Once again, Naruto found himself in a rather difficult situation. They had made decent time and were now only an hour or two away from a small town on the border of sound country. Temari had been thankfully quiet for the latest part of their journey, as Naruto needed to come up with some way to control her within the town.

Glowing red arms grabbing onto people was the kind of attention he didn't want, so he would have to be subtler in populated areas. He knew that constant physical contact was out of the question; they both needed clean clothing and a bath.

His answer came in form of an image from Kyuubi. Naruto knew the sand girl wouldn't like it, but that was probably why the demon had suggested it.

He held up a hand and the two shinobi stopped, landing on the ground almost in unison.

Temari turned to him with a glare, as he noted she always seemed to do. This meant she was at least less afraid of him now, though whether that was good or bad he couldn't decide.

"Why are we stopping so close to a village!" The irate girl demanded to know.

"As I'm sure you know," Naruto said, "it will be more difficult to watch you once we're in town."

Temari had known that for days, she was counting on it and would be looking for a chance to escape.

"And you also know," he continued, "that my normal methods of restraining you won't work. So, with help from Seirei Kirite, I have come up with a solution."

Naruto walked over to the girl, took the sword of her back and with a flick of a kunai, cut a small hole in her clothes right above her waist.

She of course, had something to say about this, "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOUR DOING!"

Naruto grabbed her arm and calmly replaced the sword on her back, covering the hole.

"This way," he said, "if you cause problems, the manifested restraints can go under your clothing"

At this point, Naruto wasn't sure if she was red from embarrassment or anger.

"There is, of course, another option, but I didn't think you'd go for having to hold my hand 24/7. And if you don't try to run or kill me, it won't be a problem either way."

The unfortunate thing was that she had been planning on trying to escape or kill him, or more likely both. Temari knew she had lost this battle, but she was determined to win the war. He would have to slip up eventually; she would be there when he did.

The two shinobi jumped back into the trees and went on their way.

They arrived in town rather late, so Naruto led his rebellious but tired prisoner to one of the first good hotels he saw. He could afford it, and they had been sleeping on the ground for 2 nights.

He got a regular 2-bed room and quickly dragged Temari upstairs. Their odd appearance and gigantic sword had been drawing attention. Once inside, Naruto set down some rules.

"Ok, your leaving this room requires one of two things, either your with me, or you've told me where your going and you take Seirei Kirite."

Temari got annoyed, "This place had public baths, or am I supposed to just not wash myself?"

Naruto did a few hand seals. One cloud of smoke later, he was a dark haired girl. (He had modified his usual sexy no jutsu to include clothes)

He grinned. "Me or the sword, your pick."

Temari had a choice between a annoying boy and a creepy sword. The sword didn't talk.

She took Seirei Kirite.

Temari slid into the water still holding onto the sword. The bathing area was empty and she didn't want to give the blade ANY chance to 'restrain' her while she was unclothed.

Once she was settled, she held the sword up out of the water. She had never actually spent much time looking at it before.

The handle was ordinary, but that was where normalcy ended. The blade reflected almost no light at all, no matter how she angled it. She moved on to the etching. It amazed her even now; both sides were carved in a mirror image of each other.

The carving was perfect, the two great monsters locked in combat truly looked alive. She started at the hilt, where the fox's tails started, and slowly ran her hand across the engraved image.

Near the middle of the blade, the fox and dragon twisted around each other, both trying to land a fatal blow. The scene was obviously near the end of a battle, but Temari realized with a start that no one would ever know which one won the fight.

The two would be forever frozen in the moment right before the victor was decided.

Temari realized that she had never asked how or why the sword was sentient, she just accepted it. After all, her little brother carried intelligent sand around with him, so who was she to question an intelligent sword?

But now she was curious. She sank deeper into the warm water and decided to ask him about it later.

Back in the room, Naruto was smacking himself in the head.

Naruto had been working over a map, planning their route to and through lightning country, when the Kyuubi had decided it would be fun to send random pictures of a wet Temari directly into Naruto's mind every few seconds. The demon was careful to make sure each image was at an angle such that it suggested everything and revealed nothing.

Kyuubi grinned to himself within the sword. This was fun. He had never had the chance to do things like this before and it was a novel experience. Hell, he though as Naruto started banging his head on the table, terrorizing these two was almost as much fun as obliterating a village. Almost.

