Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto and never will. No money is/ever will be made off of this story.
CHAPTER ONE
Shikamaru sighed as his rare feelings of annoyance presented itself toward the blonde. His hands felt a bit tender from the sudden impact with the ground and the unexpected weight of his whole body mass being put upon the straining muscles in his arms to keep his body from crushing the blonde underneath him. It was just his luck that Naruto couldn't be normal and had to try to sneak a peek inside the manor's window; which landed them on an old unstable grate that caved in under their combined weight. One would think that peeking into a window wouldn't be so troublesome.
"Knew this would be a real drag…"
A soft grunt sounded from the smaller teen at hearing that comment along with some shifting that made Shikamaru's right hand slid out from under him when one of Naruto's elbows bumped into said arm; the action making Shikamaru land fully atop the blonde with a heavy groan and a mumbled breathy curse from Naruto.
The two laid there in silence as the pain in their limbs dulled out. It had been quite the fall and not just a few short feet either. The landing had thankfully been on soft warn out wood that gave their bodies a bit of a bounce back from the sudden fall in.
"Shika…"
A drawled hum sounded from the lazy teen.
"Please move."
It took a moment for the request to filter through as something that wasn't to be tuned out by the lazy boy. "What?"
Naruto thanked the near complete lack of lighting as his cheeks suddenly heated up a bit with a blush once he realized what he had said and their current body placement. The blonde had the sudden temptation to bury his face against Shikamaru's neck which was directly by his face. He swallowed and clarified what he had meant. "I mean, can you get off of me; you're more than kinda squishing me here."
Shikamaru took a moment, his body now feeling the soreness of the impact after being forced to move, before he rolled off the blonde and onto his back. He blinked at the broken whole above them that showed off the night sky. The whole that their combined body weights made left a few broken plates of grate in place. Lowering his gaze, Shikamaru assessed that they had fallen into what seemed to be a cellar; or at least it felt like one and the location seemed correct enough to him it to be one.
"Troublesome."
"Yeah, yeah, let's just get out of here." Naruto stood up, dusting himself off.
Shikamaru soon joined him in standing up. The pair looked around for an exit route since getting out the way they came in wasn't an option.
It took them a full five minutes or rather Naruto five minutes to trip over the bottom step of stairs that lead to a rusty door upstairs. The two of them had to ram against the door twice before it gave and swung open with a gust of dusty wind. Just as they were about to step through the door a male's warning shout was yelled at them.
"Hold it the fuck right there and don't move!"
"You don't have to be so rude." came a female's annoyed voice.
"What!? They could be mur-
Naruto blinked when his brain instantly recognized the male's voice as; "Kiba?"
"Err…Naruto?"
"What a drag." Shikamaru mumbled.
However it seemed the lazy teen's comment was heard since his name was exclaimed by Kiba and another female. One he knew very well since they grew up together due to their fathers being best friends. "Kiba, Ino."
"That's the kind of greeting I get, Nara?" Ino huffed as she settled her hands upon her hips.
Shikamaru just shrugged before making his way deeper into the room, joining the others with Naruto following beside him; that is until the blonde stopped and turned their head toward the open archway directly across from the double doors that Shikamaru figured led to the front of the house and outside.
"What do you hear now?"
Naruto shot the older teen a mild glare having easily picked up on the jibe. "There's footstep heading this way."
"Oh! That must be Sakura and Tenten, I think I heard them saying they wanted to use the bathroom and Lee must of went with them so -"
"I think they get it, Ino." Kiba cut in.
Ino opened her mouth to toss an insult at the dog-lover but Sakura's voice sounded out instead of hers, making the pale blonde blink and look away from Kiba to the archway a few feet to her left.
"HEY INO GUESS WHO WE RAN INTO!?"
Ino could see the outline of five people coming toward them. Three were a given but the other two made her body tense up just in case, then again she figured if Sakura was shouting like that then there was no trouble; the three boys with female blonde thinking along the same lines.
"Who was unlucky enough to run into you, fore-head?"
There was a huff followed by a soft giggle from another female. Finally, Sakura and Tenten stepped through, the pink haired girl with an annoyed expression upon her face and the brunet with an amused one. Lee followed from behind the two girls and two other boys followed up behind him.
"Uchiha..." Naruto's voice hissed with a bit of a growl.
