Dang, 16 chapters already! Hope y'all enjoy :)

"I hope Kakashi-sensei and Iruka-sensei aren't mad." Soba wondered out loud.

"We just caught them following us, so they can't be. You're not worried about Dai being mad?"

"HA! No. That was just phase one of my revenge. I need your help with planning phase two."

"There's going to be a phase two?!"

"Well, obviously. Falling out of a tree is hardly a punishment for creeping on your sister. Plus, I have a reputation to uphold."

"A reputation?"

"Yes. Dai's and my prank and/or revenge war has been going on since we were twelve, and I can't have him thinking I'm getting soft."

"It must be fun having a twin! The two of you seem really close."

"It is, when he's not driving me crazy, or painting kittens on my cloak before important meetings. Actually, no, it's always fun. I guess it's because we're the same age that we understand each other really well, although I know he seems like he's older. He's always been like that. I'm the reckless, feral one that needs to be grabbed when she tries to run through a fire 'for the experience.'"

"You don't give yourself enough credit! I mean, your village thought you were good enough to captain teams, right?"

"I'm not as reckless as I was when I was twelve, but I sometimes still need Dai to grab me by the collar and tell me that I'm going overboard. It's part of the reason why I like us working together. He's what people call 'mentally stable,' and I am...me. He's always kept me sane and protected me from myself." Soba shrugged. "I don't know what I'd do without him. Wait, no, I do. I'd get scurvy and die because it's his cooking that keeps me alive, not ramen." Soba shrugged, meeting Naruto's eyes with a self-deprecating smile.

"You take care of him too, you know. You take care of everyone, no matter how hard you try to ignore it."

"How much have you had to drink tonight? Your judgment's getting a little fuzzy, Naruto." The man pursed his lips in frustration at her.

"Actually, nothing. I spent the entire time we were in the bar looking for you and getting caught up by everyone else."

"Ah, the curse of popularity! All these people that want to spend time with you! How hard a life it must be." Soba put the back of her hand against her forehead and sprawled across the couch, shoving Naruto into a corner with her head. Not one to entirely waste an excellent opportunity, he maneuvered himself so that she had to put her head on his thigh. Not a single complaint was heard from the kunoichi about her new arrangement.

"I'm not that popular! We just haven't had everyone together in a really long time and they all-"

"I'm just teasing you! It must be nice to have a group of friends that gets along so well."

"It is! They're all so different, but we've all been through the same things together. It's funny watching everyone change as they get older."

"It's even funnier when you notice how you've changed." Soba looked up at Naruto, who was nodding his assent. They sighed wistfully.

"Okay, so you've met all of my friends! Tell me about yours!" The cerulean eyes were so eager when they met Soba's.

"Well, the only friend I have to speak of aside from my ridiculous brother is our former teammate, Akira. He's the one that I gave a haircut by accident that one time, remember?" Naruto nodded, hoping that by 'former teammate,' she meant he had switched teams and not been killed. Reading his cautious expression, Soba continued. "No, he's not dead. He met a civilian, fell in love or whatever it is that people do, and I think she made him realize he wanted to spend less time gambling his life in the field and more time at home. Maybe it wasn't only her, maybe it was the war, too. We all saw so much carnage. Anyway. He's an instructor now, and seems to be happy. His lady is really sweet, but doesn't understand sarcasm, so we struggle when we try to communicate. I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm insane."

"Aren't you?" Soba cuffed the blonde on the shoulder as well as she could given her bizarre angle.

"Oh, now you find your sass. Anyway, yeah. That's about it."

"I'm sure there are more people that consider you a friend."

"Nooope. There are a lot of people that tolerate and respect me since we've fought together, but I told you that I tend to keep everyone at arm's length. I wasn't kidding."

"Well, I can share some of my friends."

"I'm pretty sure that you can't share people like that, Naruto. Just imagine trying to tell Sasuke that he is being shared."

"I don't want to share him because I'm still mad about him cutting you."

"In all fairness, I got distracted by you yelling my name, and it's my fault for getting hurt. It wasn't that bad, anyway." The blonde looked guilty. "No! I mean, I didn't blame you. It's my fault." Soba looked down to the faint line down the middle of her chest that disappeared into her shirt. "Shame it didn't leave a cooler scar!" Naruto lowered his hand from the back of the couch to gingerly graze the upper end of the uneven skin. His fingers lingered, drawing a line to the markedly more aggressive scars along her collarbone and lower neck. "Mm, see, those are more interesting-looking, though the story's not nearly as funny."

"Could you tell me about it?" Naruto's hands had not left the scarred tissue; he was gently rubbing the skin over as though he wanted to memorize it. Goosebumps rose along her arms at his gentle ministrations, and she squirmed. Her collarbones were one of her weak points.

"It's not that great a story, but sure. Dai, Akira and I went on a mission to capture a particularly notorious thief that was robbing small villages near us blind; it was supposed to be a very in-and-out mission, as the thief was reportedly a civilian."

"And he wasn't?"

"He was. However, this was my first mission leading our team, as I had only recently been promoted to jounin. Our sensei had been killed some weeks prior to that, and that's why I got put in charge - to see if I could handle it."

"I'm sorry."

"It happens. But yeah, I was just barely past my sixteenth birthday, and was convinced I was both a superstar and invincible. The thief ended up being a decent swordsman, and in my cockiness, I tried to do a minimalist dodge to avoid a slice directed at my neck. My wonderful collarbone deflected the blade enough so I didn't lose my head, but the thief still managed to fillet a nice section of my shoulder. Long story short, he ignited the rage of a thousand suns and I went nuts on him. The man was barely breathing when I dumped him at the police station in town, and only because Dai stopped me. Akira managed to heal the worst of my wound afterwards, but it still scarred pretty badly. It was funny because I kept trying to make the flap of skin talk to Dai after I had knocked the thief out, and I made him throw up."

