(4/7/06- July 4th, 2006 UPDATE: EEP! There was a big problem here, but I fixed it so it should be okay! If you don't know what the problem was, don't worry, but if you did, the chappies are in their proper place now! I'm REALLY sorry about that! Blame it on me doing this late at night- --. BIG thanks to Megaolix, Shukaku-chan and The Assassin of The Night for telling me this! Sorry guys!)

Hey All!

Yes, I know this is probably meant to be Chapter 6, but I just decided this to be chapter 5 because of various reasons! Yup Yup!

DISCLAIMER: No one else but the Japanese owner of Naruto owns Naruto. Further Note: StarDragon X is not Japanese.

-----

Answering "Anonymous" Reviews...

(Anonymous meaning those reviewers that don't have an account/let an email address so thus this is the only way to reply to their review...)

hachinoko: Thank youz!

-----

Thank Youz to hachinoko, Megaolix, The Assassin of The Night, Satoshi Silver Syoran, K.C., and swimtwins03

FOR REVIEWING!

-----

Special Thanks go to Megaolix and The Assassin of The Night for being the only ones to return with ideas for me! THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU GUYSSS!

-----

Finally, on with the story...

Shipwreck Chapter 5:

Hungry Savages

Shikamaru scowled from where he stood in the clearing. Here he was, in the middle of a large group of warring, excited, teenagers that, with a tiny push in his direction would probably stampede right over him. The black haired shinobi glanced around skeptical, half wondering if they would last for long on this desolate island. For the mature and reasonably powerful shinobi that they were meant to be, it was almost mind boggling to look at the scene revolving around the Nara.

In one corner, Ino and Sakura were peeling vegetables furiously in what looked to be a fierce competition. At the very centre of the clearing stood a gigantic fire pit where Sasuke was being pleaded to light a fire with his fireball jutsu. Temari still seemed not to be on complete amiable terms with Kiba and Rock Lee was running helter-skelter everywhere, trying to help but always hastily being turned down.

Shikamaru sighed but before any other thought had entered his mind, a kunai and some very strange looking fruits were dropped onto his lap suddenly. Annoyed, the Chuunin looked up and was greeted by the whiskered face of Uzamaki Naruto.

"Hey, Hinata-san wants you to peel these, Shikamaru!" and with that well placed statement the blonde ran off back to his duty of dropping similar looking plants on other people's laps and instructing them to do the same thing.

Hyuuga Hinata herself looked worried- it was obvious that the 'orders' weren't from her but from Naruto himself. Shikamaru shrugged and lazily began to take up the kunai in his right hand and sliced what he took to be a 'fruit that was so orange that it looked dangerous' in half. Seeing some juice spill out onto the ground, the Nara felt sorely tempted to lick it up like a dog and just stuff the fruit in his mouth, he was that hungry- but logic and sensibleness won over and the Chuunin put the fruit aside. Shikamaru looked to his left to see Gaara using his abilities over sand to cut the fruit up for him, without even moving once. The Nara sighed and started to actually wonder if they needed THAT much food.

At the rate they were going, the fruit would probably go to waste by the next morning due to the heat- but due also to the fact that they were all ravenously hungry and had not eaten anything for about day or so… The fruit probably wouldn't go to waste. After coming up with this conclusion in the matter of a few seconds, the Chuunin frowned upon quickly realizing how pointless those thoughts had been.

A few moments by and the teen was again cutting fruit, finding it somewhat pointless until… he was tapped on the shoulder. Shikamaru looked up, none to willingly as he was assuming that someone had brought him more fruit. Instead of Naruto's face, Tenten's face came into view. A suspiciously bright smile seemed to be plastered on the kunoichi's face as she greeted him.

"Hey Shikamaru," the words were half sang cheerfully- way too cheerfully.

Shikamaru focused his eyes away from Tenten, knowing that they would probably have a dangerous glint in them. He was already running through thousands of possible scenarios in his head of what she wanted- none of them seemed to be things he could look forward to.

"What do you want?" he replied bluntly.

The smile increased ten times in brightness, giving Tenten's face a somewhat eerie shiny glow, "I need just a little bit of water for to clean myself. This is also because of hygiene reasons and you wouldn't want us all to get a disease from me and die... would you?"

