You know… some people believe it to be humanly impossible to consume 12 bowls of ramen, no matter how hungry you are or how long it has been since you last ate. However, Naruto, an anomaly of nature, proved those people wrong. In fact, he proved them wrong by eating 13 bowls of ramen.
It was very fortunate for Haruno Emiko that ramen wafs cheap… but still! Sixty-seven dollars was RIDICULOUS!! For ramen nonetheless! Where the hell did that kid put it all? In some hidden pocket inside his body? She was surprised that he wasn't sick or hadn't started vomiting from gorging himself on ramen.
In fact, he seemed quite content and had a silly grin stretched across his face as they left the (ramen) bar. The chef waved to them as they left, a couple of tears running down his face. Never before had he had such a great customer. The boy was kind, amusing, and had the appetite of a bull elephant. That wonderful child had not only brought him more money than any other customer in one sitting, he had also been so nice and would compliment about every aspect of the ramen, from the broth to how the noodles were prepared… if only there were more people like that in the world.
"Ayame!" the old man shouted, yelling to his daughter in the kitchen.
"Yeah, dad?" the young woman asked, poking her head out from behind the kitchen door. What could her father want?
"When I let you start dating, I want you to find a man like that, and marry him the first chance you get." He said, his face so serious that Ayame almost laughed. Never before had her father looked so stoic!
"Dad, you do know that I'm twenty-two, right? And that I've already dated, like, fourteen guys. Hell dad, I've had se…"
"Don't you dare say the 'S' word!" He exclaimed, slapping his hand over his daughter's mouth. His little girl couldn't have lost her innocence, not willingly! She was probably forced upon by one of those piggish bastards that she calls "male friends"! He would find and kill the little bastard!
"Dad! You're making a scene, and we still have customers! Let go of me!"
--S-e-c-t-i-o-n--B-r-e-a-k--
Sakura had searched through three stores already, and she still couldn't find that stupid blond idiot! Didn't that idiot know what "Stay close by" meant? It means to stay near by, damn it! Not "Go ahead and wander off"!! When she found him she was going to beat him to a bloody pulp!
And how hard is it to spot a blond head in a crowded mall? Considerably easy, actually, because most of the people around this part of town had brown or black hair. Occasionally there would be the wacky hair colors, both natural and not, such as Sakura's that would pop up here and there, but blond was still fairly unique, especially hair like Ino, Naruto, and Tetsu's.
Suddenly, she spotted the familiar head of said blond, bobbing through the crowds like a little kid on a sugar buzz. The darker part of her, of which she dubbed "The Real Thoughts of Sakura", or "Inner Sakura", for short, wanted to crack its knuckles and cackle in sadistic glee as it contemplated the pains of which it would cause, while the light side of the force was thinking similar thoughts, albeit a little less violent.
She began pushing through the crowd, much to displeasure of some at being rudely shoved to the side. However, when they attempted to confront the pink haired girl, they were met by a flaming glare that screamed, "Get the hell outta my way! I'm coming through!" and were abruptly ignored in favor of moving forward towards a bouncing figure in the near distance.
Sakura noticed that the blond's bouncing had stopped, and that the crowd had halted around where she last saw him bob up. As she started forcing herself through, she noticed that a few people were attempting to peer over the others, either in annoyance or curiosity wondering what had caused the hold up. Some were looking enviously at the taller people of the crowd.
Suddenly, two familiar voices drifted over the crowd.
"Get out of my face, dobe. I don't know who you are, and I don't know what you want."
"Come on Itachi! You know me! You've talked to me before, when they let me out to stretch! You were my guard, remember?"
"What did you just call me?" Sakura could definitely recognize Naruto's voice and tones (Which was none by the way. She found out that he had very little volume control when he got excited), but that other one sounded exactly like…
"And what happened to your eyes? They're normal!"
She finally made it to the front of the crowd, and saw something she had not expected. Oh, yeah, she did expect Naruto to be there, causing trouble, but what she didn't expect was…
"What do you know of my brother."
Uchiha Sasuke.
--S-e-c-t-i-o-n--B-r-e-a-k--
"See this bad boy? Fires off 5 rounds a second, with a 60 round clip! She can tear up steel plating like it's nothing when she's spittin' AP rounds." The soldier said, holding up his favorite assault rifle. It was almost new; its first time being used was yesterday after that breakout.
"Oh yeah, that shits got nuthin' on my baby. She fires two rounds a second, sure, but my bitch can punch an .80 cal shell through a 4 foot thick wall without no 'AP'."
"Yeah, but she's one fat little fucker. I thought you liked the lighter girls."
