Another chapter! Celebrate, yeah!
Oh, and thanks for the review Kira!
This story is set approximately two years after Sasuke left Konoha, so all the characters are around 14 and 15 years old, except for Kankuro, who should be 16, and the older shinobis.
Thanks for reading my story! Those of you who have made it this far receive my congratulations. Confetti!
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto…or vice versa.
Chapter 3 Before the Sunset
In which Team Gai searches, Team 10 is harassed, Iruka gets robbed, and Naruto suffers some more
At precisely noon Team Gai arrived at Ichiraku. Neji activated his Byakugan for a sweep across the vicinity, but spotted nothing unusual.
A rather sickly-looking Naruto dozed at his seat, nose almost dunking into a bowl of ramen. Beside him…
Neji had to blink. He wasn't normally one to blink. However, seeing the guy who chatted away with a silent Naruto squeezed just one tiny amount of shock into Neji's barrier.
"Sasuke-san!" Lee and Tenten gasped simultaneously. Who knew that Uchiha Sasuke started growing his hair long?
Naruto whirled around to take a hard look at the threesome who disturbed his meal. Sasuke followed Naruto's gaze, blinked at Team Gai, and smiled.
He smiled.
That moment Neji perceived several differences between the guy sitting by Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke. One, Sasuke didn't smile. Two, Sasuke didn't wear black. Three, Sasuke would never, ever, forever, go around without his headband, since any action that looked like he might abandon the Leaf yet again would earn him a Rasengan in the stomach. And four, Sasuke didn't have this feminine quality to his face that the stranger had. Being a Hyuuga, Neji was naturally the only one to notice the last point.
Meanwhile, Naruto bolted up from his seat. "NEJI! THICKBROWS!" He struggled a little and finally managed, "Temari?"
Tenten twitched. "Well, I supposed it's too hard for an idiot like you to remember my name."
The stranger followed Naruto, a bit slower, and bowed. "Not the Uchiha Sasuke, I'm afraid," he spoke. "Erimura Kansei, pleased to meet you."
"Erimura-san?" Lee thought for a moment. "You are a civilian? But you look like Sasuke-san!"
Erimura nodded. "I've just arrived, actually. My parents told me to hire a few shinobi –"
"But it's just a D-rank mission!" Naruto whined.
Sympathetically, Erimura patted Naruto on the back. "Err…yes. But they said that I could stay a few days to tour the place, you know. Shinobi village. Always wanted to be in one." His eyes glazed over. "I really want to see everything that the village has to offer…and Naruto has agreed to give me a quick tour around…" He then gave Team Gai another smile, which rivaled the awesomeness/attractiveness of Sasuke's enigmatic atmosphere.
Tenten momentarily forgot about Gai's kidnapping.
Unfortunately, Lee doesn't forget anything when it comes to Gai.
"Naruto-san, have you seen – "
"LEE!" Tenten hooked an arm around his throat not so lightly as Neji smoothly stepped in to block the view.
Erimura raised an eyebrow. "Are you looking for someone?"
Neji would sigh if his character allowed it. Beside Erimura, Naruto had forgotten his ramen and now gazed at Neji expectantly.
"No." His word could have frozen a lake. A very large lake. Then he turned and steered Lee and Tenten away from Ichiraku, where they could regroup…and hopefully Tenten would remember why they were at Ichiraku in the first place.
Kumo cackled madly inside. So the Byakugan had been fooled by her chakra-veil technique. And Ryoki said all my inventions were useless! Puffing in triumph, she tugged on Naruto's arm. "Oy! You promised me a tour! Get on with it before the sun sets, dobe!"
Instantly, Naruto's head whipped around. His eyes narrowed. "Sa-Sasuke teme?"
Kumo rolled her eyes. "No. I thought that I already told you. I thought you believed me!" Tears began to fall. "Oh why oh why do you doubt me Naruto? I am your friend! I will NEVER lie to you!" Then, very quickly, "Would you like some more ramen? Today's specialty's on the house, and I know just which one's the best kind to get your appetite working again." Maybe I should try a different poison this time…this guy recovers remarkably fast!
"!" Naruto's eyes watered at her suggestion. "Erimura-san! You are the best!"
Five bowls of ramen later, Naruto had to be carried to the hospital yet again.
