Tayuya was wringing her hands nervously as Haku dragged her through the house, "I'm really not sure about this."
"Oh, don't be silly. It's just a change of clothes."
"Yes, but they're... weird."
Haku found even his legendary patience being tested, "Oh... come on!"
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
While the others were out of the room, Zabuza and Kimimaro were doing some male bonding through the longstanding tradition of eating chicken wings. It would have been better had there been beer on hand, but as alcohol was almost unheard of in heaven, they had to settle for fruit punch (Which although not as manly, was very tasty).
While the pale skinned angel had at first been removing the meat from the wings with a fork and knife, he was now snatching them up, tearing the meat off in one bite, and tossing the bones into the garbage can across the room.
Zabuza watched silently for a moment, then grabbed two wings in one hand, scraped them both clean across his teeth and threw them across the room so that they bounced off the wall and into the awaiting trash can.
This escalated for a few minutes, until Haku and Tayuya arrived to find Zabuza and Kimimaro both holding five chicken wings in each hand. Within seconds, all twenty wings were free of meat, and were thrown across the room, bouncing of the now sauce-stained section of wall and tumbling into the nearly full garbage can.
Tayuya blinked, "What are you two doing?"
Kimimaro held out a hand as he continued to meet Zabuza's gaze, the former eventually relaxing and leaning back in his chair, "Ha, it looks like I underestimated you, girly man. I could never get Haku to eat chicken wings with me, but you held your own pretty well."
A proverbial question mark appeared above Baku's head, "We eat chicken wings sometimes."
Zabuza grabbed his mug of fruit punch, ignoring the fact that his hands were covered in barbecue sauce, and drank it in a single gulp, "Yes, but you've always missed the point."
"Looking at you two, it would seem the point is to make as large a mess as possible."
Kimimaro tilted his head, "Excuse me, but why is Tayuya hiding behind you?"
Haku was forcefully shoved out of the way as Tayuya glowered, "I'm NOT hiding!"
Kimimaro's mouth opened and closed a few times silently, causing Tayuya to remember precisely why she had been hiding.
Zabuza snickered, "What do you know, the brat really is female."
"Dammit, I knew I shouldn't have let myself get talked into this."
When Kimimaro's motor cortex finally managed to re-establish connection with his mouth, he managed to get his gaping under control and form words, "You... girl... uh?"
Haku smiled, "See, he thinks you look cute too."
"You're taking a few liberties in translation there, don't you think?"
"I'll have you know that despite my less than macho appearance, I'm still perfectly fluent in Man-ese."
Tayuya was wearing one of Haku's angelic white kimonos, which fit her quite well except for being a few sizes too small in the chest, and that was putting it tactfully. Watching with barely concealed amusement as Tayuya tried to hide again and Kimimaro stared blank facedly, Zabuza was somewhat reassured that despite their appearances, the two shinobi still had a certain innocence to them.
Which to him, of course, meant something to make fun of.
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
Tsunade slept peacefully among the slightly charred wreckage of her office, having been put under by a sleeping genjutsu courtesy of Shizune.
Not wanting to disturb the general populace as of yet, Jiraiya and Shizune were hoping that the Hokage was just suffering from temporary delirium, perhaps from being overworked or from going a whole three days without gambling.
Hoping the problem would go away if the hokage was left to sleep, they had then left to try and keep the village up and running while preventing anyone from discovering the mayhem and remains of a fire in the Hokage's office.
This left Naruto and Sarutobi with nothing to do but watch over the sleeping woman and await the passage of time until they could re-align her fate.
Now on their 2341st round of Rock-Paper-Scizzors, the two spirits were getting restless, but just when Sarutobi was about to suggest that they check out the rest of the town to pass some time, there was a disturbance outside the window and a darkly clothed form slid silently into the room.
"Shit!" Naruto and Sarutobi swore at the same time as Sasuke knelt down next to the Hokage, his expression turning gentle as he gazed upon her face.
"Whoa..." Naruto said slowly, "Sasuke is smiling... creepy."
"Please, Naruto, lets try to stay on-topic here. Why isn't emo doing his job?"
Sasuke stroked Tsunade's face lovingly, "Ah... my blond goddess, I know I am unworthy, and could wish for nothing more than to die next to your peacefully sleeping body."
