Chapter 13: Anger, Intellect, and Cat Ears Surface!

By: DemonClowSorceress and Red

Disclaimer: We do not own Naruto. None of it.

Daisuke looked up at the boy in the tree. "That's a girl?" she asked, confused.

"May as well be," Kusaka said.

"Now don't be rude," the boy said. He swung his leg over and landed lightly on the ground. "I'm Valac. Kusaka's an old friend of mine." The boy knelt down and ruffled Kusaka's hair. "How ya doing, Saka?"

Her lips twisted into a sarcastic smile. "How ya like your limbs where they are, Valac?"

"Very well, thank you." Valac suddenly frowned. "Hey, why are you in that form? What's the matter? Isn't your crystal - "

"Valac, these are my companions and fellow Fur Fighters." Kusaka smoothly spoke over him as she introduced Hiro and Daisuke. "We're part of a group and we're heading into Oto to rescue another of our band. Would you like to accompany us?"

The redhead stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. "I guess so. Nice to meet you both."

The four headed back to the clearing where the rest of the Fur Fighters had gathered. Introductions were made, dinner was served, and conversation ensued. Valac proved to be an easy person to like, even if he continuously pushed Kusaka's buttons to the point of suicide.

"So," he said once everyone had eaten their fill, "how do you intend to sneak into the creepy evil snake-man's lair?" His eye slanted over to the Valley of the End and what lay beyond it. "I mean, he's got his goons prowling that entire place. You gotta avoid them while avoiding the traps he's set, all to find one snake-girl who's even more dangerous than all the guards combined. You got a game plan?"

"Of course we do!" Hiro said proudly. "We go in, grab the Hebi-chan, use force if necessary, and then book it out of there!"

Valac nodded. "Good plan. What if it fails?"

"What d'you mean, what if it fails? How could it fail?" Hiro could not understand how his simple plan could not pan out. As he'd been taught, simple plans always worked better than complicated ones. Besides, his brain hurt when he tried to make complicated plans.

"Then how about this?" said Hanika, nibbling on her assorted greens daintily. "When Tsukasa learns where the Hebi-chan is, we'll surround her on two sides and trap her. Then half of us can draw her attention while Ryuu-chan and Kitsune-chan and Akki-chan get into place to knock out Hebi-chan. Then we can grab her and run away as fast as we can over the border, because Oto ninjas can't cross over into Konoha territory." Everybody looked at the rabbit incredulously. She blinked. "What? I can't be astute when I want?"

"It's kinda......" Tomoya grinned. "Hot." This comment was punctuated by a double head smack from Tsukasa and Hikaru. Hanika blushed.

Hiro took this opportunity to loudly exclaim, "OKAY! BEDTIME!" The rest of the Fur Fighters bunked for the night, leaving Kusaka and Valac on guard duty. The two situated themselves in a nearby tree and Valac took the chance to catch up with his old friend.

"So, it's been a long time. Where you been?"

Her icy blue eyes didn't even glance at him. "No place I wanna discuss with you." She continued to stare at the darkening landscape. "Why are you here? Did my father send you?"

"Nope. I was in the neighborhood and I thought I'd annoy." He raked back hair that fell over his eyes. "But seriously, it's been what, a couple years, give or take? Where have you been? You dropped off the face of the earth, and that's not easily done by one of our kind."

"Then I'm just special," Kusaka responded.

Valac's smile went from cocky to caring. "That's true, you always were special." His eyes bored into the back of her skull. "Saka, where's your crystal amulet? I can't get a firm read on you."

The little girl refused to answer him. Valac sighed. "Oh fine, if you're not going to answer me......" He raised the index and middle fingers of his right hand and tensed. There was a puff of smoke, and then there was a child version of Valac sitting across from Kusaka. One big silver eye looked at the girl. "I'll stick around for a spell. Gods know I can't go home."

"What happened to your eye?" Kusaka asked, but Valac pretended to be her, ignored the question, and hopped out of the tree.