After a wiggling, screeching Naruto was hauled from Ichiraku, Team Gai darted from the bushes. Neji's veins protruded once more as Lee and Tenten bustled around the vicinity, to the puzzlement of two Ichiraku workers. Then, when Lee poked his head into the Ichiraku garbage can, Ayame ran into the kitchen and slammed the door.
Just then, Neji picked up someone walking toward Ichiraku. Taller than him, hair a bit spiked…nope, it was only Naruto's sensei Iruka. If Neji was any judge of character, the man would not so much as harm a cat.
However…
"Lee. Tenten." One head lifted from the frying pots, another poked out from beneath a pile of ramen bowls.
Iruka was walking his way, and on his back…
"Iruka-sensei," Neji greeted the chunin, "you have a piece of paper stuck to your back."
And on the paper were written the words, in large, crammed letters of bright red ink:
If Lee did spill the beans it would be a finger tied to the vest.
P.S. Look for Hatake Kakashi. I believe you will find your next clue there.
As soon as Neji finished reading, he shut down his Byakugan. Kakashi? Was the infamous copy-nin a part of the conspiracy? Highly unlikely. Then perhaps he, like Iruka, was in some way going to be manipulated into the scheme.
But what does the kidnapper want?
"Neji! Look at this!" Tenten had torn the paper off a distressed Iruka's back and turned it over. On the other side lay a crude ink drawing of a section of a map.
Neji felt a vein pulsing, and it wasn't his Byakugan.
Hanashiba Ryoki stared and stared at the white-clothed, blonde-haired kunoichi sitting across him. A large fan had been strapped on her back, but compared to the person it belonged to, it could barely be noticed. Even Tou's fat cat was staring at her with interest.
"Err…" Ryoki's head spun. How old is she? Good gods! If she's really face-paint's brother then that guy must really be younger than me! Among the Kumorokunikunin, Ryoki had the reputation of being a very vain man.
Temari crossed her fingers. She gave him the look that a kunoichi gave you when you are about to die. "Now, Raikage-sama, about last week…"
Face-paint's younger than me! He looked like he could be the Kazekage's father but he's younger than ME! Ryoki felt the black waves drown out everything. Now, any normal man would celebrate how a guy several years younger than him looked even older than he was, but Ryoki… I feel so OLD! They are all younger than me!
His consciousness returned to the subject at hand when he felt a cold, threatening gaze penetrate the depth of his bones. Temari stared most coldly at him and offered him a frown. "Raikage-sama, I know that you are very busy, but there's the matter of Kankuro's visit to Kumogakure. I understand that he…"
I am going to kill you Kumo!
Kumo sneezed. She could feel intense waves of loathing radiating from faraway and another wave of malicious intent rolling like black thunder from Ichiraku. Then there was Naruto's screams that rattled the windows of Konoha hospital and shook the doors on their hinges.
And all she did was walk away.
If she wasn't Shingen (Uchiha) Kumo, she might have felt responsible.
The streets lay before her like brickwork just before they toppled down on your head. Kumo had the strangest feeling that if she pounded the earth, it would shatter. Why was she so insecure? She rummaged around her pockets, the soles of her shoes, her hair, even the seams. It was a very familiar type of insecurity…
Ah, yes, she had run out of money.
Her stomach growled.
Due to instinct honed by six years of service in places where food, money, and honest restaurants were hard to come by, Kumo had developed a super-nose trained just for the scent of money. She sniffed the air, took a quick peek, and when she saw that nobody paid attention to an innocent civilian, she walked right into Konoha Ninja Academy.
Six minutes and ten seconds later, Iruka's drawers lay open as the door to his office shut silently. His leaf-colored wallet sagged. The zipper was open, and the scent of money had vanished.
"Ah…really?" Neji couldn't quite bring himself to glare at Kakashi, so he resorted to staring balefully at the copy-nin instead, while Lee busied himself trying to make out the writing squeezed into spaces around a page of Icha Icha Violence as Tenten hovered over him, trying not to get distracted by all the writing and pictures…
But she kept on blushing and finally gave up, moving onto the map lightly sketched on the back cover.
The lazy copy-nin positively grinned through his mask. "Yep! She was a really strange lady. Wanted to see my book, scribbled something down, and went away." Now Neji was the one being stared at. "I don't understand it though. Do you?"