Shikamaru grimaced. Water- of course she'd go ask him... He was put in charge of retrieving 'Water' by Gaara much to some kind of annoyment by Naruto and so now this title of 'Head of Water Retrieval' gave him the 'pleasure' of entertaining people like Tenten who wanted water...

"I doubt you can catch a disease from... blood," Shikamaru sighed as he prepared himself to block whatever attack the kunoichi wished to bestow on him, "Besides, can't you go take a bath tomorrow? Go to the lake or something."

Tenten blinked, pondering the situation and trying to piece together a come back that would catch a genius (a.k.a. Shikamaru) with an IQ of 200 off his guard... Just under what you would call impossible, of course. Shikamaru smiled and went on,

"Besides that, I thought you weren't like Ino and Sakura... You know, vain, prissy, and all that... But now, with this mention of all this unneeded actions, I think I might have to reconsider what I think of you."

Shikamaru allowed himself to smirk for a tiny moment before he saw a flash of metal being produced. But luckily, probably the first time he had been lucky since the shipwreck, a huge ruckus resounded from the other side of the clearing. Both Chuunin glanced over, attention on the current dilemma gone temporarily.

Kankuro was fending of a wild horde of ninja...? What the hell was happening over there? Bah. Who cared anyway? He'd probably find out soon enough, and besides... Shikamaru grinned as he saw Tenten running towards the crowd. He definitely wasn't going to die death by 'rage of Tenten' anytime soon... and that was good enough to keep him satisfied for a while.

------------------------------------------------------------

"GET AWAY WILL YOU! AWAY!" screeched Kankuro, clutching a bag to his chest.

Screeching may not have been considered manly behavior but in at this particular time and moment, Kankuro did care at all. What he did in fact care about was the many people crowding around him, some screaming or shouting- all clamoring for the rare and wanted apparent 'treasure' he held...

A survival kit. That same survival kit that he retrieved from that boat that Aburame Shino had been on. By some cruel twist of fate, everyone had noticed the survival kit in his hands, but not the other on that had been stored somewhere by Shino. Why him? The Puppet Master was sorely tempted to use some form of violence to resolve the matter but Karasu and his other war puppets were broken and he wasn't skilled enough in his other ninjutsu or taijutsu of whatever jutsu to overpower the others. So instead, Kankuro resorted to screeching and shouting loudly.

"THIS IS MINE!" he retorted loudly, fending off with his arm an eager Haruno Sakura who seemed to be looking eagerly at the hygiene supplies of shampoo and soap that might be found in the kit.

"Well you'd need to give us any cooking equipment, right? So open up that kit! Let us have a look!" Kiba's loud voice came from behind Kankuro, the Inuzuka riding upon his white dog.

Kankuro started to reply but was stopped by another question of, "Why don't you just open it up, so we can just grab what we want and be happy?"

That came from Yamanako Ino. Kankuro grimaced as he imagined several wild idiots pushing and shoving at each other- that would be absolute chaos, and also be for nothing… He'd probably need the Medical Ninja, Sakura to go heal his inevitable critical injuries afterwards... Kankuro's eyes narrowed indignantly as he saw Temari chuckling, the seventeen year old standing at the edge of the crowd and Gaara was smiling benevolently at him. Kankuro scowled and glared at Shino who was sitting far off, a smirk on his face. The Aburame's own survival kit that he'd retrieved from the lifeboat was suspiciously missing... Kankuro scowled again. How did he get this UNLUCKY?

"You don't need to get so anxious about it, "pointed out Neji, "After all it's ONLY a bag."

"If it's only a bag then why are you, the distinguished Hyuuga Neji, in the middle of this horde?" shot back Kankuro and after bending his knees, leapt into a nearby tree.

"What's this about then?" a confused female voice broke through the throng of voices of the others and caused the noise level to drop.

Kankuro sighed in relief. He didn't know what that kunoichi did, but she brought silence... thankfully. He was on the verge of going insane. Tenten herself seemed even more confused on the effect her statement had caused, and looked around.

"Umm... Did I come at a wrong time?"

The babble of voices came again, each or most individuals trying to tell Tenten what was going on with exaggerated gestures and movements. Kankuro took this moment to bound off the tree quietly and left the survival kit in plain open view, a little way off from the noisy crowd behind him. The Sand Nin noticed that Nara Shikamaru was watching him, but then again the Nara would probably be too lazy to tell anyone so it didn't matter.

