So, now we're back to the regular story... And the plot gets thicker...

Also, I've been planning on adding side pairings to this since the beginning but haven't posted them in the summary yet because I personally don't like it when a story with a side pairing I search for doesn't have that pairing in it, particularly if the story is discontinued. But now they have been put in the actual story, so I'll put them in the summary, and more will follow as they enter the story.

Happy reading!

Instead of the normal view of Naruto floating over his bed in the light of the rising sun coming through the open window, Sasuke woke the next morning to find a ball of warmth tucked up comfortably against his side. How a ghost could have such vibrant heat encased within his body, Sasuke didn't know, but it felt like Naruto had internalized the dawn light from mornings past, and it was being radiated as a soft warmth in Sasuke's arms.

Opening his eyes, Sasuke found that Naruto's own were closed, even though he couldn't sleep, and he had his arms curled up against his chest, his hands pressed up against the bare skin of Sasuke's chest as if monitoring his breathing. And even though he didn't need to breathe either, his own chest rose and fell in time with Sasuke's, the look of peaceful concentration on his face making it seem like he was finding happiness in melding himself to the Uchiha, living some small part of his existence as a part of the stoic boy.

The shift in Sasuke's breathing as he woke alerted Naruto, and the ghost blinked his eyes open lazily at him. "Good morning."

"Morning," Sasuke responded as he reached out and pulled Naruto close for a quick kiss, but the chaste touch of lips soon deepened as the two boys lazily dueled with their tongues. Gently, Sasuke tugged on Naruto's hips until the ghost moved closer, then he finagled the ghost until he was straddling his hips. With a grin, Naruto bared down harder into the kiss before pulling back to admire his flushed handiwork.

"I think that deserves an extra 'good morning', don't you?" Naruto asked, his tongue making a brief, darting appearance across his top lip before disappearing.

"I'd take another one," Sasuke answered honestly. "That was the best wake up call I've had in my whole life."

"Really?" A smug grin decorated Naruto's face. "Then I guess we'll have to replicate it tomorrow… And the day after that… And the day after that…" Leaning down, Naruto gently bit the lobe of Sasuke's ear. "Or we could just have another round right now…"

With a smug smile hiding his breathlessness, Sasuke observed, "You're a lot more daring this morning."

"Why, of course I am! I let you have all the fun last night, so today I'm going to take back a little bit of power. How does that sound?"

Sasuke remained silent for a few moments, as if considering, then flipped Naruto over without warning and trapped him against the bed. The ghost struggled a little, but didn't succeed in regaining power over Sasuke, and the Uchiha gave a dark chuckle. "Or I could just take the power back again. How does that sound?"

After a few more second of struggling, Naruto finally resigned himself to his fate and leaned forward to press his lips against Sasuke's. "I guess this is okay, too. Just be gentle with me," he added with puppy dog eyes.

"Hn," Sasuke responded, eyes twinkling. "You should probably check out your neck, then."

"My neck?" Naruto's eyes grew abruptly wide, and he pushed Sasuke off and ran to the mirror above the dresser. "Son of a bitch, you gave me a hickey!"

"What's so bad about that?" Sasuke asked, standing up out of bed himself and stretching. "You gave me one, too," he said while gesturing to the small mark of his shoulder.

"Yeah, but you can cover your up with your shirt!" Naruto hastily conjured up a button down shirt with a collar, the same one he had been wearing the night before, and tried to hide the mark, but it showed above the line of fabric. "Dammit, everyone is going to know!"

"Who's going to know? You're invisible."

"Not to the other ghosts!" In an attempt to hide the mark, Naruto flipped the collar up, but the purple hickey still showed. "Kiba will tease me forever about this!"

A rush of hurt and disappointment washed through Sasuke. "Was it worth it?" He asked quietly.

Naruto regarded him in the mirror for a long moment, then flipped his collar down to show the dark mark. "Yes. Yes it was."

