A/N: The year is 2018, cue the tumbleweed rolling in the distance. I am sorry, y'all, but at least I've come back for my beautiful Naruto in the end - regardless of Naruto's actual canon end (that never happened). You know, my favorite Naruto arc was actually the first one; and I still get emotional thinking about Haku, and tiny Naruto screaming out for Zabuza to understand his love and devotion... I refuse to believe that that emotionally mature Naruto, who knew so much, and had been through so much right from the beginning, could end up so disconnected... Oh well, I love you all, and together we will always have fanfiction XD ~K.M.
Who's On Top?
As clone-Gaara continued on his journey, he began to notice a lot of strange occurrences around him.
For one, not many people had seemed to notice that he, the Kazekage, was casually strolling through the village unattended. They all seem to be otherwise occupied. While a few of them seemed to be engaged in actual physical combat with one another (like Anko, artfully back-flipping away from Genma's senbon while launching a few kunai of her own), the vast majority of ninja and civilians alike seemed to be busily congregated in circles, holding notebooks in their hands; flipping through different pages, shaking their heads, furiously jotting and scratching out words, all the while pointing accusing fingers at one another.
For a village supposedly in peace, it seemed that there was quite a lot of chaos.
He spotted Lee waving his arms around with fire in his eyes as Sai sat beside him under a tree sketching and grinning to himself. He debated whether or not he might approach them; (after all, at this point, he was, at the very least, 'friendly' with Lee) when the tall, muscular taijutsu user suddenly got fired up and started screaming something that sounded like, 'TOP, BOTTOM, SIDE, DIAGONAL, MATTERS NOT. I ONLY WISH FOR NARUTO TO HAVE THE BEST SPRINGTIME OF YOUTH,' at the top of his lungs.
Gaara walked a little more quickly after that, trying desperately to keep his eyes from widening in abject panic when he happened upon a man in a leather jacket (that he vaguely recognized as Kiba) having an argument with his own dog?!
When he somehow stumbled upon the ramen stand that he knew Naruto often frequented, he decided to head inside and seek some refuge from the strangeness around.
However, as soon as the Kazekage's clone entered the restaurant, he got the sinking feeling that things were even more grave than he had been presuming.
The head ramen chef and his daughter were engaged in a heated argument in front of none other than Lord Orochimaru himself, as he sat there wearing what had to be the most ludicrous disguise. The snake sannin also wore an uncharacteristically benevolent look on his face, as he slurped his ramen with his unnecessarily long tongue.
Altogether, it was very foreboding.
Clone-Gaara almost instinctively summoned some defensive sand around him, but then forced himself to relax; somehow, this person had been pardoned of all charges after the war, so it would be bad to attack him, even if he desperately wanted to.
Clone-Gaara scowled deeply. He had not forgotten the mess that was the chuunin exam.
Even if the ordeal had allowed him to meet Naruto.
Naruto, who had somehow seen through to the pain and loneliness in his heart even then, when Gaara had not yet known what made him hurt, and burn, and want to scream. Naruto, who was so kind, patient, tolerant to a fault, bright like the sun on a bleak horizon, inspiring hope and peace. Naruto, who was so sweetly handsome, and sexy, with his head thrown back in pleasure-
"Lord Kazekage why don't you take a seat?" Orochimaru called to him, without moving his head. "I'm sure you've had an arduous journey thus far." His voice was light, but clone-Gaara could certainly detect a hint of amusement in the sannin's tone.
He felt his shoulders tense up as he was shaken out of another one of his Naruto-induced reveries (something which was happening far too many times today), but he moved to take a seat beside Orochimaru anyways. He discreetly wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his sleeve, hoping beyond hope that the gesture went unnoticed.
"Lord Orochimaru," he acknowledged curtly. However, his utterance was drowned out by the head chef's daughter suddenly screaming that her father was insufferable and knew nothing about the delicacies of Beel? B. Elle? (Clone-Gaara had not been able to identify the word), and storming out of the shop. The head chef went about his business dissolving miso paste relatively quietly after that, looking up only once to say, "No ramen-loving man could ever be taken by a man who does not love ramen; it takes a truly manly man to appreciate the culinary art of ramen," to no one in particular, before resuming his chopping of green onions.
The two powerful ninja sat in silence.
Although clone-Gaara wanted to appear coolly uninterested in Orochimaru in their shared silence, he could not help but let his eyes take in the other man's powdered pale skin, made-up eyes, pastel kimono, and long purple-black hair pulled up into a bun. He also still had on that benevolent look as his hideously long tongue licked the rim of the large ramen bowl before him till it was squeaky-clean.