Another few silent bounds and Kankuro was back at his original position on the tree- and just in time too. For in that precise moment was the moment that Tenten actually comprehended the chatter and the babble of voices that came at her all at once. Hyuuga Hinata blinked at him, as if she was suspicious of him vanishing a few moments ago. Kankuro tried his best innocent face and turned to address the crowd who by now had their attention back at him.

"It's not fair, keeping a bag like that for yourself!" yelled Naruto, pumping a fist in the air.

"Idiot," retorted Uchiha Sasuke "Is your night vision that bad? He doesn't even have the survival kit with him."

Kankuro sighed and finally decided on a course of action after he had questions of...

"Where's the bag!"

"What have you done with it idiot!"

"Can we please try to be civilized here?" exploded Kankuro, a hand gripping the tree trunk for support.

Silence. A rich feeling of power coursed through Kankuro's veins as he saw the eyes on him. He had half a mind to laugh evilly, he was that close to insanity… But self-discipline kept Kankuro sane.

"I don't have the bag. Or the kit or whatever you call it. The bag is over there."

Several pairs of eyes followed Kankuro's pointed finger. Brains clicked. Brains clacked. Light bulbs lit up in brains.

"I'll get for you Sakura-chan!" cried Rock Lee, acting first.

Several voices came after, each declaring the bag for his or herself, or in the case of Rock Lee, for 'Sakura-chan'. Kankuro sighed and shook his head. How did they all get so worked up over one, small, cloth, bag? True enough, they had seen the words 'Survival Kit' boldly printed on it and probably thought that any pots and pans it might have would be exceedingly useful for cooking. Some might want the objects of personal hygiene and personal convenience that any survival kit contained… But really…. As ninja they should be able to survive which such things… And besides that-

But Kankuro had no more time to ponder that last thought as he saw the white survival kit disappear under a mass of shinobi and kunoichi. A fight almost ensued for the one who would open the bag, Hyuuga Neji and Uchiha Sasuke on the outskirts looking like they though the rest were idiots. Tenten and Hyuuga Hinata were standing there looking a little awkwardly, listening to the shouts and yells. The shinobi's knuckles turned white as he gripped the tree trunk even harder, seeing Naruto slowly start to under the buckles which kept the survival kit closed. A small cry of excitement was heard as the buckles were finally done, and Kankuro still gripping the tree trunk tightly, started to hear the following statements…

"Yes! Finally open! Okay, inside we have- what the hell!"

"What… What's happened? Let me have a look- Damn…!"

"Give me it! What are you all yelling about, I mean- Oh."

"This can't be real… This is so damn-"

More shouts ensued and even Temari, Gaara, and Shikamaru slowly walked over to see what this new problem was…

Kankuro swallowed.

All that yelling was mainly because of a lot of misjudgment and misinterpretations of a simple cloth bag with words printed on it.

And, now all those people who yelled and shouted had just figured out that their previous thoughts and interpretations were wrong- very wrong.

You see, that white survival kitbag had…

Absolutely nothing in it.

------------------------------------------------------------

"Pass me that pot, Chouji!" Kiba called before turning in an opposite direction and yelled, "Get that hunk of meat Akamaru!"

A pot came flying through the air and Akamaru soon dropped his ordered object on the ground before Kiba before running off to go help Chouji with something else. Kiba grinned, wondering how good his culinary skills were. He actually didn't ever mind eating meat raw, but he when he did eat it raw once, well his mother seemed to be… quite displeased with him to say the least.

Anyway, that wasn't what he was here for now, he was meant to roast the pork or something like that… The brown haired shinobi smirked as the figure of Kankuro caught his eye. The Sand Nin was somewhat sullenly giving out objects from a survival kit, half snarling at anyone who came near. Gaara finally made some kind of speech, transforming them into the civilized people they were meant to be and finally found the real survival kit. Apparently Kankuro was going to use the empty survival kit to store his broken puppets, or something like that…

Kiba thrust a stick into the hunk of meat before him and placed it on two sticks on parallel sides of the fire before him. A few meters away Sasuke was blowing more flames from his mouth to start another fire, Sakura beside him. The pink haired kunoichi wasn't at all a 'Sasuke fan girl' anymore, and he no doubt knew that the Uchiha had indeed noticed it- whether this was causing him to have romantic feelings for the female, Kiba didn't know, he wasn't going to find out, and he really didn't care.

