They sat on the roof of Naruto's building, their legs dangling over the side. Soba had stolen her companion's obnoxiously bright jacket to wrap loosely around herself (again) to help with the biting wind. She loved the freedom of the breeze and the expanse of stars above them, but her clothing choice wasn't the most conducive to comfort in the late fall. The kunoichi was first to break the silence, unlacing her fingers from Naruto's to gesture at him.
"So, um, where do we go from here?" The blonde turned his head towards her, confused.
"Oh, you don't like it up here?"
"No, not physically 'here,' I meant, you know, this." Her hand flapped in the space between them.
"Ahhh, you and me?"
"Yeah." He shrugged, good-naturedly, a gentle smile lighting his eyes.
"Why do we need to think about that right now?" His reputation had preceded him; Soba knew he had a tendency to run with his feelings first, and consult logic later.
"I mean, I'm leaving tomorrow."
"I know."
"And we don't live near each other."
"I know that too, Soba-chan."
"So-"
"You don't need to have a plan for everything, you know?"
"But plans are wonderful."
"Isn't it more fun to just let things happen?"
"No. Then you have surprises, and those are terrible. Manageable, but terrible."
"You must have been so much fun to plan parties for as a kid."
"I nearly skewered Dai on our 14th birthday when he jumped out of my closet wearing a party hat." Naruto chuckled warmly.
"I bet he never tried to surprise you after that!"
"No, he definitely did. He's disturbingly persistent. He tried the same thing the next year, but set up a chakra barrier in case I had my katana. However, our friend Akira had taken part in his idiotic idea minus the barrier, and that's the story of how Akira got a surprise haircut. Dai has this way of coercing anyone to take part in his schemes." Soba sighed. "He got all the charm in the family, unfortunately."
"Eh, I think you have charm."
"Ha!" Soba's laugh was more of a bark. "I think you're just distracted by how little clothing I'm wearing."
"Maybe, but you were wearing a lot more than that when we first met, and I still-" He paused and her eyebrows raised in amusement.
"I'm pretty sure there was nothing you liked about me for the first few days."
"Weeeell, I was mad, but your eyes made it really hard to stay mad." Naruto avoided her gaze, his cheeks warming.
"I found it really hard to stay completely focused with you there, too. But then again, you're intimidating as a shinobi and you happen to be a little...well, a lot...handsome."
"How am I intimidating?" Soba gave him a blank look.
"You act like you didn't play a massive role in saving the world."
"Oh, yeah, that!"
"Yes, that. Plus, Kakashi-sensei put me in charge of our team, which absolutely terrified me because in what world would I be a captain over you? I just kept a straight face since it was easier. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty good at my job, but I'm no you." The blonde seemed awkward hearing her say that; Naruto knew well enough that he was incredibly skilled, but seeing that it actually affected people made him uncomfortable. He liked knowing that others could rely on him to protect them, but he hadn't ever really considered that someone would feel like Soba did. The thing that baffled him most was how well she had hidden it behind her confidence, and calm, mission-steady demeanor.
"But you don't seem intimidated now?"
"Well, we're not on a mission, and I am, without a doubt, the eating champion of the two of us. Also, I made you fall off a roof with my boobs. I take full ownership of that skill." Naruto looked offended.
"Boobs," He whispered the word, "are not a skill. And I fell off the roof because I tripped on a bird."
"A bird?"
"A bird."
"Really." She cocked an eyebrow at him, her cheek muscles failing to keep a smile down.
"Yes."
"Was it glued to the roof? Why did it not fly away? What kind of bird was it? I have so many questions." The blonde spluttered a protest and Soba laughed bodily.
"It was a very fat bird. Very heavy. Oh, and it was camouflaged." Her laughter rang out over the rooftops and tears of mirth ran down her face. Despite the fact that he had just lost a pointless argument and the laughing was at his expense, he couldn't resist joining her. But all the while, Naruto didn't miss the way her eyes twinkled, how her nose scrunched up slightly, and the way her slender fingers clutched at her stomach as she expressed her delight.
"I'll have to keep an eye out for those leaden camo birds next time I'm running across any roof with you. You'll have to point them out." Soba took a deep breath to steady herself, wiping away a stray tear. She caught Naruto's gaze out of the corner of her eye and turned to face him. He was leaning back on his elbows casually, but he hadn't taken his eyes off of her since they had sat down. Soba shuffled a little closer to him and nuzzled his cheek, feeling the warmth radiating off of his body.
"It was a bird, I'm serious." Naruto leaned into her, smiling.
"I believe you. Did it look like this?" The kunoichi did her best effort to touch her two elbows together and hike her cleavage up towards him. At that moment, one of the blonde's sweaty palms slipped on a roof tile, and he fell forward into Soba's lap, grabbing at her for purchase. He had subconsciously avoided the obvious handholds on her body, but had still flopped onto her comically. "The rare, flightless booby bird. I should have known." Naruto could only groan.
