Sasuke stared at the small frightened rabbit in his arms in confusion and bewilderment as he wasn't entirely sure what he should be doing or feeling about it at the moment. A few seconds ago, Naruto had handed it to him, entrusting him with its care. After the incident with the ant farm when he was three, nobody in his family had trusted him with anything that was still alive and quite a few things that weren't, and here Naruto was trusting him to take care of his brand new pet rabbit. He honestly didn't know whether to be honored that Naruto had actually trusted him to take care of his pet, or pissed that Naruto had dumped it on him in order to go chase a squirrel.
"HereSasukewatchmyrabbit. OoohSquirrel!" Naruto had said as he dumped the small white creature into his arms before he could object and raced off into the woods in a seemingly random direction.
After his teammate had run off, Hatake-sensei had stared after Naruto for a couple seconds before he summoned a small pug that was dressed in blue and carrying a leash and collar in its mouth.
"Find Naruto Pakkun, find Naruto." Hatake-sensei said to the blue clad dog.
Rather than follow the orders it had been given, the dog chose to stare at its surroundings instead. When the small pug's eyes landed on him, they widened in shock. The dog had then bristled and growled a bit before turning back to its master.
"Kakashi, are you out of your freakin' mind?" the pug named Pakkun said as he whirled to face his owner? summoner?
"Just find Naruto, Pakkun." Hatake-sensei said, starting to sound impatient.
"But, Naruto's..." Pakkun whined, shaking as a look of grief crossed its doggy face.
"I said, FIND NARUTO!" Hatake-sensei yelled, having finally lost his patience.
"Okay, okay. I'm going, I'll find Naruto." the dog said as it started making a show of sniffing the ground, clearly humoring Hatake-sensei.
As the dog drew near him, it looked like it was going to faint from shock. It sniffed around him a bit, and moved up his leg to sniff Naruto's new rabbit, which he pulled away in case the dog decided to hurt it. As it did so, the expression on its face turned to doggy disbelief.
"Holy Shit!" the dog said. "Kakashi, you didn't! I knew you were really broken up about what happ..."
"Don't sit there talking, FIND NARUTO!" Hatake-sensei yelled at the dog who then shot off in the direction Naruto had run about a minute earlier as if the hounds of hell were on his heels.
As soon as the dog was gone, Hatake-sensei turned to him, and glared down at him.
"Sasuke, if anything happens to Naruto's new pet, I can assure you that you will suffer." Hatake-sensei said before he shot off after the dog.
Bright! Bright! Leaf! Bright! Tree! Bright! Oooh squirrel! Bright! Eeew spider! Bright! Pakkun! Pakkun! Pakkun! Kakashi-sensei! Huh, leash? Bright! Pretty bird! Owww! Acorns! Owww! Badger! Owww!
"Kakashi, you do realize that raising the dead is illegal for a reason don't you?" Pakkun said, looking pointedly at Naruto who was straining against his leash.
Kakashi stared at the dog while yanking Naruto away from an oak tree that he had found immensely interesting for some strange reason, as Pakkun hadn't behaved this way the last time he'd summoned him and given him the task of finding Naruto, and he couldn't figure out why he was doing so now. He felt slightly guilty about putting Naruto on a leash but, he knew that if he didn't use it there was a good chance that Naruto would wander off somewhere if he let him go for even an instant, and he'd be nearly impossible to get back when he did.
"Can we talk about this later Pakkun, like when Naruto's not trying to tear my arm off so he could go look at whatever it is that's caught his interest this time?" he said somewhat sarcastically.
He really didn't have the time to wonder why Pakkun was behaving this way when he hadn't been objecting the last time he'd summoned the dog to find Naruto. Somehow, he knew that the answers to his questions would end up giving him a massive headache, which he definitely did not need on top of the one he was going to get dealing with Naruto while he was in this state.
He would be talking with Pakkun later however, as he was curious as to how Pakkun knew about Naruto's death, since he didn't remember bringing his Dog Summons back with him, and nobody else seemed to notice that the clock had been turned back by a good two years. Pakkun's delayed reaction to said time travel was also an item of interest. Now was not a good time to ask though. Now was most definitely not a good time.
Yanking the leash once more to keep Naruto away from a rabid looking fox, he headed back to the road where his team was waiting for him to return with the boy.
Tenzo approached Kakashi-sempai's team wondering what he'd say to the man by way of an explanation as to why he had been following them. There was also a good chance that he wouldn't be given a chance to explain because his former captain wasn't over whatever it was that had caused him to glare at him like that when he gave Naruto the First Hokage's necklace. When he arrived at the place where the team had finally stopped for some reason, he noticed that both Naruto and Kakashi-sempai were absent.
"Hello." he said smiling and showing the pair of Genin who were guarding the client the universal sign that signified that he wasn't a threat. "You wouldn't happen to know where Kakashi-sempai is would you?"
"Naruto went like psycho or something, and ran off. Kakashi-sensei went after him." a very young looking Sakura said, sounding annoyed.
