get down to business?"
Iruka eyed the Jounin suspiciously. He grabbed a chair from nearby and sat down, his eyes never leaving Kakashi in case he could read something from his body language. There was none. Eventually he relaxed into the chair and gave a light shrug of shoulders. "Yes, sir. Absolutely ready for business."
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Wandering along the corridors of the storey, Naruto was struck at how empty the place felt. He could clearly hear his every step reverberating off the walls and into his ears, even long after he had taken two, three steps more. Although not completely dark, the corridors were only very dimly lit - making it seem hostile even in the bright afternoon sun. Twice Naruto peered curiously into some of the rooms situated along the hallway. Twice he was disappointed to find nothing but darkness, dust, and a couple of scared spiders. Eventually giving up, he walked towards a clear window, overlooking the compounds outside. The window was sealed by the sides and edges, but the glass itself was intact and, after a bit of wiping, transparent enough to see through.
Naruto gasped at the scene below.
The entire field that belonged to the police department - for whatever reason they needed it for, was visible in one sweeping glance. Beyond that, the rooftops of some of the taller buildings in the villages could be seen as well. Further down all of that, was the Great Konoha Forest itself. It stretched on for as far as the eye could see, and then vanished into the clear blue skies beyond.
Naruto breathed with excitement. "Wow!" He muttered under his breath. "So cool!!" Quickly looking around himself, he eventually scampered down the corridor again, this time with renewed vigor and a fresh new purpose in mind. Very quickly, he found the dusty panel that said 'Roof Access', and without checking if it was locked - which fortunately it was not, pushed it wide open and stormed up the musty, dusty stairwell.
"Whee!!" Naruto sang out to nobody in particular, bursting out into the afternoon sun from the dark column of staircase. The rooftop door flew open noisily, crashing against the side in a splintered mess. Naruto grinned widely and quickly ran near to the edge of the roof, leaning dangerously over the walled parapet so that almost half his body lingered in a precarious position. His bright eyes sparkled with unbridled amazement and joy. When was the last time he was able to stand on such a tall place to take in the sights of an entire village? He doubted there ever was a time.
"This is just so cool!" Naruto spoke up again, to himself, not the slightest bit embarrassed. After all, he had been talking to himself for years already. Nothing new here. Holding a hand over his forehead, he grinned in a random direction. "Woah! That looks like the spot Iruka-sensei used to always bring me training in! I hope he knows about this place! It'd be great if we could have a picni-woah!!"
Naruto's voice tripped. And he tripped as well. Before long, he found himself hanging over the parapet by a mere finger, ready to tip over anytime. He gave a strangled yelp, realising belatedly that in his excitement, he had leaned too far out and was now in danger of falling all the way to the ground beneath. He gulped. This was not going to be pretty.
As he felt himself falling over, he quickly made a Chakra-molding seal. As his long-unused Chakra slowly concentrated on the soles of his feet, he quickly looked for areas on the adjacent wall that he could cling to. Exciting as it was, Iruka would probably scream if he suddenly walked in with a bloodied head after falling ten storeys from the police building. And he didn't think he was in the mood for yet another one of Iruka's screeching lectures. Yet.
He was surprised, however, to find himself suddenly suspended upside down in midair. This was surprising because he was out of reach from anywhere on the adjacent wall to have actually clung on to it. Wondering what was going on, he glanced upwards, just in time to see the horrified face of Sasuke looking down on him with obvious stress and anxiety. "What..." The Uchiha's voice was trembling slightly. "... the hell do you think you're doing, you clumsy oaf?!" The grip he had on Naruto's ankle tightened, and the blond could literally feel him shake with anger. "I /know/ you're stupid, but did you have to /prove/ it to me by falling to your death from the rooftop of the building, for crying out loud?! Do you /know/ what you're doing?? Is there nothing but air in between your thick skull?! Are you-... !!"
The boy was cut short when a pissed Naruto shook his ankle free from Sasuke's grasp, using the momentum to stick onto the wall beside him with his Chakra filled palms and feet. He then glared up at Sasuke, sticking his tongue out. "Gosh, you're an even worst nag than Iruka-sensei." He leapt away from clinging onto the wall and jumped easily back onto the rooftop, behind the stunned Sasuke. They both turned around to face each other, and Naruto continued, "I'm not a big baby, idiot. I can take care of myself! And it's not like you /really/ care if I die or not, anyway I see it," the blond made a face again. A look of pained sadness flashed by Sasuke's face when Naruto said that, but the Uchiha quickly replaced it with well-trained annoyance.
"I /do/ care if someone from my department is going to die because of his /idiocy/!" He snarled, sounding a bit too nasty even to himself. He knew it was his defence mechanism at work again, but he found himself unable to control it everytime. "What were you trying to prove anyway?! That you're really nothing more than a brat and a moron?!"
"Oh bloody shut up, you arrogant prick!" Naruto stamped his foot and yelled, drowning out Sasuke's panicked questions. "I already /said/ I can take care of myself! If you don't think I can even bloody conjure up enough Chakra to cling onto walls or break a damned fall, then why the hell did you sign me out in the first place?! I'm sick and tired of your stupid temper tantrums! The only reason why you're in the Taiyoubu at all must be because you hate the Youma, right?! The only reason why you're even /thinking/ of working together with me, a nasty, stupid Younin is because Kakashi-sensei asked you to, right??! If you really hate me so much, do both you and me a favour and terminate our contract immediately, why don't you?!" The blond knew he was ranting and raving by now, but he didn't care. He hadn't felt so seriously peeved in a long time. "Kakashi-sensei may be able to make you to do things, but you just have to say the word and we'll never have to see each other again! We've only just! Met! And you already won't stop getting on my case for the most trivial things! How the hell are we supposed to go on missions at this rate?! How--"
"You don't understand!" Sasuke interrupted, waving his hands about in frustration. "You've never seen the world besides your occasional mission outside the laboratory! You don't know anything! You don't know anything about the Taiyoubu! You don't know anything about /me/! So stop talking like you have every right to be angry at me!" Sasuke paused to glare sternly at Naruto. "Because you don't know shit!"
As Sasuke turned to storm away, Naruto's eyes dissolved into an angry red tint. "Well, you know what, bastard?" He shouted after the retreating figure of Sasuke. "You don't know shit about me either! So speak for yourself before you say anything next time! Jerk! Bastard!" He spat, but Sasuke was no longer within sight. "...bastard..." Naruto repeated, softer this time. His head was bowed and his fists were clenched.
They both knew that the other was right.
Neither of them truly understood what the other had ever gone through before, to be able to really comment.
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That night, Naruto found himself wandering back to the room with the mountain loads of paperwork - opening the uchiwa shelf to stare at some of the mission reports there. And in his own abode, Sasuke had picked up a book about the history of Youma-Ningen and the Kyuubi before he even realised it.
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23/8/2004
Part 4 of 16
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