Luku Viisi

Later that day found the Namikaze family having a sort of vacation day. For Minato, it was a good call to give his team a day off and for the twins, it was just a break from well…everything. Usually, vacations are supposed to be relaxing times spent with your family or friends just simply being. However, that was not the case as of this moment. Minato's eyes flickered over to his younger siblings and he sweat dropped. It was almost as if he could see the wall that they had put up between themselves. Naruto and Sasuke had been released ten minutes after Katsumi and himself had left the hospital. Sasuke, of course, went toward the Uchiha estate while Naruto apparently wasted no time in finding them. He had tried apologizing to Katsumi but she would hear none of it, not responding to a word he said. Naruto had huffed in annoyance, flipping his nose in the air, and giving her the same treatment. Now, it was so bad that if one of them so much as moved to scratch, the other was staring/glaring them down the whole time. It was getting ridiculous. Minato didn't care what they were fighting about before but he was quickly tiring of it.

"That is enough!" He said in a soft voice though it didn't detract from the steel in his words. The twins blinked him in shock before looking at each other in confusion. They blinked again before realizing that that was close to communicating and they turned away from each other with a huff.

He. Was. Done.

What he was about to do could go either way: they would work together to defeat him or they would simply focus on beating the stuffing out of each other. Either way, it would help get some of the antagonistic feelings that they were harboring out.

Maybe…

He grabbed a red, fluffy pillow from the couch and, in quick succession, smacked Katsumi hard enough to knock her bodily into her Naruto.

"What the hell?!" Naruto screeched in an unattractive way that had Minato covering his ears.

"Pillow Fight!" He yelled back after recovering, this time smacking Naruto upside the head. He hit him so hard that he toppled over the arm of the couch and landed on the floor with an 'oof!' Katsumi peered at him from over the same arm he had rolled over before breaking in peals of laughter. She fell back, clutching her sides as she tried to speak.

"T-That's wha-at-" She was cut short by another pillow to the face, this time from Naruto. The older blond was smirking down at her with the red pillow extended. She stared at him with her mouth open before she snapped it shut and narrowed her eyes at him. She picked up the pillow beside her as a feral smile took over her face.

"This. Means. WAR!"

And so began the FIFTH (or technically fourth) shinobi war that would be talked about for generations to come.

"What the hell?!" Minato yelled when he finally got over his shock. He had left a minute into their pillow fight to go take a shower with his radio blasting and came back to find part of his living room just totally gone! His TV, BRAND NEW TV, had been knocked off the stand and onto the floor, totally out of commission and smoking. His couch had been turn in two by what he didn't know nor did he really want to know. Hell, there were burns in his carpet.

"Seriously, what the hell?!"

Katsumi laughed nervously as she twirled a strand of her loose hair around her fingers.

"Weeeell, you seeee… Um, we love you?" She tried with a hopeful smile on her face. Naruto scoffed at her attempt to get out of trouble and she threw him the middle finger. Minato cleared as throat and she looked his way again with a sheepish expression.

"I was nice enough to let you guys stay with me…even tried to help you with your argument and this is how you repay me?"

Both blondes were looking at the ground in shame now. Naruto's brow furrowed and his head snapped up.

"What do you mean you tried to help with our argument? You didn't do shit but hit us with pillows-"

"Really, nii-san?" Katsumi asked in exasperation. "That was your idea of helping us?"

"It was all I could think of!" He defended himself.

"So, really, this mess is your fault." Naruto said.

"Uh-uh, no. Don't try to turn this on me. You guys were the ones who took it too far! Therefore, you must clean all this up and pay for a new couch and TV."

"How are we supposed to do that?!" Kastumi cried.

"We don't even have a job and we can't go on missions because we haven't been cleared by Jiji yet!"

"Welp," Minato said, a bit too cheerfully, "better figure it out. I'm out." He gave them a two-finger salute before leaving.

"This is all your fault." Katsumi snarled in the silence that followed.

"What?!" Naruto squawked. "How in the hell is this my fault?!"

"That stupid card isn't going to work this time, Naruto! You know exactly what you did!"

"Do I? Well, then tell me!"

"Fine! I will. There was no need to call me bitch earlier, ya know! I mean, I get that you didn't want to hear the truth-"

"What truth?"

"The truth of you and Sasuke, idiot. Whether you want to believe it or not, you wasted three years of your life chasing after that traitor-"

"He's not a traitor!" Naruto roared.

"Yes, he is! He abandoned the village and his friends to go be buddy-buddy with that pedo and need I remind you that he was a traitor, too. Then, he had the nerve to join the Akatsuki and then tried to destroy Konoha, Naruto! I mean, seriously! I get he was your 'friend' once upon a time but get your head out the clouds and see him for what he really is!"

"Sasuke is not a traitor! Not anymore! He only did what he had to do to kill Itachi!"

"Naruto, do you even hear yourself talking?! 'He only did what he had to do to kill Itachi.' Really? So all of our friends who got hurt from that night of trying to rescue Sasuke, or when he put a hole through your chest and even when he nearly ripped my arm off- none of that matters because he was just trying to kill Itachi."

"Shut up! You don't know what you're talking-"

Katsumi had finally had enough and reached forward to punch Naruto in the jaw. He flew back with the force of the punch and crashed into the wall behind where the TV used to be, cracking it.

