Chapter 4: Pest Control
BANG!
The wall to Naruto's left exploded, knocking him backwards a few paces. Scrambling backwards on his hands he faced the person stepping out of the building to his left, the pale eyed man who had held him still as Tsubaki had placed her tag. Behind him, standing in the newly formed hole in the wall, was a man in an enormous coat that obscured most of his features, the only discernible thing about him being his dark, glinting sunglasses. The street in front of Naruto had been filled with rubble, and for one horrible moment he thought Akamaru might have been crushed beneath it. However, in the next moment he heard the dog barking loudly, jumping on the other side of the mound of debris as he tried to get Naruto's attention.
"Run!" Naruto called to the dog, who didn't move an inch. Naruto shook his head, blinking back tears. "I said run!" he repeated, waving Akamaru in the other direction with one hand. "Get out of here, go on, just run away!"
Akamaru whined, hesitating, then turned around and bolted off in the opposite direction. Naruto checked the sky. Akamaru was running in the same direction that the moon was setting, the same direction he would have to go if he wanted to get home.
"You'd do well to worry about yourself instead of your dog, brat," said the man before him calmly, stepping over the pile of rubble to walk leisurely towards Naruto. Naruto continued to scuttle backwards, and the man laughed lightly. "Don't bother getting up," he said, as though they were at some social event and Naruto had offered to get him a drink, "there's really no need. We'll just take the tag and be on our way, and the next squad that finds you can kill you when they see that you don't have it. There's no point in us doing it, when there are so many others who want to just for fun."
That plan didn't appeal to Naruto in the slightest. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out one of the kunai he couldn't fit in the pouch, attaching a paper bomb quickly and hurling it at the man approaching him. The ANBU, however, just quirked an eyebrow, and with a wave of a hand it exploded harmlessly five feet over his head.
"Oh come on now," said the pale eyed ninja disapprovingly, shaking his head, "there's no need to get snippy. We won't hurt you, we just want the tag. I'll be gentle, promise," the man grinned wickedly, giving Naruto the distinct impression that he had no intention of being gentle.
"It was your comment about the next squad to find him," droned the other, speaking for the first time, "you've gone and spooked him now."
"He's spooked just by being here," argued his partner, never taking his eyes from the still retreating Naruto. "I thought he might understand the logic of why we don't want to hurt him, that's all. I thought it might make him feel better about trusting us."
"What makes you think he can understand logic of any kind?" the second one questioned, still not moving as the first continued to walk calmly towards their quarry. Naruto glanced over at him, to see little black bugs exiting from his sleeves, giving him the rather creepy look of a walking corpse shedding grave bugs. "He's a demon, after all, and a child to boot. Who knows how low his intelligence level is?"
"Oh well, I suppose there's no use arguing it now," sighed the first one, pulling a kunai from nowhere and twirling it playfully around his finger, "he's certainly on to us by this time, we may as well kill him."
Naruto scrambled for another kunai and paper bomb, wrapping it around the hilt and throwing it as hard as he could. It struck a wall and stuck there, making the pale-eyed man laugh.
"Who was that aimed for?" he asked, amused.
"Not you," Naruto told him.
Suddenly the bomb exploded, taking a good chunk of the wall with it. Dust and bits of building material flew in every direction, momentarily distracting the two ANBU, and Naruto leaped to his feet and took off running, not looking back to see if they were following him but fairly sure that they were. He didn't waste time trying to run too far, he found a small, sturdy looking house, once a bunker perhaps, and darted inside, closing the heavy door behind him. He could still hear insects buzzing outside, and he was willing to bet those things were going to sell him out. They might not have been dogs, but they had eyes, and he could guess by how the ANBU ninja directed them that they could and would report back to him.
The house, he decided, probably had been a bunker at one point, though for what he couldn't guess. It was small, a number of supply crates stacked about, but a large trap door in the middle of the floor dominated the space. Shifting the heavy lock on the front door into place he hauled up the metal trap door and descended into the room below. Truthfully it wasn't much bigger than the room above, boxes rather than crates lining the walls and an ancient bed on the far wall suggesting that in the end this place had been used for storage. There was a deep, grimy looking sink in one corner, but no other sign that this place was fit for human habitation besides the dim light above and the thick wool blanket on the bed.
Naruto pulled the trap door closed behind him and started hunting through the boxes. Most of it was useless, make-up, old clothes, journals in stacks, office supplies and two boxes full of plushy toys. One box, stacked on top of the others and standing open, was even full of unused bug spray. Naruto glanced at the label.
CAUTION: FLAMMABLE, KEEP AWAY FROM OPEN FLAME
Naruto grinned.
A few minutes later he heard a voice that sounded like the paled-eyed man calling "Down here!" somewhere above him as he put the last can into place. Covering his mouth and nose with his shirt he got the blanket from the sink and tossed it onto the bed, crawling under it with some difficulty just as the trapdoor came open.
Like before the two ANBU were unhurried, climbing carefully down into the lower room, taking their time so as not to trip on the ladder, shutting the door behind themselves and looking leisurely around the room. The one with pale eyes, the first one Naruto had seen, wrinkled his nose, noticing that the air smelled of chemicals. Following the soft hissing sound that reached his ears he picked up a can with its sprayer taped down. He showed it to his companion, snickering.
"He thinks he can defeat your insects with bug spray, Aburame-san," he laughed, taking the tape of the now mostly empty can and tossing it aside. "Just how weak does he think we are?"
"Weak enough," said Naruto from beneath his drenched blanket, catching their attention at last. Before they could react, however, he flicked the lighter and tossed out into the room.
Naruto felt the heat beneath the blanket he'd soaked in the sink to make it flame proof. He heard the two ANBU screaming as all the bug spray he'd pumped into the room caught fire at once, the roar of the fire as it consumed all the flammable gas, and then the sound of two bodies thudding to the floor. When at last all was quiet he threw off the blanket to survey the damage. Everything in the room was scorched or singed, including the blanket and two cocky ninja that were now unconscious. They were a sight; clothes singed and still burning in places, blackened patches of skin oozing blood, both of them lying motionless on the floor. Again Naruto forced himself to bend over the first one he'd spoken to, pale-eyes, and feel for a pulse. Again, he found one, but it was still obvious that they were in a bad way, and probably wouldn't be moving for some time. He replaced the two kunai and gathered up some more paper bombs, then felt around in their pockets for anything useful. Oddly enough he found a sizable chunk of money in pale-eyes' pocket, a resource he hadn't found on any of the others, and which he took for himself also. He left the trapdoor and the front door open, just in case someone came looking for them.
That made six ANBU he'd taken out now. Counting Tsubaki and Itachi, who had yet to attack him, there had been eleven. That meant he was halfway done. He took out his sizable stack of paper bombs and began counting, already working on his next plan.
Author's Note: Oooh, what is our clever little Naruto-kun planning next, hun? Read, review, find out! I take great pride in the fact that I came up with this trap all by myself. Hehe, I'm evil.