Neji cursed inwardly. The excuses, the excuses! "A lady asked us to find her book for her. She said that there's writing in there on page 101." Nobody is stupid enough to believe this. He thought, groaning in his head.
Kakashi cocked his head, contemplated this for a split second, and sighed. "Well, take the book. She seemed to like it." At Neji's look of utter, uncharacteristic surprise, he shrugged. "Give it to her."
As Team Gai walked away with a gapping Neji, Kakashi reached into his pocket and pulled out ANOTHER Icha Icha Violence.
Around the same time that Kakashi flipped to page 102, at the same hour, minute, second, nanosecond, actually, Kumo spotted from her perch near the Hyuuga main house two young shinobi walking down the street.
An Inuzuka and an Aburame! The little girl inside squealed and hugged a suspiciously familiar-looking puppet to her chest.
The two shinobi walked into the Hyuuga compound to emerge a minute later with a girl who was obviously a Hyuuga, but uncharacteristic of a Hyuuga, for she spoke with the volume of a mouse and held her hands in a way that looked like a nervous housewife. But she looks like a pretty interesting person. So thought Kumo. Flipping through Konoha shinobi, she skimmed the three's profiles and did a double take on Hyuuga Hinata. She's the girl who got kidnapped? If so… And they are chunins…well, who'd've thought?
Although Kumo was generally very irresponsible about the things she did, she does maintain a high level of guilt over whatever the stupid people of the old Thunder Country did. Right now, the woodpecker picking away at her heart told her that she owed the Hyuuga girl something.
So, without further thought, Kumo dropped into steps behind the three.
"YOU MEAN GAI-SENSEI IS NOT – mmffff!"
Once again Tenten dragged Lee away as Neji stepped in to fill the awkward gap. He thanked Asuma-sensei for letting them borrowing his cigar box (though it's doubtful he'll ever see it again), and hurried after Lee.
For the second time (and the last was the Chunin exam), Neji's rage boiled into the serene waters of killing intent.
To Hyuuga-san,
It seems that you are the only one who can really understand what I say. Good. So I will not take the time to remind you that leaked information one fingerless Gai…or a fingerless Hyuuga, whichever way you chose to take it.
P.S. Gai is still alive, trust me.
P.S.S. Your next clue awaits in the ANBU Interrogation Squad room. Good luck!
Another D-rank mission.
Team 10, unlike Naruto, didn't particularly mind doing horridly boring little missions. In fact, they quite enjoyed the easier ones – or at least Hinata did. Kiba, who was about as prickly as Naruto, deep down disliked the mission. They were pulling weeds for god's sake!
And the woman wasn't very nice. In fact, she fired a crossbow at Kiba when they stepped into her house.
Bandits! Us?
So Team 10 labored for an hour and declared mission complete. The woman lived quite a ways from here, so Kiba estimated that by the time they got back to Konoha, the sun would've set.
He was quite aware, just as Shino, that somebody had been following them. But a long time passed, and the stalker did not emerge. Thus the Inuzuka put this little fact under "to be investigated" and hurried his pace in the lead.
In theory, Neji and Lee waited like any good gentlemen for Tenten to finish throwing up.
In reality, Neji and Tenten waited for Lee to stop throwing up.
In fear of staining her clothes, Tenten abandoned her usual "shake-Lee-till-he-snaps-out-of-it" plan and went for the "patiently-waiting-with-kunais" one. At her side, Neji shook his head as he averted his eyes. Lee's reaction was a mere byproduct of their little encounter with Morino Ibiki's infamous torture squad.
But they had gotten the piece of paper with the map. That was the MOST important thing.
I must be going crazy. Neji thought. He should not get so worked up over this. But the earlier they found Gai…the earlier they found Gai and the kidnapper, Neji would be all the happier…
His eyes twitched again.
They were trying, rebelling against his character, to pop out at the kidnapper's words.
Kumo walked behind Team 10.
This was all so…boring…
She hung her head.
A row of shuriken narrowly missed her face.
"Oh great!" Kiba growled at the bandits circling them. Akamaru echoed his excitement with a loud bark.
"Be careful, Kiba," Shino warned, "they aren't ordinary bandits." As he said this, he and Kiba formed a protective barrier around Hinata.