"And Hyuga Neji…" Kiba's voice sounded right after. His voice had taken on a mildly tense tone at the sight of the Hyuga boy. After all, he was dating the Hyuga's cousin, Hinata, and Neji was known to hate the girl and her father with an icy rage.
-30 mins or so later-
"…and doors wouldn't open when we attempted to force them. So we looked for another one that would and that is when we came across Lee." Sasuke explained coolly; Neji giving no input while Lee gave a confirmed nod to the last bit.
"I see." Shikamaru said before another question was expressed. "Did you find another way out?"
Sasuke shook his head in negative.
"Wait-wait, are you telling me that we're all really stuck in this place?" Kiba shouted after a final and failed attempt to slam the doors open with the side of his body.
"I thought all the boarded or locked doors and windows already answered that question." Ino stated with a toss of her hair. Her tone was a bit off from the growing worry that was building but only Sakura and Lee had picked up on it.
Shikamaru sighed; this was becoming even more troublesome.
"Who asked you to answer?" Kiba snapped back at the pale blonde as he moved to the nearest wall and just leaned against it with crossed arms.
Tenten quickly interjected the two before a verbal fight could go down again. "Since we're stuck waiting for someone to come find us maybe we should get to know-"
"We all know each other, expect for the other blonde kid." Ino pointed out.
The dubbed 'blonde kid' snorted from where he stood beside Shikamaru, the two having really moved all that much way from the door they came through from the cellar.
"Yeah, who are you anyways?" Sakura asked with a curious stare in her green eyes.
Naruto opened his mouth to reply only to have Shikamaru interrupt him; causing the blonde to shoot his tutor a mild glare. "We can do that later. We should try to get that door open. You guy might not have realized it but no one knows where we are so leaving this place is all up to us."
Tenten and Lee both frowned at that, their minds along with the others working out the time and their location which led them to the same conclusion Shikamaru had. No one was going to look down a street filled with houses that were nearly collapsing and most likely listed to be condemned very soon.
"The fuck we gonna do then?" Kiba asked while moving over toward the door; Naruto and Lee joining him and the three boys looked over the double sealed doors of the manor.
Shikamaru remained quite as he formed a few ideas while Tenten voiced her only one. "Why don't the guys try to force it open? If it didn't work with just two then maybe all six of you guys can get it open."
The boys, minus Sasuke and Neji, exchanged looks before giving some form of unwilling agreement. Kiba and Lee got Sasuke and Neji to join them; Lee with logic and Kiba by questioning their manly-ness, something that made Sasuke sneer at the dog-lover and Neji to glare.
The six of them gathered around the seam of the two doors where both of them sealed shut with one another. Due to Naruto and Kiba's shorter height they planted their hands upon the aged wood first, followed by Sasuke who stood behind the blonde and Shikamaru behind Kiba with Lee and Neji who stood beside Sasuke. If there was enough door space the two shortest of the boys would have been standing in the line as well but as it was, the doors only expanded enough to fit three to a single door surface.
"Count of three." Shikamaru stated as he shifted his hands upon the door.
The others nodded, their own hands moving as well to get a spot that wouldn't have their hands slipping down the surface of the door when they all pushed their weight against it.
"One….two…-"
"THREE!" Kiba's voice shouted out over Shikamaru's but never the less all six boys pushed against the door.
The girls watched on with hopeful expression that were tinted with interest as the boys used their muscles. Ino and Sakura eyes roamed over Sasuke's form; taking in the strong forearms that they could see since Sasuke had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Their eyes shifted upward to the expose little area of pale chest that could be seen thanks to the Uchiha's V-neck shirt. Tenten wasn't any better than the other two girls despite many thinking her above that. Her brown eyes were trained on Neji's form not that the older boy had any skin for her eyes to sink into but the Hyuga's board shoulders had shifted in a way that forced the white button up shirt he had on to stretch at the shoulder blades when he had lifted his arms to push at the door.
The girls almost pouted when the boys stopped putting their strength against the door seeing as how it wasn't budging in the least even though it did creak and groan a lot in protest.
"Well, that failed wonderfully." Kiba muttered as he patted the door with more force than needed in a show of annoyance.
"No kidding." Naruto agreed as he stepped away from the door only to knock into the Uchiha who was still directly behind the blonde.
