Disclaimer: 'Naruto' is the property of Kishimoto-san and will never belong to me. I possess no talents in manga-drawing and as such could never be an artist capable of producing such a masterpiece. However, I am certain that the plotline is original and subsequently have not plagiarised an idea from any other author on any fanfiction site publishing 'Naruto' stories. Any similarities are by mere coincidence. Also, any non-canon techniques will either belong to me or will be the creations of other authors on this site – I will not be using one without prior permission and will give credit where it is due.
Rated: T (for mentions of suicide, some bad language and quite frequent violence)
Parings: Sasu/Saku, Naru/Hina, platonic Naru/Saku, other minor pairings.
"Tsunade-baa-chan!"
The Godaime Hokage started and turned her attention to the door, half expecting to see Naruto standing there with a foxy grin and then pummelled to the floor by his pink-haired teammate. Needless to say she was surprised to see a small yellow toad – well, the size of a six-month puppy – sitting on a pile of paperwork, croaking happily.
"What do you want, Gamatatsu?" she asked brusquely, one hand reaching for the emergency bottle of sake stored under the desk for safekeeping but with obvious effort she stopped herself, settling for a cold glare instead. "Or is this some sort of practical joke?"
"Naruto-nii-san told me to give you a message- hey, you got any food?" asked the candy-addicted summon, blithely forgetting about the message
"No. Now what is this message, before I do something I'll regret?"
With a theatrical roll of the eyes the toad shifted to a more comfortable position, before repeating in parrot fashion: "Ohayo, baa-chan! We're on our way back to Konoha now, all 4+1 of us. Won't say anything more in case this is intercepted- 'NARUTO! Hurry up, we don't have all day!' –Yeah, yeah, I'm getting there! Anyway, by the time you get this we'll be a few hours away. Better get a medic squad ready though. Oh, and don't punch Gamatatsu 'kay? And don't drink yourself into a stupor – we'll need ya sober. Ja ne!"
There was a small croak as the toad finished, then a white puff of smoke as he disappeared to… wherever the hell it was that summons lived. With a groan of frustration Tsunade downed a single cup of sake, just enough to sate her addiction for a while. Her eyes were drawn towards the gate after a moment, and with that her decision was made.
Pulling a blank scroll from a drawer she picked up her pen and scribbled:
'Jiraiya,
'It seems we may need you here in Konoha, for a little while at least. So, wherever you are, stop being a pervert and get your sorry ass back here before I have to send someone to retrieve you. And I promise it will be as painful as humanly possible.
'Tsunade.'
"And you know I mean it, pervert," she muttered aloud as she summoned a small slug to deliver the scroll, before pouring out another cup of the sweet alcohol and drinking it in a single gulp.
Elsewhere, a white-haired sannin sneezed. His notebook dropped from his hand, causing him to look away from his unsuspecting subjects for a moment as he bent over to pick it up again. 'I hope it's a pretty girl who's talking about me,' he thought as he retrieved his 'research' and put his eye back to the peephole, only to discover that the bathhouse was empty. There was no sign of the women previously inside… and a large wave of killing intent was surging in his direction…
'…Crap…'
"GET HIM!"
(Just for the record, he wasn't a pretty sight after that thorough beating.)
"Naruto!"
The blond jerked his head up at the sound of his name, glancing over towards his pink haired teammate with a quizzical expression. "Eh? What is it, Sakura-chan… oh crap!"
His kage bunshin ceased to exist, throwing Naruto off balance as he hurriedly tried to support the injured boy he was carrying. Their other teammates paused to see why they had stopped; noticing the blond's predicament Sai jumped back to lend him some assistance, but he just shook his head in response and slung Sasuke's arm over his shoulder instead.
"That's what I was trying to warn you about, baka," Sakura muttered darkly, while Naruto laughed nervously in the face of her anger. "Come on."
They travelled in silence for a little while more, leaping steadily from limb to limb. Once or twice Sakura caught Yamato wincing slightly whenever he took off from his right leg, and the rough bandaging that peeked through from underneath the hem of his uniform was testimony to some form of flesh wound – but she knew from experience that if she tried to talk to him about it he would either clam up and say nothing, or laugh it off as being 'just a scratch'. 'Cha! Boys. They always try to act so tough.'
