AN: Chapter title: One of Us Is Crazy
"Why are we doing this?"
Kiba still didn't understand why Sasuke had just shown up in front of him before he could meet up with Karin, grab Akamaru, and head home. Before he could try to ask what was going on, try to get a question out, the Uchiha had dragged him out the tower despite his attempts to get him to stop. The two, more the Uchiha just dragging him by the collar, hadn't gone far before stopping.
"You'll know soon enough." The Uchiha hadn't said much beyond that since shoving one of the two shovel he had brought with him into his arms and telling him to dig. He at least wasn't just standing around, had been set to dig his own hole while Kiba dug his.
With the Uchiha as talkative as he would be, Kiba grunted as he set himself to work. For two Shinobi, one Genin and one recently promoted Chunin, it wasn't exactly hard work. Besides, he was an Inuzuka, half of his childhood was spent digging holes with the ninken.
"I don't get why we can't just dig together. We'll be faster."
The Uchiha didn't reply with words, only grunted as he moved another shovelful of dirt out the hole over his shoulder. He hadn't responded any other time his, for lack of a better term, digging partner had posed the idea of digging together.
"I know some Earth Release techniques too. A really good one for making holes too! And super easy. I could've been done with this in less than a minute with it. I could've probably dug up this whole field if I wanted to."
Red eyes flashed in the night, a clear warning in them at the very idea of doing such a thing. Kiba swallowed, stopped in the midst of his first half-remembered hand seal.
"Y-Yeah, who needs Ninjutsu?" He tried to laugh off the shiver he felt. It wasn't really working. "Back to digging. Got it. Great exercise. Definitely need it."
The Inuzuka returned to the task at hand despite the questions building in his mind.
'Not the first hole I've dug, no questions asked.' This wasn't even the second or third time he had done something like this. Although the other four times, Akamaru had been willing to help him dig them, something the ninken couldn't do at the moment since he probably didn't even know where he was. Not that the ninken would bother searching for him when he could take the extra time to laze around with Karin instead of their, relatively new, nighttime training. 'Lazy mutt. He's always complaining about us training too late when he's the one who gets to sleep all day.'
He lost himself to the familiar enough motions of digging and, before he knew it, the two were done.
The Uchiha who was behind all of this at least considered them done, had hoisted himself out of the hole he had dug and set the shovel he had been using into the ground. Kiba followed after the Uchiha, climbed out of the hole he had dug. His digging partner wasn't exactly chatty even once they were done, red and black eyes focused on the hole in front of him.
Kiba glanced to his.
There…wasn't much to it.
It was a hole in the ground.
The absence of dirt in a given space.
By definition: A hollow place.
"So…you gonna tell me why we just dug two holes?"
"Graves."
Well, that explained a little bit of this unexpected nighttime activity.
AND PRESENTED SO MANY NEW QUESTIONS!
"What!?" Kiba felt like that was the appropriate response to what had just been said.
"Does anyone ever listen to what I say? Am I speaking another language or something?" The Uchiha was speaking to himself, a hand over his face in exasperation for a moment. He finally turned his gaze back to the Inuzuka that was the cause of his current mood. "These are our graves." The Uchiha pointed to the one Kiba had dug. His repeated shout of 'What!?' was ignored in the process. "That one is yours." He pointed to the hole he had dug. "And this one is mine."
"Why? What?" The formulation of more in-depth questions, of a deeper delve into knowledge for this unknown situation, was currently…not possible for the Inuzuka.
The Uchiha's look of exasperation returned.
"It's as if everything I say goes in one ear and out the other. Why do I even bother?" The Uchiha was once again speaking to himself, shaking his head. "I'll try to make this clear enough for you." Sasuke continued despite his annoyance. "I'll be leaving the village in the morning for…a while. The Tribunes will police themselves while I'm gone. And you will do nothing to harm Karin while I'm away." He nodded towards the grave the Inuzuka had dug. "If you hurt her, I will personally put you in that grave." He nodded towards the other grave, the one he had dug. "And then Caesar will put me in that one for letting her get hurt in the first place. Hence why we dug separate graves."
"T-That's a bit extreme, right?" He really hoped this was all bad joke.
Sasuke, rather successfully, gave the Inuzuka a deadpan stare.
"Really?" To Kiba, his tone was eerily similar to when his sister was treating him like an idiot for not knowing something she considered obvious.
"Yeah!" Kiba looked from his supposed future grave to the Uchiha and back again. "This all has to be some prank! I bet Naruto put you up to this! Y-You just want to mess with me! You've got a real messed up sense of humor Sasuke!"
"I'm not joking." The Uchiha kept that same tone as he spoke. He sighed at what he was dealing with. 'I'm truly surrounded by idiots.'. "Think about it this way: Caesar just found, and had to leave, the only other family he knows in this world. The only family he's had to call his own since the night he lost his mother, the night the Kyubi was released. His love for Karin is something you have no idea of, can't begin to comprehend. If he comes back to the village and she's hurt or, even worse, missing, he's going to…not take it well." Personally, the Uchiha was understating it.
During the last conversation the two had, the Uchiha had been forced to dissuade Naruto from ordering his Legion to burn Kusagakure to the ground. Multiple times. And the longer their night went on (and the longer sleep eluded the two), the more often he had to derail those thoughts of Caesar.