The men encircled them silently, watching them like hawks testing their prey. As Hinata raised her hands quickly and activated Byakugan, the bandits struck.
A storm of kunais rained down upon the Konoha shinobis, followed by another flurry of shurikens and finally a direct frontal assault. Suddenly the Konoha nins found themselves separated from each other.
Kiba crouched on the ground, Akamaru on his back. With a shout two Kiba's launched themselves at the bandits. "Tsuuga!"
Jyuuken-ing each shuriken with accuracy and speed, Hinata swung her gaze to her two teammates for a brief moment. She paid for this as a kunai grazed her shoulder. Focusing with determination, Hinata forced more chakra to her palms and prepared for another shower of kunais.
But the bandits around her closed in. Unbeknownst to her, they were pushing toward a cliff.
Kikai bugs swarmed in the air in a storm of their own as Shino stood in the center, arms raised outward. Bad. Was what he thought. There are shinobis mixed in! Then a hand reached through the storm, and the gray haired shinobi lunged toward Shino. Too close!
A piercing roar reached Shino's ears.
Akamaru, stunned with a poisoned kunai in its leg, lay helplessly as Kiba, panic welling to the brim, fought futilely to clear a path to Hinata. To Shino. Outside. Anywhere! Just don't let Akamaru get hurt again. I can't let Akamaru suffer!
There were only three Konoha nin and more than twenty bandits, half of them shinobis. A battle to lose…
The shadows danced. Little by little they wiggled on the earth. As a jounin-level shinobi thrust two rounds of shuriken at Hinata, who had backed to the edge of the cliff, the shadows struck.
Crunch.
Silence descended, and not just around Hinata.
Kiba gazed around wonderingly as the bandits suddenly dropped to the earth without sound.
Shino observed something more. The shadows were soaked with blood. They were no longer shadows but twirling tendrils of black covered with red. They moved with a graceful, deadly motion similar to that of Gaara's sand.
Quietly, Team 10 collected themselves. Byakugan scanned the area, but sighted no one.
"They…they just…" Kiba murmured as he looked down at one shinobi.
"Not dead," Shino interjected, "but crippled."
Every arm and leg jutted at an odd angle, odd even for broken bone standards. There was no doubt that these shinobi would not attack anyone for a very long time.
"NO LEE!" screeched Tenten for the tenth time that day as she put a hand over Lee's mouth. When will he learn?
She glanced over at Neji for support, but the Hyuuga was twitching madly. Since when…? It was rare to see the normally calm, cool, and collected Hyuuga prodigy lose his cool, so Tenten took this opportunity to memorize his features as his lips trembled and a dark red hue rose to his cheeks. His white eyes, if possible, went whiter with fury.
Behind them, the Yamanachi door opened. Ino peeked out. "SEE YOU TOMORROW HYUUGA-KUN!" And there waved the source of Neji's fury. Well, Tenten had to admit, the kidnapper had one hell of a mind. But why is he doing this? What can he possibly gain from kidnapping Gai?
Neji steadied himself, prepared for whatever insanity might come next, and read the slip of paper.
Map completed, horray!
Instantly the Hyuuga prodigy pulled Tenten over. "Give me the pieces!" His voice demanded no questions, so Tenten obliged.
But when the map was finished…
It was just a map.
No big, red X, nothing, not even labels.
Neji flipped over the last piece. More words…
Oops! I forgot to mark down the X where it's supposed to be!
P.S. Gai's in Ichiraku's closet, by the way. You should find him before four…oh…cause I've put a sack around his face and he might be out of air by then…
Neji looked up at the setting sun and swore.
"Naruto…" Sakura sighed. "What's wrong with you?"
Naruto twitched and wiggled and giggled and flopped.
His face turned blue, red, purple, yellow, white, black, and every other color possible.
His throat made odd gagging sounds that only fish could make on land, and his eyes were rolling at maddening speed toward every direction.
Naruto was seriously ill.
But the thing was, he seemed to be enjoying this.
He smiled.
If Kumo was here, she would have burst into eternal laughter. This was technically not experiment, for the poison was a confirmed product and thus Naruto was more of a trial than a specimen.
In the adjacent hospital ward, Tsunade rolled her eyes as Jiraiya panicked.
"I tell you, it was HIM! The Uchiha boy! It was him!"
