A/N: You readers must get tired of my author's notes at the start of every chapter, huh? Sorry. Just wanted to say, I'm sorry if Gaara will be OOC when he's out of rehab. I really have no idea how to write him normally. I can try though. Haha.
Deliahgirl, you'll find out what happened to Kankuro in this chapter. Quite frankly, I wasn't really planning on his disappearance until I started typing that part.
Hasabusa, the story of Mr. Defoebrimm's name is very…interesting. You know how people like to get their names on the back of sweatshirts? Well, I was sitting with my friend at lunch and she randomly looked up. There were two guys sitting side by side and guess what their sweatshirts said? Defoe and Brimm. So my friend smashed them together when she read it and I decided to name the koala Mr. Defoebrimm. Simple, no? xD I keep seeing red as I type this chapter because the name isn't registered in the dictionary (like it should be :3).
Please keep the reviews coming! They're so much fun to read and reply to!
Enjoy!
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"Yes, I'm a koala! Why must everyone do that when I reveal myself?" Mr. Defoebrimm howled. The entire group sweat dropped.
"But who cares! Soon, the whole world will be under my control! And no one will mock us 'cute, little' koalas ever again!" Mr. Defoebrimm cackled.
Naruto tried to imagine a world ruled by a koala, much less this one. All I can say is, Australia gone wrong. I'll leave your imaginations to its work.
"You fiend!" Lee yelled, leaping forward. Red flames burned in his eyes as he struck his fighting stance. "I swear on my youthfulness, I will never let you get away this!"
"Foolish shinobi! What can you hope to do against me, the great Mr. Defoebrimm?" The koala struck his own fighting stance.
"Just watch!" Lee called and leapt toward the koala.
"N-No way! The koala dodged Lee-san's attack!" Sakura cried, eyes widening.
"Now do you see?" Mr. Defoebrimm cackled, sending Lee flying back with a kick to the stomach, "No one can defeat me! I will rule the world!"
"Okay, this is getting a little too creepy for me," Temari said, stepping in between them. "Listen, Mr. What's-Your-Face, you need some serious therapy. You are a koala, and koalas can't rule the world."
"Lies! I'll show you who's capable of ruling the world!" Mr. Defoebrimm's aura suddenly got dark and dangerous. "Come forth, my minion!"
The hinges creaked and echoed eerily as the barred door to the koala cage opened. A figure stepped forward, the shadows separating to reveal the face.
"What the hell?" Ino shrieked, hand flying to her mouth.
"Kankuro?" Temari called in disbelief.
In response, Kankuro raised both his arms and thrust them forward, sending Karasu flying, armed with numerous weapons. The Sand kunoichi barely managed to dodge and sweep the puppet off to the side with a gust from her fan.
"Kankuro! What do you think you're doing?" Temari called.
"He can't hear you! This ninja is now my personal puppet! And what fun he is to play with!" Mr. Defoebrimm laughed, relaxing off to the side.
"Damn it! What'd you do to him?" Temari cart wheeled to avoid another attack from Karasu.
"Shall I demonstrate on one of your friends?" Mr. Defoebrimm asked, standing up as Temari batted Karasu off to the side once more.
"Damn it! I'm not standing by and watching this!" Naruto yelled, charging for the koala.
"Naruto-kun!" Hinata called in alarm.
"Idiot, what do you think you're doing?" Sakura called after him, too late.
In a flash, Mr. Defoebrimm had attached himself to Naruto's face. The blonde's muffled but loud screams of torture echoed in the park, sending chills up and down their spines.
"Naruto!" Tenten called, bringing out a handful of weapons. With careful precision, the kunoichi threw them at the koala. Mr. Defoebrimm fell off with a howl of pain and rage and Naruto stumbled back, then fell forward.
"Naruto-kun!" Hinata called in alarm, rushing to him. "Are you okay?"
"Too little, too late! This shinobi is my puppet now! Rise, RISE MY MINION!" Mr. Defoebrimm cackled, throwing his arms to the sky.
Naruto's body twitched and slowly it moved. It dragged itself upright and turned to face to the group. His lively blue eyes were now pale with a menacing glare.
"N-Naruto-kun?" Hinata whispered with fear, unable to go any louder. In response, the blonde bared his teeth and thrust a kunai at the heiress.
The Hyuuga screamed. "Hinata-san!" Tenten cried, too late to prevent the blade from slicing the kunoichi.
"Do I have to do everything?" A connected kick to Naruto's face came soon after the question, sending the shinobi flying into Kankuro. The kunai fell harmlessly to the ground in front of a quivering Hinata. Tenten rushed to check on her friend.
"No! Who are you?" Mr. Defoebrimm screamed, turning to the figure. "How dare you ruin my puppets?"
