--: Chapter 08 – The Plan :--
"Okay baa-chan, why did you call the ANBU to pick me up so 'stealthily'. " Naruto stormed in, yelling at Tsunade in a sarcastic way, "I think taking the front door would have had a better effect if you didn't want Sasuke to know I had to come to yours."
"I just told them to pick you up…" Tsunade mused, looking at the door opening where the two ANBU members were standing, "What did they do?"
"Sasuke and I were in the kitchen, Sasuke was cooking dinner, they jumped through the kitchen window oh so stealthily and grabbed me like they were kidnapping me." Naruto glared at the ANBU members, who were laughing nervously in the door opening, changing their looks between Tsunade, and Naruto.
A vein on Tsunade's forehead began to show, as that was the sign of she was getting mad, furious to be exact. She stood up from her chair, "THEY DID WHAT?!!!"
"They wanted to fetch me like you had ordered, so they figured that breaking a window was necessary for the mission." Naruto crossed his arms, turning around to the two ANBU men with a scowl on his face. "Besides, they were interrupting dinner time!"
"L-like you said, lady Ts-tsunade, we needed to be stealthy!" The ANBU tried to explain, obviously scared of the Goidaime, who was now in full anger mode.
"Stealthy?! By breaking a window?! What kind of logic is that! Glass makes a sound when it breaks and hits the floor if you didn't notice?! Didn't you at least get that at the Ninja Academy." Tsunade slammed her office with open hands as she stood up from her chair.
"Now, lady Tsunade, that's an unfair remark to make, since the year we had physics, Phil and I were both sick at home with glandular fever." One of the ANBU members said, the other, Phil, nodding in agreement.
"…" Tsunade shook her head, her hand coming up to her face to pinch her nose, "Whatever, just… leave, please…"
"But we…" one of the ANBU members started.
"I SAID LEAVE!" Tsunade exploded, the vein on her forehead beginning to show, showing that her patience had come to an end.
The ANBU member talking stilled his tongue immediately before both backed out slowly, closing the door behind them.
"You need to do some reorganisation in your elites, baa-chan, your men are a bunch of idiots." Naruto shook his head, looking up at Tsunade with a questioning look, "What were you thinking when you appointed them to be your new elites."
Tsunade sighed, "To tell you the truth gacky, I actually don't know anymore." She said as she sat down behind her desk, "But none of that matters right now. What I've called you here for is alarming, and has to be kept a secret from Sasuke, or actually as we call him now, 'Sasuke'." Tsunade made the gesture of two inverted commas with her fingers.
"Why is it 'Sasuke' now? What happened?" Naruto asked, narrowing his eyes as if suspecting something.
"I will show you, come with me to the basement. We have to keep him there, in order to keep him a secret." Tsunade pointed out, standing up she walked to the door and opened it, holding it she turned to Naruto, "Well come on."
Naruto walked out of the office, waiting outside for Tsunade to close the door. Doing so, Tsunade walked down the corridor, "This way." Beckoning Naruto to follow her, which he started doing not too long afterwards.
Naruto noticed that they went to a part of the Hokage Tower where he'd never been before. Suddenly stopping, the female Hokage turned to the wall to the left of them. Tapping it a few times in different places with a finger where a bit of her chakra was flowing out, the wall opened just like those bookcases Naruto had seen in a few of those clichéd spy films.
"Baa-chan where are we-"
-"Shh! Shut up gacky and just follow me." Tsunade hissed, putting a hand in front of his mouth, "And if you have to speak, do it quietly, you never know who's still in this building."
That said she passed through the now open secret pass way, before waiting inside for Naruto to follow her.
As Naruto walked into the secret pass way he heard the door close behind him, as all became dark. "Baa-chan, I can't see." He whispered, feeling around to orientate himself in the darkness. A sudden flash of light blinded his eyes as Tsunade flipped the lightswitch.
Speechless, They continued their journey. At the end of the hallway, a spiral stairway downwards was situated. With a hand gesture, Tsunade beckoned Naruto to once again follow her, as she went down the staircase.
After 10 minutes of nothing but walking down stairs, they reached the very basements of the tower. In the dark, Naruto could see a single door at the opposite side of the corridor. As both he and Tsunade walked towards it, Tsunade got out a key, of which Naruto guessed it was probably for the door right in front of them.