"Gamatatsu will've given baa-chan the message by now," Naruto announced suddenly. Sai gave him a questioning look, having been on sentry duty at the time that the toad had been summoned, though the other three chose to ignore him. None of them entirely trusted him yet after his apparent betrayal only a few days before.
Yamato leapt forwards again, glancing behind to look at his subordinates. "When we get to Konoha take him," he gestured at the unconscious boy, "to Hokage-sama immediately. Don't stop even if the gatekeepers tell you to; I'll deal with them if it comes to it. Understand?"
"Hai," came Sakura's answer; both Sai and Naruto responded with a nod. Then once again silence reigned.
"You know you shouldn't have done that, Ero-sennin."
"Shut up, Gamakichi," snapped the white-haired sannin with a wince, gingerly touching a large swelling on the side of his head. Muttering something under his breath he glanced upwards with a frown. "Hey, can you actually go any slower than this? Even Katsuya could overtake you at this pace!"
"Well I don't care," Gamakichi retorted, leaping forwards again and almost flattening a young sapling as he landed. "Stupid ero-sennin…"
"You've spent too much time with the brat."
"Even 'tou-san calls you that now so just face it, ero-sennin. And you're just a perverted old man who doesn't know when to… to… abstain from your pervy hobbies!"
"Heh. Betcha don't even know what that word means." The young toad was unable to see Jiraiya's face or the pleased smirk spreading across his face. Gamakichi was just as easy to rile as Naruto… talking about the blond brat, he hadn't heard from him in a while. Oh well. Not like he had bothered to get into contact either.
"I sooo do! Naruto-nii-chan told me!" If it were possible the orange toad had puffed out his chest with pride at that statement, and at that point the sannin was unable to contain his mirth any longer. He exploded with laughter at the indignant toad's gullibility, pretending to be unaware of Gamakichi's rising anger. He only calmed after letting the tension that had been building up go, and seemed to sober almost instantly.
"Having you around makes it seem like Naruto's here, y'know," Jiraiya told him, a grin tugging at his lips; with a croak of laughter the latter responded in kind.
"Hey! Ero-sennin!" For a moment Jiraiya wondered whether he had suffered a concussion in the assault from those women, but the shock of blond hair that appeared against the trees was enough to persuade him otherwise. Gamakichi yelled in excitement at the sight of his 'nii-chan' and halted on the path, giving Naruto and the rest of his team time to join them on the ground before he began to jabber incoherently at the blond jinchuuriki.
"Sorry 'kichi, we don't have time. And Ero-sennin, have you been threatened by baa-chan again?"
"Apparently she needs me back in Konoha for 'an indefinite amount of time'." He paused, having noticed the boy that the blond was carrying after a moment. "Who's this then?"
"We're not certain," stated Sakura coldly – she had little respect for the Sannin after hearing about his lecherous activities from Tsunade. Jiraiya shuddered, asking the fates why such a pretty young kunoichi had been taught how to guard against his perverted subspecies of humans. Then his attention turned away from that train of thought as Naruto said, in a more subdued voice than usual, "We think it might be Sasuke-teme, but since they both said they were… Got no idea."
"And while we're standing around here our only way of finding out is bleeding to death in front of us!"
'Damn. Sakura-chan gets real scary when she's mad.' The blond shook his head slightly to clear his mind of Kyuubi's sarcastic response to his errant thoughts and brought his head up, staring intently at a fixed point in the distance. "You guys catch us up later," he bit his thumb and swiped a trail of blood along a small summoning seal inscribed on the inside of his wrist, shouting "Kuchiyose no Jutsu" as he did. With a puff of smoke a toad appeared underneath him, and after receiving instructions it began to leap towards the village, the unconscious boy on its back and Naruto sprinting alongside.