"Tch, you're not worth my time. Crawl back into your cage and stay there." The figure turned, stuffing their hands into their pockets.
"That voice!" Sakura squealed, entering fangirl mode.
Tenten smirked. "I know that attitude a mile away. Late much, Sasuke?"
Sasuke scowled. "If you knew my 'attitude a mile away', why didn't you notice me earlier?"
"How about we not do this now? Because, if you haven't noticed, Naruto's gotten serious!" Shikamaru called, placing his hands into the first sign of his signature jutsu.
"Hn, I'll take him all by myself," Sasuke said, stepping forward. "It doesn't matter if the koala's made him a million times stronger; I can beat him anytime, anywhere."
"Yeah, that's Sasuke, alright," Kiba grumbled, earning himself a glare from the Uchiha. The Inuzuka shrugged and turned to taking care of his kunoichi teammate, who had passed out.
"I don't care how strong you think you are! My puppets will take you all out!" Mr. Defoebrimm cackled. Clichéd lightening flashed overhead as the koala threw his head back in his evil laughter.
"Someone needs a hug," Ino muttered, shaking her head.
"Seriously, what is this koala on?" Sakura agreed, crossing her arms.
The two kunoichis paused and turned toward each other. "We agreed!" They cried in unison. "Yeah!" They chorused. "Okay, stop copying me," they said together. "Stop it! Stop it! I said, STOP IT!"
"Forehead girl!"
"Ino-pig!"
Shikamaru shook his head. "Hey, koala," he called over the arguing.
"Mr. Defoebrimm!" The koala declared angrily.
"How troublesome…" Shikamaru muttered. "Okay, Mr. Whatever. How do you plan to take us all down with just Naruto and Kankuro?"
"Especially Naruto…" Sasuke muttered under his breath.
"Oh, you're a funny one, aren't you? Who said anything about using just the two of them? Come forth, my faithful puppets!"
The ground shook as, one by one, dark figures began to appear around the shinobi. The puppets moaned and groaned in surround sound as they covered every square inch of the zoo.
Temari sweat dropped. "Oh, so that's how he plans to take us down."
"Well, this will be interesting," Neji grunted, getting into his fighting stance.
"I'm hungry," complained Chouji, shaking his empty chip bag.
"YOSH! I will protect you, Sakura-san!" Lee's eyes flamed.
"Let's make this interesting. Anyone up for a little wager?" Sasuke smirked, looking around.
"Oh, and what might that be?" Tenten asked, pulling out her trusted weapons.
"A contest to see how many we can each take down. And I mean they stay down. Losers have to do anything the winner wants for three months."
"Anything within reason." Tenten shot back.
"No. Anything the winner wants. All the losers have to. Well, chickens?"
"…Fine." Tenten smirked.
"Alright, Uchiha. You asked for it," Neji answered.
"Count me in," Kiba answered.
"How troublesome…" Shikamaru muttered, nodding his answer. Shino, Gaara, Temari, Lee and Chouji decided to join in as well. Sakura and Ino, meanwhile, took a stance to protect the still shaken Hinata.
"We're not joining though," they stated clearly. The boys and Tenten shrugged; more for them.
"Ready…set…GO!" Sakura called out. The shinobi took off in a flash; everywhere, puppets dropped like flies to flashes of kicks nearly unseen. The clang of metal echoed throughout the park as everyone, including Sakura and Ino, battled the seemingly endless army.
"Give it up, foolish shinobi! There's no way you can win!" Mr. Defoebrimm called from his comfortable bed of leaves he had made. Two girls under his spell fanned him with larger leaves and a third offered him juice.
"Dammit!" Tenten swore as the guy she had been battling with stood up after a barrage of her weapons. "They just won't stay down!"
"Tell me about it!" Temari called back with a sweep of her fan. They got up as quickly as they had fallen. The two kunoichis came back to back. Despite their wounds, the puppets managed to get up every time they were knocked down.
"How the hell are we supposed win this if they won't stay down?" Tenten hollered at Sasuke as she kicked back another puppet.
"Kill them," the Uchiha replied simply.
"What part of 'won't stay down' do you not get?" Temari spat, swinging her fan like a baseball bat.
"Gaara's doing it," Shikamaru answered as he passed by. The two kunoichis turned to see the Sand nin.
"Desert Coffin." The sound of bones cracking and the blood dripping made the kunoichis cringe. "That's fifty, Uchiha."
Sasuke scowled. "There's still plenty left."
Crack! "100. And I need more blood."
"Temari, I think you should do something about Gaara," Tenten whispered carefully, fear dancing in her brown eyes.
"I should, but I value my life," the Sand kunoichi answered, all seriousness in her voice. Tenten couldn't help but agree to that.
And so the battle raged on, with most of, okay, all the kills going to Gaara.