"That's good," Sasuke said, hiding his relief as he moved behind Naruto and wrapped his arms around his chest, leaning around to touch a brief kiss to his cheek. He could see both of them reflected in the mirror, something that ordinary people would just recognize as one person bent at an awkward angle, and for the first time since the incident with Itachi, Sasuke felt blessed that he had his gift. As if sensing his thoughts, Naruto heaved a contented sigh and leaned back against the comfortable chest waiting for him.

"Oh, yeah, that reminds me," Sasuke remembered with a sudden clarity. "I wanted to ask you about your shirt. How did you make it disappear last night?"

Naruto fingered the top button of said shirt. "Ghosts usually wear the clothes we die in, but we've learned to manipulate them the same way we can manipulate our ages. Over the years, we've updated them so they won't be out of date with what everyone else is wearing, even though no one but us can see them. It also means that we can remove them at a moment's notice."

"Convenient," Sasuke murmured against Naruto's neck.

"Oh, stop that!" Naruto broke away from Sasuke and swatted at him. "Put a shirt on! You're late for breakfast!"

Chuckling, Sasuke did as he was bade, slipping a black shirt over his pale skin before picking up his satchel and heading down to the dining room, Naruto hot on his heels. As the ghost had said, Sasuke was later than normal to breakfast, and everyone else had already eaten and left, leaving a single pink-haired girl, uncharastically silent, as the the sole inhabitant of the room. Sasuke took his usual chair and waited for her to notice that he was there.

As she served Sasuke his breakfast that morning, Sakura had a glazed look on her face and in her eyes, as if she was having trouble believing the events of the day before.

"What's wrong with her?" Naruto observed a Sakura set Sasuke's plate down - in front of the wrong chair, no less - and returned to the kitchen without a word.

"She's just suffering from shock," Sasuke answered, pulling his plate toward him and picking up his knife to cut his pancakes. "It's to be expected; she did have a life altering revelation yesterday. Don't worry about her; I've seen enough people go through this realization to know that she's handling it particularly well."

"The door to the kitchen swung open again, and Sakura came back with a second plate and sat down opposite Sasuke, and, eyes misted over, silently began to eat.

"You sure she's okay?" Naruto asked dubiously, waving his arm with the bracelet in her general direction. "That's not normal Sakura behavior."

Sakura reacted to the bracelet waving around in seemingly thin air. It was a good thing that they were the only occupants of the dining room, or someone other than Sasuke and the ghostly Naruto would have been privy to the impressive string of swears that came out of her mouth. When she finally calmed down enough to hold a reasonable conversation without an extraordinary amount of blue words, Sakura passed a hand over her eyes. "So it was real. I was hoping a little bit that it would turn out to be just a dream."

"I'm afraid so," Sasuke answered, spearing a piece of pancake with his fork with more force than was absolutely necessary. "The Hokage isn't going to get rid of its ghosts any time soon, so you and the others are just going to have to learn to live with them."

Making a face, Sakura picked at her pancake moodily. "I wish I knew what I was getting into when Kakashi asked me to help bring you onto the team. I thought you'd sprinkle some holy water and chant a bit, like in the movies, then poof! No more ghosts. This whole big mess… it's a bit more than I bargained for."

"Movies romanticize and overdramatize everything," Sasuke said, twirling his fork in his syrup to make a spiral in the viscous liquid. "You shouldn't believe anything you see in them, especially related to ghosts. There's just no truth in them, only lies to entertain the masses."

"Now I feel stupid for thinking like that," Sakura wailed, bemoaning her lot in life.

"Tell her I think she's smart." Naruto slipped in the conversation, taking care to gesture with his hand that didn't have the bracelet. "I know how well she does in school, even if her parents don't support her."

"Hm." Sasuke considered for a moment, then relayed the information. "Naruto thinks you're smart."

"Naruto?" Sakura looked up in surprise. "Is he here? Is that his bracelet?"

"Yeah. He says that he knows how well you do in school, even though your parents don't support it." He paused, the meaning of the words only just dawning on him. "Why don't they support you?"

Sakura blushed. "Oh, it's just that neither of them went to college, so they expect the same from me. It's not like there's enough money to send me to school, anyway. They only way I'm going somewhere is if I get a scholarship or I save up the money myself… which is why I've been working here for Kakashi as far back as I could."