"Hell no! Guns are like trucks, man! The bigger they are, the better!"
"Yeah, but the bigger they are, the less of them you can carry. I pack at least two Desert Eagles on me, and a shitload of ammo along with it. You hold on to a fourteen pound hunk of steel and you gotta carry the rest of your shit in a backpack."
"Oh yeah, fuckhead? Well how about…"
"Could you guys tone it down? And watch the language, I'm pretty sure my ears have fried off by now." A cool voice interrupted, drawing their attention to the man in the corner of the cramped bunkroom. He appeared to be in about his mid-twenties to early thirties, but his crazily angled hair was already a solid gray/silver. He wore an eye-patch over his left eye, and wore a facemask over the bottom portion of his face. He had a carved wooden dog-mask hanging above his bed. He lay on his back as he read a little orange book.
"Hey… I know you!" The second soldier said, his voice filled with recognition. "You're that hand-to-hand specialist, Kakashi! They say you can move faster than most guys can draw their guns."
"Yeah fucking right! That's not even fucking possible!" Scoffed the first soldier disbelievingly, crossing his arms.
"Oh yeah? Well I never thought no fucking kid could turn into a monster and fucking blow the fuck outta a hallway!" The other replied, jabbing the first in the chest with his finger.
"Yeah, well, those scientists are really fucked up. He's probably got some cybernetic sci-fi shit shoved up his ass."
"As opposed to the dick you have in yours?"
"Shut up, faggot!"
"I thought I told you to quit it with the language, and I don't appreciate the faggot jab." Kakashi said, shifting his view from the book to the other two occupants in the room.
"Why, dog-bitch. You one?" The first one said snidely, making a reference to the mask above Kakashi.
"Actually, I am." The other two looked at the silver-haired man in shock. The first soldier cracked up in mean, abusive laughter.
"HAHAHAHAHA!! Probably got some other faggot lover on the outside, waitin' like some pussy for you to come home, so you can have gay faggot butt sex."
"Well, my love's one sided. But you really don't have to use the word 'faggot' so much. It's getting kind of irritating."
"Awww, dog-bitch's bitch is chasin' after some other pussy-ass?"
"No, actually. He's straight."
"HAHAHA! That's even worse, shit-dick! You can't even get nothin', cause you in love wit' a straight man!"
"No, honestly, stop with the derogatory phrases. They're beginning to piss me off."
"Oh, whatcha gonna do, fudge-packer. Gonna turn into a daisy-pickin' Hulk?"
"That one just didn't make sense."
"Probably stayed up all night fingerin' yourself to the image of your straight bitch. Maybe that's why you didn't help out last night."
Now Kakashi was genuinely confused, not to mention severely irritated. He was sick of the gay jabs, but he had no clue what the other man was talking about when he said "help out last night". What happened? Voicing his question out loud, the other two just stared at him in disbelief.
"You mean you didn't hear anything? None of the explosions or gunfire?" The second soldier asked, finally saying something. The silver haired man just shook his head negatively.
"I'm a pretty deep sleeper. And I haven't left this room all day, except to go to the bathroom." He said, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment. The other two could hardly believe what they were hearing.
"So you didn't hear anything? No gun fire, no big kabooms, no nothin'?" The first soldier inquired, staring at the silver haired man quizzically.
"No, nothing. I just slept peacefully all night."
"You didn't even feel the quake caused by that freak when it torched Hallway 13-6?"
"Oh! That's what that was! I had been wondering what made my bed move a few inches off!" Once again, the other two were reduced to shock and disbelief. Not only was this man supposed to be Kakashi, a legendary martial arts specialist, but he was also gay and slept like the dead.
"Well, if you had been awake, maybe Tango wouldn't have been wiped, and that scientist wouldn't have died!" The second soldier was angry now. Here, this supposedly 'legendary soldier', slept through something he could've helped prevent, and maybe have saved the lives of his comrades and that scientist.
"Wait… you said one of the scientists was killed. Who was it?" Kakashi had known something was missing from the mess hall when he passed it earlier that day. Just about everyone in there sat at the same place, at the same time, every day, and Kakashi had memorized the patterns. However, he had noticed the lack of a certain pony-tailed scientist. Namely…
"The fucker's name was Iruka." Kakashi physically felt as if his heart was breaking into little pieces. No…
"Said he was tryin' to protect that fucking thing, and it killed him. Fucker probably deserved it…" The first soldier was suddenly slammed backwards into the wall, a manic glint appearing in the single visible eye of the man gripping his neck.
"Don't you ever fucking say anything like that about Iruka! He hasn't done anything to deserve death, period!" Kakashi shouted in the man's face, emphasizing each word with a slight shake and slap against the wall.