Finally, what seemed like hours later, the endless army had all the shinobi, even Gaara, back to back. They closed in slowly, Naruto and Kankuro leading them.
"Surrender and I'll spare your lives, foolish shinobi. You will all serve as my personal slaves for forever and eternity!" Mr. Defoebrimm laughed, then sighed and took a sip of juice. "I swear, all this evil laughter takes a toll on my beautiful throat. Anyways, back to what we were saying. Do we have a deal?"
"I'd rather live without Shikamaru-kun!" Ino protested, clinging onto the Nara's arm.
"That can be arranged," the shadow master muttered, attempting to free his arm.
"I think the unanimous decision is no, koala," Tenten answered.
"Mr. Defoebrimm! My. Name. Is. MR. DEFOEBRIMM!" The koala hollered, leaping up. "That's it! I'll kill every last one of you! I'll make sure you all regret not remembering my name and joining my side!"
"Who could remember that name?" Kiba said in a hushed voice. Tenten bit her lip to restrain a giggle.
"Silence!" He shrieked, jumping up and down. "Minions, kill them! Kill them all! Make them into mincemeat so I can eat them with my eucalyptus leaves!"
"Okay, gross much!" Ino gagged.
Sakura shuddered. "That's really sick. You need to go to rehab or something." At that, Temari grinned.
"Rehab, eh? That, I can do." Everyone sweat dropped. Even Mr. Defoebrimm looked a little shaken.
"U-uh…w-well, y-you see, I…Get them, minions!" The koala commanded, his legs trembling. At his words, the puppets started to move in.
"Uchiha." Sasuke turned at Gaara's summons and raised an eyebrow. "I win." The sand-nin said plainly.
"What are you-?" Sasuke started. Gaara cut him off with a release of immense chakra.
"Dessert Coffin." At his command, the sand poured from the gourd and washed over the puppets. The sound of cracking bones echoed through the park, causing most of the shinobi in the group to shudder and huddle together.
When the sand retreated back to the gourd, it left the remains of its meal. Mangled bodies littered the grounds and what remained of the blood spilled freely over their limbs. Silence fell over the zoo.
"G-Gaara's definitely out of rehab," Ino whispered, cutting the circulation off of Shikamaru's arm.
"You think?" Sakura hissed through clenched teeth.
Mr. Defoebrimm stared. And stared. Until his eyes started to dry. "M-my p-precious minions…" he stammered. "You k-killed them all…"
"Now, about you." Gaara turned towards the koala. "I've never tried koala blood before. Won't it be interesting, Mother? Yes…"
Thud! A flying scroll crashed into the back of Gaara's head, cutting him off. With bloodthirsty eyes, he turned around to see who had dared thrown it at him.
"He needs to be kept on a leash, that one," muttered the mysterious person.
"S-Sensei!" Mr. Defoebrimm cried out.
"Sensei?" The shinobis repeated in shock. The figure stepped out of the shadows to reveal an elderly bent-over koala with a clichéd white beard and gnarled wooden cane.
"Yes, yes, I am-well, was his sensei in the fine art of mind control," explained the elder koala. "I always knew he would use it wrongly though. Yes, I always knew."
"…Then why'd you teach it to him in the first place?" Temari asked, eyebrow raised.
"He had a certain…aura, if you will. To not teach him was to forsake my title as sensei."
"So…he threatened you to teach him?" Shikamaru ventured. To that question, the sensei merely shrugged.
"Call it what you will, but the past is the past. Now, who has he so wrongly used the techniques on?"
"The one in black with the face paint and the blonde with the whisker marks…and just about everyone else here except for himself, you and our group," Sakura answered.
"Is that so? Well, thanks to the red haired one, I can only save Face Paint and Whiskers. Such a shame to lose these wonderful shinobi…" the sensei sighed and started to shuffle towards Kankuro and Naruto.
"Face Paint and Whiskers?" Ino repeated quietly, arching an eyebrow.
"Should we trust him?" Tenten asked, doubt playing in her brown eyes. Sasuke shrugged.
"You have any better ideas?" The Uchiha asked in response. Tenten glared at him and pursed her lips.
"Yes, siree, I'll fix them up all nice," the koala said as he stopped at Naruto's feet. The shinobi stared down into the elder's squinted eyes.
A lengthy silence settled over the zoo as Naruto and the koala stared at each other. Chouji coughed and leaned towards Shikamaru. "What's going on?"
"Beats me," mumbled Shikamaru, hands in his pockets. How troublesome…
"Hey, Koala-sensei, what are-?" Tenten started asking. Her sentence was cut off by the sensei's quick cling to Naruto's face and the blonde's muffled screams of horror.
"Naruto-kun!" Hinata screamed, finally getting her voice back.