Sakura stared after the pair, her eyes straining after them until they were just specks against the skyline. When a bird-shape swept her into the air she almost screamed in shock, but masked it at the last moment with a gasp. Glaring at Sai she tried not to look down, yet still found her attention flickering in that direction. (Damn her curiosity.) Even now she had little love for heights, and the ink bird underneath the four of them had very little that could block out the sight of the ground below – she saw the puff of white as Gamakichi vanished from the human world and the tiny figures running along the path beneath them before managing to look ahead. Slowly her eyes met those of her three companions; their faces were grave as they stared at the distant profile of Konoha; except for Sai's, though, which bore a few ceases of intense concentration as he focussed on keeping the jutsu active until they reached the village.
The girl found herself wondering just what their success would signify, and – more importantly – just how much more she and Naruto could take if it turned out they had brought back the wrong one. She might be able to handle it better than Naruto in some respects, he in others, but in reality she knew that each of them was the only thing currently keeping the other afloat.
By the time the remainder of Team 7 arrived at the hospital they found a sour-looking Naruto sitting in the waiting area, still dressed in the same blood-soaked clothes he had been earlier. Occasionally he would send a glare at the woman sitting behind the reception desk, who would respond simply by pretending he didn't exist; other people seemed to be giving the blond a wide berth and hurried whenever they had to pass him, many of the older generations shooting him scorn-filled glances if they had to, as if questioning why he was even allowed to enter the building.
Sakura pushed her way through the throng of people to her team-mate's side, falling into a seat beside him with a loud sigh. "What's happening?"
"Nothing much," he spat, once more glaring in the crowd's direction. "Baa-chan and Shizune-nee-chan are dealing with the teme upstairs somewhere, and the rumour mills are having a fucking field day." The medic nin had to bite back a sharp reprimand for his swearing when she caught sight of his tenseness, silently agreeing with the blond. 'There'll be all sorts of rumours flying around now… people probably saw Naruto carrying a half-dead body through Konoha.'
"The rest of the Konoha Eleven have been summoned here… as well as our sensei's," Naruto continued, then unconsciously growled when a small cluster of people sent cold stares in his direction. The kunoichi flexed her fingers experimentally then cracked her knuckles loud enough for the gossipers to hear, causing them to blanch and move to a safer distance. "Said that they deserve to know as well-"
"Hey, Naruto! What the hell's going on here?"
"Kiba-kun, don't talk so loudly in a hospital," Hinata gently admonished without a trace of a stutter. Akamaru whined and flopped into a white, panting heap on the cold tiles; the receptionist began to rise with a clear intent, but a moment later decided against it when the stoic, silent Aburame Shino cast a glance in her direction. There was a slight agitated buzzing from underneath his jackets as attention once more flickered in their direction, though it quieted considerably after a moment or two as soon as the roving eyes turned away again.
The Inuzuka sat next to his canine companion and idly stroked the dog's fur, resulting in Akamaru thumping his tail happily against the floor; the two kunoichis moved a short distance away to talk, leaving Shino and Naruto to themselves, neither boy speaking much. It seemed to take forever for the other teams to arrive, all of them tired from training or missions – there was little conversation as they waited impatiently for the Hokage to appear. A soft snore soon drifted from the blind jinchuuriki, and when Kiba snickered at him Sakura had to resist the sudden urge to pummel the boy into the ground.
"Naruto hasn't slept for three days straight, baka," she said instead, an ominous aura seeming to crackle in the air around the pink-haired medic. "Cut him some slack!"
"Keh. What's he been doing this time then?"
She never had time to answer; a voice boomed down the stairs just as she was about to speak, a stern voice saying, "Unless you're injured or here on my orders get out of here. This is a hospital, not a social meeting ground!"
Muttering under their breaths but unwilling to risk evoking the wrath of a tired and irritable Hokage the rumour-mongers slowly dispersed, leaving only a few people remaining in the waiting room asides from the group of ninja gathered in the corner. "You lot follow me – this is something that concerns you all. And for kami's sake someone wake Naruto up."
"M'already 'wake," the blond mumbled, stretching to relax his tensed muscles, and couldn't resist adding, "With the amount of noise round here you can't really go to sleep."