He had succeeded. Barely.
The Seventh and Eighth Cohorts had nearly been ordered to march forth during that last hour.
"But why am I going in the grave! Why not just you!"
"Because you're the one who's been spending so much time with Caesar's dear cousin. You stand the greatest chance of hurting her out of all the Tribunes." Sasuke once more nodded towards the hole the Inuzuka had dug. "That grave is also for if you break her heart, if this is all just to lead her on…" The Uchiha didn't finish. He merely glared at the Inuzuka before he continued. "Caesar wants her to be not only safe but happy as well. If you ruin that by hurting her, that becomes your grave."
"S-So now you're just here to threaten me into staying her friend! I'm going to die if I don't want to hang out with her anymore!" Kiba had clearly not been prepared for this. At all. 'This can't be real. Nobody's that crazy to-' He, briefly, thought back to what he knew of Naruto Uzumaki.
The same Naruto Uzumaki who had created an army.
The same Naruto Uzumaki who ran around calling himself 'Caesar' this and 'Caesar' that.
He paled, suddenly found himself using the shovel in his hands as a crutch to stay up on his feet.
'Somebody is that crazy! He's exactly crazy enough to think like that!'
"Not at all. You're completely misunderstanding things." Sasuke went so far as to wave his hand through the air, disregard such a thing in its entirety. "I never said anything close to that. If you two can't be friends, you don't need to force it. I'm merely warning you that, if you pursue her romantically, to be earnest about it." The Uchiha continued on as if this entire conversation, this entire sequence of events, was something a sane man would do. "Like I told you, the grave you dug is for if you break her heart. And mine is for myself because I let you do such a thing to her."
"That doesn't even make any sense!" A part of Kiba could understand the grave he had dug. The part of him that had given up on sanity, on any hope of combating the insanity of tonight with logic. Also, he would do something close to the same as this if some pervy old bastard was trying to date his older sister. It was the other hole that wasn't making sense now. "Why did you dig one? How are you so calm about this!"
The Uchiha promptly snorted, something Kiba was pretty sure he had never seen him do before. "Who said I was calm? I just had to dig my own grave. This is probably going to be the second worst night of my life. For however long it lasts at least." From how unconcerned his voice was, it was hard for any observer to claim that the Uchiha was anything but calm. The Uchiha promptly shrugged his shoulders. "But Caesar's will is absolute. If he desires such, he will obtain it." He stated such a thing as fact. "There's nothing I can do about it. That's why I had you dig yours." He again took on that tone of 'I'll explain this obvious thing to you'. "Now we understand each other."
Sasuke truly spoke as if that made any sense at all, as if that was the key piece of information the panicking Inuzuka with him needed to piece it all together.
The Uchiha even went so far as to smile at him, as if some bond of brotherhood had formed between the two Shinobi who had hardly shared a one-on-one conversation before tonight.
"This is insane. This is all insane and can't be real." Kiba was half tempted to see if this was a dream, see if he could beat his dream-self up enough to wake up as he pounded on the side of his head with his free hand. "This is a Genjutsu! Yeah! This is all some super illusion that I've gotta bust out of!"
Sasuke said and did nothing as the Inuzuka quickly began a downward spiral, ranting and raving truly mad things to himself, that rationalized his belief of this all being an illusion.
He could only shake his head at a true mad man.
"I almost pity you Inuzuka." Sasuke Uchiha rarely felt sympathy for another but he supposed this was a special case. He didn't dislike the Inuzuka, didn't feel one way or another about him in truth beyond that he was weak like the rest of his once Academy classmates, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel, at least a little, sorry for him as he fell to utter madness. "We should probably head back soon, before anyone misses you."
The Inuzuka didn't respond in any way that mattered to the Uchiha.
"Kurenai-sensei is definitely messing with me because I asked her about her dating Asuma! Yeah! She was so mad at me thinking she would date a guy like him that she got red in the face!" The Inuzuka, at the revelation of the truth behind all of this, promptly looked towards the sky. "Alright Kurenai-sensei, I get it! I won't ask about it again! I totally learned my lesson! You don't have to keep this up!"
He clapped his hands together, bowed his head.
"I'm really, really, really sorry I ever asked!"
As the mad display in front of him, Sasuke could, again, only shake his head.
"The stress of your position has truly gotten to you." He patted the Inuzuka on the shoulder. "Let me take you home. It's the least I can do for a…friend would be pushing it. Let's call ourselves acquaintances."
Kiba didn't jump when the illusionary hand landed on his shoulder.
He jumped when he turned his head and saw Sasuke with that weird smile on his face again.
He quickly looked back towards the sky.
"And enough with the smiling crazy guy! I quadruple double promise to never ask you about embarrassing stuff like that again! You can make me train with Guy-sensei if I ever do something to upset you again Kurenai-sensei! I'll even wear that stupid green thing and run around the village in it for everybody to see! Just get me out of here!"
As Kiba continued to speak towards the sky, Sasuke walked the obviously stressed out Inuzuka home. Clearly, his position as Tribune had stressed him out too much.
As much as he would like to let Kiba work all of this out, the Uchiha still had a mission to prepare for. He needed to be ready to leave in the morning.
AN: Lost all passion for writing since the last update. This happened...eventually.
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