The slurping sounds made Gaara want to run away, scream, or both; but outside the restaurant he heard someone that sounded like Neji Hyuuga scream, "Hinata! I simply cannot read such a treacherous book, and I refuse to ponder whether the seme on the cover looks just like Naruto or not! Please do not ask me to do such dreadful things!" and he knew it was just as dangerous to leave.
The Kazekage-clone began sweating bullets.
"So, are you on your way back from an undercover mission, or are you heading out?" he asked in a small voice, praying that Lord Orochimaru would retract that enormous appendage back into his mouth in order to answer his question. A shiver ran down his back as the tongue wrapped itself around a few remaining noodles stuck to the sides of the bowl.
"No. I haven't had a field mission in quite some time," he said mournfully. Thankfully, he did retract his tongue to state his answer, but he gave clone-Gaara a slightly bewildered look, "But why would you think that?"
Clone-Gaara spluttered a little before schooling himself. "No reason," he said plainly, diverting his eyes away from Lord Orochimaru.
The snake sannin gave an amused laugh that sounded remarkably like a hiss. "I mean, I guess that isn't quite fair. I know why. And, I guess there have been times when wearing these kinds of clothes has been useful to me on missions of a certain sort... I mean, why would I wear them otherwise, right?"
Clone-Gaara nodded like he understood, and Orochimaru laughed again.
"But didn't you know? All out-going missions have been indefinitely put on hold. It appears that Konoha has some other truly pressing issues to deal with for now..." The man's yellow eyes flashed brightly, and clone-Gaara gulped a little.
"What sorts of issues?" He asked. If he had eyebrows, they would have been hiding in his hairline by now.
"What sorts of issues indeed..." sing-songed the sannin. "You know, I think we should go ask our gracious Hokage that exact question, don't you think?"
"Oh," was all clone-Gaara could finally respond when Lady Tsunade finally managed to explain the situation to him. He, Orochimaru, and Tsunade were inside one of his giant defensive sand contraptions, protected from the veritable mayhem of the building in which the Hokage's office resided. Tsunade had her arms crossed and was rapidly tapping her left foot, while Orochimaru was wiping away tears of mirth from his eyes.
Orochimaru had actually started laughing as soon as he and clone-Gaara stepped into the building, and had not stopped since. Clone-Gaara, however, had not found that there was anything to laugh about then, or now, as the two of them had been immediately drenched in a wall of water spurting out from the mission desk near the front entrance, and things had only gone downhill from there.
"Excuse me," the Kazekage's double had said, royally drenched before he or Orochimaru could react, but was ignored by the chuunin girl who attacked them; probably because she was already busy deflecting a barrage of kunai from another male chuunin, who was holding a giant soaked through notebook, entitled, 'sasUKE.'
"ADMIT IT," the male chuunin had yelled passionately, fully ignoring the soaked kage-rank ninjas before him; one laughing hysterically, the other squeezing water from his clothes.
"EAT ME," she had screamed right back, ignoring them too,
Clone-Gaara had decided to form his sand-barrier right then and there to avoid the wind jutsu already forming in the boy's extended hands. From inside the sand barrier, Orochimaru and Gaara soon heard all sorts of rude and semi-violent things from Konoha ninja directed to other Konoha ninja as they passed by. Though they made their way in a giant, sand ball, they were unacknowledged; everyone too focused on that Biel? Beehl? to care about them.
Half-floating and half-rolling in the defensive structure (that was not at all designed with this purpose in mind), Orochimaru and clone-Gaara had eventually found themselves in front of Lady Tsunade's office, where the Hokage had been on a phone call.
"Okay, so since it's already been decided that you're going to be the next Hokage, I don't understand why you can't just take over now, and put me out of my misery," she had said to the other person on the phone with a long suffering sight.
"Okay, sure," the voice on the other end of the line had replied, "But then I get to make an announcement that, naturally, Sasuke tops."
Tsunade had immediately hung up, and turned to face the giant ball of sand before her. "Let me in," she had said it with such gravity that clone-Gaara had wordlessly allowed the depressed woman, clutching a bottle of sake, into his sand bubble...
Which brought Gaara to his current situation; squashed uncomfortably close together with two out of the three legendary ninja, stifled further by the most uncomfortable situation hanging tense in the air.
The young ninja-clone wished that he could dispel himself back to safety and somehow avoid this situation altogether.
"Oh," he tried again, because he has futilely hoping that somebody would come out and say, 'Surprise! Jokes on you!' and just give him the supplementary aid ninja he needed to be on his way out of this crazy village.
"Yeah," replied Tsunade, not at all sounding like she was in the mood to joke, "I'm also sorry for not receiving any calls."
"...I do understand," clone-Gaara nodded. He wondered what he would have done if placed in a similar situation; if everyone in Sunagakure collectively lost their minds like this, he'd probably hide inside his sand barrier until it was over...