"Oh, so that the one you pinin' after? That bitch was trying to save that stupid fucking monster, and it had already offed one platoon. That beast killed him, and I say the fucker deserved… ACK!" The man didn't get to finish his sentence as the hand closed around his neck, squeezing tightly. He swore he felt something his neck pop.
The second soldier, wondering whose side he should be on, finally took action. Yanking and tugging at Kakashi's iron grip on his friends trachea was doing little good, however, as he watched his friend's face darken and veins begin to pop up. The man's eyes were soon rolling back and bugging out as darkness finally came over him.
Tossing him to the side, Kakashi stood up, staring at the man as if realizing what he'd just done. Shrugging, Kakashi kicked the downed man as he began walking towards his side of the room, grabbing his mask and walking out of the door. The second soldier spoke up as he passed.
"Is he alright?" He asked, watching Kakashi as he turned the knob. The man glanced back, pulling his mask on as the door opened.
"He'll be fine, just a little unconscious. He'll wake up in an hour or two. But I'd get him down to the infirmary if I were you, I think I did something to his spine." He said coolly, stepping outside the room.
"Alright, but where are you going?" The soldier asked, bending down to try and lift his fool of a friend (Dammit, the fat-ass was heavy!). Kakashi stared at him through the eye-slits of the mask. The soldier could see a slight gleam coming from where the left eye was, and he suddenly noticed that Kakashi had taken off his eye patch, and was holding it in his hands. A murderous aura had encased the mysterious man, saying one word before he walked away.
"Hunting."
--S-e-c-t-i-o-n--B-r-e-a-k--
Quick recap of the fight…
First of all, Naruto called him Itachi, whoever that was. Apparently (according to Sasuke's words) he was Sasuke's older brother.
Second of all, Sasuke demanded that Naruto tell him all that he knew, which, in Sakura's humble opinion, wasn't all that much.
After that, things had gotten a little violent and went something like this…
"Waah!" Naruto shouted in surprise, leaning back away from the punch aimed at his jaw. This was totally not Itachi! Itachi said he would never hurt him without due cause, and this most definitely was not due cause! Naruto paused suddenly, letting his mind wander along that train of thought… in all technicality, Itachi would have had due cause, since Naruto had escaped from the lab, and hurt all those people in the process. So if this was Itachi, he maybe would begin attacking him… but this person had called Itachi his 'older brother', so…
Naruto was knocked from his thoughts, literally, as a fierce right hook to his cheek knocked him over and into one of the many concrete planters in the mall, and unfortunately one of the few with edges not worn down by sneaky skater punks, small children walking along the edge, and the sitting upon by various other people in the entire structure.
Naruto stood up shakily, a considerable gash on the right side of his face and a bruise forming on his left where the Sasuke's fist had struck him.
"Dammit, that hurt!" Naruto shouted angrily at the raven-haired teenager, his eyes flashing a quick red. Sasuke took note of this, wondering what it was, and unconsciously took a step backwards.
"Then tell me what you know about my brother!" Sasuke yelled back, recovering his lost step, angry with himself for taking that step. Uchihas' never retreated! He mentally prepared his next move, taking note of the crowd and the placement of various objects.
"What have you done to deserve it, teme?! All you've done is yell at me and punch me!" Naruto retorted, his shoulders tensing in anger. Stupid jerk!
Sasuke began to take a step to the left, preparing to plant it and knock the blond's head off with a powerful kick to the side of his face from his right leg. Just as the leg began to swing, nearly reaching the stupid dobe's head, Naruto swung his left arm up in defense, stepping into the kick, and punching Sasuke straight into a wall, his normally blue eyes an enraged crimson, his pupils slit and cat-like. The raven had whacked his head against the brick, and was now stumbling dizzily about, attempting to focus on one of the five red-eyed blonds that now stood in front of him.
Sasuke took a drunken swing at one of the ones on his left, only for him to realize that it wasn't there as his arm appeared to pass right through it. But the center one grabbed his arm, and suddenly Sasuke's vision focused, realizing that the blond had not somehow cloned himself, and was standing, instead, right in front of him. Then he didn't see anything as Naruto delivered a powerful head-butt to teenager's skull, knocking him unconscious.
And that's when the Security Guards had come in, grabbing the dark-haired teen and pulling him away from the still-angry Naruto, who was just beginning to calm down. It was then, also, that he realized that a large amount of people were standing in a circle around them, whispering and talking, occasionally gesturing to the teme's unconscious form. He didn't understand what all the fuss was about… all he did was teach the stupid bastard a lesson. Don't mess with Uzumaki Naruto! Yeah… that's it. He was the best. Period. End o' story. Ohhhhh yeahhhh…
"Naruto! You IDIOT!! Do you realize what you've even just done?!" A voice that, in the short time that he had known it, he had learned to fear, erupted from behind him as Sakura punched him the head, knocking him flat on the ground. She grabbed him by the foot, and began to drag him through the crowd.