"What do you want to do with your life?" Sasuke asked, genuinely curious.

"A doctor, if I could," Sakura answered. "But medical school is expensive and takes a lot of time, so a while ago I decided on clinical psychology. Of course, wherever I work, I wouldn't be in charge of a lot of people, because that usually requires a doctorate and I don't think I'll get that far, but what I want to do is people who are depressed to make them feel better. If I can prevent at least one suicide, then I will think of my life as complete."

"That's a lofty goal," Sasuke remarked with slightly raised eyebrows.

Giggling a little, Sakura decided to turn the tables on him. "What do you want to do with your life?"

Now it was Sasuke's turn to pull a face. "My dad wants me to be a doctor, or a lawyer, so I can take over the hospital he owns when I get older."

"I didn't ask what your father wanted you to be," Sakura said. "I asked what you wanted to be."

Sasuke hesitated a little, nervously tapping his fork on the edge of his plate. He had never confessed this to any living person before, and had only answered Shikamaru when he had asked because the genius had held a certain quiet authority that he had felt compelled to follow. Then, suddenly, he remembered how Sakura had pulled his confession of his sexuality out of him, and how it had been accepted without question. This place was a safe zone in his life, where he could confess anything and everything, and people would accept him for who he really was, not who he was expected to be.

Squaring his shoulders confidently, Sasuke replied, "An author."

Sakura seemed to think about it for a few seconds, then she slowly nodded. "I can totally see it. You love literature so much, so it wouldn't be much of stretch. I think you'd make a good author."

"Well, you're just about the only who does," Sasuke said with a sigh. "I know my family wouldn't support it, so I haven't even brought it up to them. Unless they're famous, writers don't tend to make a lot of money, and it's not a profession that my father considers 'legitimate', so I know he wouldn't support me. My only choices are to do what he wants, or he'll cut me off and I'll have to become one of those 'starving artist' types."

"Yeah, but just think how romantic that would be!" Sakura wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. "It would certainly stir your artistic spirit."

Sasuke couldn't help but laugh at that. "Thanks, Sakura. You always make me feel better."

"What am I?" Naruto asked, hand resting over his heart and eyelids fluttering in mock afrontery.

"You're an unholy terror."

Naruto leaped up from his spot at the table and performed a deep bow while floating over the table. Sakura sent Sasuke a quizzical look, and he gestured to the bracelet dangling above them. "What else would I call a prankster like him?"

Eyes widening in understanding, Sakura fixed Naruto - or his vague position, at least - with a mock severe glare. "Are you, good sir, and unholy terror?"

Doffing an imaginary cap in Sakura's direction, Naruto answered, "Yes, I am, and proud of it!"

"He happily agrees to the nickname," Sasuke laughed, watching Naruto do a dance that vaguely resembled a gig while floating a few feet above the table. The silver bracelet caught the light and threw shards of illumination across the room as he moved, and Sakura's eyes were focused on that bracelet, the only part of Naruto that she could see.

In the middle of their session of laughter, a hand came down on each of Sasuke's and Sakura's shoulders, making them jump. Looking up, they found that Kakashi was smiling down at them with his one eye.

"Nice to see the three parts of my team working well together," he commented.

"Three parts? Team?" Sasuke and Sakura exchanged a confused look.

"Of course." Kakashi gestured to the table at large. "My locals - that's you, Sakura - my foreigner - you own that spot, Sasuke - and the ghosts of my inn - and I'm afraid I have no clue which one you are," Kakashi remarked apologetically to Naruto.

"It's Naruto," Sasuke said a little testily, not liking having been called a foreigner, even though it was technically true. "But what is your 'team' supposed to accomplish?"

"Damned if I know," Kakashi said with a hidden grin that made his eye crinkle. "You're the expert here."

"Of course I am." Sasuke sighed perhaps a little more heavily than what was required of him. He shook such negativity out of his head as he regarded the masked owner of the Hokage. "You're taking this very well, Kakashi. No denying it or anything."

"Yeah, much better than me," Sakura chimed in.

