Disclaimer: Sucka', you know darn well that I ain't tellin' no lies when I say this anime ain't mine.

The signal Jiraiya set off lit up the rainy skies like lightning. The toad sage had no doubts that the two groups of shinobi would converge on his position soon. Still, there would be a gap when it was just Naruto and himself. Naruto, who was the child he named all those years ago.

The toad sage looked at the youth and sighed. The blonde was shaking(crying, presumably) and hadn't looked at him since the initial rescue. It was understandable that he would be frightened; the kid had almost been killed. On top of that, he was saved by a complete stranger that could be after him for any given number of reasons.

"Naruto," Jiraiya said simply, dismounting very slowly from his giant amphibian, "Naruto Uzumaki?"

There was a nod from the blonde mass, and the Toad Hermit approached the kid very slowly.

"I am part of a retrieval team from Konoha. We're going to take you home. Your sensei will be here in a minute."

The kid seemed inconsolable. The airy sobs wracked his entire body, and Jiraiya had to wonder exactly how many layers of hell the kid had been forced through at the hands of the man the sannin had just knocked out. Jiraiya's surprise could be imagined, then, when Naruto slowly raised his head to reveal a dazzling smile that would have put Gai to shame. Tears streamed down his cheeksa nd left trails of washed skin, but they weren't tears of sorrow. Naruto Uzumaki was laughing hysterically.

"How did you f-find me?!" he managed to ask between fits, and Jiraiya regarded him curiously.

"Can I assume you wanted to be found?" the white-haired man asked before holding his canteen out to the boy he now recognized as Minato's son. The kid reached for it and took a swig only to inhale it. His laughter turned into coughing for a few seconds before nodding, and Jiraiya let out an inward sigh of relief. If the Uzumaki had left the village on purpose, things would become even more complicated.

"In that case, I believe your sensei said something about a squirrel. Ring any bells?" the infamous pervert asked and stroked his chin, waiting for an answer.

Naruto's laughter ceased when the words hit his ears. For a moment, he didn't believe them. Out of all of his 147 attempts at escape and communication, there was no way in hell he heard Jiraiya correctly. He had bled for those chances. There was no way that the stupidest plan(and least painful) he had worked.

"The squirrel?" he asked, his voice hushed.

"Something like that." the toad sage answered, his eyebrows tilting in thought.

"The squirrel worked?" he asked again, almost robotically. The author of the Icha Icha series could only watch as the youth paled and drew himself into a ball. "The one I tied the leaf on? The WILD squirrel I tied the leaf on?"

"It would seem so."

Naruto's laughter came back, and this time with a vengeance. It plagued him for a full ten minutes before leaving him a breathless heap.

Iruka had bolted the instant he spotted the flare, Sakura trailing behind him. The schoolteacher had nearly given up hope altogether when the signal had finally appeared. It felt like his heart was bungee-jumping; one minute it would plummet into his stomach, and the next it would leap into his throat. He couldn't take the stress much longer, but thankfully, it seemed he wouldn't have to. If Naruto was alive, he would be just a little further ahead.

Sakura held onto Iruka's arm for dear life, her legs only occasionally making contact with surfaces below her. She could run, but she couldn't hope to keep up with the brown-haired man's current pace. His legs were stronger, longer, and on top of it all, he was desperate.

Kakashi had very efficiently gone about waking Sasuke up and cleaning up their tracks when he saw the flare. As always, he seemed to have a routine. Everything was done the way it supposed to be done, and every paddle of the boat towards shore was made in uniform strokes. Sasuke had no problem with this approach; there wasn't any need for conversation, emotion, or attachment. The procedures gave the two a sense of security, as well as a way to work through the unease they unwittingly shared. Kakashi, it seemed, bore the worst of it.

Now that Naruto had been found, there were other concerns to deal with. If he had been mistreated, Kakashi would have hell to pay(and not just at the hands of Iruka and the Sandaime). Also, if somehow, they had been too late in spite of all their efforts, the Hatake just didn't think he could take it anymore. He was a strong man, but the mischievous Uzumaki had nearly tried trying to defend him once; that wasn't the sort of thing a person forgot. And his face… Obito's expressions on Minato's face… It was like something out of a deranged storybook.

If someone in heaven was trying to give him a second chance, they had a very sick way of going about it.

Despite the fact they were further away from Jiraiya's position, Iruka and a very windblown Sakura were the first to arrive. While he had been running until that very moment, the moment the two figures came into his line of sight, he slowed to almost a halt.

He recognized Naruto immediately, which could have been considered a feat as the boy he was slowly approaching was emaciated and filthy. The radiant blonde hair he remembered was matted with blood and dirt and hacked away unevenly, like someone had been trying to take off the boy's head and missed. The jacket the youth normally wore was wrapped around his waist in tatters, and his bare back was covered in small lacerations that were visibly receding by the second.

Sakura had let go of Iruka by this time, but she was just as stunned as her former teacher. Sitting not too far ahead of her was the one person she doubted she'd ever see alive again. Until that moment, she had still thought the past few days could have been a dream.

"N…Naruto?" Iruka asked, barely trusting his own voice.

Hearing his teacher's utterance of his name, the subject of their unsurpassed attention slowly turned around to reveal his dirty face. Like the rest of him, it seemed tired and somewhat thinner than they remembered. It was not without a tinge of sympathy that Sakura noted the tear-trails on the boy's cheeks.