Temari arrived back at their room an hour later, wrapped in a towel and carrying her clothes. Naruto didn't even glance up from where he was laying on his bed; he knew he would blush if he did.

Temari washed her clothes in the bathroom, as Naruto had done while she was bathing. She had spent enough time with her captor to know something weird was going on when he was quiet for this long. She estimated that he should have made at least 3 wisecracks by now.

She emerged from the bathroom a short time later still wrapped in her towel, but Naruto could see as he glanced over that she was wearing her net shirt under it. Unlike the fox boy, she crawled under the covers of her bed.

Temari stared at the ceiling for a few moments, but quickly found herself drifting off.

She was awakened sometime later, but a silent glance at the clock showed it to be only 2:00 AM. A lamp was on in the room, and a moment later Temari noticed Naruto sitting at the table in the corner. Seirei Kirite was leaning against the other side of the table and Naruto was studying something on top.

"Are you aware it's two o'clock in the morning?" Temari half-murmured.

"Yeah"

Temari glanced at what he was studying on the table.

"Why are you playing chess with yourself?' she asked.

"I'm not" came Naruto's reply

"Who are you playing with then?" Temari asked skeptically, but as she finished speaking, a clawed hand reached out of the sword and moved a piece.

Temari blinked, "Your sword plays chess?"

Naruto nodded, "he's pretty good at it to."

"Oh…" Temari paused for a moment; "The question I'm leading up to here is why are you playing chess with your sword at 2 AM?"

Naruto took his opponents Knight with one of his bishops

"Couldn't sleep"

Temari paused again, "Where did you get the chess set?"

Kyuubi took Naruto's rook with his queen

"Stole it from the game room downstairs"

"Oh…" Temari just sat there for a moment.

She slowly got out of bed and wrapped a blanket around herself before pulling a chair up to their table and silently watching them play.

The boy felt himself drifting in pleasant darkness. There was nothing here, no one to bother him.

Suddenly, he heard rather screechy voices surrounding him, and started to notice that his left arm hurt.

Shikamaru opened his eyes and sighed. "Troublesome"

The moment Tsunade heard Shikamaru was awake, she insisted all others leave the room so she could debrief him personally.

She sat next to his bed on a foldable chair.

"So your absolutely sure" The Hokage said, "that it was a fox head that bit you"

The shadow user nodded slowly, "Yes, a red fox head. It appeared to be a chakra manifestation"

Tsunade was impressed, but Shikamaru was both the laziest and most observant person she knew, so if he said it had been a fox, it had been a fox.

She knew what that meant.

She slowly walked out of the room and turned to the waiting Shizune, "Naruto's status is now upgraded, he is now an S-class missing-nin. He was the one who attacked the northern gate. Kyuubi is active enough to manifest, I want the best Hunter-nin and ANBU we have on this. The demon CANNOT be allowed to break loose."

The great irony of course being that at that moment in time, the great demon fox was about as dangerous as a housecat without Naruto to give him chakra.

Currently, Naruto was quite contentedly snoring in bed. Temari had woken up first and was already dressed. She had momentarily considered making a break for the door, but Seirei Kirite's presence mocked her, as if daring her to run.

She looked at the sword again and out of sheer curiosity, started to count the tails on the fox. She had known there were more than 6, but never actually counted.

"7….8….9……………..9 tails…..a 9-tailed fox" something tickled in Temari's memory, a connection she had missed and couldn't get a hold of. She looked around the room and saw Naruto's wallet sitting on the table.

It was a frog.

Her eyes widened.

Gaara. The girl pinned against the tree. Gaara transformed. The Frog. The Fox.

Uzumaki Naruto.

He must have left his village only a short time after she last saw him, after the failed rescue of Uchiha Sasuke.

Almost everything about him had changed, but she was sure it was him all the same. This was the boy who had beaten her brother. The one who was supposed to be dead.

Temari suddenly thought of his new name. Fushichou Naruto. One who was burned alive and reborn from the ashes of his demise.

Of all her revelations, it was this one that stayed with her as she watched him awake.

Naruto knew something was wrong the moment he woke up. Temari sitting on a chair near the end of his bed and was looking at him thoughtfully, she had never done that before.

"I want you to promise to answer a question truthfully," the sand girl said carefully.

Sensing humor wouldn't be appreciated right now, Naruto just nodded.

Temari took a deep breath, "How did Uzumaki Naruto really die?"

