Chapter XIII: Fish and Vodka
"Missing-nins?!" Naruto screeched. "B-but why?!" He had so many things to do before he became a missing-nin or a dead-nin. Becoming Hokage was at the top of the list, and this tidbit of would not look good on his resume.
"Explanations later. Now get rid of your hitae-ate. Since we're the only Leaf ninjas in the country, there's no use in carrying them around."
"But Iruka-sensei..."
"Naruto! Just throw it away!" Sakura cried out in exasperation as she stomped on a plot of dirt where her forehead protector was buried. Glancing at her superior, she wondered what brought Kakashi to this unusual assumption. The glance became a double-take when she saw the copy-nin looking intently back at her.
"What?"
The man scratched his head sheepishly. "Um, I was wondering if you had anything for hangovers."
Sakura gave her leader a disapproving look before handing him a bottle.
"What's this?" He asked as he twisted off the top and sniffed the contents inside. The liquid inside smelled of nothing and he looked back at the medic in slight confusion.
"Water."
"You don't have anything else?"
"Would I lie to you?"
"Perhaps."
Sakura opened her mouth to argue only to stop herself. It was true. Even if she remembered to bring an antidote for a hangover, Kakashi would not deserve such luxury.
"Either way," Sakura said smugly, "That's all you get." Turning around, she jumped onto a branch and continued towards Yuko-san's former home. Kakashi sighed and looked forlornly at the bottle in his hand.
Women were such complicated creatures.
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Kakashi ordered that all clothing that revealed any kind of symbol was to be discarded for dark, non-descript attire. Flak jackets were discarded and incinerated. All Konoha jounin and chuunin fatigues were effectively destroyed save Naruto's precious headband. No amount of reasoning or threatening could counter "But Iruka-sensei gave it to me!" and so the stubborn demon child was left with his precious article. Sakura despaired at the childish way Naruto chose to express his demands.
The team had split in order to accommodate their own acquired tastes as Shiro so illustriously enlightened to his newfound friends. His plan backfired when Naruto and Sasuke assented and assumed their roles as captors, dragging the culturally narrow-minded Shiro for 'fish so fresh, it'll stare at you'. Sakura decided to eat alone, a sentiment not shared by her superior as she watched Shiro's tearful and desperate goodbye.
"Well? What are we eating today?" The remaining jounin looked irritably cheerful at the thought of dining with his favorite—and only—kunoichi. Sakura's face immediately lost all youthful vitality at his proposition as she glared at the eye not obscured by the black strip of cloth that replaced his headband.
"'We'?"
"What's wrong with 'we'?"
"There is no 'we' when 'I' still happens to be mad at 'You'." Sakura turned to leave. Raising an eyebrow, Kakashi turned the opposite way. If that was how she would take his offer, then he would have to bare everything.
"What a shame. I wanted to talk to someone on why we're missing-nins...." He heard her stop. The insatiable thirst for knowledge and will for reason reached into the depth of her parched intellect.
Now that he had Sakura's full and undivided attention as well as hesitation, all she needed was a little tug at the preconceived leash to change the girl's obvious direction.
"Maybe I'll join the boys instead... talk politics with Sasuke or something..." Though Kakashi would not have left Sakura to eat alone, two could play this intellectual game of chicken.
There was a tugging at his sleeve. Kakashi turned to Sakura in feigned shock. As expected, the exclusive factor led to her downfall. He smiled at the inevitable. She was cute when she was predictable.
"If you start gloating, I'll kill you."
"Hai, hai."
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They sat inside a small bustling restaurant, one that Sakura had less than favorable opinions on its bland appearance. Appearances were deceiving, however. Whoever owned the place was a genius at making yakisoba.
"You remember Neji from the Chuunin Exam, Sakura," Kakashi began as he snapped apart his chopsticks.
"Hyuuga Neji?" Sakura mused, glancing at the waiter refilling her glass. "He fought with Naruto in the first round of the Chuunin Exam. Why?"
"Yup. He also exposed a good deal of confidential information during his 'Caged Bird' speech that day." Kakashi propped his elbows on the table and laced his fingers together. Sakura noted that his gloves were gone as was everything on his dish.
"After the Cloud found out that the body given to them was Hyuuga Hizashi, the country began to move in their spies and cut off all political and economic ties with the Leafs. This also factored into our village's decline in power, but even now we don't have the time or resources to do anything about it.
"Right now, the Cloud is itching for a chance to blame something on the Leafs. The problem is that most prominent people would rather hire ninjas of their own country rather than another, so there are no official records of any ninjas entering the country unless they are assigned a mission. Godaime-sama knew that she was putting us in a precarious position when she assigned us this mission, and if some high-top person ended up dead, we would have to be declared missing-nins in order to avoid conflict."