'However!' he suddenly realized, 'I have had the... opportunity of observing... a moment that may indeed alleviate the suffering of Konoha's people.'
Just as he was opening his mouth to say something, he heard Orochimaru speak, "I mean I have my theories, of course, but I am very very biased, as you can imagine. But what do you think Tsunade?"
"I think that..." Lady Tsunade looked at each of them in turn, before sighing loudly, "I want to die."
"Mmm, that's probably very true," Orochimaru nodded in agreement, far too quickly for clone-Gaara's comfort, "I guess as Sakura's mentor, you would have been happiest if the ending had been SasuSaku, as opposed to SasuNaru, or NaruSasu."
At that, Lady Tsunade suddenly snapped out of her lethargic world-weary fatigue, "Don't screw with me, Orochimaru, you asshole. Why would I put my sweat and soul into training Sakura, and then wish for her to end up in a relationship with someone who didn't even respect her, let alone like her? Kakashi told me what Sasuke said about Sakura's feelings for him during the fight with Kaguya! I mean I can now understand his past resentment for Konoha... but what did Sakura ever do to him? Care too much?"
Orochimaru hmmed low in his throat. "That's also very true," he agreed, but Tsunade didn't seem to be listening. She took a drink of sake and continued.
"Naruto, on the other hand, that boy would have treated her right; he always had, right from the beginning," she drank some more, "Even when she probably didn't even deserve it, damn brats." She hiccuped.
"But then how is that fair to Naruto? Why should he have to be with someone who only settled for him because the true object of their affections didn't reciprocate?" clone-Gaara blurted out, before hurriedly covering his mouth with his hands. Luckily, the sand blotted out most of the light, so they probably wouldn't be able to see his blush.
"Ah. I understand. So if you're a fan of Naruto, you don't think Sakura deserves him because she hasn't always treated him well. However, if you're a fan of Sakura, you think she deserves Naruto because she's always treated her well," Orochimaru said, extending each of his hands in turn, as though physically weighing the choices.
"It isn't that easy though," Tsunade said, looking as depressed as she did earlier. "I know this one girl, one of Shizune's students, who is a huge fan of Sakura, and the idea of SasuSaku, because she thinks that Sakura has finally earned what she has always wanted; Sasuke Uchiha."
Orochimaru suddenly looked a bit saddened, "Such warped views young people have on relationships; I wonder if she really hates Sasuke then to devalue his character and feelings so much... Unfortunately, Sasuke doesn't sit still like a nice trophy husband, plus he's made some bad decisions-"
(Here Gaara and Tsunade both looked at each other; silently agreeing that the worst decision Sasuke had ever made was bringing this lunatic back into their lives.)
"-and with that cruel streak he's got buried in there," Orochimaru continued, unperturbed; sounding a little more excited in fact, "Handling him requires that you love him, and put him in his place in equal measures. Enter Naruto! I always recognized the influence Naruto had on Sasuke!"
"Somehow, I don't want to hear that from you," chorused both Lady Tsunade and clone-Gaara. The two leaders turned to each other and high-fived solemnly as Orochimaru shrugged his shoulders; wholeheartedly acknowledging that he was a piece of shit.
"But, I mean," Lady Tsunade re-ventured after a few minutes of silence, "Obviously Naruto tops; anything else would be ridiculous... It would be like... if you were to top Jiariya or something..."
"Oh!" Lord Orochimaru smiled wide and licked his lips, "I'll have you know that this tongue of mine has been in a great many places that you would not expect, and just like my dick, one of those places includes-,"
"THEY SWITCH. OH PLEASE, SPARE ME. THEY SWITCH," clone-Gaara screamed, covering his ears. "I passed by Naruto's house on my way here, and I happened to overhear them, a-and it sounded like they were d-doing everything both ways!"
Tsunade narrowed her eyes, as though mentally calling him a pervert, but she punched her way out of the sand, and called out to Shizune to prepare a village-wide message. "Well then, once I get this message out, I'll send over your request for ninja," she said, scratching something down on a sheet of paper, 'Now, get out of here, your nose is bleeding all over the floors, kid."
Clone-Gaara dispelled himself with relief, too excited to be back home to say anything else in response.
Orochimaru rolled his eyes, and rolled his enormous tongue out of his mouth to lick up the blood. "Well, of course they would switch. The year is 2018, variety is the spice of life, and how would those competitive children settle for anything less?"
A/N: Okay so like... the only part of Boruto I like is Orochimaru saying, 'Hey, I'm your ~parent~ because a)what is gender, b) what is the difference between moms and dads anyways and c)he's a snake-person not governed by your sad heterosexual laws' The gender-nonconforming representation we deserve. Icon.
Also, I lied. We have one MORE chapter to go; but that one will be more epilogue-like. #RIPGaara Love, K.M. Please leave me review with your thoughts!