"Listen with one ear, be suspicious with the other."
- Laotian proverb
~ ҉ ~
He was on cloud nine.
Nothing substantial had really happened, but it was progress, and he was relishing in it.
Naruto laid awake in his room several hours after Kaiya had fell asleep in the crook of his neck, and even less since he dragged himself away from her side. It killed him to leave her alone in there, but he didn't want to push his luck. Just because she fell asleep easily with him there, didn't mean she would be okay with his presence when she woke up.
He would take that in his stride. In a few short hours he was getting to her, and the more he stoked at her hidden fire, the closer he got to getting over that initial wall. It was only a matter of time.
Now he just had keep the kyuubi in check, as well as his hormones.
It didn't help that her scent hadn't left him yet, and it was intoxicating.
The shoulder she slept against had absorbed her breath, and he had never loved the smell of tangerine so much… or was it oranges?
He wasn't sure, but that, plus the subtle spiciness of the ramen they had… words didn't, no, wouldn't come to him.
No words, but words meant nothing without actions.
Naruto continued to lay there and soon became close to sleep. His heavy eyelids dropped and his muscles relaxed. He was beginning to doze…
…or at least he was until he heard movement in Kaiya's room.
He slowly sat himself up on his elbows and listened carefully. At first he heard nothing, just some light rustling and footsteps. He assumed Kaiya must have woken up, did she need something? Would it be okay for him to check on her? Was she looking for him?
He was about to decide when his blood ran cold.
Kaiya had screamed.
He was at her door seconds later.
He threw himself into the room in a panic only to find Kaiya missing. The bed empty, sheets ruffled, the shirt he lent to her at his feet, as he picked it up, it was drenched in sweat. The window was open, moonlight filling the room, standing next to the window was a wincing Shikamaru.
Naruto furrowed his brows, "Shika? What the hell are you-" he started before settling into a low snarl. The shorts she was wearing before were crumbled at his feet, his eyes were red in an instant.
"Shikamaru," he growled, "What. Did. You. Do."
Shikamaru glanced down at his feet before immediately raising both his hands, "Cool it Naruto, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this."
Naruto chuckled mirthlessly and began skulking towards Shikamaru.
"'Reasonable?!' You broke into my apartment in the middle of the night, Kaiya is gone, and her clothes are at your feet, how the fuck is that 'reasonable?!'" he shrieked, pinning the lazy nin, "I'll only ask this once more, what did you do to her?!"
"I did nothing to her." Shikamaru glared pushing Naruto away, him landing onto the bed, leaching with chakra and killing intent.
"First of all," Shikamaru began dryly, "I came to see you, and this window was the only one unlocked, I didn't break in. Second of all, she's in there," he gestured towards the wardrobe, "Troublesome woman, she screamed and hid once she realised I was in here."
Calming only marginally, Naruto stood, "And this?" he said, holding up the shirt.
"The reason she screamed." he smirked, "Seems the girl has a stripping problem."
"What?"
"She woke up, and ripped off all her clothes."
Naruto pondered this for a moment. He was suddenly regretting leaving to sleep in his room.
"All of them?"
Shikamaru's smirk grew to a shit-eating grin.
"Enough to-"
"I wasn't naked!" a muffled voice spoke.
Both Shikamaru and Naruto's attention was now fully on the wardrobe.
"Please stop talking about me like I'm not here," she said softly, "I've had enough embarrassment."
Naruto sent Shikamaru one final glare before stepping towards the wardrobe. Despite his anger and jealousy, Kaiya was more important at this moment. He could kill Shikamaru later.
"Are you… are you okay, Kaiya?" Naruto said warmly, placing a hand against the wooden door. He could feel her faint chakra signature flaring with so many conflicting emotions, emotions he could relate too.
It was a few moments of silence before she answered, "I'm fine, don't worry."
"If you're okay then come out, I'm sure Shika is sorry," he said sending another small glare the shadow nin's way, "I'll hold him down if you wanna hit him."
More silence, "He didn't see anything special, he just surprised me is all."
Naruto looked to Shikamaru and mouthed 'how much did you see?'
Shikamaru stared at him, picked up the shorts at his feet and pointed at the shirt that was still in his hand, 'you really have to ask?'
Naruto was perplexed. Neither of them were lying… but yet…
She didn't freak out when he had snuck in while she showered to leave her new clothes.
He never peeked, but most girl would have made that assumption. So either she was super trusting, which her behaviour showed was unlikely, or… she really felt her body was nothing special…
"Nothing special huh…" he mumbled cynically, "Then why hide?"
Nothing but more silence.
Naruto didn't know who to me madder at, Shikamaru for what he saw, or Kaiya for her ignorance. Did she not believe him earlier?
His fingers curled around the doorknob, letting out a momentary exhale readying himself to see whatever state she would be in. Even if she was mostly bare in there, he would not let it affect him. He had seen nude women before, thanks to his late master Jiraiya, so he could handle it. He was a shinobi, he would handle it.
"I hid… because he saw past the skin…"
His hand fell.
"… I was just caught off guard… I'll come out when I'm ready."
