Chapter 2: Top-Secret Disclose!

"What do you mean Sasuke?" Naruto asked her with surprise. Therefore, Sakura had invited him to go out so that they can discuss about Sasuke.

"Yes, Naruto it was all about Sasuke…" she trailed off and sat in the grass.

"What about Sasuke?" Naruto said feeling a little bit of sick. He can't believe it that she just asked him to say something about that big-headed Uchiha.

"Naruto, he was missing remember?" Sakura said ridiculously.

"Then?"

Sakura's mouth hang open to Naruto's reaction, has he not worried why Sasuke was missing. "This is not a joke, Naruto. Sasuke is missing." Shikamaru joined them.

"Good! Sasuke is missing! Fine, so what's the point!" Naruto said with outrage.

"Don't you want to know what had happened to your teammate?" Shikamaru asked him feeling annoyed.

"I mean is Sasuke is missing, then?" He said standing up to the ground. "It's just like that, he preferred to be out of the sight of us… or…" he said glaring at them. "Train himself to death and he don't want to be disturb… or.." He again gasp for air, "Just kidnapped by his fan girls of his!"

"Naruto! He has no fans club." Shikamaru added. Sakura blushed and turned away her gaze at them.

"I still remember in the Chuunin Selection exam, Kakashi-sensei told me he wasn't going to train that Sasuke but when the final battle had arrived they had a dramatic entrance at the stadium!" Naruto again said angrily.

"But that was not the matter now!" Sakura shout at him for the first time they had this conversation. "Naruto, I know that you and Sasuke are rivals in our team but can you have a bit concern about him?"

"I am concern about him!" Naruto corrected her, "It's just I am not over-exaggerating!"

"Right!" Shikamaru said to untense the situation. "By the way, I was telling you…"

"Shikamaru, not yet, I want tell you what those mad men had been talking about…" Sakura cut his statement. Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. Naruto who had been feeling calm again and feel like grinning sat next to him and busy watching the birds in the ceiling of the forest. "They had been talking about…plotting something nasty about our village."

"Not new to me." Shikamaru said instantly.

"They telling about the right-hand man, I have no idea who the hell that was but this is disturbing!" She said softly as if someone was out there watching and listening. "And says that he was in our village and recruiting people…" She said.

"And they are planning of conquering Konoha." Naruto added.

"Who could that be?" Sakura asked the two of them.

"I don't know, it must be the ninjas of the Hidden Sand village." Shikamaru said promptly. "They had allied the Sound village before isn't it… or no it can't be, Sandaime had finished him off."

"Who was it?" Sakura said grasping fro breath.

"Orochimaru." Shikamaru said in a cold shrill voice. Sakura winced at the name; she was really frightened at that snake-faced devil.

"No! It can't be… he was dead… Sandaime had killed him…Sandaime had sacrifice his life to us all in murdering that evil twisted snake." Sakura yelp.

Naruto is just listening to them. He doesn't know what to say if he can blurt out the truth. But he felt guilty that he had known something. Still he didn't say anything to them for a moment. 'There is one thing that bothers me, who was the right-hand man and who was that creature the old mad man was referring to?" Sakura again asked the spiky-haired chuunin.

"What do you mean?" Shikamaru asked her and looked puzzled. Sakura repeated what the men in the pub was saying.

After retelling it to him, he was gone more puzzled that he was. "What the hell is that about, is that kind of a riddle or something? I don't feel like thinking at this moment." He exclaimed with his hand ran at the back of his ponytail. Sakura cast a here-goes-this-lazy-bum-again look to Naruto. Naruto just shrugged.

"Right-hand man, I can't think of someone without his left hand…" Shikamaru said brushing his chin with his fingers like a detective. Naruto then pictured out a ninja without a right hand, that was a funny yet insulting to a ninja.

"This is not a laughing moment Shikamaru!" Sakura frantically yelled at him. He jumped to his seat.

"Sorry." Shikamaru apologized and sweat-dropped.

"I think I know who was that right-hand man they were referring to…" Naruto finally said to the both of them. They both stared at him. Sakura cast an odd look at him as if he has no right to give or know some piece of information in life. Shikamaru now staring at him ridiculously.

"You are bluffing…" Sakura said and waved her had in the air.

"You think so? Try me?" Naruto said with the air of confidence. "Don't you really think I am not part of this world?"

"Alright, I am just making it sure, go on spit it out."

"The right hand man is no other than…" Naruto started. Sakura hold her breath. Shikamaru just listens to him intently. Naruto could feel all the attention of the two to him and felt embarrassed or shy. He cast a looked to the two back and forth and gulped down his throat.

"It was Kabuto." He finally said.

"No!" Sakura yelled at the top of her voice that made the birds in the trees to fly away to them. "I can't believe it! I don't believe it! You are lying…"

"Kabuto? You mean the one who was talking to us in the first test of the Chuunin Selection exam?" Shikamaru said and cannot believe it either.

Naruto nods in agreement. "I am 90 percent sure about it."

"No. Kabuto cannot do such a mean thing, had you forgotten he had helped us to get the scrolls of heaven and earth in the second test?" Sakura said. "He helped us, he was friendly and for that time we considered him as a friend. Naruto, you are jumping to conclusion then."

"Like before I knew was he was up to." Naruto instantly added to her. "Can't you see Sakura he was just hiding his own self, he was wearing an invisible mask."

