Author's Note: I hate it when people tell you you can't have your cake and eat it, too. What the hell is cake for? Staring at? That's just dumb.
Thank you for the reviews, and definitely for the readings!
Chapter 2
…:::You're Hokage:::…
"Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Bang bang.
The noise still echoed in Naruto's memories. He had trouble stepping off of the ink bird when they landed. His knees were shaking. They buckled and Kakashi held him up through the Confusion that suddenly erupted. They were in front of a hospital. There were people going in and out, running in and out, blood trailing on the floor, blanketed bodies disappearing behind doors. Nurses here and there.
"An attack?" commented Sai as he helped (reluctantly, but he would never admit it) Sakura lift Sasuke from the bird just before it dematerialized (and Sai only wished he had released his jutsu earlier).
"Looks like it." Sai felt himself bear most of Sasuke's weight when Sakura let go. "I've got to get in there and help –"
"You're the one in need of a hospital, Sakura. And a good week's worth of rest. Come on." Kakashi stared at her, daring her to defy.
She didn't.
She couldn't.
She stared long and hard at Sasuke's (breathing) body, sent a fleeting glance in Naruto's direction, and followed the males into the building. Sai dragged Sasuke's body lower to the ground than was respectable.
Naruto's ears were ready to burst at the cluster of noises and voices: "Ready the . . . Two more over here . . . Can't . . . Isn't . . . DeadDyingSeizureMetalBlood . . .!" He cringed. What had happened? He'd heard metal; had the same thing happened to other people as it had with Sasuke?
"Tsunade-sama!" A jagged chanting of her name. "TsuTsunaTsunade-saTsunadeTsunade-sama!"
Naruto whipped his head around to search for the busty blonde and found her walking angrily in their direction, although her eyes were elsewhere (and hopefully her anger). She stopped when blond hair and blue eyes obstructed her path and looked down.
"Naruto," she began in what Naruto was surprised to hear Relief. When her eyes roamed, however, and landed on the pale bundle Sai had unceremoniously dropped to the floor, her eyebrows scrunched together and her lips contorted into a snarl. She didn't speak for a few moments.
"Granny? . . . We brought him back, Granny. I told you, I'd bring Sasuke back, and –"
"This isn't the time, Naruto!" came the strangled yell of frustration. Tsunade raked her fingers through her hair again and again, eyes closed tightly and lips drawn into a thin line. "This is . . . I can't deal with him right now, when there's a crisis at hand, Naruto, what the hell were you thinking?"
Kakashi, who had deduced the situation at hand from the moment he stepped through the doors, interrupted Naruto's Confusion and Tsunade's Frustration. "Tsunade-sama," he said seriously. "Sasuke was hit. With this." He gingerly held out the weapon they had obtained.
"And I took this out of his collarbone." Sakura held out the conical scrap of metal she had held tightly in her fist and never let go. It still had bits of Sasuke's skin on it. Sasuke's blood still painted her hands red, having crusted over to leave her with gloves of his life liquid.
Tsunade took the scrap of metal from Sakura's fist, took the Weapon from Kakashi's hands (gingerly, gingerly), and sent one final glance at the Uchiha still in a crumpled heap on the floor.
"Kota," she called to a passing nurse. "Call the ANBU in."
"No!" Naruto's eyebrows furrowed. "I just brought him back! You can't send him away!"
"I'm not sending him away." Tsunade put a hand to her head. The migraine she'd received days ago had never left her. "I'm putting him in confinement."
"He was just hit with that metal thing! He's going to die!"
"If I'm not mistaken, Sakura healed him."
"He stopped breathing a few minutes ago!"
"He's breathing now!"
"Granny, I know there's something going on but this isn't fair –"
"You know what's not fair, Naruto?" Tsunade rounded on him, eyes only for Naruto, finger about to jab once into his shoulder but he just looked so tired and she was so tired of everything. "Bringing a lost cause into this hospital when a dozen loyal members of this village have just been maimed by some foreign weapon! I can't choose his life over theirs! I'm happy for you, Naruto, I really am, but honestly what did you expect? Everything would be perfectly normal and he'd be let off the hook?"