Naruto sighed, he would need to deal with Shikamaru before he could talk things out with her. If he opened that door now, she would react similar to how she reacted to the lazy idiot that was still here. Her mask would be up, and her walls reinforced, but he had a better chance with that then he did right now. For her to trust him, he had to show her some first.
"Okay, I'll come check on you after I talk with Shika." He said, motioning to said ninja to follow him.
He made his way towards the rooms exit, taking one last glance back before crossing the threshold and letting the door close.
.
Naruto glared at Shikamaru as they both sat on opposite ends of his couch.
"This better be important, thanks to you I'm back to square one with her," Naruto huffed, "Talk fast, we have training in few hours and I'd like to get some sleep in first."
Shikamaru stretched, "Something's not right about her," he said in his usual bored tone.
"Enough about Kaiya, why'd you come to see me?"
"She is the reason I came, Naruto," Shikamaru eye rolled and folded his arms. He turned the whole top-half of his body, facing Naruto directly, taking on a serious tone and stance. "She's suspicious."
It was Naruto's turn to eye roll this time, "The hell you talking about?"
"You would understand if you saw what happened when she was in that office."
"Well I wasn't there Shikamaru, so how about you educate me?"
Naruto was getting annoyed now. What was his problem? What was his beef with Kaiya? It's not like him to be like this.
Shikamaru leant his shoulder against the couch, arms still tightly folded and his head tilted towards the ceiling. It was times like this when his attitude could got on Naruto's nerves.
"We all initially suspected something was strange about her when you first brought her in. ANBU were sent to where you found her and they didn't find much of anything. No one else had been there other than you, and it's obvious that whatever happened to her wasn't done to her there. She was dumped there, but the evidence suggests she appeared out of thin air," he explained and paused before looking back at him, "But you already knew that."
"Get to the point, Shika." Naruto sighed.
His eyes narrowed before he continued, "When I received her medical report and her release papers, I noticed she didn't sign them properly. She didn't use characters, she just scribbled along the dotted line," he reached into his pocket, "I thought perhaps she was illiterate, but then I looked closer and found within the nonsense was some characters, just not any that made sense," he pulled out whatever he had been searching for, "The characters found on this device match the ones in her signature, after three days with the ciphers, they could make no sense of the language on here and had made no progress in trying to translate it, even with my assistance."
Shikamaru was holding the object that looked like a tiny, flat, rectangular TV and spent a few moments touching and poking at the screen, then proceeded to hand it over to him.
Naruto started at the strange device. It really was like a small TV, but it reminded him more of a miniature version of the databases found in Otagakure. On the screen seemed to be paragraphs of text, mixed with symbols that looked like faces and other colourful shapes, and a background made to look like notepaper.
"It kinda reminds me of Sakura's diary," Naruto murmured, "Owning advanced technology and knowing a foreign language isn't a crime." He said to Shikamaru in a dry tone similar to his. "What are you trying to tell me, Shikamaru?"
"I was getting to that," he grated, sighing once again. He held out his hand and Naruto reluctantly returned the mini-database.
"Man, your troublesome… Anyways," he articulated, pocketing it once more, "After your meeting with Kakashi and she entered the office, her body language and her chakra subtly changed. She gave of a sense of familiarity, like she had been there before, but not recently, since she still examined the room like most people do in a new environment. I originally shook it off as coincidence, she might have been in a Kage's office before, they do look similar in most of the nations…" his tone went serious again, "However, when our esteemed Hokage made my presence known, she froze up, and looked at me with recognition in her eyes."
"You know her?" Naruto asked surprised.
"No, I've never met the woman, but she definitely knew me… and I mean really knew me, like she knew everything about my being." He inhaled, "Weirdly enough, she choose to go under the Jutsu, and I thought we had her, at least until Kakashi sent me out and spoke to her alone after performing the Jutsu himself."
"You're overreacting, if she was a danger to us Kakashi wouldn't have let her stick around."
"You say that now, but you haven't even heard the strangest part," he retorted.
"Try me," Naruto spat.
Shikamaru straightened and locked his gaze with Naruto's, and gave an expression like he was going to drop a bomb. With that he said next, he might as well have.
"When I came back in, Kakashi's mask was down."
Naruto thought his eyes were going to snap out of his face.
"WHAT?!"
Naruto didn't believe it. It was so unlike him, and he had known Kakashi for years. He was his sensei, a close comrade, and teammate. None of Team 7 or Team Kakashi had ever seen him with his mask down, and they had spent a good amount of time trying to find out what lay hidden there. What had Kaiya done to convince him to show her his face? And Shikamaru got to see his face too?!
As if reading my mind, Shikamaru spoke once more, "I wish I was joking, Ino has been on my back all afternoon trying to get a detailed description."
Naruto respired deeply, he would interrogate him on this at a later date, "I still don't think she's dangerous, she just a civilian."
"I'm just saying she has something to hide, I don't know what it is yet but I will find out. I don't trust her."
He abruptly stood and placed the mini-database on the coffee table in front of him before walking towards the door. He opened the front door, but before leaving he turned towards Naruto once more.
"Return it to her. If you really think she's harmless, then gaining her trust and working on getting that thing translated should be no problem," he faced the exit again and stepped into the doorframe, "See you at training." He uttered quickly before shutting the door behind him.
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