"I think what you are trying to say Naruto, I remembered the day of our oral exam, when Sir Morino Ibiki was not yet there in the examination room he was talking to us, to us newly genins." Shikamaru paused for a while and thinking what had happened to the certain room, "Then he had showed us his Nin cards! That's it! He was recording everybody's statistics!"

"Well spotted! Therefore, he had helped our team to get the scrolls because he had to spy on us! And he has hidden agenda." Naruto said and grinning.

"And I had known that it was not the first time he had back out the third test, he had done that every time he took the Chuunin Selection exam!" Shikamaru added.

"And he was here in Konoha recruiting followers?" Sakura joined them again. "But how did you know Naruto?"

Naruto grinned mischievously and kitsune ears pop out of his head (anime style), "When Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei had a bad encounter with Itachi and was forced to get confined in the hospital, me and a certain perverted hermit had journeyed to the next village to search for the Konoha's lost Sannin." Naruto said grinning playfully to them. "Then we had faced that twisted-snaked-face evil and his loyal 'apprentice' in the particular village we are searching on…" He continued.

Sakura put her hand to her open mouth to cover her disbelief, Shikamaru just stared at him seriously and to Naruto it seems that there is a great battle inside his head. "He is… He is alive?" Sakura manage to talk despite with her awe.

"Certainly he is." Naruto nodded.

"But…" Sakura again said still her hand in her mouth.

"And I have a strong feeling what is our little chuunin was going to tell us eh?" Naruto said and gesturing to Shikamaru.

"OH! I nearly forgot." Shikamaru said. "It was like this… I had heard from the jounins talking the other day at the academy…" began and sitting nervously in the grassy ground.

"They were saying that Sasuke had been missing and…" he continued.

There was a pause and dead silence. Shikamaru eyed Naruto to Sakura and gulped down his throat. Sakura was shaking and eagerly waiting to what he will say and so is Naruto.

"It was confirmed… he had joined the Dark side…" he finishes with a sigh.

To what Shikamaru had said, Naruto thought Sakura would yell at him with outrage and tell to his face that Sasuke will not do such a move, but he was wrong. Sakura sat to her seat and almost going to fall to what had she heard a small gasp escaped from her mouth. She fell silent for a while did not know how to react.

"Are you alright Sakura?" Shikamaru asked her but with the looks of his face it seems that he knows the answer of his question.

"Who specifically?" Naruto turn to Shikamaru.

"They don't know. But to what you had told us… it must be him."

"Sasuke-kun…" Sakura finally said. Her voice shaking and she looks like she was fighting her self to let her tears fall down to her cheeks. "There should be a mistake there… Sasuke-kun can't do that…" she trailed off.

Naruto and Shikamaru both exchanged looks at each other. They don't know how to calm her or make her comfortable. "Sakura… Sasuke is just brainwashed." Shikamaru said with great sympathy to her.

"He's right. He is just carried away by his revenge." Naruto agreed to him.

"No! I can feel that you two are just… just—trying to—make Sasuke-kun bad to me!" She said sniffing. "Naruto you twisted evil loser! You are just saying that to make Sasuke-kun a bad prat like you are!" Sakura yelled at his face at stands at her feet. They could feel her rage.

"I know he'll do everything, everything to make revenge to his brother but not to the extend that he'll join that snake!" She again screamed. "You might be right; he's just training himself to death…"

"Sakura! Calm down!" Shikamaru shout at her to be able to hear her.

"You know that there is a great possibility that he'll join that snake!" Naruto hiss and her and stands to his seat too and facing Sakura a few inches away. "You know what he had told us at our encounter at him at the Forest of Death, he'll seek for me, that I promise."

Sakura's eyeballs widened. Shikamaru cast a puzzled look to him and also stand to his feet to get a good view at him. "What do you mean your encounter at the Forest of Death? Your team had encountered him at the second test of the Chuunin exam?" He asked with great curiosity.

This is not what he wanted, to blab the things they had experienced but it is like to be no other way to explain her. "No! We did not! See how this wart a liar!" Sakura spat to him.

"Shut it Sakura!" Naruto shouted at her. "We did encounter him at the second test. Just like I said he left a message to us." He said to Shikamaru. Sakura shot a dangerous look at him.

"Don't tell about it to him." She hissed. "We had sworn to Sasuke-kun not to tell."

"Well, to tell you Sakura I had not sworn to death I would not tell it." He snapped at her. Sakura shaking more than before and began to rock back and forth. "Sakura!" he yelled at her and before she could fall to the ground, he had caught her.

"Promise me Naruto, you don't tell it to him." She said with a whimpering tone. Naruto don't know what to do. He wants to tell everything to Shikamaru. He can be trusted but…

"It's alright Naruto don't tell me about it." Shikamaru said with his normal 'lazy bum' tone. "That is a military secrecy isn't it?"

"What I see, what I hear, what I fell, when I leave I leave it here…" Shikamaru said and gave him a natural smile.

Naruto gave him smile then too. Sakura got to herself again and sat at the ground. "Thanks, Naruto." She said feeling relief.

"So… the best thing to do now is to report this to Hokage-sama." Shikamaru announced.

Sakura frowned but did not say anything. "Yes, definitely, we all go straight to Hokage-sama's office." Naruto said seriously. Shikamaru darted his eyes left and right as if searching for something.

"I don't think that we can do that for now…" he muttered.

"What do you mea—n?" Naruto said. And with the split second, kunais and shurikens go flying towards them.

"We've been busted!" Naruto shouted at the top of his voice.

TBC…