The ANBU had arrived, one male and one female from their body shapes. Ready to take Sasuke to Prison.
Prison.
Naruto thought it wasn't supposed to happen that way. Sasuke was supposed to walk through the gates of Konoha himself. They were supposed to stop by Ichiraku's Ramen Shop, sit down like old times, talk about their lives. Sasuke was supposed to complain about the saltiness of the ramen. Naruto was supposed to tell him to suck it up.
Things were supposed to return back to Normal.
Sasuke was not supposed to be wrenched from the floor by his arm by ANBU (and there was a pool of blood where he had been and damn it damn it damn it). Naruto sent a glance in Kakashi's direction. Pleading. He wasn't sure what he was pleading for, or what Kakashi could possibly do. His sensei looked right back at him.
Don't worry.
He felt that was what Kakashi was trying to silently tell him. Don't worry, Naruto. Things will fall into place. So he tried not to worry, because Kakashi told him not to worry, and he trusted Kakashi with his life. His head hung dejectedly.
"Please," he whispered before the ANBU could vanish in their cloud of smoke. "Don't hurt him."
"Tsunade-sama," Kakashi added in hastily. "I really do advise you to send him a medic-nin once he is in confinement. The weapon punctured his body completely. It would be good to investigate him in particular since he could not sense the oncoming attack with his Sharingan."
Tsunade stared hard at Kakashi. She knew what he was playing at. Saving his (ex)student in the subtle way only Hatake Kakashi could pull off. Her chin jutted out in silent resentment but she nodded. She looked from Naruto, to Sai, to Sakura, to Kakashi. "No one is to know, understand me?" She glared for emphasis. "Not until the current situation dies down. Uchiha Sasuke is not here."
"What's going on, Tsunade-sama?" Sakura chose to ask instead (anything to take her mind off of Uchiha Sasuke, as if meeting the boy and dragging him to Konoha was simply a dream, it had been too easy too easy, there had to be a catch). "What is that thing and why can it kill faster than any jutsu I've ever seen?"
"Confidential knowledge, Sakura."
"It almost killed Sasuke!" Naruto hissed. "I think we have a right to . . ."
He put two and two together and got four and a half.
". . . Is there another race of people we don't know about?"
Tsunade's reaction surprised him (almost as much as Naruto's deduction skills). She took him roughly by the shoulder and pushed him forward, motioning for the others to follow. In a few clicks of her heels and the swing of a door, they were suddenly alone in an empty room, all noise drowned out by the soundproof walls.
"Why is it that whenever something goes down, Team 7 is always somehow in the center of the issue?" She rubbed her hand against her head. "And judging by your lack of input, Hatake, I'm guessing you've already figured out what's going on?"
Kakashi nodded.
"A boy. Some random kid had that thing in his hands," Naruto recalled. "I tried talking to him, but he was speaking . . . I thought he was just scared, but I couldn't understand anything he said." He looked at the Hokage. "It was another language, wasn't it? He's from another part of this world."
Kakashi looked like he had been about to supply something but thought better of it.
"There is another part of the world unknown to us?" It was Sai who asked. Sakura and Naruto turned to the boy in surprise. Sai, of Root ANBU, had not known such information?
Tsunade grimaced. "I demand you stop thinking about this immediately," she wanted to say, wished she would say, but no one would take her word and actually listen. So she said, instead, "Something like that."
"Wait, wait, wait," and Naruto had to take in a deep breath, his mind still swirling with Sasuke and desperately trying to derail. "You're telling us that there's another race of people out there? That we don't know about? And these . . . these things?"
"Naruto, please." And he stopped, because her voice had been so tired, so pleading, he had to stop. "You can speculate all you want but I won't give you any answers. Yet." She paced. "Our investigation teams are still gathering knowledge. If what we think is true, there may be some serious implications." Before Naruto could interrupt her, she continued, with a new layer of frustration in her expression, "Don't let this sort of idea travel around, understood? No news of Sasuke, and no ideas about another race of people until I release a formal statement."
