It's been a while since I last updated this story. Sorry, but I hope all you readers aren't mad at me!

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Chapter 2

The Ominous Mission; Beginnings

Recap:

Padding into his rather small kitchen, he stepped quietly over the tiled surface to fill a glass of tap water. His hands shaking violently, he almost spilled the water before he brought the glass into the bathroom with him where he took out successfully some of his medication and swallowed it along with his water. Apparently, the medicine was supposed to help him with his dreams by repressing his brain activity or whatever. He only knew that it hadn't worked so far, but he continued taking it more out of habit than the hope that it would start working later on.

Knowing that he wouldn't be going back to sleep, and that it was almost 4:30 in the morning anyway, he brushed his teeth and took a cold shower before making his regular cup of chicken flavored cup ramen for breakfast. Seeing that he had a few hours until he was to meet with his team, he made some tea and sat in his kitchen, thinking about random things for the next few hours.

Noticing that it was about time to go, he put on his battle outfit and strapped on his weapons, and calmly walked out of the door, still with a slight tired droopiness on his face. Unbeknownst to him he was about to experience the most horrible and stressing series of days of his life.

End Recap:

Naruto walked into the mission hall with his team following behind him. Today, however, Kakashi was preoccupied with an A-rank mission, leaving only him, Sasuke, and Sakura to complete today's mission.

Tsunade, the Hokage ever since the death of Sarutobi during the Chuunin exams when Naruto was twelve (he is now 16, one year after his training with Jiraiya. He's a chuunin now), looked up at them and said, "Ah, Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, you're here. Now to get down to business."

"What's our mission for today?" Sasuke asked, stepping up from behind Naruto.

"Your mission for today is C-rank, bordering on B." Tsunade replied, " You are to travel to the borders of Fire country, where you will find a village called Shiriyoku, in which you are hired to eliminate a man."

At this, Naruto raised his eyebrow, silently asking the question: A man? Not very specific. Who is he, What did he do? Why is he hunted? His motives?

Tsunade continued, "His name, which, frankly, isn't very important, is Kisuke Kai. Brown hair, green eyes. Around 20 years of age. One week prior, he went crazy and started killing everyone he could in the town square. I won't tell you how, suffice it to say that his mouth was very active, though."

At this point, team 7 collectively flinched at the images that entered their heads. They managed to hold onto the bile that was rising in their throats, though, as Tsunade was still talking.

"As a result, the rest of the village was forced to leave and take shelter in the outskirts of their neighbor, Tashiba. They are the ones that hired you. You are to meet them there first and receive further details before moving on to the actual mission. Naruto is the leader for this one. You leave in an hour. Dismissed."

Naruto and his team walked out of the building. Understandably, since this was Naruto's first experience at command, he was nervous. "Errrr heh heh, I guess we pack up and meet in an hour?" He said.

------One hour later------

Team 7 met in front of east gate and without further ado left the village. It would be about a week's worth of travel to the Fire country borders by non-ninja, but only three days for an experienced ninja.

Nothing really interesting happened along the way to Tashiba city. Naruto started complaining halfway because there was nothing to do but run and his teammates were being too quiet. Sakura was content with staring at Sasuke (or rather, Sasuke's posterior) until Naruto started complaining, in which Sakura immediately switched priorities and pounded Naruto upside the head and shut him up. She had to keep doing so every ten minutes until they reached the village or (during the night) put up camp. Needless to say, Sasuke was thoroughly annoyed with the two by the time they reached their destination to ask for information on their target.

When they did appear at the outskirts of the outskirts (XP), they were lead immediately to the local Daimyo's tent. Inside, an old man who was still in very good shape (a.k.a really buff 'n' burly XD) was sitting in seiza (1) with his eyes closed. The ninja were motioned to sit down by the man who was standing outside of the tent.

The man didn't look like he'd be doing anything anytime soon and so team 7 let their minds and eyes wander. A voice made them all jump and come back to reality very soon, however, as it seemed the Daimyo had noticed them.

"It seems the Konoha ninja are here. Turn around and let me see your faces." Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura complied. "Ah, that's better" he said, "Now, I trust that you've come for the information?" The team of chuunin nodded. "Well, then. Tell me what your honorable Hokage-sama has told you so far."

After the chuunin were done reciting what they knew, the Daimyo let out a hoarse laugh, "Ha! It seems you know everything already!"

At this, the chuunin's eyes bugged out, "WHAT! Then what the hell did we come here for!" they yelled.

The Daimyo laughed again, "Well, I actually told Tsunade-sama everything already, but I didn't know how much she'd tell you. Really, I just asked her to send you here first so I could get a good look at you. See our potential saviors. Of course, if I judged you too weak, I would've sent you back right away, anyway."

All three of the ninja looked rather miffed at this. "So, did we pass your 'test'?" Naruto asked sullenly.

The Daimyo laughed once more. Yes, he seems to enjoy laughing a lot, "HA! Of course you did! With flying colors, even!"

Now thoroughly annoyed, and sensing that the so-called 'meeting' was over, the chuunin team turned to leave. Before they exited the tent however, the Daimyo called out, "Oh! And before I forget, he likes to stay in the flower shop in the northeastern corner of the square!"

This only served to annoy the ninja more. Senile old fool, how could he forget such vital information! They thought in unison.