"Watch it dobe." Sasuke glared down at the blonde.
"Pardon me, duck-butt." Naruto slipped under Sasuke's still raised arm to
"DON'T CALL SASUKE THAT!" Ino and Sakura shouted together, causing the boys to inwardly wince at the sudden high volume.
Naruto rubbed his poor ear at the loud noise while taking a few steps away from the now angry two girls. Kiba tossed a smirk at him which earned him a nudge in the ribs from the shortest male. Shikamaru just looked on bored, a yawn stretching his mouth as his eyes rolled over the length of the doors then along the entrance hall walls.
Lee having been jiggling the door handles also looked over the door for softer spots in the wood that he could maybe break but like the lazy teen, found nothing. "Maybe we can try the windows-"
"Not the window over there! There's a whole underneath it." Naruto jerked a thump to the boarded least boarded up window on the right far wall.
"How do you know, dobe?" Sasuke asked with lacking interest.
Naruto just shot the other teen a glare since Shikamaru's voice sounded and it seemed the genius had a plan. "Lee, you and I will try the boards and Sasuke, if you don't mind, try the handles?"
"Try the handles..?" Tenten asked with confusion.
"Lock picking." Shikamaru clarified.
The others all blinked at that, minus the Uchiha and Neji; who didn't show any reaction that he knew of his friend's skill or not. Ino and Sakura were quite impressed, having never known that about their crush. Then again it explained how he always seemed to get away from them when they sometimes manage to lock him alone into one of school classrooms.
"If I can ask Sasuke, why do you know how to pick locks?" Lee asked with interest as he and Shikamaru walked to the boarded window on the left side of the double doors.
"My brother mainly." with that said, Sasuke crouched down by the door handles, pulling out his school I.D along with a paper clip, a bobby-pin and a small stick of chap-stick.
The others took the time to talk among themselves, Naruto, Kiba and the girls exchanging the tale of just how they ended up within the manor. Neji after a few mins of listening made his way toward the Uchiha and assisted the raven in the lock-picking having done so in the past. And with the constant chatter of the others his slightly more advanced hearing would be of help to his sole friend.
"So Naruto, how do you know Shikamaru?"
"Eh? Oh, he's my tutor." The blonde answered while still shooting a glare in the Uchiha's direction even though the other boy was focused on picking the lock.
"What about Kiba?" Tenten asked next.
"We're childhood friends, right buddy?" Kiba replied instead of the blonde as he playfully punched the blonde's shoulder, getting a smile from Tenten and Lee; who grunted as he and Shikamaru yanked a board loose and a faint pout from Naruto who rubbed his still sore shoulder from the crash landing earlier in the cellar.
"How do you know Sasuke? You don't go to our school." Sakura's voice sounded next.
"His brother is friends with my best friend's older brother Sasori whose friends with my brother Deidara, so the three of us end up seeing each other cause of them." Naruto grunted out, not liking to talk about the bastard Uchiha even though Sasuke's brother was cool.
"Do you know Neji too?" Lee asked next from where he and Shikamaru were trying to yank out a board from over one of the windows.
"No, but I do know Hinata since she's dating Kiba here." Naruto answered with a tilt of his head as he eyed the male Hyuga. He had heard some of the things Neji had done to Hinata and others whenever Kiba would fall into a rant about the guy.
Feeling eyes suddenly on him, Neji lifted his head and turned it in the direction he could feel the gaze coming from. His eye-sight able to make out a bright shade of blonde hair, despite the lighting being very bad, atop a semi fuzzy featured face that was shouldered upon a body with an obviously male build; which only led the Hyuga to believe it was the Naruto fellow Sasuke would mention from time to time after the two would cross paths.
"Uzumaki."
"The dobe?" Sasuke asked as he looked up from the pile of possible key-lock pickers for a moment before selecting one since the paper clip failed one had failed. "What about him?"
The Hyuga didn't reply though and just simply went back to keeping a keen ear to the door lock as Sasuke wiggled around the bobby-pin.
A/N: And there it is. The first real chapter of the Haunted Manor story. The next chapter I will be posting up in a moment and I can promise you there will be gore and some messed up mentality shit that will confuse you a bit. And for that I'm sorry but it'll all be explained if you keep reading and I keep posting.
~A-hem..~ ONWARD!