Tsunade shook her head. Her hands were shaking – not out of fear, but out of sheer frustration, out of excitement, out of the power of knowledge.
"You all need to leave."
She wrenched open the door for them. The sounds of the hospital were suddenly let into the room, booming voices of panicking nurses and heart monitors beeping and wheels screeching.
"Get some rest. Clean yourselves up. I want your mission report tomorrow morning. And no one –" She opened eyes she had closed to stare at each and every single member in the room. "No one is to know anything. Nothing until I make that announcement tomorrow or the day after. Do I have your word?"
"Cross our hearts," Sakura whispered.
"Good. Get."
They left.
Tsunade closed the door behind her and allowed herself a moment's weakness. She knelt on the floor, feet flat against the ground and head buried in her hands. She cursed. She yelled. She cracked walls.
But in the end, she forced herself to stand up, open the door, and face the chaos.
After all, she was Hokage
Bang Bang.
Six ANBU were able to see the Weapon in action. They watched, amazed, as the men down below pointed their Weapons at the trees where they were crouched. "Bang bang," said the Weapons. The ANBU could not see what came out of the hollow tube at the end of the Weapon, but they heard something whizz past their ears. Another bang and something embedded itself into the trunk of the tree behind them.
"That metal thing again," said Crane, inspecting the trunk of the tree as three of his team alighted to take out the men with the Weapons.
A series of bang!bang!bang! resonated in the forest for a moment. A shriek. A strangled yell.
One of the men was dead. "Accidental," Ape had grunted when he returned with their Prizes. "He moved in the way of my jutsu. He is weak. Bled out."
"That is not a man."
Bear was pointing to the human (could they call those Monsters human?) that struggled in the grip of the larger ANBU. It was a boy, his black hair long and falling into his almond eyes. He was whimpering words that they could not understand; in a moment, he was crying and wailing and shut up shut up shut up. Ape's hand went up to backhand the boy, but it was Sheep who stopped him.
"He's a boy," she snapped at him. "You probably just killed his father."
"He is a monster who tried to kill us."
"Because we're foreigners to them, too. Now come on, we need to return all of this to Tsunade-sama. Give him here. I don't want you killing him before we even get there."
They left the dead body.
The boy wailed and wailed.
"So you say they pull this stick and the piece of metal comes out?"
Crane nodded. "It's so fast, I doubt even the sacred Sharingan of the Uchiha can follow it."
Tsunade grimaced inwardly at the irony. Sasuke was still in the cell, but she had given him the luxury of a bed, a bedpan, a nurse, and two members of the inspection team working on the peculiar case. She hadn't bothered to check up on them. She noted that she probably should, in case he was dying, but at that very moment she had more important matters to attend to.
"Take these weapons down to Shikaku. He and his son are already inspecting the weapon Hatake Kakashi brought back." Tsunade pushed the bundle of Weapons into the hands of the ANBU in front of her. "Have Division Eight scout the area. Someone call in Kurenai's team for me."
She looked at the frightened foreign boy who had not said a word since he entered, his dark brown eyes wide in fright. His hands had been tied. "Take him to confinement, will you?" She gestured to Ape. "The cells with the beds. Don't be too rough on him. I'll be down there in an hour to talk to him."
"He doesn't speak our language, Tsunade-sama."
"I know." She paused to think. "And check up on Uchiha Sasuke, please. Make sure the inspection team is working on him."
"Yes, Tsunade-sama."
When the ANBU dispersed, Tsunade stood up. She needed to check on Shikaku's foreign research before she could speak to the boy. In case he was dangerous.
When Sasuke woke up (a few hours later), he was angry.
Angry was, perhaps, not the proper word.
He was infuriated. Livid. Enraged. Ireful. Stringing the intensity of the words together would not even begin to venture into the anger the Uchiha felt bubbling in his stomach upon returning to consciousness in Konoha's confinement cells. He had seen the cells one too many times (on a tour from his academy days, a few times on D-rank missions, once for an eyewitness testimony, but never from the perspective he was seeing at that moment). He could recognize it in an instant.