A few small grins came to his precious peoples' faces, and Kiba muttered something like, "He's just woken up and is covered in blood, yet he still finds time to make light of things." He, too, was affected by the infectious grin of their blond peer, and Akamaru thumped his tail once and added a series of curious whines and snuffles to his master's statement – the white dog's version of laughter.
The eleven shinobi followed behind Tsunade, all the way to the rooftops of the hospital. Naruto winced slightly at the memory of the last time he'd stood up here, with the Rasengan swirling in his hand and Sasuke's Chidori aiming towards him, something that didn't go unnoticed by the others. With their arrival the four jounin scattered around the rooftop wandered over to join them.
"You're wondering why you've all been called here, aren't you?" the Hokage said, the question more like a statement. Glances were shared – no, no-one knew the reasons behind their summoning here, and Sakura and Naruto could only guess – and Kakashi pulled out his book from a pocket with a slight shrug.
"Has it got anything to do with the rumours that are flying around?" Ino asked abruptly, brushing a stray lock of hair away from her face. "They're talking about a 'demon brat' and 'murderer' in the streets – I don't believe it, there's nobody I know who could be anything like what they're describing, but is it?"
"No," came the firm reply, and the tension in the older ninja's shoulders seemed to lift with that single word.
"Then why are we here, Hokage-sama?"
"It's about Uchiha Sasuke."
The effect of four simple words was instantaneous. The six boys who had been on the original retrieval mission stiffened and glanced at each other; Naruto and Sakura, and to some extent Kakashi, looked slightly hopeful; and the others had varying expressions of disbelief (even Shino seemed to be affected to some degree, as the raised eyebrow proved testimony to).
"A few hours ago the C-rank nuke-nin, Uchiha Sasuke, was returned to Konoha by the temporary Team Yamato – more specifically, Uzumaki Naruto." Her eyes closed as she sighed, before looking over towards the Hokage Monument where the stern faces of her predecessors gazed down at them. "Unfortunately, that's the only good news I have. In three days time he will be put on trial for abandoning Konoha and seeking tutelage from another nuke-nin."
"That's bullshit!" Naruto exclaimed loudly, eyes slowly beginning to bleed red; while Hinata looked mortified at his choice of language she found herself nodding in agreement, as did the rest of the group.
"It's the way Konoha has always dealt with traitors," Tsunade retorted, crossing her arms in front of her with a scowl. "It's not even my decision. The majority of the Council have demanded that traditions be upheld – only a few clans are against this choice, and others have taken a neutral stance. On some occasions people who know the accused have formed a strong enough defence to overturn the whole case. By law I cannot be involved on either side of the trial, although you can be. Make your choices wisely."
With that she turned and left, closely followed by the four jounin – as Kakashi passed his blond student he slipped a piece of paper into Naruto's hand and gave a nod of reassurance. Everyone craned to catch a glimpse of what was written as soon as they were certain they were alone on the rooftop. It was merely a simple note, saying, 'SHARE THE LOAD.'
"Has anyone got any ideas on how we go about this?" Chouji asked after a moment. His eyes flickered up at the sky briefly before over at the Hokage's office building, then at the rest of the group. Shikamaru and Sakura shared a quick glance; he sighed and shrugged, muttering 'troublesome' under his breath.
"We'll have to divide the work between us," the kunoichi said slowly, looking from one ninja to the next. Varying colours of eyes gazed back, each of the group silently committing themselves to the task ahead with nods or smiles, and a 'Nice Guy' pose from Lee. With a quick grin of her own Sakura leant back against a fence, saying, "So this is what we'll do…"
Owari
Originally I was going to extend this to show what was going to happen; then, when I was supposed to be doing my English coursework, I decided that it would be better to do it a piece at a time – that way I wouldn't commit to something that could be liable to change.
I'm going to be playing round with timings quite a bit – (SPOILER ALERT) the Hidan & Kakuzu arc will be shunted a few months after the canon timeline. Hmm… but that's all I'll say for now. Ja ne.
DWA, over and out.
Next chapter:
'I-I can't believe it… Naruto-kun actually wanted me on this mission… I promise I won't let either of you down, Shino-kun, Naruto-kun!'
Secret! the Blind Sharingan.