Danzo spent a relatively pleasant lunch hour skimming reports while eating a rather nice salad that had been made from vegetables from the Kyuubi Jinchuriki's garden after they had been thoroughly tested. The operative he had watching the young Uzumaki's residence had managed to snag the last of the lettuce while two rather elderly Uchiha were engaged in a fight to the death over it. Considering the ongoing feud between their respective lines that was quite legendary within the Uchiha Clan, this wasn't entirely shocking. While the young Uzumaki usually seemed to have inherited his personality entirely from his mother, bits of what he had inherited from his father would occasionally crop up unexpectedly to prove this untrue, such as the fact that the boy possessed his paternal grandfather's gardening skills.

If only the boy had his mother's cooking skills as well. There had been a reason that the Yondaime's favorite food was anything Kushina had cooked. The woman was such an excellent cook that she could probably get someone to happily eat poison if she prepared it. As the Yondaime had once said, Kushina could do things with a rabbit and some herbs that would make other rabbits want to commit acts of cannibalism. While his operatives generally couldn't get too close to the Uzumaki's residence unless there was a serious distraction like the Uchiha descending upon the boy's rooftop had been, observation through the windows had indicated that the boy possessed little to no aptitude in the area of cooking whatsoever.

Perhaps it was a lack of resources. One couldn't learn a skill properly if one didn't have the necessary tools, and considering the Jinchuriki's living situation, it was practically a given that he lacked the proper tools.

With that in mind, Danzo wrote out a list and called for one of his operatives who was familiar with such things.

"Purchase these and make sure they get to the Uzumaki boy." he ordered as he handed over the list and some money. Even when the day he had control of the village's weapon came, the boy wouldn't be on missions 24/7, and this would make him useful during his downtime as well.

&!&!&

Kakashi sat in one of his favorite trees contemplating the matter of Naruto's friend. There were two things about the situation that had seriously disturbed him, the first being the fact that the elderly ninja who was quite possibly an exceedingly elderly missing-nin had been in Naruto's apartment for an unknown purpose - he refused to believe that it was to tell Naruto he was his friend, as Naruto believed - and the second was the fact that the man had ended up in the hospital with three broken ribs and a collapsed lung after he'd "made a strange popping noise" when Naruto had hugged him.

Kakashi had questioned Naruto immediately after they had left the hospital, and quickly learned that Naruto hadn't knocked his "Bestest friend in the whole wide world" down a flight of stairs accidentally or otherwise. The truth was far, far more disturbing. Apparently, the man had shown up in the middle of the night - according to Naruto, the "Invisible person who lived in his underwear" (who was apparently Naruto's imaginary friend, which was in and of itself unusual since the boy hadn't been inclined to create one before) had told him that the old man had come to give him a gift - and had vanished shortly after making a "strange popping sound" while Naruto had been giving him a hug. While further interrogation revealed that the man didn't touch Naruto inappropriately or ask Naruto to touch him inappropriately, it had also revealed that the man hadn't really been there long enough to do so, which meant that that possible motive for the man's visit couldn't entirely be ruled out.

A quick check had confirmed that the popping noise the man had made while Naruto had been hugging him hadn't been that of a shadow clone dispelling. And, hadn't that been disturbing.

&!&!&

When Naruto came home from visiting the hospital again - when the nurse wouldn't allow him to visit Madara's room, he took the "Invisible Underpants Man" (as Naruto had dubbed the Kyuubi)'s advice and sat outside Madara's window for a few hours so his friend "would know that he was there for him" - he found that someone had left alot of presents for him in his kitchen. On top of a massive pile of boxes that contained a wide variety of cookware and utensils was a pile of books on cooking which included a few how to manuals, and a bunch of cookbooks ranging from the "Shinobi's field cooking guide" to some of the more exotic gourmet ones. All of them were above Naruto's current reading level.

The Kyuubi - who had healed injuries related to the fifteen times Naruto had burned rice while trying to cook it and knew that the kid had inherited his father's cooking skills rather than Kushina's (who had only burned the rice twice in her lifetime) - laughed at the sight of this, and at the boy's naive assumption that Madara had sent the cooking supplies. The Kyuubi had a sneaking suspicion that one of the wealthier Uchiha had remembered Kushina's cooking skills and had decided that he or she was going to make Naruto their personal chef after they "Took care of the stairs problem".

Seeing that bastard Madara laid up in the hospital was amusing. Hearing him go nuts because he could feel the brat's presence, but couldn't see him since the curtains had been drawn had been downright laugh-worthy. He was finding "human style" revenge to be refreshingly entertaining. Normally when he wanted revenge on something it was: scream, snap, crunch, and done, whether it be a small furry animal or a major metropolis. Humans however, humans drew it out to such a length that even the most sadistic of cats were jealous of how the nearly furless creatures toyed with their prey.

The vague cravings he'd had for inarizushi - which he found rather incomprehensible since he normally couldn't care less about human food - when he was under Madara's control gave him an idea.

"Hey Brat." the Kyuubi said to get his jailer's attention.

"What?" Naruto asked, not even looking up from the full color picture in one of the new cookbooks.

"Friends often cook for each-other to show how much they care." the Kyuubi said, barely holding in an evil laugh.

&!&!&

As Madara was about to zonk out once again from the drugs he'd been given, a nurse walked in holding a box.

The nurse had only delivered the box because she was curious about what the Fox Brat would give to the mystery patient who had apparently forgotten why casting Genjutsu while under the influence of painkillers - or any form of drug for that matter - was a bad idea. The results of trying to look at this particular patient were...interesting to say the least. Nakamura - or rather Uchiha as at least two of the doctors had surmised based his bone structure and his ability to hold up the Genjutsu while only half conscious - Tobi was shaping up to be the most "Interesting" patient the hospital had had in a long time.

The box which bore a tag that said "To: my bestest friend in the whole wide world, From: Naruto", turned out to contain several burned objects that were barely recognizable as possibly being food. Madara prodded at the blackened lumps inside the box. They had an unusually rubbery texture, and now that he thought about it, they smelled kinda familiar under the stench of scorched food. It was with dawning horror that he realized exactly what they were.

They were absolute sacrilege, and considering the recipe, shouldn't even be possible.

There was inarizushi, and there were these things that didn't belong anywhere near the same thought as that heavenly dish.

The nurse left her patient moaning over the "desecration" of his "precious" inarizushi. Apparently, the Fox had tried to cook for the man and had epically failed. When she got back to the nurses' station, she had a laugh with her coworkers over the irony of the Fox Brat giving someone inarizushi.