He was in Konoha.
He had stood up and attempted to let out his anger as best he could. He screamed. He ripped his nails into the mattress of the bare bed. He pounded against the iron bars. He tried to muster every jutsu he could think of, only to scream in further frustration when he caught the new black seals along his arms and stomach that prevented him from summoning even an ounce of his chakra.
Damn them all to Hell. Damn each and every member of Konoha.
Once his anger had subsided and his screams had died down (because, he realized, it was Futile. They were all heartless bastards; they wouldn't care if he was dead or alive), he sunk to the floor and barely registered the dull throb beneath his collarbone and on the side of his chin. His eyes followed the throb of his chest. There was a hole in his shirt, its edges bloodied, red handprints all over what had once been his pristine white robe. He pulled the collar of his robe down to reveal the bandaged wound. With a grimace he noted that it had begun to bleed again and was staining the virgin white.
He groaned.
Whatever had caused the wound eluded him completely. He could only remember a bang bang and bam, he had gone out.
Naruto.
Sasuke's anger resurfaced.
Naruto had brought him back. Perhaps he had even punched him, too; Sasuke's fingers prodded the painful bruise along his jaw line. That son of a bitch. Where was Suigetsu? Karin? Juugo? Were they searching for him? Did they realize he was missing? He had told them to go on ahead and he would meet up with them later. Naruto had been easier to detect than an academy ninja.
He – sitting there, body throbbing, silence deafening, life futile – regretted never specifying "later".
And to put the cherry on top of his ice cream fucking sundae, someone was crying. In the cell. Across from his.
Fucking great.
"Shut up," he snarled in his anger and impatience.
The crying, to his surprise, silenced.
Sasuke shuffled forward slightly and crouched against the bars of his cell, squinting through the dimly lit hallway at the figure in the cell across from his. The voice sounded young. Far too young to be in a cell like his. How low had Konoha's authorities fallen? he vaguely thought when he could make out the form of a smallish boy or girl. His cell was much more furnished than Sasuke's.
"You," he barked. "Who are you?"
He only received a sniffle in reply.
Sasuke banged against the bars to get the boy's attention in case he hadn't heard. He was surprised to find eyes staring back at him. Definitely a boyish face, long hair matted in his eyes from sweat. Sasuke cocked his head to the side. The boy had to either be some terrible monster to have ended up in confinement, or there was something far more important to him that he did not know.
"Who are you?" he tried again, making sure the boy was staring directly at him.
But he received a shake of his head in return. Sasuke frowned. Was he deaf?
"Can you hear me?" he said instead, exaggerating his lip movements.
The boy (he was shaking, Sasuke noticed, shaking violently, he was Afraid, so very Afraid) opened his mouth and barely managed gibberish. Sasuke's frown only deepened and he had been about to turn away and scoff, thinking he was wasting his time, but something about the gibberish piqued his interest. Something about the consonant sounds and placement of the vowels that, even for a deaf person, was unusual.
Something foreign.
Something Not Quite Right.
The words that were Not Quite Right continued to flow from the boy's mouth in a flurry of noises. Someone grunted from further into the area, "Shut the fuck up!" but the boy paid no heed (and neither did Sasuke). Sasuke, fully intrigued by that point and wanting to channel his anger into something less futile, put a hand up when the boy had begun to bow to him.
Maybe there was a tribe somewhere in some distant part of the Ninja World that had decided to separate itself from civilization and start its own new language. Sasuke knew it was a stretch – a far, far stretch – but he did not have much to work with. He let his imagination – or lack thereof – connect the dots.
So he put his index finger and pushed away the little voice that told him he looked absolutely ridiculous. He was done listening to little voices.
"Sasuke," he said, first quickly, then again slowly, and then quickly again, his index finger still on his nose to indicate himself (he hoped the seriousness of his expression took away the silliness of the gesture). His head involuntarily gave a small nod.