Kakashi shrugged. "I'm an adult who's believed in ghosts for most his adult life. I'm not going to freak out just because, for the first time, I actually met one - or five."

"Well, that's good." Sasuke felt a shiver of relief go down his spine. "And Iruka?"

Starting guiltily, Kakashi asked quickly, "What about Iruka?"

"Did he take it well, and will he be coming back today?" Sasuke stood up and slung his satchel over his shoulder. "I did offer to tell anyone who wanted to know about the Akatsuki, if they felt up to it. I know it's a lot to stomach at once."

Nodding, Kakashi completely glossed over the Iruka question in favor of gesturing at the back room. "I do think that we should know. Everyone is working today, so they'll meet us back there when they come in, which should be soon. I expect the ghosts will show up as well?"

"I had assumed they would."

"Excellent." To Sakura, Kakashi asked, "Would you mind bring the dishes back and then joining us?"

"Sure," Sakura said. "I'll be right with you."

She grabbed both hers and Sasuke's plates and ran with them to the kitchen, and Kakashi seized Sasuke's elbow and steered him toward the back room.

"So," he ventured once they were in the relative privacy awarded by the room, a perverted twinkle in his eye. "How was your night last night?"

"Priceless," Naruto called out, entering the room right behind him.

Giving a slight twitch in Naruto's direction to tell him that he was right, Sasuke said out loud, "Not what you're thinking, you perverted old man."

"Perverted?" Kakashi appeared genuinely shocked. "What on earth would cause you to think that?"

"Where's Iruka?" Sasuke challenged, folding his arms across his chest.

Now that Sakura was no longer in the room, Kakashi leaned forward and whispered confidentially to Sasuke, "He's feeling a bit… sore at the moment, if you catch my drift, but otherwise, he's fine."

"What did I tell you?" Sasuke asked with a shake of his head.

"What did you tell who?" Sakura entered the room with a suspicious look on her face. "What were you two getting up to in here?"

"Nothing," both Kakashi and Sasuke said together, than gave the other a dirty look for having stolen his line.

They were save from m any further questioning because just then, they were interrupted by a large white dog bursting through the door, Kiba hot on his heels. As soon as he saw the phantom, Naruto jumped and hid behind Sasuke.

"Akamaru!" He yelled as he tackled the mutt, keeping him from jumping up and muddying Sakura's clothes. "I told you not to bust in here!"

In lieu of a response, Akamaru squirmed around in Kiba's grasp until he could reach out with his tongue and lick the cheeks of his owner, turning the tables on the disgruntled phantom.

"Hey!" Kiba tried to push the big white dog off, but Akamaru jumped on him and pinned him to the floor, then proceeded to lick every inch of his face from top to bottom.

Shino had followed the dog and his master through the open door, and now stood leaning against the door jamb with a smirk. Trapped under Akamaru, Kiba threw a helpless look at the stoic boy in shades, who ignored the silent plea in favor of adjusting the dark glasses perched on his nose.

"Fine. Be that way," Kiba groused. To escape from the joyful wrath of his hyper dog, he made himself incorporeal, and Akamaru's paws, which were resting in his chest, thumped down in the floor. Quickly extricating himself, Kiba floated over to where Shino was watching with an unreadable expression and pointed silently out the door, and Akamaru left, though he didn't look happy about it.

Throughout this exchange, Sakura and Kakashi had been watching the bounce of the bracelet that, to them, seemed to float in midair.

"I'm guessing that was Kiba," Kakashi said dryly, raising the one eyebrow that was showing.

"What gave it away?" Sasuke asked just as dryly, raising his eyebrow in a mirror of Kakashi's.

Pointing at the door, Sakura asked, "Who's the one by the door? The first one, I mean."

"Shino." To the pair of ghosts, Sasuke asked, "Are the others coming?"

"Should be," Kiba answered. "We saw both of them earlier this morning."

"That's good." Naruto finally came out from behind Sasuke, stretching his arms in an attempt to shrug his collar up over the hickey on his neck, but Kiba still spotted it almost instantly.

With wide eyes, Kiba ran forward and yanked the collar of the shirt away from Naruto's neck. "You have a hickey!" He cried with exuberant challenge.