"Okay. You win. But you are not the eating champion." The words were muffled by her thigh.
"Oh, please, like you can hold a candle to my ramen-devouring skills." Naruto's head popped up, eyes narrowed. Soba knew what she had done.
"I'm gonna win."
"She will actually murder us."
"No, she won't." A pause. "Okay, maybe she will."
"I'm too young to go on the memorial stone."
"Shh. I hear someone." Dai pushed Kiba's head down further into the bushes with one large hand. He sunk down shortly after.
"Maaaa, Iruka, why have you stopped?"
"Because I heard something. Shh."
"Iruka-sensei?" The two older men froze in their tracks, checking that they were still obscured in shadow. Kiba popped his head out of the bush, swatting at some stray twigs. "What are you and Kakashi-sensei doing out here?" Dai emerged from the bush and bowed.
"Good evening!" The size of the man's grin mirrored how much he had drank that night, but none of the three other men really had any right to judge. They had, after all, just run into each other while stalking.
"Ah, Kiba and Dai. I should ask you the same thing!" Kakashi slouched out of the shadows, hands deep in his pockets. A miffed-looking Iruka stepped out after him, his hair down.
"We were just looking for Soba. We were supposed to meet her. Uh. Here." Dai's nods served to punctuate his sentence. Kiba pointed drunkenly at Iruka's hair, the cogs working to process what was different.
"I took out the ponytail." Iruka answered the unspoken question. "I was informed," A sharp look was directed at the silver-haired man next to him, "that my ponytail was too bushy for recon. Never mind that a third of someone's height comes from their enormous hair." Kakashi inhaled a sharp gasp.
"A third? It is precisely 24.5 centimeters tall, and that would mean that I am 73.5 centimeters tall, and that is ridiculous. I am taller than you are, Iruka. Plus, my hair blends into the night."
"It's silver."
"Like moonlight." The Hokage fluffed his hair up, narrowing his eyes dangerously at his companion. Dai and Kiba exchanged glances, wondering how they could slip away to continue their poorly-planned mission.
"Hm. Anyway, we happen to be waiting for Naruto to meet us, so we'll just walk around a little until he gets here. I'm sure it won't be long." Iruka stated, in his most authoritative teacher voice, hoping to regain some semblance of composure in front of the two younger shinobi. He wouldn't be caught dead participating in Kakashi's hare-brained schemes when he was supposed to be the voice of reason. He hardly flinched, however, when the jounin summoned his ninken.
"I never thought I'd say this, but I just realized how many bowls of ramen are too many. Six. Six is too many." Soba groaned, draped over the railing of Naruto's balcony. He too was sprawled over the iron bar, muttering something about exploding stomachs. Soba may have been full to the point of passing out, but even she sensed some vaguely familiar chakra from the tree opposite the apartment. The kunoichi lifted her head to gaze into the dark branches whose leaves had mostly fallen to the street below. The signature disappeared. "Did you feel that?"
"Feel what?"
"That chakra?"
"Sort of, but it's gone now. It felt almost like Kakashi-sensei..."
"I felt Dai's presence..." Green eyes met blue and the realization hit them simultaneously. Naruto and Soba's heads snapped forward and they squinted into the tree, trying to discern if there were any familiar figures in it.
"Abort mission. We're going to die. Both of us. All four of us. We will all die at the hands of Soba." Kiba trembled on his branch, his wariness only heightened by inebriation.
"Kiba! Are you a shinobi, or not? We must face danger calmly, without wavering." Kakashi's voice dropped so Kiba couldn't hear from the other side of the tree. "I really should not have assumed that they were too distracted to sense chakra. Iruka, you know that I can feel your judgmental eyes burning a hole in my head." In the dappled moonlight filtering through the branches, the Hokage could just make out the disapproving stare on Iruka's face.
"I can't imagine why I'd be judgmental, given that you forgot the first rule of stealth." The sensei hissed.
"I did not forget, Iruka. Stop it with the teacher no jutsu. I was merely testing them."
"Hokage-sama, why would you be testing the shinobi you're hunting?" The silver-haired man busied himself with a thread on his pants, acting oblivious to Dai's innocent question. "Also, why are we in a tree if we were all supposedly waiting for someone to meet us?" The four fell into silence, contemplating, avoiding the glares of their respective targets.
"What are the chances of there being people in that tree right now?"
"Why would they be in the tree?"
"Hiding?"
"From what?"
"Us."
"Why us?" Soba looked at him like he was the most dense human in a twenty kilometer radius. She waited for the light bulb to turn on slowly. "Oh. Got it."
"Let's go inside. They won't be leaving anytime soon. I'll come up with a plan to deal with my traitorous brother later." Naruto slid open the balcony door, gesturing for Soba to go in first and ignoring her evil cackle. She took off his jacket and folded it over the arm of the sofa, gently lowering herself onto it. The blonde followed suit, leaving some distance between the two. Their eyes both flitted to the wall clock and back, just registering that it was close to two in the morning; Soba sighed heavily, realizing the she and Dai would have to leave in only a few hours.