"You stupid idiot! I leave you alone for one second, and you and you're socially awkward self wander off and start a fight! With Uchiha Sasuke nonetheless! GRARGH! You have no idea how worried Mom was! We were searching all over…" She ranted as she finally let him stand, grabbed him roughly by the shoulders, and shoved him the rest of the way back towards where she and her mother had agreed to meet.
Sasuke had come-to shortly after Sakura had begun to drag Naruto through the crowd.
The mall security guards, incompetent Rent-a-Cops that they were, had let the dobe wander off with that pink haired woman. In fact, after that stupid blond had left, the guard holding him made sure that Sasuke could stand on his feet independently, and then they left.
But there was something off about that blond… When he had left, there was still plenty of drying blood on the right side of his idiotic face… but… he could've sworn that…
The wound had healed.
And he knew about that bastard Itachi, and had even (somehow) confused himself with Itachi when the blond confronted him. Sasuke had never told anyone about Itachi, so how had that blond (of whom Sasuke was quite sure he had never met) known about one of his darker secrets.
He had to find out who this blond dobe was.
--S-e-c-t-i-o-n--B-r-e-a-k--
Sakura was still ranting as they met up with Sakura's mother, who was calmly sitting on a bench by a "Lime Octavius" stall. Noticing her pink-haired daughter, she stood up with a smile on her face, brushing off a couple of wrinkles on her shirt.
"So you found him, did you? I hope he didn't wander too far off." Emiko said, seeing Sakura's death-grip on Naruto's shoulders as she pushed him along. Naruto was babbling a bunch of apologies and explanations as they approached, many of them not making sense to Emiko as they got closer.
"Not at all. Just over by the other side of the mall, picking fights with people he shouldn't have!" Sakura said angrily, preventing another escape attempt by Naruto by squeezing the nerves in his shoulders, making him squirm in pain.
"Oh my! I hope everything is all right! Did you get hurt?" Emiko asked Naruto, suddenly in front of him and inspecting him all over for injury. Noticing the blood on his face, she locked on to that, taking out a handkerchief in her pocket, wetting the cloth with her tongue, and scrubbed at it, expecting to see some form of cut or scab forming underneath the dried flakes.
What she saw was… nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing but clean, pristine skin. Albeit whisker-marked and saliva covered skin, courtesy of Emiko's rag, but undamaged skin nonetheless.
"Naruto… where did all this blood come from? What happened?" Emiko questioned the blond, concerned. Why was the right side of his face covered in blood, when there wasn't a mark on him?
"What? Oh, that! It was nothing, just some stupid teme that's the brother of a guy I know. Stupid teme hit me and knocked me into the cement block plant thingy! That hurt! And then I got up and hit him and Whack! Kapow! I knocked him down and out!… and then Sakura-chan came and got me and yelled at me and brought me here!" Naruto said cheerfully, ignoring the increasingly concerned look he was receiving from Emiko.
"But where's the blood from? Did you get a cut? Where is it?" She said. Nothing in his explanation could account for the blood!
"Oh… I think I had a cut or something. Why?"
"Because there shouldn't be that much blood from 'a cut or something'! How big was it?" Naruto held his fingers apart, moving the tips until they appeared to be the correct distance apart.
"About this long."
"Honey! That's more than a cut! Where is it? Did it get in your hair? Is that why I can't find it on your face?" She said, staring at the three-inch space between his fingers. That wasn't a cut! That was a considerable gash! How could he just brush something off like that?
"Oh… it must've healed already."
Sakura and Emiko stopped and stared at him in awe and confusion. That just wasn't possible…
"Naruto, this isn't the time or the place for this right now. But when we get home, you have some serious explaining to do."
--S-e-c-t-i-o-n--B-r-e-a-k--
Welll… let's just say that Sakura thought Naruto looked good in tight pants. Like, really tight pants. Like "Oh my god, his ass is so grabbable and sexy!" tight pants.
But there was very little tight pants-edness. Naruto didn't like them. At all. Said it constricted way too much movement. It also looked like the pants were constricting something else, but Sakura would never tell Naruto that.