His face froze in fear for a second, then Naruto saw something on Kiba's neck and narrowed his eyes, yanking on the fabric of his shirt until it gave with a tear and ripped away from his chest, leaving it bare. The garment disappeared as soon as it lost contact with Kiba's skin, and when it was gone, it revealed a number of bites and marks across his chest and shoulders.

"What are these?" Naruto jeered while pointing at the marks on Kiba's chest, glad to have the attention taken off him.

Trying unsuccessfully to hide the marks with his hands, Kiba protested, "They're just play bites from Akamaru!"

Sasuke noticed that Shino's face - or, what part of it that could be seen - tightened slightly at this claim.

"Oh, yeah?" Naruto jabbed again. "Then what's that?" He asked, gesturing to a purple mark on his collarbone that looked exactly like the one Naruto himself was sporting.

"Well… It's… ah, well, I mean…" Kiba tittered nervously for a moment before Shino came up behind him and wrapped his arms around his chest in a possessive manner.

"I made them."

Ah, so Sasuke's earlier assumption had been correct; Shino and Kiba were together.

Naruto, meanwhile, was standing there with his mouth hanging open, looking back and forth between the two phantoms. "How long?" He finally managed. Apparently, his powers of observation were not so great as Sasuke's.

"Almost a decade," Shino answered, since Kiba was still blushingly mute. Smirking, he added, "And now it's time for you to tell us where you got yours."

The tables now turned on him, it was Naruto's turn to stutter. "Well… I…"

And now it was Sasuke's turn to claim responsibility. He hesitated for just a second before remembering his epiphany form earlier that morning, and he squared his shoulders and stepped forward.

"Me. It was me."

Five sets of eyes - two confused, courtesy of the humans, one shellshocked, thanks to Kiba, one inscrutable behind glasses, and one a little surprised and insurmountably happy - trained on Sasuke, and he stood a little taller under the scrutiny.

"What's going on? What was you?" Kakashi asked, looking a little suspiciously at the trio of bracelets in the center of his back room.

"Nothing important." Sasuke raised a hand dismissively. "Just working out differences."

This seemed to amuse the ghosts as they split from their group stance, Naruto floating back to Sasuke and Kiba conjuring up another shirt, but Kakashi was pacified, so Sasuke counted it as a win.

Just then, Shikamaru floated in through the open door with his hands shoved in his pockets. "That was an interesting discussion I just overheard," he remarked languidly, causing both Kiba and Naruto to blush and Shino and Sasuke to hover just a little more protectively over them, then Shikamaru turned to Sasuke with the barest hint of annoyance in his voice, which was the equivalent of a shouting fit from anyone else. "I can't float through walls with this thing," he complained, gesturing to the bracelet on his wrist.

Sasuke couldn't help it- he laughed, loud and long, completely undone by the phantom's reaction. Wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, which was severely out of character for him, he responded, "Yes, that's what happens when objects become physical."

Tsking gently, Shikamaru leaned up against the wall and proceeded to ignore the rest of the occupants of the room.

Two new occupants were added to that total when Ino walked through the door, closely followed by Choji. Upon seeing the four bracelets dangling in thin air, Ino took it the worst out of all of them, falling back onto Choji's chest in an almost faint, who was only saved from a similar reaction by the hard reality of the girl who was grasping onto his for support.

The heavyset boy's reaction was stunned, but coherent. "Damn, so it wasn't a dream."

"Not even close," Sasuke answered as Ino blinked back to life. "Where's Tenten?"

"Sick." Choji held up a phone with the hand that wasn't supporting Ino. "She sent me a text. I think she's taking it harder than the rest of us."

"Then I guess we're all here," Sasuke started, but Kakashi interrupted him.

"We're missing one," he said, pointing to the bracelets.

Sasuke surveyed the scene for a minute before he realized what was wrong. Dammit, Lee wasn't there! Where on earth was he, and how were they going to get him here for the impromptu meeting? As if reading his thoughts, Naruto's hand shot eagerly into the air.

"I'll go find him!"