Naruto blanched, "Well, I guess that answers our first question, now how do we get Emo out of Sasuke before he decides to either slit his wrist or... even worse."
"What," Sarutobi asked dully, "Could be worse than Sasuke slitting his wrist?"
The Uchiha withdrew his hand from Tsunade's face, sighed, and then flung his head back, "CRAWLING IN MY SKIIIIIIIIIN, THESE WOUNDS, THEY WILL NOT HEEEEEAAAAAALL."
Tsunade awoke with a start and Naruto plugged his ears, "dammit, either get Emo out of Sasuke or I'm going to give him a razor myself."
Struggling against the horrible noise, Sarutobi formed a single seal, "Vanish!"
Sasuke went rigid, then a few little puffs of smoke came out of his ears, and he stopped singing, "Wait... why would I ever want to kill myself, today is the beginning of my... no... our new life."
As the still groggy Tsunade lost herself in the depths of his dark eyes, Naruto and Sarutobi were trying their very best not to panic.
"Shit, shit, shit... this is very bad, we're way past the point of no return, we have to make this work somehow."
"What do you mean, 'make it work'," Naruto asked nervously.
"Well, Sasuke is already here, and from the looks of things we have almost no time until the making out starts. Since I would rather stab out my eyes with a hot poker than see that, we need to settle for a temporary solution."
"Which would be?"
Sarutobi snapped his fingers, and one of the ceiling beams broke loose and fell cleanly onto Sasuke's head, knocking him strait out.
Tsunade looked around, then giggled, "This is a silly dream."
With that, she collapsed back to sleep, and Naruto looked bemusedly at the scene, "Well, I suppose that works. But now Sasuke is unconscious inside the Hokage office, and Jiraiya or Shizune might be back at any time, so we're kind of stuck again."
"Alright Naruto, what do we do when we're facing a situation that we can't fix within the rules set out for shinigami?"
"Umm..."
"I'll make this easier, how did you always solve these problems when you were alive?"
"I broke the rules."
"Exactly."
"Didn't you tell me that the rules were never ever to be broken under any circumstances?"
"No, actually I didn't. The rules don't allow for direct interference, and for a very good reason, but right now the alternative is doing nothing, and we absolutely cannot do nothing."
"So... Thats all just complicated way of saying that the rules were made to be broken?"
"Well, the one about direct interference anyway. The other ones are pretty rock solid."
Naruto looked at the mess that was Sasuke, the broken wooden beam still laying on him, "What constitutes direct interference?"
Sarutobi suddenly flickered, turning blurry, and calmly kicked the wood off Sasuke's prone form and hefted the unconscious boy over his shoulder, "This."
The younger spirit's mouth formed a perfect 'o', "You need to teach me that..."
"Later. Right now we're getting out of here."
"I assume we can't teleport with Sasuke, he has an actual body."
"We can't teleport, but regular people still can't see me, or most can't at least. I'll just run with him, and if I move fast enough I don't think anyone will notice that he's not moving under his own power."
"What?"
"Please tell me you're kidding."
"I wish I were. Now lets go."
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
Tayuya and Kimimaro followed nervously as Zabuza led them and Haku through the streets of heaven, on their way to the daily angel welcoming.
"So you're saying," Tayuya whispered, "that we're going to meet god?"
Haku smiled warmly, "In a manner of speaking."
While everyone else was chatting, Zabuza was grumbling, "I'd forgotten how annoying it was to have to walk everywhere. First thing tomorrow, Haku, we're teaching these runts how to fly."
"Oh, we live close to the arena, and it's a lovely walk. Try to be more cheerful."
"Wait," Kimimaro suddenly broke in with, "The arena? Why are we going to an arena?"
"For a long time, the angels were always arguing with the boss, so he had the arena built and declared that anyone who disagreed with him was welcome to take him on mano-a-mano. Incidentally, it's also used for the daily greeting of new angels."
Getting more annoyed by the second at the chatter, Zabuza grabbed Kimimaro and threw the boy over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, "Haku, grab Tayuya. Unless you want me to go crazier than I already am, we're flying the rest of the way."
And so, with absolutely no regard for appearances, Zabuza and Haku hauled their unwilling passengers into the sky, their newfound speed bringing them within sight range of the arena in just under a minute. The massive building was open topped, allowing angels to just fly in the roof and land in their seats.
