Disclaimer: Me no owny Naruto.

Notes: Don't flip out on me in reviews, I keep my promises. After reading you'll know what I mean, at least I think you will. Any typos or things that seem out of place, please let me know. Thanks!

-- Chapter 5: Duty --

Naruto thoroughly enjoyed his bowl—sorry, bowls—of Ramen. In his mind, no other food or form of Ramen could compare with Ichiraku's, it was simply the best. After paying his compliments to Teuchi and Ayame, Naruto began his trek to see Tsunade. As he saw it, it would be better to get this punishment over as soon as he could. Naruto noted that the attitude the villagers held toward him had not changed much over the years. Their eyes were still cold and harsh, but at the same time fearful of him. Anyone without trained hearing wouldn't have heard a word that they said; Naruto's hearing was probably the best in the city. They hated his guts and he knew it, but he would still protect them, even with his life. It had always been his dream to protect those people, even when he knew they would rather see him dead than alive. It was only once he could protect them all that they would recognize him as who he was, and not Kyuubi. That is why Naruto walked with a slight gentle smile on his face, to show that while they despised him, he cared.

Further up the street, Naruto saw a beast of a man, or rather, a young man. He immediately identified him as Akimichi Chouji. Naruto called out to him, who, at the sound of his name, turned his round-bellied body around to see who it was. At first he thought his eyes were lying, because surely it couldn't be the kid who he hadn't seen in three years, the one who left the village. But as he looked closer he saw that it was; it was Naruto.

"Naruto?" He asked, still in slight shock.

"Yeah, it's me. I just got back the other day," he said as though he had only gone on a vacation. "How have you been?"

"Pretty good I guess, what about you?"

"Oh, alright. Tsunade's been bitching about how I need some form of punishment for leaving."

Two people stepped out of a building, and one of them said, "She's right, tracking you was really troublesome. Somehow you managed to evade all of us."

"Anything is troublesome for you, Shikamaru." Naruto nodded at him, and the other person, before saying, "Ino." Ino examined Naruto, surprised by how good looking he was. When her eyes met his, she started to blush, realizing that she had just been staring at him, and hadn't even said anything yet. What she didn't know is that he had been doing the exact same thing, and he was surprised by how beautiful she had gotten.

"Naruto," she began, "It's good to see you, but Shikamaru is right. It was really annoying trying to find you. How did you manage to stay hidden for three years?"

"Yeah, well, what would that say about me if I got caught by you guys?" he joked, but earned glares from his three friends. He held his hands up in defense, "Just kidding. But I learned ways to keep myself relatively invisible on the map."

"Hmm." They replied. Shikamaru continued, "Well we've got to get going, We've got a mission to the sand."

"Yeah," Ino teased, "So Shikamaru can go see his girlfriend."

"Hmph," Shikamaru said, "Anyways, see you later Naruto." The group turned to leave.

"Ino." Naruto said. She turned around.

"Mm?"

"When you guys get back, would you like to go on a date?" This shocked everyone there. Last time they had seen him, he had been a hardcore Sakura fan, but now he was asking out Ino. 'Since when did he have the guts to ask a girl out without stuttering anyways?' they wondered. Ino's mind, on the other hand, was thinking on a different stretch. She was surprised that Naruto, one day coming back, looked amazing and was asking her out. Not to mention that he had matured, at least so it seemed to her.

"Sure," she said, trying to play it cool. He smiled and waved as she turned around again, and she waved back, also smiling.

As they left, Naruto went back to his original task of going to see Tsunade. He found her in her office, sitting behind stacks of paper, and quickly trying to stuff away a bottle of sake before anyone caught her. Naruto, however, did not need to see the bottle to know what it was, he could smell it in the air.

"You know, Hokages really aren't supposed to be drinking, especially not on the job."

"Shut it brat!"

"I'm not really sure I like that nickname, baa-chan." The glare from this would have made any normal person piss their pants, but calling Uzumaki Naruto normal would be a stretch of the imagination.

"What do you want?"

"Well, I would like to get that punishment done so that you can't hold it over my head later on."

"Are you sure you don't want a day or two to rest up? It's going to be quite the job."

"It's only twelve in the middle of the day, I'm not even close to tired. Let me know what it is."

"I'm hoping that you'll be able to get it over by the end of the day, as it shouldn't take you too long with shadow clones. Anyways, on to the details. Not to long ago the pipes and concrete separating the fresh water from the sewer water were broken. As of now there is a rather large break in the pipes and walls, around eight meters long. Due to this, about a fourth of the city has been without fresh water for a few days. We were unable to to cut off water to that section of the village without cutting it off for most of the village, so there is also constantly water moving throughout these pipes."