"Don't think about that yet!" Naruto nudged her and she smiled wanly. "It's not like we'll never see each other again." Soba's eyes fell to the hands she had clasped in her lap. Though she knew there was very little chance of their relationship, if that's what they could call it, working out, she still felt a little disappointed. Her reasoning was fueled by the fact that there were so many beautiful and charming women in Konoha, that she couldn't possibly stand a chance, being so far away. Her brain churned up what she deemed realistic scenarios, and prepared her for the inevitable. She'd enjoy what time she had left here, then go home and resume her life. Naruto would move on quickly enough, she mused. There was no point in creating elaborate fantasies that would fizzle out the moment she returned to the village of Hidden Grass; Soba was much too practical for that.
"Do you want anything to drink?"
"Hmm?" The kunoichi snapped back to reality. "Oh yeah, sure. I'll have whatever you're having." Naruto got up and walked to his kitchen.
"It looks like you've already left, in your mind." Soba dropped her gaze back down to her lap and began to worry the fabric beneath her palms.
"I guess I'm just trying to prepare myself for the inevitable."
"So, don't!" He came back and handed her a glass of water.
"Telling me to stop thinking about something is like trying to stop a wall of water by yelling at it. It's really not going to work."
"What if I make you think about something else?"
"I guess there's no harm in trying. Good luck with that."
"Hmmm..." The blonde screwed his face up, tapping the pad of a finger on his chin, lost in thought. Soba couldn't help but smile at how adorable he looked and how hard he was trying to come up with a suitable distraction for her. "What if...ah! Let's play a game."
"A game?" The kunoichi was skeptical.
"Hai! A game. Let's go scare our stalkers."
"Now you're talking!"
"We can go out the front door and sneak up on them in the tree. I have a great idea." Naruto explained his plan to Soba, both giggling at the sheer level of mischief they could accomplish.
"Oh, this'll be great."
"They're just sitting on the couch. This is really dull. Maybe we should go?"
"Kiba, where is your spirit?"
"In a bottle, at my home. Where my bed is."
"Pff. Our mission is not over yet."
"SHH!" Iruka silenced the two younger shinobi on the opposite branch.
"Sorry, sensei." The only man yet to speak, Kakashi, was squatting on the branch, a familiar, obscenely-colored book open in his left hand. He flipped pages leisurely, waiting for any indication of change in his surroundings.
Soba gathered a few spare twigs for her distraction, leaping to the top of the tree where she had sensed her brother. Peeking down the nearly-bare branches, she spotted a familiar mop of brown hair, accompanied by an equally familiar fur collar. She tilted her head in Naruto's direction when he landed silently next to her, gesturing below. The blonde scowled, seeing a shock of silver hair belonging to Kakashi and Iruka with his hair down next to the man. It was time to implement their simple, yet potentially hysterical plan. Soba performed a few hand seals and blew a small flame onto the twigs in her open palms. As they were still fairly moist, they began to smoke quickly; the kunoichi grinned deviously.
"I smell smoke." Kakashi sniffed at the air, joined by the others. The changing wind made it difficult to figure out exactly where the source was, which worked well for team Soba and Naruto. All four men rose to their feet, wary of potential danger, but completely unprepared for what was about to come next.
Naruto was struggling to keep a straight face, feeling like he was about to explode. He whispered "Harem no jutsu" and waited as a dozen female likenesses of him surrounded the four stalkers, rubbing their naked bodies against the men. Soba had leapt down from the tree to observe the hilarity in real time, and nearly fell off a neighboring balcony when she saw the masterpiece Naruto had created. Expecting an attack, or something markedly more dangerous, the four shinobi had fallen out the tree so aggressively that they had nearly flown. Even Iruka and Kakashi, who had been exposed to this particular jutsu before, were caught completely off guard and collapsed, red in the face, to the ground below. Naruto landed right next to Soba on his neighbor's balcony, and joined her in laughing at the pile of flushed, twitching men below. Soba and Naruto clutched their respective stomachs, fueling each other's hysteria.
"That was...amazing. I can't breathe-I can't-" Soba wheezed, collapsing to the concrete. Naruto couldn't get a single word out because he had no breath to spare for verbal communication. One of Kakashi's ninken, a toy in his mouth, approached his master.
"Boss." The silver-haired man craned his neck to make eye contact with the pug. The dog dropped his squeaky toy by Kakashi's wrist.
"Pakkun. Didn't I give you orders to keep watch on them?"
"The kunoichi gave us a toy and ear scratches in exchange for free passage. We deemed that an appropriate trade." Kakashi's head flopped back to hit the dirt path, muttering something about being betrayed by his loyal companions. Naruto and Soba high-fived, and the kage bunshin sitting on the blonde's couch disappeared. The two decided to leave the pile to fend for themselves and went right back into the apartment. Mission accomplished.
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