********

The Next Day, back in Konoha.....

Sasuke was still fuming at Naruto when they met up with everybody else after a fruitless night of looking for the Fur Fighters. "See, this is all your fault. It's your fault that my son is missing AGAIN and it's all because of your philandering ways with that Sand freak!"

Of course he had to scream this at the top of his lungs. Of course the Konoha Twelve heard him and spun around to stare incredulously at Gaara. Of course Gaara made a gesture at them that clearly said, "What are you, stupid? No."

"How many times do I have to say it? That's not what happened!" Naruto looked to be on the verge of tears as he tried calming his jealous lover. "Please Sasuke, keep your voice down!"

"Keep my voice DOWN?!" This only fueled Sasuke's misdirected fire. "Keep my voice down?! You expect me to keep my voice down when you've been cheating on me?! WITH GAARA?!"

Kiba raised an eyebrow. "Anyone care to explain why those two are having a lover's spat in front of us?"

Sai smiled. "Well, Sasuke's mind apparently went to the dirty place while he was peeping under the windowsill as Gaara helped Naruto remove a splinter from his finger."

Shikamaru sighed. "Are you serious? How stupidly troublesome."

Meanwhile the duckbutt head and the fox boy were still arguing. More like Naruto trying to placate his boyfriend while Sasuke systematically and idiotically burned all his bridges with the blond while smearing Gaara's name in the process.

Then Sasuke's dark eyes landed on the redheaded Kazekage and found a new target to yell at. "YOU!!"

"Me," Gaara retorted with his customary emotionless expression.

This served to infuriate the Uchiha even more. "Yes you, you - you - son of a - mother - AUGH!"

"Are you quite finished sputtering like an overboiled tea kettle?" Gaara interjected in a bored tone, masking his rising anger at seeing his cute little brother (Naruto) so close to crying.

"THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!" Sasuke leveled the finger of blame at Gaara, who responded with an invisible eyebrow raise. "Don't gimme that look, you no-good two-bit demon man-whore with a mother complex! You're only banging MY boyfriend because he's the only one who'll deal with your level of bull-crap! Not even YOUR MOM wanted any of that!"

Stunned, jaw-dropping silence covered the group. Gaara had gone still, so still, still as a statue. It was a known unspoken fact of the ninja world; never bring up Gaara's mom. Naruto's eyes were like a cat watching ping-pong, darting from Sasuke to Gaara and back. "I-I-I think you went a little too far," he said softly, his fingertips reaching to lightly touch the Uchiha's shoulder. "Why don't you apolo - "

"DON'T TOUCH ME, YOU DEMON WHORE!!" Sasuke yelled, violently jumping away from the blond.

However, this had the unexpected and violent side effect of his arm coming up to backhand Naruto across the face, sending Naruto to the ground. Sakura, Ino, and Hinata gasped in horror as Tenten and Temari joined the ranks of the boys who were ready to beat Sasuke to a bloody pulp for what he'd done. Naruto pushed himself up with an arm, cupping his bruised cheek with his free hand as he looked up at Sasuke with the look of an abused dog that asked "What did I do wrong, master?"

Sasuke's eyes widened as the horror of his actions hit him. "Naruto - Naru, I'm so - "

"It's five minutes too late for you to be sputtering any kind of apology, bastard." This was spoken in a dark, dangerous, evil voice that many people had forgotten Gaara possessed.

What happened next was both astonishing and very, very fast. With speed nobody knew he had, Gaara dropped his gourd and streaked across the twenty feet seperating him from Sasuke to b*tch-slap the dark-haired asshole with enough force to send him flying backwards. Pale green eyes were dark with rage as the redhead snarled, "B*tch Slap no Jutsu," as Sasuke slammed into a tree and crumpled to the ground.

Neji's Byakugan eyes widened in shock. "When the fuck did he get so goddamn fast!?"

