Naruto: Ninja Burger Chronicles
Scroll Five, Part One: Sasuke's Day Off
By Kaori

WHIZZZZZ…THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! Sasuke awoke just in time to avoid being murdered by shuriken.

"Dammit dad!" he yelled. "It's four in the morning!"

"WRONG! It is four o' one and fifty-two seconds in the morning! You should have been awake fifty…" a pause. "a minute and a half ago! Do you want to disgrace this family by being late for work?"

"It's my day off."

"LIAR! You probably got fired!"

"WHAAAAAAAT!" Uchiha Makoto's voice echoed. "SASUKE GOT FIRED? WHY GOD! WHY DID YOU CURSE ME WITH SUCH A DISGRACE?" Sasuke buried his head under his pillow and groaned. Why did stuff like this happen to him every morning? And just when he thought the situation couldn't get any worse…

"Mother, father, what's going on?"

"Oh Itachi!" wailed Makoto. "Your brother has dishonoured us all and has been fired!"

"How can that be, he's right there." Itachi pointed. "Had he actually been fired he wouldn't be here."

"Reh?" she poked her head in the door. "Oh, so he is…which means…OH MY GOD MY SON'S A ZOMBIE!"

"First you get fired and now you further dishonour us by becoming the undead? Have you no shame?" yelled Fugaku Uchiha.

"I DID NOT GET FIRED AND I AM NOT A ZOMBIE!"

"Get back Makoto. Itachi, protect your mother!" Fugaku declared grabbing the kodachi that had been hanging on the wall outside of Sasuke's room (which was there for the sole purpose of killing the boy should he dishonour the family).

"Um, said he wouldn't be here," Itachi deadpanned, as Sasuke desperately tried to protect himself from his father (who was trying to decapitate him). "I meant that he'd have been dead and there wouldn't be enough of him left for there to be a zombie. The company is very strict about that. It's probably just Sasuke's day off." Fugaku stopped mid slash.

"Oh." He said nonchalantly, sheathing the sword and then glaring at Sasuke. "Why didn't you just say it was your day off?" Sasuke passed out.

How long he had been out he wasn't certain, but as he came around he got the eerie feeling that he was being watched. Groggily, he tried to sit up but couldn't; something heavy was draped over his right side. He turned his head and suddenly got a nose full of something soft, pink and that smelled like strawberries.

"Good morning Sasuke-kuuuun!" cooed Sakura.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Faster than the human eye could follow he grabbed the girl and threw her out the window, belatedly remembering that he lived on the seventeenth floor. Oh well, she was a ninja, she'd be fine. And with that happy thought he prepared to get on with his day.

Entering the kitchen / dining room, his breakfast was still on the table and his mother was waiting for him; tears streaming down her face as she bit her handkerchief.

"I worked and slaved over a hot stove to prepare a beautiful breakfast for you, and now it's cold. You didn't even come down to say good morning to your father and brother!" She fell on her knees in a fit of sobbing. "Oh why does my son hate me so?"

Sasuke ignored her theatrics in favour of putting the food in the microwave to heat and getting some orange juice from the refrigerator. The carton of orange juice was noticeably light. He peered inside it. There was about a quarter of a cup of juice left inside. He growled low in his throat. Damn that Itachi, this was his doing. How was he supposed to get his full day's supply of vitamin C now? Sighing (for the thousandth time that morning) he was about to simply drink the remaining juice from the carton only to have it slapped out of his hands by his mother.

"Did I raise a barbarian?" she screeched. "Use a glass!"

Itachi chose that moment to walk into the kitchen.

"Mother, I'm going to work now." He said. Makoto's mood did a complete one-eighty.

"Okay dear, have a wonderful day!" she smiled brightly as he walked out the door. "Aah, such a perfect child!" Sasuke decided to leave while his mother was still fantasizing about the ever so perfect Itachi.

It was going to rain soon, which suited Sasuke just fine because it meant that Itachi's hair would be frizzy by the time he got to work. Sasuke took a tiny measure of satisfaction in that knowledge; his brother wasn't so perfect.

Sasuke, however, had inherited the perfect hair genes and was guaranteed to have perfect hair forever (1); his sole consolation for the crap he had to put up with every day.

His parents hadn't always like that. They used to gush about his achievements almost as much as Itachi's but it all changed after Itachi started working at Konoha Ninja Burger.

Itachi had graduated from Ninja Burger Academy in two weeks, and in the space of a year had managed to get into the Ninja Resources Department. Ever since then their parents had constantly bemoaned that Sasuke wasn't as bright, talented, or amazing as Itachi, wailed that the younger Uchiha was going to bring down eternal shame on the family name, and wondered what they did to deserve such a disgrace and whether things would have been different if Sasuke had been born female (and then squelched that thought because they figured with their luck, he would've been born an ugly girl).

While it was true that Sasuke had graduated top of his class, he had taken a year to graduate and his grades weren't as impressive. Itachi had all A's, Sasuke averaged an A-. He had been made a Deliverator, Itachi had gone straight to the Drive-Thru window.

Sasuke clenched his hands in a fist. He would show them, though. He was not going to lose to Itachi. He'd do the one thing Itachi couldn't: become Employee of the Year in six months!

"Itachi! Your ass is grass and I'm the lawnmower!" Sasuke screamed to the sky.

As if trying to cool the teenager's rage, it started to rain.

1) That show makes no sense but it makes me laugh.