What Inuzuka Kiba really did care about was that… he had no idea of how to cook. The pork roasting quickly over the fire seemed to be on the verge of bursting into flames and the teen had an extreme urge to just rip the food of it's stick and eat it as it was, raw, scorching hot, and bacteria ridden, he didn't really mind. A few moments later, the desires to eat overcame Kiba and after a grumble form his stomach, the fifteen year old bit into the pork in front of him.

His tongue was scalded instantly but he didn't care. He took another bite- the flavor was divine, the-

A forceful blow snapped Kiba out of his thoughts and his mouth away from the meat. A vein pulsed on the the heir's head.

"WHY YOU- Oh. Hi there… Ino-san." Kiba chuckled nervously, "Just a little taste test…"

"IT WAS SO NOT A TASTE TEST!" The blonde's eyes bulged angrily, and then she did something much unexpected.

She picked the meat off the ground took a huge bite and grinned at him, "This is a taste test!"

And with that, the Yamanaka finished chewing and swallowed it down. Kiba growled angrily.

"WHAT THE HELL! DAMN YOU STUPID-"with a wolfish grin on his face, the Inuzuka broke of mid-sentence and took a bigger bite of the meat.

It turned into something of a competition, both taking bigger and bigger bites of the meat until-

"Kiba-kun! Looks like you need help!"

Concentration broken, the heir gave a start and turned around... He had strong feeling he was repeating this very action from earlier on in the day. Yeah, he was. And the dreaded person he was going to see was the very same person from earlier on. Rock Lee.

At the corner of his eyes, the heir saw Ino walking away, the pork in her hands and a triumphant grin on her face.

Inuzuka Kiba hoped dearly that the person before him just really wasn't going to feel helpful at that particular moment… Inuzuka Kiba, oh so sadly, oh so unfortunately, was very very wrong.

"Okay! Let's cook!"

------------------------------------------------------------

"We must use our flames of youth to the fullest extent!" the all too familiar and recognizable voice came from the infamous Green Beast of Konoha- Rock Lee.

"NO! DON'T YOU DARE DO THAT!" the furious yell of Inuzuka Kiba went unheeded as Lee dumped a large portion of herbs over the sizzling hunk of meat.

A good majority of the herbs were brunt to a cinder in a matter of split seconds as they were eaten by the hungry red flames. Lee heard a moan from the teen beside him as the brown haired shinobi saw how much herbs had been wasted. Lee shrugged, if they really needed d more of those funny green plants, he'd go and fetch them himself.

Right now, the current task was to cook the meat before him, and that, was what Lee could do with a lot of gusto and energy.

"Pass me those berries, Hinata-chan!" called Lee.

The Hyuuga heir looked at him surprised and stared at the berries in her hands as if he was kind of… strange.

"But Lee-kun… these berries are poisono-"

But fortunately Lee had no more time to direct his attention towards Hinata-chan as…

"Hey, Lee, you know you're meant to rotate the meat right…? The undersides going to get burnt soon if you don't…" a mildly worried voice of Yamanako Ino came from behind him.

Lee glanced at the person who had spoken, and after flashing the teenage girl super white dazzling smile, proceeded to rotate the pork… Rock Lee style. Rock Lee style could be described as spinning a hunk of meat so fast that a large amount wind was produced by the spinning motion. This a huge amount of wind power somehow fueled the hungry flames with its main food source, air, and thus the flames grew bigger and bigger until-

"O MY GOD! PUT THAT FIRE OUT!" a hysterical yell came from Ino as the blonde turned around to find a blazing inferno in front of her.

"What? What's wrong…?" Kiba turned his head slowly round and…

Made a total '0.o' face before screaming, "LEE YOU COMPLETE IDIOT!"

Unfortunately, Lee, who was really getting into his task, just couldn't hear the yells directed to him, or even notice how… very dangerously big the fire was. The pork by now was speedily turning black, but the intelligent, observant, and honorable Rock Lee did not notice that either. What he DID notice was the fact that air was beginning to turn a little hot. But, that had to be accepted- after all, wasn't this a tropical island?

"Whew… Is it just me or is it getting hot…?" the sixteen year old had fallen into the rhythm of rotating the pork at its high speed and now decided to didn't need to concentrate so much of himself into the task.

But as our loveable Lee-kun had lowered his concentrated on his task, our loveable Lee-kun also noticed all these ninja that he knew were running around like idiots and yelling wildly.