"He's the Kazekage, dumbass," Kankuro cackled as his younger brother stalked towards the fallen Uchiha. "After Sasuke raced circles around him at the Chunin Exams, Gaara has been training himself in taijutsu nonstop. He even stopped using his sand for an entire year." Eyes widened even more. "Yeah, I know, that was our reaction. He's almost too fast for our eyes to track. This is shaping up to be the greatest rematch of our time."

Gaara, standing over a struggling-to-rise Sasuke, delivered a well-aimed kick to the other boy's ribs. Kankuro blinked. "Or......not."

"Get up, you inconsiderate dumbass," Gaara snarled in that dark, dangerous, evil voice. "Don't make me embarrass you even more."

Sasuke tried to sweep Gaara's feet out from under him. The redhead only jumped to avoid the sweep and kicked Sasuke in the head, sending him bouncing across the ground again. Kankuro facepalmed as Temari sighed heavily, her hands on her hips. "Gaara, please try not to show off too much," she said in a carrying voice. "You are the Kazekage, remember. You have to show some respect to your enemies, even if they are idiotic hopeless nutcases with no chance of pulling their head from their ass."

But Gaara was already long gone. He was sinking back into Jinchuriki Killer Mode, all his focus and anger on the black-haired moron who dared to hurt his darling little fox brother. Stalking towards Sasuke as the latter struggled to rise, Gaara made ready to unleash a world of agony, rage, and pure unadulterated whoop-ass on him. And he proceeded to do so very well.

Neji watched the kicking, punching, smacking redhead pummell the Uchiha without using a speck of chakra. "You think we should stop this?"

Shikamaru, Choji, Kiba, Shino, and Sai responded in one breath without hesitation. "No."

Kiba blinked as Gaara hauled Sasuke up by his collar and dusted his chin with an uppercut. "Do you think Gaara's gonna use any jutsus on him so he won't totally embarrass Sasuke?"

The remaining boys shook their heads and chorused, "No."

Shino plucked an imaginary piece of dirt from his sleeve. "You think Sasuke will ever recover from this humiliation?"

"No." No hesitation whatsoever.

"You think Naruto's gonna stop him soon?" Choji asked when Gaara delivered a particularly vicious b*tch-slap to Sasuke.

Another rousing chorus of "No," answered him before another voice joined in. With a very unfamiliar smirk on her face, Hinata asked her male friends, "Anyone want to take bets on how long this is gonna go?"

But those plans (and Hinata's obvious atttempt to fleece the boys) were put on pause when Naruto shot past Gaara like a blond comet, skidding to a halt in front of his beaten boyfriend. Sasuke barely had time to look up before Naruto lifted his leg and rammed his foot down with all the power he could muster.

On Sasuke's groin.

The boys winced and crossed their legs unconsciously. The girls hissed. Gaara's eyes widened in shock. Sasuke gave an unmanly shriek and assumed the fetal position.

"You idiotic, ignoramous asshole," Naruto said in a scarily level voice. "Why, pray tell, is everything that comes out of your mouth in anger just the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the ignorant by the incompetent?"*

This statement was met with silence, not only from Sasuke, but from all the ninjas present. Naruto could feel their astonished stares burning lasers into his back. He internally winced at the unintentional revelation of his intellect, but it wasn't such a biggie anymore. He was boiling at the mess Sasuke had created with his raging jealously.

"Okay, you jealous bastard, listen up and listen good." Naruto held up one finger. "One, the hell is wrong with you? I chased after your sorry ass for HOW LONG AGAIN!? That's right, THREE YEARS!" Three fingers waved in Sasuke's face. "I chased after your sorry emo ass for THREE GODDAMN F*CKING YEARS, and you have the GALL to even ASSUME, to even allow the mere THOUGHT to form, that I would cheat on you?! And with GAARA?!" Naruto leveled a finger back at the redhead. "He's like my goddamn brother, you bastard! If you thought I'd cheat on you, why not suspect me with Neji, or Sai? They're more likely to complete me than frickin' Gaara!!"