Putting the key in the keyhole Tsunade opened the door to the basement of the tower. "What you'll see now is probably going to shock and confuse you…" Walking in, she tucked the key to the basement safely within her pocket.
Naruto squinted his eyes to see in the darkness. With some effort he could see a bed, and someone was lying in it. "Well congratulations baa-chan, it's someone lying in a bed… I'm so shocked."
"It's not just somebody…" Tsunade had trouble not hitting Naruto for his commentary, but instead she switched on the light in the room.
Naruto was finally able to look closely at the person lying in the bed. Black semi-long hair, pale skin… "What the… Sasuke?!" Naruto's jaw almost dropped to the floor, "But I… he… what is going on here?!"
"Clearly, the Sasuke who's making dinner in your house right now, is an imposter." Tsunade walked over to the bed, "I think it's the plan of the Akatsuki to get close to you without any of us noticing."
"But… how do you know this one isn't the imposter?!" Naruto screamed, switching gazes between Tsunade and 'Sasuke' every five seconds.
"Think about it gacky, Sasuke gets abducted by the Akatsuki and later on appears not a scratch on his person, and in denial about what happened. His chakra flow is not following the pattern of a human being and later on we find yet another Sasuke in the forest, too weak to take care of himself, and probably left there to die. The only reason it didn't happen is because Genma and Raidou happened to pass by that particular place and found him." Tsunade explained her eye twitching with disgust, "Secondly, ever since 'Sasuke' returned you haven't been feeling well. Sorry to have my suspicions about that."
Naruto opened his mouth to say something back, before shutting it again and looking at the ground. Tsunade was right, ever since Sasuke had returned to the village, strange things had been occurring. Naruto himself hadn't been feeling too well, and… now that he thought of it, ever since Sasuke had come back to the village, they hadn't had sex even once, while Sasuke had always needed that on a daily basis before the kidnapping happened.
Tsunade sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in the process. "But even so, we have to keep him here for observation, and you mustn't let the imposter know we know he's an imposter, else the Akatsuki will know that we know."
"Okay getting a headache here baa-chan, be clear about what you want me to do." Naruto complained, getting confused about the number of times Tsunade used know in her sentence.
"Oh it's simple really…" Tsunade said dryly, "you have to behave as normal as possible around 'Sasuke'." She made apostrophe gestures with her hand when she mentioned Sasuke's name, "And I do mean normal, so even to have sex with him if you have to."
"What?!" Naruto exclaimed so loudly, that Tsunade had to cover her ears for a short while, "I'm not going to have sex with him! Then I would be cheating on Sasuke!"
"So what? Didn't you and 'Sasuke' have sex before you even knew this was going on?" Tsunade yelled back, the vein on her forehead once again beginning to show.
Naruto thought about it for a while, "You know, actually we didn't… I've done my approaches, but Sasuke never wanted to have sex… of which I thought of course it was weird since the Sasuke I knew never turned down sex. But I thought it just had to do with the abduction thing, and that he wanted to take things slowly. I should have immediately thought something was wrong."
Tsunade watched as Naruto sat down on the bed next to Sasuke, and felt a pang of guilt spread in her stomach area, making her guts twist and turn in discomfort. "You know Naruto, I'm sorry, that comment was below the belt…"
-"Nah, it's okay." Naruto looked up at the ceiling, "Nothing never really happened, so I guess it's okay. I'll just have to try and avoid it as much as possible, which I of course, have my strange illness as excuse for."
"Yes, which I was meaning to ask you Naruto, have you seen any kind of toxic or poison lying around the house?" Tsunade sat down on the chair next to the bed, crossing her legs.
Naruto thought for a while before shaking his head, "No, not really. But I don't think he's poisoning me really, I mean, why would I still walk this earth after he has been poisoning me for months, and why isn't he just going for a poison that would, like, instantly kill me… it just doesn't make sense."
"Yes I know, and the strangest thing is, we haven't found any toxicants in your blood sample nor did we find any bacteria of some sort. We did find a raise in quantity in bodily chemicals, but that's nothing to be afraid of." Tsunade sighed, stroking her hand through her hair, "I just can't think of something that could have made you this ill."
A soft knock could be heard from the door, making Tsunade stand up so fast, her chair fell over backwards, "Who's there?!"
