Free food is t3h win! By the way, since that shooting at the post office in California made the news, I've been hearing the phrase "going postal" a lot more often. It's been… what? Eight years since something like that happened?

The Shinobi's Guide to Drama
By Kaori

A slight breeze was the only warning Neji got before he was unexpectedly grabbed by the wrist and forcibly dragged along at a brisk pace. Struggle as he may, he couldn't seem to get himself loose from the person's grip and resigned himself to being yanked around until he got bored or the person released him.

When they finally stopped running, Neji noticed that Sasuke had been dragged into this as well and that their mutual captor was…

"Iruka-sensei, what is the meaning of this?" Sasuke demanded, seemingly unsurprised but we all know better.

"I need your help." Panted Iruka (poor man, without Naruto to keep him on his toes his skills are diminishing). Neji and Sasuke simultaneously raised their left eyebrows. "You have to see it for yourself; there are no words for this."

The trio made their way towards the gigantic tent the crazy jounins had set up and peeked inside.

"What in the scary hell?" blinked both prodigies.

"Okay, there is that…" Iruka admitted.

All of Konoha's young children were sitting in the tent singing and clapping their hands; vacant smiles on all their faces. In the centre, Magical Girl Kurenai was waving her wand around and singing while Care N' Share Asuma and Genki Kakashi (who had somehow managed to chibify himself) clapped their hands in time to the music that had no point of origin. It was scary.

"And just what are we supposed to do about this?" Neji half-glared at Iruka. Apparently glaring and other non-friendly facial expressions lost fifty percent of their potency while inside the tent. Iruka got a very Naruto-esque look on his face and then…

"Ninpo: Angst Kai no Jutsu!"

Ninpo: Angst Kai no Jutsu (Ninja Arts: Angst Release Technique) was developed by an Academy student who was angry that all the brooding angst-ridden boys got all the girls while he was ignored. It basically forces the victim to exude and spout angst in an uncontrollable fashion, annoying and eventually depressing everyone in the vicinity. It was given a B-ranking simply because the only people that weren't affected were the user, the deaf, the blind, and the clinically insane.

No matter what universe you're in, the power of angsty teenagers far outstrips happy kiddy power.

And lo, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth…

Back with the others, who were only vaguely curious as to why Neji and Sasuke disappeared so suddenly and where the crying and screaming noises were coming from.

Shikamaru sighed and gathered up the remaining people they could. "Since I'm the stage director I don't have to act."

"You're just lazy." Snapped Ino.

"I'll admit to that because denying it would be troublesome."

"Argh! All those in favor of making Shikamaru play Kakashi raise your hands!" Ino, Sakura, Naruto, and Kiba raised their hands. "Against?" Shikamaru and Chouji raised their hands. "Shino, you didn't vote!"

"I'm abstaining." Shino said quietly. Ino shrugged.

"Oh well, Shikamaru's outvoted anyway."

"…Whatever." Shikamaru wrote his name next to "as Kakashi" on the list. "All right, for the part of Jiraiya…"

"Me!" yelled Naruto. "I've gotta get my revenge on him for throwing me off that cliff!" growled Naruto. The others blinked at him this being the first they'd heard about the incident.

"He threw you off a cliff?" asked Kiba. "What the heck did you do to deserve that?"

"So-called training." In the back of his mind, Naruto cursed the kyuubi. Well-used (and proud of) being cursed at, yawned and went back to watching porn (actually it was the Nagging Bunny Channel but blatant lies amuse me).

Shikamaru wrote Naruto's name in the designated slot. "And for the role of…" he paused. "There's no way in hell we'd get away with making fun of Anko. Why is her name on the list?"

"Well, if we're going to make fun of Orochimaru we have to include Anko." Shrugged Sakura.

"We can always skip that part." Naruto suggested. "Anko is almost as scary as Obaa-chan."

"And yet we're still going to make fun of Hokage-sama, why?" Shikamaru couldn't follow the twisted logic.

"Because, she can demote us, she can punch us through walls, she can even assign us D-Rank missions for life, but she won't murder us in our sleep and put our heads on display in front of her house." Leave it to Naruto to put things into perspective.

"Fair enough."

All around what used to be a tent were crying children; wailing and bawling their eyes out. They had no other recourse, they'd just gone through two of the most horrible experiences in their young lives and the second seemed crueller somehow. In the middle of it all sat Asuma, Kakashi, and Kurenai; staring at the sky and desperately clinging onto their newly regained senses.

Neji and Sasuke sat nearby, completely exhausted and wanting nothing more than to beat the crap out of Iruka who had made himself scarce long after casting the jutsu.

The wailing soon turned to sniffles as the children slowly recovered from their trauma. After a while Kakashi looked at his two comrades.

"My God…" he gasped. "they're full of crap." And then he fainted.

Yeah, I totally ripped off a line from "2001: A Space Odyssey" and twisted it to my purposes.