Of all the questions in the world, that had been the one Naruto had been least expecting, but it was at least, he thought sadly, one he knew the answer to.

"He died," the boy said with a dark smile, "from broken dreams and a broken heart."

The both sat in silence for a few minutes, then Naruto quietly got out of bed, put his vest and shoes on, and slid Seirei Kirite into place on his back.

He walked to the door of their room and stopped. Temari stood up, put on her shoes, and they walked out the door together.

Temari would later wonder what might have happened had she not followed him that day. But, she would then amend; it hadn't really been her decision. In that moment, whatever fear or desire to escape she had was overcome by a need to understand.

And so she followed.

Iruka stared into the mirror and the white mask that stared back. The decision to don the mask had been easy. Iruka knew Naruto better than anyone, so no one would be a better choice for hunting the boy down. The problems would arise, he knew, when he did find the boy.

What was he going to do, ask the boy to come back? As much as Iruka hated to admit it, Naruto had engineered and executed an almost perfect fake death, one that had fooled the whole village for weeks.

The problem was, that kind of planning was proof that his leaving had been premeditated, and not just spontaneous. There was no leniency in the law when it came to that type of treason.

A shinobi who left the village in a way that suggested it had been planned was to be killed on sight.

Iruka didn't think he could live with that; he had to talk to Naruto first.

The brown haired man carefully removed his new mask and massaged his face. He would wait, and decide what to do when he saw Naruto.

Gaara wasn't sure what to think. The news that Temari had disappeared in an attack by Naruto was both comforting and disturbing at the same time. Gaara was sure Naruto wouldn't hurt his sister, but that really didn't make the thought of his sister being held captive by a Nukenin, even Naruto, more likable.

Kankuro hadn't taken it nearly so well, and had gone to vent his anger on some trees.

Gaara stared up at the sky. He and Kankuro had been called back to hidden sand alon with the rest of the sand nins. They would leave the next day.

The sand swirled around him anxiously, he hated to leave without Temari, but she could be anywhere. He would have to trust Naruto to take care of her, and for the fox boy's sake, he better be trustworthy.

Hiroshi ran through the forest, surrounded by his squad. The Hokage had deployed them 10 hours before; she had mobilized more than half the Hunter-nin for this. Squads were sent to all nearby towns, told they were hunting an S-class criminal named 'Uzumaki'. Everyone, of course, knew what that meant.

The demon child.

As an added bonus, Hiroshi had heard that he had taken a sand girl along with him. Hiroshi had lost his brother to the war with the sand and figured that if his squad found them, he might have to engineer a little 'accident' involving the sand-nin.

Currently, the aforementioned sans-nin was shopping. It hadn't taken her 30 seconds after leaving the hotel to realize that the sword no longer covered the hole Naruto had made in her clothing.

Naruto was now carrying his sword, as there wouldn't be any need to restrain her. They had come to a kind of unspoken understanding, she knew enough now that if she ran, he would probably be forced to hunt her down and kill her. She knew he really didn't want to do that, and she didn't really want to die. They both knew she wouldn't run.

And so she was now looking for new clothes. Naruto had given her 15000 yen to spend (mostly) as she liked and had gone off to buy traveling supplies. Temari had never been a shopping person, primarily because she always wore the same thing, but Naruto had insisted she get some pants and at least one regular shirt.

She had growled for a little while, as she was very fond of her net shirts, but complied anyway. He was the one paying, after all.

Naruto arrived back an hour later to see Temari looking rather stressed, but holding a shopping bag of clothes. Naruto himself was carrying a large duffle. Once they arrived back at the room, Naruto opened the bag and started pulling out its contents one by one, naming them as he went.

"Some new pants to replace the pair I lost, 2 extra light sleeping bags, new underwear, magnetic chess set, whetstone, dehydrated soup, a pot, Pocky, soap, oh and," he pulled out a small package and threw them to her with a smirk, "new hair ties."

Temari glared, but it was halfhearted. Things were still slightly awkward between them.

Temari had accepted that trying to escape was pointless. Eventually, she knew Naruto would let her go, but it still felt somehow wrong to be acting like the two of them were just two shinobi on a mission, when she technically was his prisoner.

Naruto was getting nervous; she was looking at him thoughtfully again.

The boy got refocused when he thought of the plan he had made the evening before. He pulled out his map and laid it out on table.