For a second, Naruto's bright blue eyes stared at them in disbelief. The shock soon passed, however, and Iruka had very little warning before the filthy mass of Naruto's body was launched at him, knocking him over in a tight hug.

"Iruka-sensei…!"

The brown-haired found himself returning the hug more harshly than he had intended. He didn't care that the child smelled terrible. He didn't even mind the mysterious globs of swamp-mud that were now seeping into his vest. Naruto Uzumaki, his little brother, was safe and alive, and that was all that mattered. It felt like a burden the size of an Akamichi had unlatched itself from the chuunin's ribcage, and he laughed.

Sakura watched the faces of Iruka and Naruto as the two were reunited. She had never seen a human being so happy to see another. All of the madness that had taken hold of Iruka unraveled, and the freakish defense mechanisms were slowly disarmed.

It was the first time, she realized, that she had seen Naruto appear accepted in an embrace at all. She should have known that her blonde teammate was a touchy-feely person.

Naruto and Iruka let go of one another when Kakashi and Sasuke arrived, carrying a professional air of restraint. Kakashi didn't even walk over to Naruto first. Before anything, the jounin walked over to the sannin responsible for their reunion and took him aside to speak. If Naruto hadn't known Kakashi from the future, he may have been insulted by the man's choice to forego even greeting him. He knew otherwise now, though. He was afraid; just as Sasuke and Sakura were nervous with not knowing how they were supposed to react.

The blue-eyed jinchuriiki approached Sakura first. He was surprised to find the kunoichi's hair as sheared as it was after the chuunin exam. While at once very happy to see her, he was more nervous than she was. He wanted to apologize, hug her, and tell her how hard he tried, but he was afraid. Whatever had prompted her to cut her hair could have had other effects, and the last thing he wanted was for her to hate him. Still, he was prepared for the blow he could tell was coming. He had worried her, and he knew the spontaneous violence was to be expected.

"Sakura-chan, I'm very, very so-" he began, only to feel two fingers on his lips.

"You have a lot of nerve to apologize to me after all this, Naruto." the pink-haired girl named after the cherry blossom had a few angry tears in her eyes. Suddenly, the Uzumaki was alarmed.

"You'd better be ready, because I'm going to give you what you deserve for all you've done to me, Naruto."

The addressed cringed. He had been expecting some hostility, but he had thought Sakura was better than to keep him from telling her she was sorry for the sake of her own anger. His cobalt blue eyes watched as his female teammate's fist balled up and made a swift path for his face. He couldn't bring himself to dodge, but the result was less than painful. A warm sensation engulfed his left cheek, and in a movement so fast he thought he imagined it, he felt two lips press on the side.

"S-sakura-chan..?" he stammered, turning red beneath the caked grime," What are you doing?!"

"Thank you, Naruto, for saving my life." There was a red tinge to the Haruno's face as she took a step back. In contrast, the Uchiha's face went white as a sheet at the sight.

Naruto Uzumaki stared at his female friend vacantly, unable to process what had just happened. Sakura Haruno, the girl he had loved since before he could remember, had just kissed him. Before he was able to feel any more glee, however, the girl in question punched him in the face for real and began to yell.

The ranting of an incensed kunoichi were rather easy to keep up with when you understood the base material. All you had to do was apologize at every other pause and allow yourself to take anything they dished out. If you were lucky, you came out with everything intact. Fortune smiled on Naruto Uzumaki in that respect, and he came out of Sakura's bitter lecture with little more than two lack eyes and a bloody nose, leaving him to deal with a very uncomfortable Uchiha.

Sasuke looked at Naruto with uncertainty after Sakura walked a short distance away. He bit the insides of his lip, unsure of what he was supposed to do. Yes, he had been worried about Naruto, and of course he was angry, but he had treated the two emotions like toxic waste. Like everyone else, the blonde idiot had gotten to him. In his way, Sasuke was happy.

"Turns out we had to save you after all, Moron." Sasuke said, smirk forming to match his smug words. In the end, their rivalry simplified a lot of things.

Naruto didn't take any sort of bait from this. He just smiled sadly and shrugged. "Well, I knew his highness needed the exercise."

Sasuke grunted indignantly, but he couldn't help but smile as Jiraiya and Kakashi waved him aside. It was nice to have that never-wavering counterbalance that Naruto embodied.

Kakashi approached his long-lost student with the stiffness of a board. Naruto couldn't quite tell what was disturbing the man so much, but it wasn't his job to know. He was happy to see his teacher again, even if his capture could be considered every bit as much the jounin's fault as his own. The Uzumaki had made his own choices, and in the end, Kakashi had always seemed to want what was best for him. Perhaps that was what compelled Naruto to say what he did to his instructor.

"Sorry I'm late," Naruto informed his teacher with a scratch to the back of his own head, "I got lost on the road of life."

Kakashi's face blanched. "Y-you.." he said, sounding angry but unsure,"-you are never to disobey my orders again, Uzumaki!" he shouted. The jounin then blinked, just once, and Naruto was suddenly hugging him. The sensation left him feeling more vulnerable than a nightmare in which he was forced to face off against his former ANBU squad naked. At the same time, it tore at his emotional walls.

Naruto hadn't judged him. He hadn't even held the jounin responsible.

"Yes, sir."

Author's note: Fluffy enough? I have a few loose ends to tie up next chapter, but I hope I ddnt let you guys down. This chapter... is finally over. I did it.