After all of the chaos of earlier that afternoon, Tetsu's drama about his sister, and Naruto's fight with Sasuke, it had actually been rather relaxing to be able to wander the malls with Naruto and her mother. They had purchased Naruto a few sets of clothing, and a couple of pairs of pants to go along with them, and had just passed a small candy machine, which, to much begging on Naruto's part, they had just used. So all in all (not including the ramen), they had spent roughly a hundred dollars, and Mrs. Haruno was quite pleased that Naruto appeared to be quite the keen bargain-shopper.
"Who taught you how to bargain shop, Naruto-san?" Emiko asked, looking over at the boy who was preoccupied with trying to unwrap a sucker he had gotten. After an annoyed huff and a tearing of paper, Naruto shoved the sucker into his mouth, a content grin plastered across his face.
"What do you mean Mrs. Haruno-san?" Naruto said, talking around the hard candy.
"Who taught you how to shop for all of the cheap stuff, instead of buying all of the expensive stuff like I do, is what she means." Sakura interrupted before her mother could answer, much to the elder Haruno's irritation.
"Oh! Iruka-sensei taught me to do that! The few times I was let out, he would take me to places and stores and buy me stuff! He would get in this serious voice and say stuff like 'If ever you are allowed out by yourself, and you go shopping, always remember to find the deals. Chances are the cheap pants are just as good as the expensive ones'. And then sometimes he'd add stuff like 'With how you treat clothes, it wouldn't matter anyway. So save yourself a few bucks and go for the ones in the bargain bin!' ... or something like that." When Naruto finished his explanation, he seemed to pull into himself, a sad smile on his face as he added a couple more sentences.
"… I would always reply… I would always come back with 'They won't let me go! You're gonna always be with me, so I don't have to worry about money!'…" Within moments, the hyper and happy Naruto had withdrawn into a sad and depressed person that Sakura had only seen after she met him in the alley… when he had been crying into that one guy's body…
"Who is Iruka-sensei, Naruto-san? What do you mean by 'let out'? You weren't mistreated were you?" Emiko asked, her motherly senses kicking in again. Someone had apparently caused some sort of suffering to Naruto, and though she had only known the boy for a few hours, she had grown attached to the energetic young man. Now that he had pulled a complete turnaround in personality, it made her worried.
"Iruka-sensei is… was… my dad." Naruto said sadly, looking mournfully towards the ground, remembering the kind man's kind words and gentle voice. " I was… I was raised in a special facility…" Naruto paused, a look passing across his face, as if suddenly realizing where they were. "I'm sorry Mrs. Harfuno, but can we save this conversation for later? I don't really wanna talk about it here…" and suddenly the other Naruto appeared, smiling and happy, seemingly oblivious to the world around him. But the smile didn't quite reach his eyes, and the smile appeared strained.
Emiko and Sakura were taken aback by this sudden mood change, catching the pleading look in Naruto's eyes. A look passed between the two, one of those silent mother-daughter as-close-to-telepathy-as-you-can-get moments, and then the elder Haruno nodded to Naruto, her face serious.
"Of course, Naruto, but you will tell us when we get home." She said, looking into Naruto's eyes. Naruto just gave his foxy grin and nodded.
They all stood there for a moment, the mall crowds flowing around them as Sakura and Emiko watched Naruto, and Naruto smiled at the two Haruno women. However, the moment didn't last long as Naruto's attention changed to something else, that something else being the electronics store just down the hall.
"Ooooh! Hey! Let's go there!" Naruto said as he began to walk, not even waiting for the other two to respond or follow. Emiko groaned and Sakura slapped her forehead.
Emiko figured that they would be in for a long night as she and her pink-haired daughter began to follow the blond, especially since the boy, though a great shopper for bargains and deals, also happened to be attracted to trinkets and toys, and anything else, really, that happened to catch his eye. That, coupled with whatever troubles were bugging the poor blond, was going to probably end up keeping her awake much longer than she wanted to be.
Ah well, she had plenty of coffee. She was prepared for just about anything tonight.
Alrighty… so the chapters are going to probably be around 5000 words from now on… this chapter's just short of that by 514 or so.
So, anyway, this was a bitch to type… personally, I don't like the ending of this chappie, but I'll live.
Either way, with the summer holiday approaching, I should be able to start posting updates a little bit more often. But please remember that I am not bound by any schedule to post, and will post as much or as often as I feel like it. When I feel like it usually is whenever I finish the chapter.
Sorry to sound grouchy on the last bit…
Always remember! I appreciate feedback, in any shape or form. I truly would appreciate it if you would leave a review longer than 10 words, or even better, 20.
Anyway…
Much love and appreciation,
ChickenDeNoodleyNoodle the Third
P.S: I will also attempt to reply to reviews this time around! I'm just usually so busy with everything else in my life, I can't get around to it!