"What's- what's going on?" his voice almost sounded drowsy as he talked to Hinata.

"Umm…" but before the teen could work out exactly what to say, Neji's cool voice did it for her.

"Idiot. You've made the fire too big." and with the well placed statement, the Hyuuga launched a gallon of water straight at him, via a wooden bucket.

That amount of water alone wasn't enough to distinguish that burning fire of course. But, combined with such encouraging shouts of,

"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU AFTER THIS!"

"IDIOT! IDIOT! IDIOT! IDIOOOOOOOOT!"

"YOU'VE BURNT ALL OUR FOOD!"

And so, with many other buckets of water, that great big burning fire just had to give up and turn into ash. Lee blinked as he saw the huge group of shinobi, the huge group of glaring angry shinobi around him. Gai-sensei had once told him that, if, in any situation he got stuck and needed to resort to diplomacy, the 'good guy pose' would solve it all.

And Lee, being Rock Lee, protégé of Maito Gai, ALWAYS listened to his sensei and so… Lee stood up straight beamed at them all and flashed… the 'Good Guy Pose'. There was a moment of silence. Lee presumed with an optimistic attitude that this silence could be interpreted as the shocked understanding silence that meant they all were gong to treat him like some kind of king or Hokage. But unfortunately, Lee had really overestimated the powers of his infamous 'Good Guy Pose' and so the silence really should have been interpreted as…

The silence, the deadly silence, the very deadly silence before a raging storm. After a few painfully long moments, Konoha's beautiful green beast finally realized exactly WHAT he had done. The 'what' was basically the wooden lodge charred and just not burnt, the others with minor burns and bruises, but the worse thing was…

Lee's eyes widened enormously. The food. The food was all gone… GONE! GONE GONE GONE! To be clearer, the food had been devoured by the fire. Thus, there were now fourteen very enraged teenagers standing around him. Three of that group of fourteen seemed enraged to point of enraged insanity and they of course were- Inuzuka Kiba, Tenten, and Akimichi Chouji. A feelings of impending doom infiltrated Rock Lee's mind.

A moment went by. The feeling of doom grew. Sakura-chan's anger seemed to triple. Another moment went by.

Then, that is when the huge treacherous storm broke loose. The language heard by far exceeded the rating 'R, and thus had to be removed from this story. The sixteen trembled as he watched the rampage get closer and closer to him. He should have actually moved away, but fear. Lee braced himself for impact.

The impact came. Over a dozen pairs of feet trampled over the poor teen- but none of those pairs of feet stopped to do more damage. Instead the whole group seemed to be more interested in the scorched black object behind Rock Lee. Yes- that poor decimated piece of pork that Lee had been TRYING to cook. Note the great emphasis put on the word 'trying'.

For alas, that poor wee piece of pork didn't even look like a piece of pork. It looked far from edible; it looked far from anything anyone had ever seen… It was just a black…thing. And yet, as Rock Lee looked up wearily from his trampled state, he blinked… He goggled. For every single one of those fourteen previously enraged shinobi were not turning around to kill him but they were… tearing, ripping, gorging…

Eating.

Rock Lee blinked. Even the most distinguished and stoic of the group looked and acted like wild animals as they sought to deplete their hunger with a charred piece of meat. Yeah… the females, the males, they all seemed to be humanoid beasts- wild beasts.

Indeed, they were all eating like a bunch of hungry savages.

Chapter 5… Done! Sorry this is about a day or two late (for the weekly update), but then I figured its better to give you guys a full chapter a day late rather than have it on time and have the writing really scrappy.

I get writer's block frequently (when you can't think of ideas/what to write etc.) so ANY ideas are fully appreciated and are most likely to be put into the story or given at least a lot of thought! And if you DO contribute, you'll get mentioned in the next chapter and I'll '' you!

Second Lastly, I know I'm not the greatest of writers so if you see anything wrong/don't like something in ANY part of the story, etc. PLEASE tell me as I actually WILL go back and change these things no matter how big or small… 0.o Yeah, I know, I'm beginning to be a writer fanatic…

Lastly, THANK YOU SO MUCH for reading this chapter and bothering to actual read this far! Thank you! Read and… maybe review?

Till Whenever,

StarDragon X

(NEXT CHAPTER: DEPENDS ON RECEIVED FEEDBACK!)