He waited a few moments in silence. Did the boy sincerely have some form of dementia? Could he not understand that Sasuke was introducing himself? After a few moments (although Sasuke did not realize they were merely seconds), the boy pointed at Sasuke and repeated, "Sasskei."
Sasuke nodded, smirking when he felt the entire ordeal had become a game. Communicate With the Stranger. Anything was better than the Sit and Wait in Anger without Chakra Game.
So the Uchiha pointed at himself again, repeated his name, and then pointed at the foreigner. He silently asked for his name, hoping the words would follow through with the gesture.
The boy pointed at himself. "Ming Li."
Sasuke did not expect that.
He looked at the boy for a while. He had heard the name, but the pronunciation was entirely foreign to him. As the boy had done with him, he attempted to repeat his name.
It came out all wrong, heavily laden with his Japanese accent so that he naturally added a u after Ming and transformed the l into a contortion of the letters l and r. It came out (after much stuttering) as Meengu Ri.
"Meengu Ri?"
Ming Li shook his head, a smile suddenly on his tear-stained face. "Ming Li," he repeated in perfect pronunciation.
"Meengu Ri."
He laughed. Sasuke glared at the boy who had the audacity to laugh at his pronunciation when he was the one speaking in a completely different language! Sasuke made sure the boy could see his glare before he turned around, officially fed up with the new game he had created. Who the fuck cared if it was Ming Li or Meengu Ri?
Short bites of words erupted from MingLiMeenguRi's mouth in a chanted apology. Sasuke did not turn around, unsure of whether or not the boy was rubbing it in or asking for his forgiveness. He crossed his arms, winced, and uncrossed them; he had agitated the random wound on his chest.
After a few minutes of silence, MingLiMeenguRi spoke up again.
"Guo . . . guome . . . guomen?"
Sasuke turned around. The accent was there, not entirely the go to the gomen, but the apology was obvious, etched in every line of the boy's expression. "Did you just say sorry?"
MingLiMeenguRi nodded when Sasuke said "sorry", attempting to repeat it himself. Sasuke smirked, officially intrigued. He pointed to the boy. "Meengu Ri is too hard to say," he told him despite fully understanding he would not understand him. "Your name is going to me just Meengu, okay?" He put his index finger to his nose. "Sasuke." Then he pointed at the boy. "Meengu," the u much subtler.
MingLiMeenguRi pointed at himself. "Ming?"
Sasuke nodded. MingLiMeenguRi smiled and became –
"Ming."
He pointed at Sasuke.
"Sasskei."
Good, thought Sasuke. They were getting somewhere. And maybe Sasuke was making some sort of valuable ally. Who knew? He honestly did not care. If there was anything he had learned in the past few years, it was that if placed in an impossible situation, make the best of it. He, without his chakra, with a hole in his chest (he had yet to know it drilled through the entirety of his torso), and with the entirety of Konoha at his throat if he were to leave, was simply making the best of things.
He decided, no matter how silly it looked, he would play charades with this new Ming. He pointed at Ming, attempted to look confused (with complementary hand-turning), and pointed at the floor to indicate the prison they were in. Ming was more intelligent than he had originally come across in his initial impression, or Sasuke was better at charades than he thought he was.
"Sasuke," began Ming, pointing to the Uchiha. He then lifted his hands up, one in front of his right armpit and the other out in front of his chest, as if he was holding onto some long pole. In a short movement, he seemed to lift the pole up. "Ba! Ba!" he shouted in staccato.
Okay.
New plan, thought Sasuke, since Ming was not helping the He's-A-Boy-With-Dementia theory.
Sasuke waved his hand in dismissal and had been about to attempt a different approach when he heard the door at the end of the hallway creak open. The click click click click told Sasuke the new occupant wore heels, and there was only one person Sasuke knew who would wear heels into confinement quarters (and just about anywhere else, too).
"Uchiha."
Tsunade.