Shizune, it seems, felt it her duty to interject. "But Jiraiya-sama, Sasuke hasn't left the hospital for weeks, and this morning he was doing some check-up because he seemed to have caught a cold…"
"IT WAS HIM!" Jiraiya rumbled.
Tsunade and Shizune exchanged glances. First Naruto, now Jiraiya?
And then...
"We need a medic!" Tenten's fear-striken voice shrilled through the hospital like an alarm clock one o'clock in the morning.
Tsunade stuck her head out the door, took one look at purple-faced Gai, and narrowed her eyes.
Kumo, once again, found herself strutting down the streets of Konoha. But this time she whistled. Ahhh…one deed done is one guilt settled, yeah? At least that was what Reibane said. Personally, Kumo thought the theory a bit out of sync with reality. But beating those bandits up like that…I feel a bit guilty... After all, she used to be a bandit of sorts.
Konoha's afternoon activities buzzed around her like bees. She passed the baker's shop, passed Ichiraku, passed a lot of other stores, only to stop in a somber street that looked rather…empty.
Sluggishly, she raised her eyes to meet the closed windows of the Uchiha mansion.
The house must have been abandoned ever since the massacre, or at least somebody had not bothered to take care of it very well, for cobwebs hung in masses from corner to corner, beam to beam, and dust bunnies gathered on the wooden floor where feet should have tread. Nobody repaired the cracked walls. Nobody cleaned all the bloodstains off.
Vegetation thrived like parasites, crawling in ugly, distorted lines over the courtyard.
Kumo looked on, wordless.
She should laugh.
Her brain should be uncorking a hundred ideas on how the house could be remodeled into the perfect haunted house.
Uchiha…
But she refused to think these thoughts.
She couldn't.
Uchiha…
Shingen-sama had that gray look in his eyes when he spoke to her. Your family is dead… He looked like a man who pitied her, wanted to cry, but could not, and pitied her even more that she was too little to understand and cry. Massacred, just three nights ago…all of them, except one…and the traitor Uchiha. The survivor, Sasuke Uchiha… Itachi. Remember his name. Someday you will seek him, and you might kill him. The decision belongs to you…and the other. Uchiha, massacred. Right in this house where nothing was disturbed for years.
Massacred. Do you know what it means?
Kumo closed her eyes.
Do I?
The Uchiha clan, massacred. Killed.
Itachi Uchiha.
Do I?
Kotetsu and Izumo exchanged glances as a young man wearing the apparels of a shinobi but not the headband of one walked through the gates without so much as a greeting or, for security matters, stopping.
"Hey you!"
The young man waved a stack of papers in the air. Vaguely, the seal of the Raikage could be seen.
When Kotetsu and Izumo started after him, he vanished into thin air.
The two guards exchanged glances.
They knew an enigma when they saw one, and the stranger who just walked through had "enigma" written all over him.
Ryoki sat on his table, fingers crossed, a perfect imitation of Temari's pose. Now he cleared his throat, looked every member of the Kumogakure council in the eye, and spoke, the razor sharp, chilling tone that Temari used, to the older men. This, after all, was the grand finale…
"I hereby declare this meeting adjourned."
Men exchanged glances on their way out.
Since when did the childish, cowardly Raikage learn to speak and sit like that?
"A spitting image of the Kazekage, I say," said one man.
Another spoke up. "No…more like…the Hokage."
Member two received looks. "Have you even seen the Hokage?"
Member two didn't, but he sure wished that he had…
Rumor has it…that the Hokage has…
And his thoughts stopped right there as Tou's fat cat curled around his leg…and bit his toes.
TBC
Author's note:
It's odd how inspirations pop out to you anywhere, any time. I can be sitting in class and jotting down history notes when suddenly the idea rushes onto me…
Fighting scenes are, for me, a difficulty. I haven't had much practice in writing about fights, and so forgive me if the Team 10 battle was a bit lame. Hahah.
And if you are wondering why Naruto suffers so much…well…who else can fall for the same trick twice and not suspect a thing?
Don't worry, other characters will come in later. In fact, I had planned to give Sasuke a big part in this chapter, but…I thought it would be more appropriate to end the chapter on a somber note (for once). Yet I couldn't resist adding in the shenanigan in Kumogakure.
Next chapter: finally the Uchiha survivors meet! And more mayhem for the rest of Konoha!
