(AN: Alright. Due to a request or two, I've decided to put down some reactionary chapters. Remember, these are completely unplanned, so they may suck a bit, but the idea intrigued me, so I've decided to stick with it. The first one to find Naruto in his death is Inuzuka Kiba. Read, hopefully enjoy, and pleeeeeeeeeease review? Heh, I admit it.. I've become as much a review whore as the rest.)

Kage of the Graves:

The Fallen is found.

The first one to find the body was one Inuzuka Kiba, a true beast of a teenager now that puberty had finally begun to take affect. His reaction had been immediate and out of control. Like the canines he and his kin were so closely associated with, the young Inuzuka did everything to the extreme edge of whatever particular emotion is dominant at any given time. So, while his knees quaked and gave in and an 'unmanly sob' threatened the edges of his vocal chords, Kiba found himself completely immersed in a dark mood. Naruto, one of his closest friends' and favored rivals', was laying still as a statue. The faint bruising around his Adam's Apple, along with the emptied hypodermic needle broken upon the floor, led Kiba to believe that Naruto had somehow been assaulted. Surely, Naruto - who smiled like the fox he was practically born with - could not have done this to himself.

Just before the bile-churning sickened rage could claim him however, he spotted the piece of paper. Alternately fearing and hoping that it was some calling card, Kiba reached forth with trembling fingers that lethargically gripped the folded message. A moment later, as he finished reading the final words of a suffering actor, he released a howl that was purely feral. All across Konoha, the wolves and assorted beasties took up the cry. A sovereign creature - though evil, even in it's nobility - and the young man who held even the most spiteful of the human hating creatures in awed respect. Many a person was chilled at the mournful sounds of hundred, perhaps twice more, of creatures loosing various keens of loss.

But, at the epicenter, all things were calm. The Inuzuka lad had settled in a shocked state of detachment - now carrying the downed Kage-to-never-be in a slump between his arms, on his way to the Hokage Tower. He knew though, deep within the shelter of his automaton body, somewhere just beyond the countless layers of consciousness, Kiba was aware that Konoha would never be the same.

--------

Meanwhile, hovering some fifteen feet above the site of the recent suicide - apparently stretched into a comfortable sleep atop the invisible restraints that kept him from falling - lay the colorful mishmash that was a rather flamboyant ghost. Although the man-ghost - possessed of 9 billowy tails, long tufted vulpine ears, hair of reds and yellows intermingled into a simulacrum of fire, and given over to what amounted to be a bestial mutation in the face and body structure - was snoozing contentedly, the hundreds of howls hadn't been quite enough to arouse him from his slumber, but as the body he had so recently inhabited was moved outside of the apartment, the restraints went with it, and the ghost crashed rather hard into (and partially through) the pavement. He landed with a grunt and slowly opened one confused eye just a crack.

-"What's going on?"-

(AN: But what's this? Ghost Naruto? Hot damn. WHere the fuck was I going with that? I gotta quit trying to write serious stuff under the influence, ja?