She looked at him briefly from behind the bars. "At least you're alive," she said before she turned around to face the boy. Sasuke sneered at her. He shifted a little to the left in curiosity, attempting to angle himself so that he could see Ming's expressions from where Tsunade's back did not obstruct his view. The boy, much like he had looked before, looked absolutely Frightened.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Tsunade tried to console.
Sasuke snorted. Loudly. Tsunade whipped around to glare at him.
"Something funny, Uchiha?" she all but hissed.
"You shoved him into a confined cell and have the nerve to tell him you won't hurt him."
Tsunade's eyes narrowed. "You're not helping your case."
"I don't plan on having a case."
Deal with him later. And she turned around so she could crouch in front of the shivering boy. Her tone softened as she said, "How did you get here?"
Nothing.
"Where are you from?"
Nothing.
Sasuke saw her grimace. "What's your name?"
Nothing.
"My name is Tsunade."
Nothing.
Sasuke frowned at her. "He doesn't speak Japanese."
"I realized," was the dry reply.
"His name is Ming Li."
At that, Tsunade turned around. Her eyebrow twitched. She stood up at full height, heels click click against the ground as she took her sweet time walking the short distance across the hall to Sasuke's cell. Her hands gripped two of the bars as she peered inside, purposely looking down upon the boy on the ground.
"And how would you know?"
"I talked to him."
Eyebrow rose. "You . . . talked to him."
"Yes."
"And you could understand each other?"
"Basic communication."
"I don't believe you."
Sasuke's Arrogance recognized a challenge. He turned his head so he could see the boy from around Tsunade's body. "Hey," he called monotonously to catch his attention. Ming immediately faced him, eyes widened in anticipation and fear. Sasuke pointed at him. "Ming." Then he put his index finger to his nose, not caring how silly the gesture looked in front of Tsunade, and attempted to portray an expression that asked What's my name?
"Sasuke," Ming said simply, and repeated the gesture, pointing to himself and saying, "Ming." Then, as if finally understanding what Tsunade had asked him in the first place, he gestured wildly to himself and turned to her. "Ming! Ming Li! Ming!" he chanted, slender finger frantically jabbing his chest.
Tsunade, however, was busy narrowing her eyes at Sasuke. "What else did you find out about him?"
And that was when Sasuke knew it was his Chance.
He frowned, turning away and tucking his hands behind his head in a manner too similar to Naruto's for his liking. But now that he had assumed the position, he would look silly removing his hands and so he stayed with his back against the bars and his hands against his head. "I'll exchange information for a price."
Tsunade growled at him. "Name it."
"You take these seals off."
He shrugged his elbows to indicate the black rectangles climbing up his arms like a staircase. Tsunade laughed humorlessly. "That was a terrible attempt and you know it. If you could extract information from this boy, so can we."
"He's afraid of you," Sasuke said simply. "You were the one who captured him. For all he knows, I'm just as innocent as he. He already responds to me differently than he would respond to you."
Thud.
It was the sound Tsunade's heart made when realization hit her. Uchiha Sasuke was right. Her ANBU had killed who they suspected was the boy's father. They had taken the boy from whatever family he had. They had thrown him in confinement unceremoniously. And here was Uchiha Sasuke – the traitor of Konoha, the S-ranked criminal – seemingly as innocent as a newborn to that boy.
She sighed.
"Your seals don't get taken off," she said. "But I deal with you sooner. I wasn't planning on dealing with you until this current situation died down."
Sasuke shook his head and stood up. "I don't want to be 'dealt with'. I want to carry on with my mission." He brushed himself off slowly, slowly. "But since I know that's not going to happen any time soon, I want to understand the current situation. Meaning I want to know why I have a hole in my chest, who this boy is, and what is going on."
"No."
"Then no."
Tsunade's lips spread into a thin line. "Fine."
Sasuke seemed somewhat surprised. "Fine?"
"Fine."
". . . Okay, then."
"Okay."
Silence.
Tsunade called for ANBU to escort both Ming and Sasuke from their cells and bring them to her office. She asked for Shikaku. She asked for Shikamaru. She asked for Naruto. She asked for hot coffee. And then she smirked.