------Shiriyoku------

Team 7 walked through the gates with no trouble, and at first it seemed as if there was nothing wrong with the city, other that it was almost uninhabited. No marks of struggle, no blood, nothing out of place at all. That, however, changed as they got closer to the center of the city.

It started out small at first. Just a few specks of dropped blood and turned over plates and chairs. However, as they got closer to the town square, specks turned into pools, and plates and chairs turned into tables and cart stands, until they finally saw the town square…and promptly ejected their lunches.

There was blood everywhere, so much so that it was nigh impossible to find a clean spot anywhere within the square, whether they looked up, down, right, left, or any combination of those directions. In addition to that, everything was destroyed, carts, tables, awnings, doors, glass, everything short of actual building were toppled, trampled and broken.

It didn't stop there, either. Whole limbs were lying uselessly in various parts on the ground. Fingers, arms, noses, ears, and even eyes were spared no mercy as you could witness them in all their glory by looking just about anywhere. The original corpses were there, too. Mere torsos now and some even lacked heads. Many where disemboweled, intestines strewn all over as if to make a small street on their own.

As the konoha chuunin finally ran out of things to throw up, dry heaving and retching, they hobbled over to the nearest body, inspecting it only to find that the mode of death was…biting?

They backed away from the body, not caring to know more about the criminal's mind. Frankly, they were scared of what they would find. "Ew. Ok, let's just find this guy and kill him as fast as we can 'cause I wanna get out of here!" Naruto said from behind his hand, twitching in disgust.

At that moment, as if he was summoned, a man walked out of the building across from them. Obviously, this was the ninja's target. His brown hair was matted and stained black with volumes of blood, and his green eyes glowed with madness. His clothes were caked with blood as well, so much so that the entire thing was stiffened and broken off in sections (Like how if your clothes were made from Styrofoam and you tried to move around in it…yeah).

He was hunched over and seemed to almost walk on all fours (he would look like it from far away, but his hands weren't touching the ground). His mouth was smeared with blood and his teeth had little bits of sinew and meat tissue between the cracks. Fortunately, they were hidden from view when he raised a dismembered human arm to take a bite out of it like a snack.

Kisuke Kai looked at them through crazed eyes set in a tilted head and said two words, two words that put irrational fear into them more than anything else, "New food?"

And without any warning, Kisuke launched himself at the team of shinobi, swaying as he ran, causing foamy spittle to spill from his mouth as it lolled back and forth.

Naruto and his team just managed to leap out of the way of Kisuke's attack (Well, Naruto and Sasuke did. Sakura had to be dragged, seeing as how she was still in shock at all the blood and gore), the questing hand latched onto a nearby chair back and broke it into splinters in his grip. His jaw came less than a second after, making a spectacular snapping sound as his mouth closed, iron hard teeth clashing together ferociously.

The three looked on in horror, wondering how any proper human could perform such feats. "N-no way…" Sasuke said, "it looks as if he's over-taxing his muscles…without expending any chakra, too…"

Naruto, dodging another lunge by the target, retaliated with a couple of kunai before yelling back, "What! What the hell do you mean, Sasuke!"

"Idiot!" Sasuke yelled, mad because now he had to explain during a battle of all times, "The regular human muscle usually only runs at 10 of full capacity in order to put a buffer, allowing oneself to not overstrain the muscles and use them multiple times throughout the day, which means right now, both of us are using only 10 of our full muscle strength. However, there are some ways to increase muscle output, such as the lotus (because the first step in learning to lotus requires one to give more muscle output than the norm). Right now, this man is running at about 50 or 60 maximum muscle output."

Naruto, throwing a kunai in front of Kisuke (and giving the man a small cut in his arm) to prevent him from getting Sakura (who was still in shock) replied, "And? What the hell does that mean?"

"Fool! Even the lotus only increases muscle output to about 20!"

-----Tsunade's office, Konoha-----

Tsunade ran around like a beheaded chicken in her office, trying to find her missing ball. "Shit! Shit! Where's the ball! Where the hell is my ball! I have to have my ball!"

Shizune was right along Tsunade, running and shouting, "We need to find the ball! We must find the ball! Where's the ball! Help us look for the ball!"

The ANBU that subsequently came in were immediately confused, "What! What ball? Whose ball?"

"The Sandaime's ball! (2)" Tsunade yelled in reply, "I want his ball! I need his ball!"

The ANBU flinched and turned slightly green at implications of why Tsunade would want the Sandaime's ball, but they turned to help anyway.

This continued on, more people being enlisted to help all the while as the whole of the Hokage tower was turned upside down with the chaos.

------?------

He snickered and licked his lips sensuously as he watched Naruto fight his turned one through a crystal ball that he stole from the Hokage tower. He was not wearing pants and his hands were preoccupied with something in between his legs as he talked to himself, "Ooh, Naruto. I didn't know you could do that! Naruto, you're –ah- so strong, and –ah- so hot, and –aaahh- and so mine! Fufufufufu…the preparations are ready, and as soon as you come back to me, you will have you're present…"

He stroked the crystal ball with hands covered in white liquid, laughing all the while.

1) seiza is what you call the position you sit in formally. You know, with you legs under your butt? (I can't explain this well. If you still don't know what I'm talking about, try googling it.)

2) That crystal ball that the Sandaime was using to scry on Naruto during episodes 1 and 2

Well, I hope you like this chapter as well, the third one is coming much sooner than this one is, as I'm working on it right now. Plz drop a review before you go!