Pushing her face closer to her leader, Sakura narrowed her eyes.
"Why didn't you tell us this earlier?"
"I forgot," was his swift reply. The validity of the answer was doubtful, but Sakura only gave Kakashi a harsh glance that conveyed her disbelief.
"I wanted to tell Naruto and Sasuke, but being missing-nins really doesn't have much to do with our mission so I'll tell them later."
Sakura nodded. Quickly finishing the remaining scraps on her plate, she took a big gulp from her glass to wash down anything left in her mouth but suddenly began to sputter and cough violently.
"Sakura?" Kakashi inquired with a bit a concern. Sakura wiped her mouth and cringed.
"No, nothing. It's just that the water here tastes gross." And I just drank half the cup, she thought disgustedly. Kakashi gave her an odd look and took the cup from her grasp and sniffed the liquid inside. The scent was a bit different, but he could identify the abominable substance
Some idiot had refilled Sakura's cup top full of alcohol.
And not just any alcohol. Something stronger than the sake he had at Thompson's place. Judging from the intensity of the stench, what Sakura had downed in that one gulp was an equivalent to half a bottle of sake. Kakashi wondered what he should say to Naruto and Sasuke about this situation. The designated meeting time was less than ten minutes away and Sakura sobering up between now and then was like asking a twelve-year-old Naruto to eat his vegetables.
As Kakashi wondered how such a colossal mistake could happen, a waitress bustled toward their table and excused herself before taking the liberty to sniff Sakura's beverage. On taking a whiff of the illicit substance, she bit her lip and fidgeted before reciting an obviously pre-conceived apology.
"I'm sorry. One of out part-time workers thought it was funny to replace a pitcher of water with vodka. In compensation, we would like to pay for your lunch." Kakashi nodded dumbly in concurrence and in realization that Sakura had just consumed alcohol before she was legally permitted to. This mission report would have more holes than he anticipated...
"Sensei? Do all restaurants spin in the Lightning Country?" Great. The alcohol was seeping into her system already.
"Ones that sell alcohol to minors, yes."
Sakura's eyes brightened in understanding. "Ohh..."
Rising from his seat, Kakashi offered a hand. "Sakura, let's go." Green eyes stared sleepily back in response rather than budging from her seat. Sakura's previous drink was invading the corner of her brain that possessed rational thinking patterns, and that corner was swiftly warping into the fourth dimension.
"Y' know what?" Sakura said suddenly, slowly lifting an arm above her head and dramatically pointed a finger at the jounin's nose.
Kakashi waited for a continuation, his hand still extended towards her general direction. After the tense moment Sakura hiccupped and dropped her arm.
"I forgot." Kakashi sighed and gripped Sakura's wrist, pulling her reluctantly to her feet. She swayed and fell onto his shoulder, attracting some unwanted attention. Ignoring the growing numbers of eyes turning to their general direction, Kakashi hoisted an arm around his neck and quickly made his exit. Of all times to get drunk, it had to be the middle of the day.
The rain had increased ever so slightly, but a rumble in the distance indicated an oncoming downpour.
Which happened three seconds later.
While the concept of bad luck never occurred to Kakashi despite the bizarre turn of events, pneumonia did. Trying to find the rest of the team in the rain was ruled out, and obtaining a room was best in this circumstance.
Setting Sakura's pack on a foot, Kakashi swung the pink-headed chuunin off the ground, right arm supporting her knees and the left, her back. He kicked the pack into the air and caught it with one hand and moved the luggage onto Sakura's stomach where she hugged the pack for warmth.
"Ah, I remember what I was going to say," Sakura mumbled, rubbing her cheek on his shirt. Finding the comfortable plane below the right collarbone, her eyes closed in alcohol-induced drowsiness.
"I wouldn't mind marrying you."
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The three men sat side-by-side in a cart much like Ichiraku, Shiro seated between the two ninjas. The literally fishy smell that hit him ten meters down the street already deterred his appetite.
"Alright! Eat up!" Naruto eagerly dug his chopsticks into his dish while Shiro stared at his less-than-satisfactory meal before him. Sasuke noticed the gunman's discomfort and poked him with the blunt end of his chopsticks.
"What's wrong?"
"Its eyes... and tail.... They're still moving..."
"Ah ha, that means it's fresh! Mine's doing the same thing, so don't worry about it." Despite Naruto's consolation, Shiro could not bring any kind of eating utensil near the plate. It seemed like...animal cruelty....