Since there were no fights today, the only people there were other fledgling angels, about twenty in all, being chaperoned by two archangels to ensure everyone behaved themselves. Zabuza had been intentionally late in leaving since he hated spending more time than was absolutely necessary with archangels, and since they had walked the first part of the way they were even later.
Kimimaro fell to the ground unceremoniously while Haku let Tayuya down a bit more gently. She reached to help him up then stopped as Haku and Zabuza went rigid.
"Well," there was a pause, "what," there was a pause, "is," there was a pause, "going," there was a pause, "on," there was a pause, "here?"
Still on the ground, Kimimaro gaped, "But you're..."
(We interrupt this moment of revelation for a random scene change to something far less interesting)
Two painters stood in a room, admiring their work.
"You know," the first one said, "I think this is the best white wall we've ever painted."
"I agree," said the second one, "Together we have painted uncountable walls white, and yet this one is by far the whitest."
"And yet," the first said with a frown, "something seems to be missing, as if our masterpiece is not yet complete..."
"Wait, I've got it! What it needs is another coat of white paint!"
"Brilliant. Another coat of white paint to make this near perfect white wall achieve it's potential greatness."
"I am truly quaking with anticipation, lets get to work."
And so, the two painters added another coat of white paint.
And then watched as it dried.
(And now, back to our tense moment of revelation)
Chuck Norris nodded, crossing his arms, "I," there was a pause, "am," there was a pause, "the," there was a pause, "boss" there was a pause, "in" there was a pause, "these" there was a pause, "parts" there was a pause, "and" there was a pause, "I'd" there was a pause, "like" there was a pause, "to" there was a pause, "know" there was a pause, "why" there was a pause, "you" there was a pause, "are" there was a pause, "so" there was a pause, "late."
As he had taken a little over a minute to get out that one sentence, and pretty much everyone took a few seconds to reconstruct it into a coherent phrase. Zabuza, being the senior angel, was the one who responded, "I apologize, I've never been a mentor before and I did not think far enough in advance to account for my charges being unable to fly."
"Well" there was a pause, "that" there was a pause, "seems" there was a pause, "fair"
"You're Chuck Norris!"
All eyes suddenly riveted themselves to Tayuya, who had spoken, and the referred to man raised an eyebrow at being interrupted, "Yes" there was a pause, "I" there was a pause, "am."
"How can you be Chuck Norris and god at the same time?"
There was yet another pause, but this one was vastly more awkward, particularly once Tayuya realized she was being a smart ass to god. She had never been particularly religious, but now after finding out that god was a master of the roundhouse kick, she was concerned about her loose tongue.
But despite her blunder, Norris did not seem angry, "I" there was a pause, "am" there was a pause, "not" there was a pause, "god" there was a pause, "and" there was a pause, "while" there was a pause, "I" there was a pause, "do" there was a pause, "run" there was a pause, "heaven" there was a pause, "I" there was a pause, "am" there was a pause, "known" there was a pause, "here" there was a pause, "only" there was a pause, "as" there was a pause, "Chuck" there was a pause, "Norris" there was a pause, "so" there was a pause, "I" there was a pause, "simply" there was a pause, "kept" there was a pause, "the" there was a pause, "name" there was a pause, "when" there was a pause, "I" there was a pause, "spent" there was a pause, "a" there was a pause, "few" there was a pause, "years" there was a pause, "on" there was a pause, "earth."
This phrase having taken up the better part of five minutes, Zabuza whispered to Haku out of the side of his mouth, "Hey, translation?"
Haku took a few seconds to process it all, then said in a rather bad imitation of Norris' voice: "I am not god, and while I do run heaven I am known here only as Chuck Norris, so I simply kept the name when I spent a few years on earth."
Despite the bad voice impression, there were nods all around as few of the assembled angels had been able to understand Chuck Norris when he spoke. Norris himself silently acknowledged Haku's translation, having learned a few centuries ago that if he wanted his orders obeyed, he had to write them out.
Norris had a long introduction to do, and while the older angels were used to it, the new recruits were soon bouncing on the balls of their feet, lost in thought as their esteemed leader talked at the blistering pace of ten words a minute.
As for Zabuza, he had long since mastered the art of blocking all outside stimuli and loosing himself in thought, which he found served him very well in heaven, where he rarely cared what anyone had to say.
