Naruto groaned as he awoke to complete darkness. He was shut in a closet which was located somewhere that smelled like the Academy except for the fact that the Academy didn't use Ironwood scented floor cleaner. There was also someone in here with him that smelled like diseased trees and old people.

Why did this situation seem so familiar?

Little Naruto whimpered as he awoke to complete darkness. There was a groan nearby. He wasn't alone. One of the big mean people was in here with him...

Naruto groaned as he awoke to complete darkness. As his foot moved, it found the leg of another person. He waited for the other shoe to drop knowing that the guys in the animal masks had finally gotten fed up with all of his pranks, and that whatever retaliation they had planned for him right now was most definitely not good...

Naruto groaned as he awoke to complete darkness. He could hear someone else breathing in the dark. He wasn't alone. Something about this situation seemed familiar for some reason. Maybe he'd pranked the guys in the animal masks one too many times again...

Naruto groaned as he awoke to complete darkness. He seemed to be crammed into a small utility closet with someone else, and that someone smelled like old people. His head hurt, his mouth was dry, and the last thing he remembered was Shizune with a dart gun. Maybe he should quit calling the Hokage "Baachan". Nah...

"Hey Geezer, get your foot off my leg!" Naruto yelled.

It was a small closet, and no matter how he moved, if the freaky old person he was trapped with didn't shift position, he'd be touching it. He so didn't want to be touching an old person who smelled like a sick tree right now.

"Why does this situation seem so familiar?" said a voice he barely recognized.

He couldn't quite place the voice but, he was reasonably certain that it belonged to one of those old farts who used to hang around the Old Man and later Tsunade-baachan. He hoped and prayed it was old dude with the glasses.

"Not an effing clue." he replied scooting as far away from the old man as he could before he got a bright idea.

Whoever had trapped him in here was quite likely either stronger or smarter than he was or both considering the fact that they'd been able to capture him. If that was the case, then they would be able to keep him trapped in here for as long as they pleased. But, it was possible that the old guy he was trapped with knew some long-forgotten ninja tricks they didn't teach anymore since the old people who hung around the Old Man used to be his teammates or something. Maybe, the old guy who was either that guy with the glasses or that asshat Danzo could get them out of this.

"You used to be a ninja right?" he asked, getting straight to the point and hoping the old guy knew something that would get them out of here.

"No used to be about it boy, I still am." said the person with whom he was trapped.

"So, you've been a ninja for what, fifty years?" he asked.

"Closer to sixty." the old person replied.

"Good. Then you can get us out of this." he said.

An exasperated sigh came from the direction in which the old man was located.

"Move over boy." the old man said as he shifted towards where the door was located.

He moved over, and the old guy started fiddling with the door handle which appeared to be completely intact. After what seemed like an eternity of swearing in which he learned several new ways to question someone's sanity, paternity, maternity, sexual preferences, the sexual preferences of that person's mother, father, sister, brother, and family dog, and how to do so in at least three languages, the old guy ordered him to move over again and sat down next to him. It was at that point that he noticed that the arm closest to him was in a sling.

Fucking great. He'd been trapped in a closet with Danzo.

"So, where's Naruto?" Kakashi asked when he met up with the guys for drinks at Jiraiya's apartment.

"Tenzo locked him in a closet with Danzo somewhere." Jiraiya replied off-handedly.

"Like that hasn't been tried a half dozen times." Kakashi snorted as he downed the first sake of the evening.

"It has?" Tenzo asked as he pulled his ochoko towards him.

"Yeah. There was that time when Naruto was two, and the Sandaime decided that the best way to get Danzo to stop asking to turn the boy into a weapon was to have him spend more than two seconds in his presence, which was something Danzo wouldn't willingly do." Kakashi said.

"Then there was the time when Naruto was six when the Hokage tried again." Kakashi continued.

"There was also that time the ANBU locked Naruto in a closet with the closest thing we could find to "Creepiest old guy" in the village after he broke into T&I headquarters, sprayed silly string everywhere, and freed three high value prisoners when he was nine. We couldn't use the real "Creepiest old guy" in the village since the Hokage would have had our heads for putting Naruto in a closet with a suspected child molester." Kakashi finished before he refilled his ochoko.

"There was also that one time Tsunade got desperate, and hoped that Naruto would work his special magic on the man and make him easier to deal with. The guy repented for all of two minutes before he was back to his old tricks again." Jiraiya said before taking a sip of his drink.

Had Fu or Torune had any emotions, they would have been screaming in frustration over all of the work that was ahead of them. They had hacked away all of the tree branches that had blocked access to the hallway in which one of the Ninja Academy's numerous supply closets was located, and learned that they had arrived too late once again.

"And then he volunteered to die while I was working up the nerve..." Danzo-sama said as he was spilling his entire life's story to the boy who had been trapped in the closet with the man.

Torune had been quite young when he had first encountered the Uzumaki boy's unique abilities. He had come to the rescue of Danzo-sama who'd been sealed in a utility closet in the Administration Complex ten years ago only to find the man sobbing into the hair of a small toddler and vowing to raise the boy as his own child. Since that incident, certain protocols had been put in place. Protocols that would be going into effect now.

"The chamber has been prepared." Fu said when he received confirmation from one of the other Root operatives.

Upon receiving that confirmation from Fu, Torune released several Kikaichu whose venom had sedative properties rather than poisonous ones. It had taken over a month for Danzo-sama to return to normal the last time this had happened, and that had been after they had been forced to implement a memory wipe. There had been a large number of consequences that had resulted from this extended recovery, and some of the recruits from that period were slightly...off.

Elsewhere in the village, Shin sneezed as he made his way on his self appointed mission to acquire a teddy bear for his little brother despite the fact that the other boy was too old for such things.

Edited 11-4-12