"That's really gross." Naruto screwed up his face, imagining the gore, while Soba beamed with pride.

"It is, isn't it? I promise I don't do that anymore, and for the record, Dai started the gross-outs."

"Do I want to know about those?"

"Enh, probably not. It involves some really nasty broken bones and burns. We broke a lot of stuff as children."

"You must have a lot more scars, then!" His fingers pulled at the shirt on her shoulders, investigating further. Soba smacked the offending hand. Naruto dropped the fabric as though it had scalded him, avoiding her mischievous gaze.

"I do, but they're not there, perv." He blushed fiercely.

"I was just-I-"

"You're really easy to tease. I'm sorry. My major scars are on my arms and back, actually, and I have two funny ones um...on my butt." Two blonde eyebrows disappeared into Naruto's hairline. "Before you get ideas, Dai and I were trying to hit apples off of each other's heads with shuriken when we were little."

"How'd he hit your butt then?!"

"Well, I missed, badly, as I was a little kid, and he retaliated by throwing two at me when I ran away. He has a matching scar on his shoulder from my throw. You should have seen how mad our parents were when they realized their shuriken were not in their weapons pouches, but in their children. We stood in front of them, him with one embedded in his shoulder, me with two sticking out of my bum, crying. Our dad laughed pretty hard at us once he realized we weren't seriously hurt, and our mom purposely didn't heal us up completely as a reminder to not be stupid. Her idea, while good, was ineffective. Both Dai and I stayed pretty stupid; we just became better at aiming." Soba giggled. She couldn't remember the last time she had talked this much in one sitting. Every time she went to stop, thinking she had overdone it, she just saw the curiosity on Naruto's face, and felt the need to keep going. He looked like he was enjoying listening to her reminisce about the silly things she had done as a child, but she was hoping he'd tell her some stories about his childhood, too. "You have to have some stories too, because Sasuke's told me about how the two of you were...are."

"What did he tell you?" Naruto narrowed his eyes. "If he said anything about me being stupid, he's completely wrong!"

"Hah, no, he just told me the two of you used to fight a lot. Or still do, I guess!"

"Teme..." The blonde growled. "We do fight a lot, but sometimes we get along. Ha! Actually, there was one time where Sasuke, Sakura and I tried to find out what was under Kakashi-sensei's mask!"

"And did you?" This piqued Soba's curiosity.

"No. But it went on for a week, and we kept coming up with crazy plans to get him to take it off around us, and nothing worked. We took him out for ramen, but right when he was about to take his mask off, our friends showed up and blocked our view. By the time we got them to move, he'd already finished eating, and we were so mad. We even invited him to the hot springs but he had a towel over his face!"

"So you've never seen him without the mask?!"

"No! Nobody has! It used to drive me crazy, but then I got used to it. Soba-chan, I don't like that look."

"What if..."

"That look is even scarier."

"I have a new life goal."

"I think your life goal can wait."

"But-" Soba whined, sitting up to face Naruto. "Now I really want to know." The blonde threw his arms around her and pulled her close. She fell forward, grabbing the blanket slung over the back of the sofa to steady herself.

"You're not going anywhere tonight!" The kunoichi pulled back enough so Naruto could see her biting her lip to suppress a grin, and he responded in kind. Thinking that she may need some convincing to stay put, Naruto placed a timid peck on her lips. He didn't really expect her to respond with the fervor that she did, pushing him back onto the couch and forgetting entirely about her self-proclaimed new life goal.

After they had extracted themselves from the mass of embarrassment, Dai, Kiba, Kakashi and Iruka sat, cross-legged, on the dirt path. They feigned nonchalance, like it was the most normal thing in the world for four men to be sitting in silence on a pathway in the middle of the night. The Hokage had resumed his reading, Iruka, his judging, and the two younger shinobi were working on progressing to a more sober state.

"Maa, they're a good team, at least." Kakashi noted, flipping a page.

"Is that all you learned from the experience?"

"Hai, Iruka." His long fingers brushed against a particularly interesting passage.

"I hope imouto decides to take pity on me during our trip home tomorrow."

"You're going to be hung over and dealing with the consequences of spying on her twice." Kiba, aware of the fact that he had already received punishment for his involvement in the stalking debacle, couldn't help but guffaw at his friend's predicament.

"If you keep laughing, I'm going to try to convince her that this was your idea." The other man snapped his jaw shut audibly. Dai wasn't about to mention that Soba would know that it wasn't Kiba's idea; she was more than familiar with the hallmarks of her twin's mischievous plans. He was, however, deeply concerned about how hard and how fast her retaliation would come. If she retaliated before they left, he'd still have the benefit of her being moony over Naruto; if she waited until they got back to their village, he would face the full wrath of his katana-wielding, flame-charged sister. Dai recalled the last time he had seriously pissed her off by setting her up on a blind date. He had ended up wearing fuzzy cat ears and a tail for exactly three days, as Soba had sealed them on with some sort of chakra timer. Dai had no idea what it was, but he just knew that he couldn't get the stupid accessories off in time for a meeting with the village elders. He had yet to get her to reveal the technique to him, and for that reason, he was terrified of what he'd be subjected to this time.

Thanks for reading! Comments and constructive criticism are appreciated.