"It's me…" Came a familiar voice from the other side of the door, "Neji Hyuuga. I've come to give you Sasuke's examination results, Lady Tsunade."
Tsunade opened the door letting Neji in, "So, what do the results say?"
Neji got in, bowed to Tsunade before taking a scroll out of his pocket, "We did find some strange things. First of all, it's like his memory has been altered, crucial parts of it have been taken out to avoid him from waking up."
Naruto's eyes widened in shock, "So, he'll never wake up?"
Neji scowled at Naruto, "Baka Naruto! I hadn't finished yet." He turned his focus to Tsunade again, "As I said, crucial parts have been taken out to avoid him from waking up, though, this will only be temporarily, his brain is already filling up the holes it left by itself. No, what I am more concerned about is the other alternation we found in his memory, an addition this time."
Tsunade's eyes narrowed to tiny slits, "An addition? Of what sort? Have you figured out yet what it says, and what effect it will have on Sasuke?"
Neji shook his head, "Sadly I can't say anything about it yet, Lady Tsunade. The addition seems to be existing of some code. We have concluded that it's binary script, which is used for computers, my question then is, what is it doing there, assuming this Sasuke is the real Sasuke, and not some kind of computer."
"Maybe they just hoped it would work?" Naruto offered, scratching the back of his head with his hand.
Tsunade sighed and shook her head, "Baka Gacky, We're talking about Akatsuki here, and probably Uchiha Itachi in particular, he doesn't just 'hope' for something to go right."
"No, no he does not." Neji simply concluded, flipping a page in the resultdocument, "We have copied the code for further investigation, it's written down here…"
Naruto – quick as a flash – grabbed the documents out of Neji's hands, receiving a small grunt from the Hyuuga, "Shut your trap, Hyuuga." He yelled, before focussing on the document to read the code.
0100101101101001011011000110110000100000010011100110000101110010011101010111010001101111
"But, these are just a bunch of numbers, only ones and zeros to be exact." Naruto stated, giving Tsunade and Neji a look like they were total idiots, "I don't see why you are so worried about this."
Tsunade hit her forehead with the palm of her hand, "Baka! It's not the ones and the zeros that worry us, it's the message within!"
-"Message within? What do you mean, am I supposed to see a figure in it or something?"
Tsunade sighed and dropped her shoulders, "No you idiot, if you combine these numbers, then they should, with some complicated calculations, form letters."
"It's just that, those calculations take time, so I haven't gotten the results in yet." Neji added, a slight nervous twitch beginning to act up at his left eye.
"Well, I suggest you be on your way to get the results in as soon as possible." Tsunade said strictly, before turning to Naruto, "As for you, I think it's time to go home, before your 'lover' gets suspicious and start looking for you, you've been gone for quite a long time now."
Naruto sighed, "You're probably right." Turning towards the bed where Sasuke was lying, he gave his lover a kiss on his forehead, "You wake up soon okay, Teme."
Tsunade opened the door and the three of them got to the Hokage office again, "Well, you best be on your way gacky, I have work to do."
"Oh yes, certainly baa-chan, but before we all forget…" Naruto turned towards Tsunade with a huge grin on his face, "I still expect that window to get fixed." Then, he ran away.
"What?! Oi, gacky kuso!"
"So, what was it that Tsunade-sama had to discuss with you?" Sasuke asked as Naruto entered the kitchen.
Naruto sat down at the kitchen table, his usual trademark grin tugged his features, "Oh, nothing, really…"
T.B.C.
A/N:
Me: No, T.B.C. does not stand for tuberculosis, it stands for to be continued…
Naruto: Why don't you put T.B.C.O.W.G.H.A.T. down then?
Me: … what's that supposed to mean?
Naruto: To be continued once writer gets her act together…
Me: what?! °tries to kill Naruto°
--- We're experiencing some technical difficulties, please stand by ---
Roxas: °munches°
Me: okay, and we're back, this time with a new guest! Moving on, if somebody can guess what the code means, he or she gets a cookie!
Roxas: o.o °still munches°
Me: I just gave the cookie to Roxas to hold on to it and… °sees Roxas munching° … Roxas… where's the cookie?
Roxas: o.o what cookie °swallows°
Me: °sighs° fine, no cookie, just stay tuned…