Neji and Sai shared a look that said, Did Naruto just admit in public that we're possible second choices? while Gaara's mind thought, If any other person were talking about me like this, I'd kill him. I'd kill him dead. With my sand, or something.

Sasuke attempted to speak using his recently reinflated lungs. "Naru, I - "

"Two," Naruto said, drowning him out as his second finger rose. "The hell is wrong with you, temee? If you'd bothered to properly assess the situation, you would have seen that I had a giant-ass splinter in my finger that I'd asked Gaara to pull out. You know how much splinters unnerve me!"

So, this entire clusterf*ck started because Naruto got a piece of wood stuck in his finger? The Konoha Twelve and the Sand siblings sweatdropped in disbelief. Sasuke's eyes dropped to the ground and he muttered something inaudibly.

Two orange-red fox ears popped out from underneath Naruto's blond mop, tilting forward. "What was that?" he asked dangerously. "I couldn't catch it."

"Be careful of your next words," Gaara added, striding forward. He also had animal ears poking from his red hair, but his were raccoon-dog ears that were black with reddish-brown tips. Several of the girls wished to coo and awww over the Kazekage's new ears, but they valued their lives more than that.

Sasuke glanced to the side, refusing to meet his boyfriend's eyes. "I may have been - hasty - in my initial judgement of the situation."

"' Hasty?' " Naruto repeated, incredulous and annoyed. " 'May have been?' Really? That's all you've got to say? Cuz dude, as far as apologies go, that one sucked."

Gaara crossed his arms, his forgotten gourd floating over on a cloud of sand and attaching to his back again. Those pale green eyes were intense as they bored into Sasuke's face. "You know what you have to say. So say it, damn you."

It took severe wrestling with his pride, but Sasuke managed to say "I'm sorry," in a timely fashion. After all, he did love Naruto to the marrow of his bones. Now that he'd been delivered a swift kick - and punch - and many, many b*tch-slaps back to reality, he was beginning to realize the amount of pain and headache he'd put everybody through.

"Aw, it's so sweet," Kiba drawled, leaning against Shino and resting his head on the bug boy's shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm getting cavities," Neji replied sarcastically. "Call the dentist."

After this romantically violent episode in Naruto and Sasuke's relationship, focus returned to the two jinchuriki's ears. The girls began to touch, fondle, and coo over the fox and tanuki appendages as their owners twitched in annoyance at being treated like pets. Gaara had three anger marks on his forehead when he muttered to Naruto, "Can we kill them? I know Sabaku Sōsō (Sand Waterfall Funeral) and a great place to do it."

Naruto almost said no, but then someone tugged his ears. Hard. So he ground out through his teeth, "I'm with you on this one. Where is the place?"

The rest of the boys must've caught onto the murderous intent of the blond and redhead, because they swarmed en masse and each pulled a girl away. The kunoichi would not go willingly. Choji had to wrap Ino in a bear hug to pin her arms. Neji, after getting kicked in the stomach by his female teammate, had to use Juken and paralyze Tenten's arms to wrap his arm around her waist and haul her away. Hinata was bodily dragged back by Kiba and Shino, whining all the way. Shikamaru didn't bother with attempting to pull Temari away in a dignified manner, instead going with grabbing her around her waist, throwing her over his shoulder, and stalking away. Naruto and Gaara shared an impressed look that said Not bad. Not bad for a guy three years younger than her.......

Sai went in to grab Sakura, but the pinkette just stepped away. He tried again, but she merely stepped again. In this fashion they made a complete circle around Naruto and Gaara, who were ready to kill at a moment's notice. Sai frowned, puzzled at how to tackle this problem. Well, she's displaying a certain fascination with animal ears.......adorable animal ears.......attached to adorable boys.....Hmmmmmmm......well, cats are cute, Sakura likes cats. I think I can do this.............maybe.......