"But if that's how it is then I'll drown."

"You'll have to build some form of dam down in the pipes until you finish the work."

"This is going to take around a thousand shadow clones between the dam, moving the materials, preparing them, and using them. While this may only be one day, this is three years worth of work, and that means I'm going to experience three years of being in the sewers because of my clones. You're evil!"

Tsunade was sporting a wicked grin. "You don't even know the half of it. I'll have some men take you around to show where everything is so you can get started. Have fun!" Naruto looked as though he had just been told the world was going to end in five minutes. Drudgingly Naruto went to the area that Tsunade had told him to go, in order to meet the person who was going to inform him. This was definitely not going to be fun.

---

Sakura was having a hell of a day. Finding out that Naruto had returned left her in quite a bit of shock, especially since she found out directly and had no way to prepare herself for the encounter. All that she could manage to do was end up acting like her old self, or at least the way she used to around Naruto.

Then she ends up battling Naruto, and not landing in a single hit, at least not one that did any damage. And of course, at the end he ends up temporarily paralyzing her. That seemed to be a recurring element in the past few months. She was still feeling a little bit out of whack from the lightning attack. Right now she was lying on her bed in her apartment, trying to shake the nauseating feel, as her healing jutsu couldn't fix the problem, it was simply a matter of time.

Her thoughts drifted back to Naruto. He had avoided bringing up their last conversation when she asked why he left. She knew that she had more to do with his leaving than him needing to "just get away for a while." Sakura figured that she must have been the final straw, the last one that tipped him over the edge. Although more realistically, her part was more like a brick than a straw. Naruto was already carrying a mountain on his back between Kyuubi and the villagers. She remembered the words that she had said to him, or rather called him. Her mouth was turning dry just from the thought. Sasuke's death had been the drive behind all of the cruel things she said.

Sakura knew she should apologize to Naruto, even if he had already forgiven her or forgotten. Though she knew that he couldn't have forgotten, and forgiveness was unlikely. It was more likely that he was just being friendly, and once again caring about others' emotions more than his own. Even after Sasuke's death he was looking after Sakura, trying to patch their friendship and worrying about how she felt.

But now that he was back, she wondered how things would be between them. He certainly hadn't gone out of his way trying to find her, and only came upon her by chance. She assumed that he had some form of attachment to her though, because otherwise he wouldn't have saved her from the two ninja four months ago. Although after seeing those two in the bingo book, she couldn't be sure whether he was just claiming them as a bounty or not. Ninja generally did not like casualties, it brought attention to their work, which certainly wasn't a good thing. Going out of his way to protect her using chakra would be quite the inconvenience though, even by ninja standards.

She needed to talk with him, but she certainly wasn't up for it now, and even when she was, she had no idea where to begin. She got up out of the bed carefully, not wanting to fall from the dizziness, and moved into the kitchen. She made soup, chicken noodle to be precise. There was nothing better than soup for cooling nerves and getting better physically, both of which she needed to do right now. She wasn't really hungry, but she forced it down.

She had to get better so that she could go out that night to talk to Tsunade and Kakashi. They were the two people who she trusted most and who knew Naruto the best. Between both of them she was sure that she might find some good advice for dealing with the problem that she had with Naruto. She finished her soup, put away the bowl, and proceeded to walk out the door into the cool night air.

---

Naruto was exhausted. Fixing the water system had taken most of the day. He hadn't expected his punishment to be anything like that, but more like something along the lines of basic community service. Picking up trash, things like that. But no, Tsunade had to give him some annoying job that took insane amounts of clones to do.

He walked to the Yamanaka flower shop, ignoring any looks he got, which was quite a few. As of now his clothes were looking very raggedy. He walked in and ordered.

"A dozen white roses please, Yamanaka-san."

Ino's mother rang him up and got the flowers ready. "Who's the lucky lady?" she asked.

"They're not for a girl," he said.

"Hmm," she responded. She passed him the flowers.

"Thanks." With the flowers in hand he walked out the door. He went to the one place he had yet to visit, or the one important place, which was Sasuke's grave. He set the flowers done against the tombstone.

"Hey," he began. "I've gotten a lot stronger. If we had fought now instead of three years ago, things would be different. You'd be here, alive, and I wouldn't have had to leave, not that I'm blaming you. It was my fault that I couldn't control Kyuubi, and I recognize that. But now, he won't harm anyone anymore. Most of all, I just want to say that I'm sorry I couldn't stop you. Stop you from leaving, stop you from becoming consumed by hate. If I could have, neither of us would be in the positions we are now. I'm sorry."

Naruto walked with his thoughts clouded toward his apartment. He was tired, and he needed rest.