When Naru showed up at his hotel room outside of the village, crying, Jiriaya knew that something was seriously wrong.

Especially when she wouldn't meet his eyes. Jiriaya dropped everything pertaining to the mission that Tsunade had given him and quickly ushered Naru inside of his room and holed up there for three days trying to get Naru to tell him what happened when he got a message from Tsunade telling him of what had happened.

Jiriaya read the message three times, not really believing for a second that Naru had played a prank of that kind on anyone before going to Naru and sitting down on the edge of her bed and asking her, "What happened?"

Naru didn't respond at first and Jiriaya was starting to get worried when she finally said. "I don't think that I should go back there."

"Why?"

"Because I think they're pissed."

"And do they have any reason to be pissed? Did you really pull a sick prank on them?"

"No. My heart stopped and they thought that I was dying. I didn't know what to do. I just froze-" Jiriaya reached out and ran his fingers through her hair in an effort to comfort her. He didn't blame her for being upset. Hell, he couldn't even blame Kakashi and the others for being upset since they hadn't known that Naru couldn't control the fact that her heart stopped at random times during the day and night.

Naru should have said something to warn them yet at the same time she probably hadn't said anything for the same reasons that she never said anything about her physical condition. People just couldn't seem to handle hearing such things. They tended to look at her strangely, and react like she was a monster. Or worse an abomination.

In the past three years since her change, Jiriaya had made the mistake of having her examined thirty times just to make sure that he learned everything that he could about her insides and outsides. And in that time she had been viciously attacked by a number of people trying to kill her because they didn't understand what she was.

Since then she tended to get wary of having physical's done and also tended to freeze up and panic when someone found her out. So yes in many ways, Naru's silence about her heart was understandable.

Still Tsunade and the others were upset at her because they had thought that she was actually dead. Then despite being relieved that she wasn't dead, they had become angry at her thinking that she had played such a childish prank on them. It was no wonder Naru felt that she couldn't go back.

She was trapped either way one looked at things.

She doubted the others would understand, and the others were too furious with her to both trying to understand. Time was what was needed here. Time and hopefully some explaining to Tsunade while keeping her and the others from tearing into Naru.

An idea occurred to him, that maybe he could get Naru away from the village and Tsunade, Sakura and Kakashi until things cooled down and before he even realized it he asked, "Hey, since you don't want to go back then how about you come with me on my mission? We'll summon ourselves into the village and see Tsunade real quick to get permission then we'll head out. You don't even have to be in the room if you don't want to be."

Naru was quiet as she nodded her head and Jiriaya gave her a grin, though she wasn't looking at him and couldn't see it and said in a mock cheery tone. "Okay then! Lets get you up, showered and ready to go!"

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Kakashi stood with Sakura in Tsunade's office, both of them listening carefully to the instructions she gave them about their mission. They didn't bother asking why she wasn't planning to give them a third member to work with or anything. They already knew the reason why.

Their mission was to find, retrieve and bring Naru back to face punishment for her prank. And while they weren't exactly pissed anymore, they weren't exactly happy with the girl either which meant that her punishment would be humiliating, and possibly even painful since it had been devised by all three of them.

But first they had to drag the girl back.

And to do that they had to first find out her location. Tsunade thought that she had slipped out of the village, and had put all of the nins on alert that if they saw Naru, they should grab her, tie her up and bring her straight to Tsunade. However the main drawback from thinking that she was out of the village was that there were far more places for her to hide out at.

Which was a pain really since it meant that their mission could take them anywhere from a few hours, days, weeks- To months. Possibly even years depending on how frequently Naru moved from place to place and how informed their information networks kept them. "Alright you both know the drill. Go get Naru and bring her back."

"Hai." Said the two grim faced nins before they both vanished. They would find Naru. And when they did she'd be sorry for the crap she had pulled and for leaving them behind again.

They both mental swore it.

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Fortyfive minutes later Jiriaya and Naru stood outside the hotel. Both were ready to go back to the village to ask for permission for Naru to go on another mission with Jiriaya until things blew over.

They both just hoped that Tsunade would listen to reason.