As soon as he had attacked Naruto, Koala-sensei had let go. The shinobi crumpled to his knees then fell flat on the ground, twitching like crazy. "It is done," the sensei concluded, nodding as if agreeing with himself. "The spell is reversed."
"You're kidding right? You did the same thing as Mr. What's-His-Face did when he turned Naruto into the zombie!" Temari was practically foaming at the mouth.
"Yes, yes, that was the reverse spell. See for yourself," Koala-sensei hobbled over to the still down Naruto and, with a deep breath, kicked the blonde in the back in the head. Hinata gasped in surprise as the rest of the group sweat dropped.
"OI! YOU OLD GEEZER! WHAT'D YOU DO THAT FOR?" Naruto screamed, jumping to his feet.
"See?" Koala-sensei smiled, ignoring the raving shinobi behind him.
"OI! LISTEN TO ME!" Naruto yelled, raising his hand to hit the "old geezer". Faster than the group or Naruto expected, Koala-sensei took his cane and whacked the blonde in the back of his knees, causing him to crumble. Again.
"Now then, the one in black," Koala-sensei shuffled towards Kankuro and repeated the staring match. After a minute or two, he attacked the shinobi's face and let him fall to the ground.
"Nn…" Kankuro groaned as he pushed himself off the ground. "What happened?"
"How should we know? You were supposed to watch Gaara," Temari shot back.
"Oh yeah. Hey, Gaara, bro. How bout I make it up to you with some ice cream?"
The addressed Sand-nin glared coldly at his brother. "What?"
Kankuro paled. "Temari…Is Gaara…?"
"Back to normal? Yeah," Temari answered, tucking her fan away. "Who else do you think did all this?" Her hand swept over the dead bodies.
Kankuro laughed nervously as he backed away from the bloodthirsty stare. "Okay then," he answered, wrapping Karasu up. "So…what exactly happened here?"
"Long story short," Tenten piped up, "Mr. What's-His-Face the koala over there brainwashed you and Naruto and reversed Gaara's rehab. Koala-sensei showed up just in time to reverse the spell-ish thing. Except for Gaara, of course."
"No, that I think the sister can do by herself," chuckled Koala-sensei, winking at Temari. "Now, you, young man," the elderly koala turned to Mr. Defoebrimm with all seriousness in his eyes.
"Young man?" Kiba repeated in a hushed voice. Sakura shook her head and shrugged, telling him to leave it to Koala-sensei.
"Grounded for 5 years. We're going back home right this instant. Off your butt," instructed Koala-sensei.
"Grounded?" Kiba repeated in disbelief.
"Home?" Sakura followed.
"5 years?" Chouji added, earning himself a slap upside the head from Ino.
"Yes, doesn't that seem like good punishment?" Koala-sensei asked cluelessly.
"I think what everyone is trying to say is, you're related?" Tenten asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes, can't you see the resemblance?" Koala-sensei answered with a serious voice.
Yet another silence fell over the park as the shinobi tried to picture the family tie. "No," Temari finally answered, shaking her head.
"Thank God," Mr. Defoebrimm breathed, earning himself a whack by the cane.
"I'm his grandfather. Now, we must get home for his punishment. I bid you all the best," Koala-sensei nodded, took Mr. Defoebrimm by the ear and disappeared.
"Now what?" Kankuro asked after another silence.
"We…go home, I guess," Tenten blinked uncertainly. Murmurs of agreement turned in goodbyes and the shinobi slowly went home and to bed without logging on to the chatroom.
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"Hello, this is Takashi Takeda reporting live from the park. Just this morning, attendants who arrived to open the park to the public discovered over hundreds of massacred shinobi. Those who were identified were reported by their home village to have left mysteriously in the middle of the night. No one, not even their loved ones, was told the reason of the disappearance.
"What happened here is a mystery to even the top ANBU investigators. Reports of odd screaming noises and battle sounds have been given by nearby homeowners, though none actually witnessed the event. I have been told by the attendants that two very prized koalas are also missing from their cage, believed to have been stolen by the culprits of the biggest massacre any of the Hidden Villages has seen in years.
"If anyone has any information about what happened, they are urged to immediately report to the Hokage. Anything could possibly prove useful in wrapping up this case. There has been bounty placed on the culprit's head, though the amount has not yet been decided for the heads of all the villages are getting together this afternoon to decide the sum.
"From Konoha News 5, this is Takashi Takeda. Thank you. Back to you in the studio."
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A/N: Fin! It took me forever to figure out how to wrap this up! I don't quite like how I ended it but if I took any more time to work on it, I'm sure I wouldn't have posted this until sometime late September. Haha. Enjoy! I don't know when I can get the next chapter out though because I'm due to start school next week. I'll try to work on it as much as possible!