"Great! Now we have to pay for that, too!" Naruto snarled as he pushed off the wall and rushed toward her with his arm pulled back. She twisted to the left and brought her knee up to make contact with his stomach. Naruto folded around her stomach with a wheeze before he grabbed the same leg and brought her crashing to the floor. He then moved to punch her stomach but she managed to roll away. She didn't get very far before Naruto was at her side again, sending a kick to her ribs. She bit back a cry of pain at the sharp kick and rolled back onto her feet, shifting into a crouch.

"See! Once again, you're letting someone like Sasuke, who doesn't deserve your forgiveness, cloud your judgment. After all the things he has done, he deserves to die!"

The breath was knocked clean out of her when Naruto pinned her to the wall with a clawed hand, red eyes glaring hatefully at her as his lips stretched into a snarl.

"Don't you ever," he spoke with a growl to his words as he tightened his hand around her throat. ", say that about Sasuke. Ever!"

Katsumi tried to kick out at him but he only grabbed her leg by the calf in an unrelenting hold.

"Do you understand me?"

She nodded frantically, quickly running out of air, and he gave another once over before letting her go with a snort. She fell bodily to the floor gasping for air with her hand around her bruised throat. She saw him walk away and then heard the door close with a resounding slam. With him gone, she felt it safe to release the sob that she had been holding back. The action hurt but she found she couldn't stop even if she wanted to. The pain- both emotionally and physically was too much.

She let herself curl into a ball and just cry.

It was hours later and neither blond had yet to come back. Katsumi still lay on the cry but she was no longer crying. She just stared at the wall opposite of her with a frown on her face. That fight was one of the worst she had ever had and she didn't know who to go to. When she usually had a problem, she went to Naruto if only to vent. However, he wasn't around for obvious reasons and she really did not (did) want to talk to him. While she was loathe to admit it, she knew that she had crossed an invisible line with him today but she still didn't want to take it back. No matter how much it hurt the both of them he needed to see what Sasuke was doing to him. That boy was all Naruto ever saw and all he ever thought about; he basically breathed Sasuke. Sure, she and Sasuke had once been friends but that seemed like a lifetime and a half ago. The boy who would be willing to sacrifice anything, even his so-called 'best friend', just wasn't the same and he couldn't be trusted anymore. How could she put her faith into someone who would be willing to betray them (Naruto) yet again?

The answer was that she couldn't.

In the following weeks, the relationship between Naruto and Katsumi seemed to get worse. While they did fine when they were sent on those terrible D-rank missions, at home and anywhere else there was a big wall of tension that could be cut with an axe. If Minato thought it was bad before, it was nothing compared to this. Their rising tensions also didn't help Minato's stress levels due to the war that was looming over their heads. There had been reports of skirmishes along the borders of the Five Great Nations had been coming in nonstop and nothing the Hokage seemed to be doing could stop that. As far as Minato could see, all this fighting could turn into an all-out war before anybody could realize it. While he didn't want that to happen it seemed almost inevitable. The best he could hope for was that the war would be short and sweet.

"Minato-nii!"

Minato jerked rather violently and looked to see Katsumi staring at him with something like amusement on her face.

"Yes?"

"We're going somewhere quick…or maybe not." She mused but then shook her head. "The point is we need to talk about some things so we'll catch up later, kay?"

She was going to talk? With them?

He raised a brow in disbelief.

"Stop giving me that look, nii-san!" She huffed, sounding a bit like her old self. "I can talk to people I don't exactly like."

This time he raised both brows.

"Whatever!" She groused before turning on her heel and stomping from the establishment. Naruto looked toward him. He shrugged his shoulders. He also shrugged their shoulders before walking after his sister, speeding up to get into step with her and glaring at the males that were eyeing her.

Minato chuckled to himself. Even the worst of fights couldn't destroy a bond that went deeper than they could imagine. He turned back to the counter only to narrow his blue eyes as he realized something.

They had left him with the bill!

"Well?" Katsumi prompted after five minutes of standing in front of Sasuke. She and Naruto had met up with the Uchiha at his district before he led them to some never before seen abandoned shack. As extra precaution, Sasuke had cast a near impenetrable genjutsu around the shack so that anybody who walked by would think that it was empty.

He merely glanced at her before he went back to staring at the tabletop. Uncharacteristically, Naruto was sitting patiently without any movement of any kind. It was almost unnatural.

"I have heard things from my clan." He began rather calmly and still without looking at his friends, or so he claimed them.

Katsumi crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him with both eyebrows raised (it seemed she didn't inherit the one eyebrow thing much to her chagrin).

"And?" Naruto pressed.

"There seems to be a war on the horizon." He stated after a (rather unnecessary) dramatic pause.

Another pause.

"What?!"

Welp! Here's the fifth chapter after my nice, month long winter break! I'm so sad to see it end! T.T But, at least it's college and not high school I can say that much! Add on to the fact that I'm in Florida right now, which is all warm and hot but then I have to go back to the COLD! Ack! Anywho, hoped you enjoyed this chapter and please R&R. Much love to those who have already reviewed, alerted, and favorited my story! It feels awesome to log on and see that, like, really! :)

Hope ya'll have a good weekend!