"This," he said, pointing to a small dot on the eastern border on sound country, "is where we are now."

Naruto went on to describe the approximate location of Hidden Cloud and the path they would have to travel to get there, but it was the end of his speech that made Temari jump.

"and when we arrive, I'm going to let you go." The boy finished, "my village will figure out my secret soon anyway, and the cloud has no hostilities with the sand, so you should be able to find your way home."

Things didn't seem so bad all of a sudden; Temari now had a goal to work towards. It would be a week at least to hidden cloud, but it meant that she could be home in the sand within the month.

Temari would have liked to leave that moment, but Naruto wanted to take a bath himself (which he had neglected to do the day before) and eat a meal in town, as it would be 2 days to the next one.

The two paid the hotel manager and left right after diner. Temari got to carry the duffle since Naruto had his sword to haul around, but she complained about it regularly, just to annoy him. The Nukenin and his prisoner were almost to the edge of town when they passed a small sushi shop.

Above them on the roof, Hiroshi smiled as he looked at the picture in his hand. It was his lucky day.

Naruto felt his shinobi sense tingling as soon as he passed the sushi shop, so it was with relative calmness that he shoved Temari into an alley, drew his sword and spun to deflect some needles aimed at his neck in one smooth motion.

There were 6 hunters that he could see, and there would be one spotter somewhere. Naruto ran down the street, staying close to the buildings. Even hunters couldn't throw Jutsus around in populated areas.

He leaped into the air and spun, releasing Seirei Kirite, before landing and running along a building wall while flashing through seals.

The hunters scattered as the huge sword sailed passed them, but failed to notice when it split into 9.

Naruto jumped off the wall, landing on the ground just in time to catch his sword and go into a spinning slice, dispatching a hunter who had tried get into close combat.

A second hunter came at him from behind, while the other three tried to hit a vital point with their needles. Naruto snorted; these weaklings had nothing on Haku. He spun again, deflecting the needles with the flat of the blade and bringing it around to face the hunter who had tried to attack his rear.

Seirei Kirite flashed again, the second hunter fell.

Apart from a few needles in uncomfortable places, Naruto was uninjured. Three hunters faced him in the street, deciding how they should attack.

He never gave them a chance. He let his body flow into the death stance and watched them freeze up in terror. They would be able to fight it off in a few seconds. Kyuubi didn't need half that much time.

The sword shadow clones came from behind, as they had with Chouji. Without the added bulk of Multi-size no jutsu, none of them stood a chance.

Various pieces of hunter-nin lay in the street, but Naruto wasn't paying attention. There had been 6. Where was the last one…

He spun with a growl and ran back towards the alley.

To say that Temari was shocked would be an understatement. She sat in the darkness between the two buildings with mixed feelings. She knew the presence of the hunter-nin meant she was safe and could go home, but there was a part of her that would mourn the death of the odd boy she had spent four days with.

A leaf hunter-nin landed in front of her and offered her a hand getting up. She smiled sadly as she reached for it, but then noticed a glint in his other hand. Her eyes widened, the hunter was concealing a knife and slowly drawing the arm back for a stab.

It's a common misconception that in the game of chess, a player wins when he kills the oponents king. In reality, a player wins when his opponents king is put in such a position where, no matter what he does, he dies.

Temari had one more move.

Naruto arrived just in time to see Temari trip the final hunter and slam a Kunai into his face. The mask split, revealing the mans face just long enough for him to whisper, "sand bitch" and fall, blood oozing around the knife sticking out of his forehead.

Naruto rushed to catch Temari as she collapsed.

She had just killed a leaf hunter, one sent to kill a Nukenin she was traveling with. Right now the spotter for the squad was rushing back to inform his superiors of what happened.

Within 24 hours, she would be labeled as a missing-nin. Hours ago she had been looking forward to seeing her village in under a month. She would probably never see her village again. But she was alive.

There was nothing Naruto could say, so he just sat, soaked in blood, and held her as she sobbed.

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Authors Notes: I had trouble writing this chapter, not sure why.

On a completely different note, someone mentioned Naruto's hair color in a review, and I decided I was going to look up what color "dark maroon" really is. I knew what I imagined it as, and the real thing is pretty close. It's a very dark shade of red with just a hint of purple.

Next Chapter: Temari adjusts, Ino whines, and Gaara throws a temper tantrum