Sasuke nodded once, and Naruto shot off through the open door. Turning to the humans, he explained, "Lee was missing. Naruto's gone to find him."

When the humans all nodded in agreement, Ino still holding onto Choji's arm, who was looking none too upset about it, Sasuke continued. "You all know why we're here, so I'll begin."

Slowly and with as much detail as possible, Sasuke explained everything he could about the hierarchy of ghosts, from specters all the way up through draugrs. The ghosts, having heard this spiel before, mostly ignored it, but the humans hung onto every word.

When he got to the Akatsuki, Sasuke paused for just a second before launching into their description. He did, however, leave out the part that it had been a former Akatsuki who had driven Itachi mad. That was something that would stay between Naruto and himself. Shikamaru, who had squeezed part of the confession out of him during the chess game, had pretended to ignore the whole conversation, but proved he really was listening when he opened an eye just wide enough to give him a look that said, "I think I know what's really going on."

Sakura interrupted him as soon as he was done. "But there's no way there could be an Akatsuki in Konoha; we've never had any serial killers here!"

But Sasuke was already shaking his head. "That's one of the scariest things about Akatsuki- they were so emotionless in life that they have no ties to anything on this earth great enough to keep them from wandering. That's how they form groups, by wandering until they find another Akatsuki, and so on and so on, until there's a whole gang of them. They seek to further their own dark agendas, so they're unpredictable and merciless."

"But are you sure they're Akatsuki?" Ino pressed.

"No," Sasuke admitted. "I didn't see them myself. But from the description Kakashi gave me, it's the only logical conclusion." He turned to the phantoms in the room. "How about you? Have any of you seen black-caped ghosts wandering the streets, day or night?"

Shino and Kiba exchanged a quick look. "Once, about five years ago. It was in the dead of night, right down the middle of the street, and they felt awful so we decided to stay away from them."

"They stay in a shack close to the border of the town during the daytime," Shikamaru chimed in lazily. "Naruto mentioned them to you when you first asked about draugrs in Konoha. We've avoided them since that day, which is fairly easy since they only come out late at night, but we can still feel that they're there whenever we pass close to the shack."

"Damn," Sasuke muttered.

"They confirm it?" Kakashi asked, a troubled look in his one eye.

"Unfortunately," Sasuke said with a sigh. "But I guess they only come out late at night, so we should be fairly safe from them. I was worried about them recognizing my gift and it causing trouble for the rest of you, but as long as we're careful, we should be fine."

There was a general consensus of nods at this.

"How do you expect to deal with this?" Kakashi asked. "Is it dangerous for there be these dead serial killers in our town?"

"That, I don't know," Sasuke admitted. "If they're just killing time or staying here for a lark or to plan their next move, we shouldn't have to worry too much. But since they've been here for five years already - that's what Kiba just told me, anyway - it's highly likely that their objective lies somewhere in this town, and that could prove to be a problem."

"Then I'm glad we have you to help us," Choji said.

"That's right," Sakura said with a shake of her head. "We'd never be able to even figure all this out on our own, let alone know what to do when we figured it out."

"What is the plan?" Kakashi folded his arms over his chest in preparation for hearing the plan.

"I've called in backup."

"What?" Ino pulled away from Choji while asking the question, who looked slightly disappointed at the loss. "Who?"

"His surname's Hyuuga, and he comes from a family with similar powers as mine. We do have different strengths and weaknesses, though, so he should be able to confirm some things for me before we finalize a plan."

"I suppose that's one way of doing it," Kakashi allowed. "If I may ask, what are the differences between your two powers?"

Hesitating a bit, Sasuke said, "I'm not really supposed to talk about it, and I don't know the exact specifications of his gift so I can't say for certain. Please understand; this is the only way that we can protect ourselves from others exploiting our gifts."

Whatever Kakashi was going to say in response was cut short as Naruto burst back through the open door and grabbed Sasuke's arm, trying to pull him away from the group. "Help, Sasuke, please! Lee needs help!"

"Slow down! What's going on?" Sasuke tried to ask the frantic ghost, but Naruto just tugged harder.

"There's no time! Gaara's got him. Please, Sasuke- I think he's going to kill him!"