"Aw, crap." he groaned.
His hopes that he wasn't too late had apparently been dashed despite the fact that it was a week too soon. According to the report he'd read, Naruto hadn't started using the fox's powers until a week from now but, something had obviously changed to push that timetable up a bit. Hadn't there been a skirmish with the missing-nin they had battled on Tazuna's bridge today? He couldn't be too sure of that since he hadn't seen any signs of battle as he approached, and neither of the Genin looked any more exhausted than their journey could explain.
While he was trying to decide whether to go and search for Kakashi-sempai in order to help him bring Naruto under control or stay and hope Kakashi-sempai had things under control since Naruto couldn't even release a single tail of the fox's power yet and he didn't know where they could be in the first place, Kakashi-sempai returned dragging Naruto on a leash. At the moment, Naruto didn't have red eyes, fangs, claws, or changed whisker markings, which indicated Kyuubi possession, so Kakashi-sempai had apparently been able to subdue the boy on his own somehow.
Despite the fact that he looked completely normal, there was something off about the boy however. Something he couldn't quite place...
"What's up with him?" he asked gesturing at Naruto who was making a break for the nearby lake.
"I forgot his meds." Kakashi-sempai said in that annoyingly casual tone of his as he yanked the boy back.
"You forgot his meds?" he said, stunned.
The one thing Jiraiya had made clear was that you never ever let Naruto go off his medication for any reason whatsoever. Jiraiya had made the mistake once and had to pay out about a million in damages to the inn they had been staying at at the time, and about another million to the town because of the destruction Naruto had caused when he'd gotten loose. On his medication, Naruto was merely hyper, rather inattentive, and somewhat impulsive. Off it, Naruto was a whirlwind of unfocused chaos and destruction that moved faster than humanly possible and literally bounced off the walls. Because of this, he had always made sure to bring at least three backup bottles of Naruto's medication on missions in case one or more were destroyed in a fight.
"You forgot his meds?" he repeated, unable to process the act of stupidity that Kakashi-sempai had committed.
The First Hokage's necklace wouldn't be able to fix this. The only thing that could be done was to get to the nearest pharmacy ASAP. But, the nearest pharmacy was most likely at least several miles away however, and the leash Kakashi had Naruto on looked rather flimsy.
If Naruto got loose, there was no telling when they would get him back or how much chaos and destruction he would cause in the meantime. Jiraiya had been forced to chase the boy for three days straight, and had only caught him because he'd lucked out and ran into Naruto during one of his infrequent one-minute naps. Jiraiya was Kage level easy, and he and Kakashi-sempai couldn't say the same about themselves. Kakashi had only caught Naruto this time because he was still a little slow. Who knew how hard it would be to catch the boy in a few hours?
"Yes, I believe that we've already established that." Kakashi-sempai said tersely as he pulled Naruto away from a bush.
As Naruto did his utmost to escape, Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura stared at them openmouthed during the conversation. The Uchiha boy was holding onto a white rabbit for some strange reason, and didn't seem to notice that it was eating his shirt. The old man that they were guarding didn't really look nearly as surprised as Naruto's teammates however. In fact, he looked torn between amused and wanting to be as far away from here as he could be.
"Why were you following us?" Kakashi asked Tenzo as the group got back on the road again.
"No particular reason. I still had a few weeks of vacation left, and decided that I wouldn't mind seeing wherever it is you were going." Tenzo replied, trying to sound casual.
"And, this isn't in any way related to that necklace you gave Naruto?" he asked glaring at his former subordinate who started slightly at this but otherwise remained impassive.
'Were you hoping that whatever "curse" was supposedly on it would cause him to drop dead, and that you'd be there to see it?" he asked when he didn't get an immediate reply.
"Curse? Oh, you mean that thing with The Ho- ... erm, Tsunade's younger brother and fiancee? I'd completely forgotten about that. I only gave it to him because the First Hokage did something to it which will enable me to erm, deal with Naruto's furry little problem if it ever gets out of hand." Tenzo said sounding slightly embarrassed.
"Furry little problem?" he asked, slightly amused at how his former subordinate had gotten around breaking the Hokage's law.
Moments before, he'd been prepared to kill Tenzo who'd been something approaching a friend to him during his days in ANBU for giving Naruto that accursed necklace, and he probably would have already gone after the man if he didn't have to hold Naruto's leash since, if he handed the boy over to one of the others, he'd be long gone before you could say "Get back here!". If there was another reason for giving Naruto that necklace that he'd been unable to get off of the boy so far because the child had been carefully guarding it every time he tried, he'd be willing to hear it and, if it was good enough, he might consider sparing Tenzo.
"I'll explain it better when we're away from prying ears and overly enquiring minds." Tenzo said gesturing to the pair of Genin and Tazuna who quickly tried to look innocent.
Naruto however, was completely oblivious to the situation and was scratching his head with his foot like a dog.
"Fine, whatever. We've got to get to the pharmacy before it closes." he said to Tenzo, making it clear that he would be dealing with the man later.
Edited 11-3-12