/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
They ran across the roofs of Konoha without so much as a whisper, but the younger spirit noticed that Sarutobi's effort of projecting himself into the physical plane was quickly draining his energy, and a few hundred feet from the village wall Sasuke fell and hit the shingles as the arms holding him suddenly became insubstantial.
"That's all I got." Sarutobi said in barely a whisper, "But it shouldn't take me more than a couple minutes to recover and we're far enough away from the wall that the odds of a patrol seeing us is near zero."
Naruto let out the breath he had been holding despite the fact that he had no actual need to breathe, but he suddenly spotted movement. Orochimaru's arms were both sitting on the next building, and they both had their hands full. The left hand held a large gong, and the right was giving a mallet a few test swings. Though obviously neither arm had a mouth, he had the sudden feeling that they were grinning twistedly.
"You've got to be joking."
The old man looked up to inquire about his apprentice's outburst, but right then a piercing clang spread across the Konoha skyline.
/-/-/-/-/Completely Unrelated Omake/-/-/-/-/
Young Sasuke walked up to the door to his clan's estate, and felt intuitively that something was off. Where there was usually a bustle of activity there was only silence, and something about the air seemed just...wrong.
He walked nervously through the streets and alleys, getting more nervous as he passed more and more silence. It was if everyone had somehow vanished.
He shook his head, ridding himself of such silly worries. He was a big boy now, like his brother, and he knew that Itachi wouldn't get worried over something dumb like this. He nodded to himself assuringly, thoughts of his brother's eternal confidence calming him.
He was approaching his house now, and he slowly felt a pounding in his bones. At first he thought it was just his heart, but it seemed to reverberate throughout his entire body, from his feet all the way to his physics-defying hair, and the feeling got stronger the closer he got to his house.
By the time he opened the sliding door, he was actually shaking as these unknown vibrations ran through him. He carefully checked all the rooms, but found no one and nothing to indicate where anyone was. The one thing he did notice was that the strange shaking got stronger and weaker as he moved to different areas of the house.
Following instinct, he searched out where the feeling was closest, and found himself in the family dojo. Running his hands along the floor, he followed the vibrations to a corner and found a ridge in the floor. Digging his fingers in and lifting revealed a secret door, and he could feel the vibrations in the very air, feeling like someone was blowing on his face in time with the unknown rhythm.
He took the steps two at a time, using determination to overcome his fear, and after descending a hundred or so feet, he faced a heavy wooden door and his teeth were chattering, but he could now hear variations, more subtle pulses overlayed over the deep pulse that had drawn him hear. He wondered if it was some sort of code or signal, but he was never going to find out if he didn't act, so with the last of his nerve, he kicked the door in.
Suddenly, he knew where the clan had gone, and his eyes locked with his older brother's, "Itachi... how could you! How!"
The older Uchiha said nothing, and Sasuke turned and ran up the stairs as fast as his legs would carry him, his still immature heart torn asunder by his brother's betrayal. Tears clouded his eyes, but he didn't stop running, not until he reached Hokage tower.
He pounded on the door with his small fists until a groggy Sarutobi opened the door groggily, "Sasuke-chan? What's wrong?"
"Itachi... the clan... He... he..."
"What, Sasuke? What did Itachi do!"
"He... was doing a disco."
This took a moment to sink in, "What?"
"I found them... the whole clan... they were in my house...dancing...and Itachi was in the middle... doing... I still can't believe it..."
Back at Sasuke's house, in the basement; Itachi was absently straightening his glaringly white suit as the rest of the clan stood around him dejectedly. His father shook his head, "We should have told him Itachi. We knew this day was going to come."
"But he won't understand. Sasuke has always hated disco, ever since we tried playing Stayin' Alive above his crib."
Their mother's mouth curved upwards, "I know, Itachi. We were all avoiding telling him because of his reaction, but maybe now that's it's out in the open, we can teach him to love disco."
Itachi looked down, then suddenly straightened and smirked, "That's right!"
He snapped his fingers, and the mirror ball spread it's rainbow across the room, "Hit the music, uncle, and crank the bass. The whole town is going to party with us tonight. We may need to drag Sasuke into this at first, but whether or not he likes it, my foolish little brother has boogie in his blood."