"I don't want to eat something that can stare at me." Clunk! Shiro and Naruto jumped at the sound of a kunai hitting the wooden board. An exasperated Sasuke had decapitated the flailing entrée.
"You killed it!" Shiro cried. Sasuke whacked the gunman over the head.
"Shut up you idiot! We would have forced you to eat it anyways!" For a mercenary who supposedly had his fair share of homicides, he was acting awfully childish. He was like... Naruto. Two idiots.
"We're not going to have another break until nightfall, so if you don't eat now you'll only slow us down." He looked away and continued to eat in silence.
"Ow..." Naruto watched Shiro rub his head to ease the pain. A thought had entered the blond's mind as he watched the whole exchange.
"Oi, Shiro... Are you really a mercenary?"
"I'm a... hmm, what would you call it... Where I come from, they call people like me 'snipers'. Basically a long-range assassin." Picking up the chopsticks he dropped, Shiro peeled a small piece of meat off the slimy skin and narrowed his eyes and the gelatinous morsel. He mimicked Naruto by dipping the meat into the small bowl of sauce beside his plate.
"I'm not very good when I'm in the heart of the action. Picking off unsuspecting enemies is my specialty."
"Then why—"
"—was I at the party like that?" Shiro swallowed his bit of food. It wasn't that bad. A bit rubbery, but not bad.
"I was the only bilingual person of the whole team."
Naruto nodded sagely.
"Sucks to be you."
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Kakashi stood watching over Sakura mumbling nonsense in a drunken slumber. His message, sent via nin-dog, would meet the trio at the meeting point and hopefully they would find their way to the inn. For now he would make his way toward the meeting place after establishing a temporary guard for Sakura.
He had an inebriated subordinate accepting a non-existent marriage proposal who was holding up their travel schedule. The wonders of human invention.
Nevertheless, alcohol was truly the poison of society. Nothing else would make the violent yet naive Sakura so cheerful and open than a gulp of vodka. The scenario left him wondering what kind of nonsense he spewed out last night.
I wouldn't mind marrying you.
Kakashi chuckled to himself. Sakura was funny when she was drunk.
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Naruto was the first to notice the caped dog that wore sunglasses in the rain. As Naruto ran toward the messenger, Sasuke went into deep thought. If Kakashi sent a messenger to the meeting place before the designated time, something was up. Most likely a change in plans.
"Oi, Sasuke, look at this," Naruto said as he tossed the scroll previously in possession between the jaws of Kakashi's pet. The three kneeled next to Naruto, who was in the process of spoiling the dog, and peered at the erratically written characters on the sheet. Apparently the man was distracted when he wrote this.
As Naruto was scratching Kakashi's pet, the dog's ears shot up. Naruto also looked about, noticing the lack of people and their disadvantageous position in middle of an empty plaza. Sasuke burned the scroll in his hand and looked at Shiro.
"So you're not a hand-to-hand fighter?" Shiro nodded with a quizzical look on his face. Sasuke sighed. He could only trust his gut instinct on this decision. Swinging about his pack, Sasuke unlatched a long black box he had confiscated when the gunman was knocked unconscious. Shiro stared at Sasuke's outstretched hand that held the strap of the black box.
"I suppose I can put my trust in you?" Shiro's face became uncharacteristically grave as his eyes met the Uchiha's. Taking the strap from the shinobi's hands and shouldering the case so that it was positioned parallel to his body, the sniper turned and walked wordlessly away from the two men and the dog. Sasuke watched the gunman walk into the mist and as the figure disappeared, he shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair.
"I think I did something stupid."
"Naw, he's a good guy. We'll be all right." Naruto threw a shuriken at a pool of water nearby. A hand shot up, catching the shrapnel between its fingers followed by a heavily armored and bandaged ninja. As he slid out of the puddle, a multitude of shinobis also materialized from random collections of water around the plaza.
There were about thirty in all.
"No identifying village. Could mean that a Kage's behind this." Sasuke's eyes swirled red as he reached into his pack and twirled about his Fuuma shuriken.
"Either way," Naruto said with an ominous grin, "Looks like the buffet decided to open."
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Author's Notes:
I do not write lemon. I am not sorry that I don't write lemons, so do not ask for any.
Shiro's encounter with the fish is actually based on my brother's experiences. Except he didn't eat the fish.
Smashed Kakashi, smashed Sakura. Two of a kind.
As for the two's first kiss... don't expect anything melodramatic. I suck at angst and mush. Anti-climatic events are my specialty.
I'm slowly editing past chapters while I write for future readers based on reviews and personal aspirations. If there's new content in a previous chapter, I'll tell you all about it in these ANs.
"Fanartist"