Whipping out a scroll, Sai painted a pair of huge cat ears** and formed a sign. They popped off the parchment, 3D and realistic, and he popped them over his real ears. Okay, so I've got the ears. He looked as Sakura paid him no attention, still fondling jinchuriki ears. Um.........now what? What do cats do to get attention?

"Me-ow?" he said, sounding so lame.

Gaara looked at Sai with a dagger glare, unable to speak with Sakura meddling with his ears, while Naruto growled, "You bastard, are you asking to get killed?"

I guess I need to inject more emotion. Sai sidled up to Sakura and quickly licked her cheek, backing up even quicker to keep his facial features on his face. Dregging up every drop of emotion, he made his eyes go big and cutesy while delivering a perfect "Meow!"

Sakura had frozen when Sai's tongue touched her skin. What was........Was that.....? She slowly, slowly turned her head and saw Sai, with big adorable eyes and black cat ears sticking up from under his hair. "Meow!" he said again, bringing a fist to his chin like it was a paw.

In what would be forever considered "Sakura's Break From Sanity" the pinkette flung herself at Sai in a tackle-glomping-hug. "KAWAIIIIII!!!" she shrieked, hugging the boy tightly. One hand came up and fondled the cat ears happily as Sai quickly backpedaled away from Naruto and Gaara.

Now that nobody was inappropriately touching their ears, both jinchuriki could relax enough to make the ears go away. There was an audible sigh from the girls that they decided to ignore.

Sai, having removed his own ears, put Sakura down and questioned the masses, "So.........where are the Fur Fighters?"

********

Deep in Sound Country, near Orochimaru's hideout....

"There it is," muttered Hikaru, fur standing on end as he glared at the almost camoflouged building sprawled across the valley. He wrapped an arm around Hikari, who was shuddering almost violently. "This is where he kept me and my sister."

Mei sneezed. "That place stinks of evil," she said, hunching in on herself.

Hiro thought about the plan again. They'd managed to sneak past Oto's borders. They'd snuck past all guards thanks to Kusaka and Valac's abilities, as well as the neko twins' incredible knowledge of Oto and Mei's powerful nose that led them right to Orochimaru's door.

Or, more precisely, two hundred feet above Orochimaru's door. On the hillside facing the compound, hidden in the forest, scouting the place before they went in.

Tomoya poked Kaname's shoulder until the bat boy snapped, "WHAT?!" and made everybody else look at the tanuki boy.

"Um, we've been having a great stroke of luck, huh?" Tomoya asked, fidgeting a little.

Kaname was already annoyed at not being able to fly when he wanted to, so this made him snappy. "Why are you questioning this, tanuki?"

Again he fidgeted. "Well, ya see, I just meant that, well.........." He pointed over Kaname's shoulder. "Hebi."

"Huh?" came the collective response of the Fur Fighters.

Tomoya pointed. "Hebi. Behind you."

So they all turned. And then they understood. Valac even said, quite unnecessarily, "Well whaddya know. I'll be damned, there she is."

"And she's drawing swords," Kusaka remarked. "Twin blades. And they're made of crystal."

"What should we do?" asked Hiro, cocking his head to the side. "We can't hurt her...."

Kusaka balled up her fists in preperation for a fight. "Well, the best way to take her is to knock her out. For a long period of time."

"Kyuu!"

The Hebi paused, feeling something sticky and round land atop her head. She looked up and saw the riceball sitting there. Before she could react - BOOM!

"Nice - " Daisuke preened at Kaname's compliment. " - exploding riceball." She threw a glare at him.

"Now what?" Hanika asked, edging closer to the unconscious Hebi.

Tsukasa and Kaname were already at the Hebi's side. "Grab the girl and run!" Tsukasa ordered.

Each Fur Fighter held a part of the Hebi, lifted her up as one, and booked it out of there.

A.N.

* - This statement was brought to you by Red, who read it in "Tempest Fugit" a Draco/Harry fanfic.

** - Like the detachable ones in Loveless.