She was going to tell all of Konoha about the current situation anyway. Sasuke was simply a bonus.
"You're telling me you didn't see what it was?"
"Undetectable."
"No traces of – fuck, Itachi! Could you pull any harder?"
"My apologies."
Uchiha Itachi attempted to readjust his partner over his shoulder. Despite his best efforts, the man's blood had still managed to seep into his own cloak, which in turn seeped into the shirt beneath, which in turn stuck to his torso in a display of sickly stickiness. Because of that, he no longer minded that Kisame was leaning far too heavily against him as he dragged him to Headquarters.
It was a comical sight, Itachi mused. Uchiha Itachi – shorter of the two – dragging Hoshigaki Kisame by his arm, the latter bleeding from two holes, one to the right of his abdomen and the other in his thigh. They had been simply walking when they had been ambushed by . . . well, Itachi hadn't really been sure what they were because he could not find them.
ItTheyHeShe had no chakra.
Whatever It was.
Then there had been that noise that had just lit up the silent forest with sound, bang bang bang bang! Itachi had felt something that he could not see whizz past his ear. Kisame had grunted and fallen to the floor, blood beginning to pool from his skin as he lay in a crumpled heap.
Itachi did not like coming upon the Unknown. The Unknown had managed to evade his red, red eyes completely. It had managed to gravely injure his partner.
They, he thought when the two disappeared in a flock of crows, might have been lucky to have escaped.
"Madara hasn't responded, that piece of –"
"Stop speaking," Itachi intoned. "You will only let the blood out faster. There must be something urgent going on for him not to respond. Be patient."
"You try being fucking patient when you're bleeding out half your life –"
Itachi slapped a manicured hand over Kisame's mouth. "Kisame," he said simply, "shut up."
Kisame grumbled.
Minutes later, when Kisame's body grew heavier over Itachi's smaller one (and Samehada not a welcomed addition), Madara appeared. In a swirling vortex, the man materialized in front of him and clucked his tongue. "Looks like you came upon the weapon far before I did."
Kisame could barely make out his words by that point. His head lolled in a poor attempt to look at the speaking man.
"The weapon?" Itachi asked in genuine curiosity.
"Yes." Madara clapped a hand on Itachi's weary shoulder. The world began to spin violently in front of their eyes. "I've got a little announcement to make."
Naruto winced when he put his hands behind his head.
"I know," Kakashi spoke up from a corner of the hospital room. "It's a lot. It's too much. But you've got to get some rest, Naruto."
The blond hummed.
Kakashi sighed.
It had taken several minutes and several attempts to keep Naruto from following Sasuke into confinement. Kakashi had been forced to dig his thumb into the bruise in Naruto's side and had barely managed to catch the limp blond in his arms.
"Please, Naruto –"
"She can't kill him."
Kakashi stared at him. "She's the Hokage. She can have anyone do anything under her orders."
"No, I mean . . ." Naruto sat up, still wincing as the bandages around his torso only clenched tighter. "She can't. I won't let her." He stared at his sensei. "You know you won't let her, either."
"No." And Kakashi, having sat in a chair by Naruto's hospital bed, rested his head in one hand propped up on his knee. "I won't. But that doesn't change the fact that he's considered a criminal."
"It's okay." Naruto grinned his Grin. "That's what I'm here for. I'll take care of that little issue."
Kakashi did not think it was a "little issue" by any means. He, however, never doubted his Number One Most Unpredictable Student.
Even if it involved Uchiha Sasuke.
Naruto suddenly turned to swing his legs over his temporary hospital bed and stood on wobbling legs. He began to shrug off his hospital shirt.
"And where do you think you're going?"
"You're going to tell me I can't have my cake and eat it too, Kakashi-sensei?" He put on his t-shirt that had been slung over the headboard of the bed and swung his sweater over one shoulder. "Because that's dumb. Cake is for eating."
And he walked out.
And Kakashi followed.
Not long before they had stepped upon the streets of Konoha were they stopped by ANBU. One of them turned his head to Naruto.
"The Hokage requests your presence."