Hot it off the press, extra, extra!
Kierayumi- I'm glad you found my story too!
Uchihas-don'-whine- Thanks! And I know about the errors- I type on an iOS devise and the autocorrect is killer. I try to catch stuff, but sometimes I just miss it. I have a scrub of the story already planned after the next chapter, and I'll make things people were unsure about clearer. Thanks for bringing up the fox curse- I'll add that to the list. I loved reading your review; it was really well though out and made me feel special! (And I hope I didn't offend you with the amount of whining Sasuke does in this story, hehe)
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: the pinnacle of the abridgment, the resolution of the cliffhanger, the introduction of a new character, the... you know what, you've probably stopped reading this by now, so I should probably stop.
"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!"
Swearing, Sasuke grabbed his satchel and started out the door. Gaara was not someone to mess around with. This, he knew personally.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Kakashi asked, no amount of panic seeping into his questions.
On the exact opposite end of the spectrum, Ino's voice was filled with franticness. "Is something wrong? What happened, Sasuke?"
"No time to explain," he shouted over his shoulder as Naruto lead him out the door. "Stay here!"
They didn't listen, of course, the ghosts following the trail of Naruto's aura and the humans following the wink of their bracelets in the sun, even though Sasuke had never run so fast in his life, aided by the spiritual power of Naruto pulling him along. It was a busy day, and people on the street stopped to watch the impromptu and strange caravan, telling themselves that they had to be a special exhibition of some sort, or their minds were playing tricks on them, for silver bracelets couldn't float in thin air.
When they reached the same beach that Naruto and Sasuke had fought Gaara at before, the sand mired down Sasuke's feet and made it hard for him to run. Naruto, sensing this, pushed a little bit of his power into Sasuke, making his feet barely touch the surface of the sand. It felt a little bit like flying, but Sasuke had no time to enjoy the sensations before they rounded the bend in the beach and beheld Gaara, holding Lee down against the ground with chains made of sand. Lee was struggling, but to no avail, and Gaara made a hand out of sand and ripped the bracelet off his arm, the pure silver clasp breaking and knocking against Lee's bare skin, drawing a cry of pain from him.
"YOU MAKE FRIENDS WITH HUMANS? WHAT A JOKE! ALLOW ME TO PROVE HOW WEAK YOU REALLY ARE!" Gaara roared, murder in his eyes.
Naruto grabbed onto Sasuke's arm. "Why can't he get free? Lee can't become corporeal!"
"The sand has spent so long under Gaara's command, it's a part of both worlds, so it can hold both humans and spirits. Remember, you couldn't escape it when you tried to become incorporeal."
Panic infused his voice. "Then what are we going to do? We have to save Lee!"
Setting down his satchel, Sasuke dug through it as quickly and calmly as he could. "The same thing we did last time. We're going to fight." He pulled out a vial of holy water and sighed; there wasn't much left. He had used up most of it in the last battle with Gaara and had filled the vial back up at the Hokage, but he still only used it in absolute emergencies, so he hadn't brought enough to pull the same stunt as before. "Unfortunately, we can't do the same thing as last time; Gaara won't fall for the same trick twice, and I don't have enough holy water anyways. We'll have to think of something new."
Standing, he handed the bottle to Naruto, who took it gingerly. "Do you know if Lee was religious during his life?" He asked, bending down again to pull out three silver knives, one for each hand and an extra shoved through his belt.
"No, he's young enough that it was considered acceptable for him to not be." Shikamaru said from right behind them, startling both. "What?" He asked when they gave him a look. "I may be lazy, but I'm not going to sit and do nothing while a friend of mine is hurt."
Naruto tried to hand the bottle back, but Sasuke refused to take it, holding up the two knives as evidence, so Naruto made a face, but held on to it. "Why aren't you using the cross?"
"The cross only works in close quarters, and since we used it before, it won't work again; Gaara's to smart to fall for it twice. It'll have to be just the knives and whatever power you can throw at him this time."
"How did you beat him last time?" Shikamaru asked, his eyebrows creasing as his genius mind began to work in circles.
"By contaminating part of the sand with holy water, and then the surf diluted it and contaminated almost all the rest of the sand. His own defense hurt him then, and from there on in I used a knife."
"Interesting." Shikamaru sat down on the sand, his hands steepled together and his eyes closed in absolute concentration.
The rest of the gang, Shino, Kiba, and the other humans, rounded the bend then, and Sasuke turned to them with an impressive string of swears. "I thought I told you to stay put! This is dangerous!"
Sakura pointed at the moving lumps of sand in horror. "What's that?"
"Get off the sand!" Sasuke roared just as Gaara took notice of them.
With thundering footsteps that shook the ground enough for even the human to notice, Gaara took several great strides forward, past the the bound and captive Lee, and sent a tidal wave of sand toward to small knot of people. Shoving Naruto behind him, Sasuke took a few steps forward and plunged both knives into the ground ahead of him. The tidal wave of sand parted at the point where the knives were stuck into the ground and slid along the sides of an invisible barrier that flared out behind Sasuke in a cone, wide enough at its base to protect all four people standing, clueless as to what was going on, at the edge of the tree line. The excess sand crashed into the plants at the edge of the beach, decimating the small bushes and stripping the trees of their smaller branches.
Ripping his blades out of the ground as Gaara turned his attention back to Lee, Sasuke yelled, "Shino! Kiba! Get them off the sand now! He controls this whole area!"
Thankfully, neither Shino or Kiba asked any unnecessary questions, and both proceeded to push back against the group of people, shoving them until they passed the treeline. Akamaru, who had joined the group during the journey, Sasuke didn't know when, planted himself at the edge of the sand and growled at them, making it clear that they were not to pass. When Kakashi's tried to go around the large white dog, Akamaru even snapped at him, and he hastily retreated.
Good, Sasuke thought. Untrained civilians had no place in the field, especially if they couldn't see what they were fighting. If would be safer for everyone if they stayed out of the fight altogether.
Naruto scrambled up from the ground as Shino and Kiba quickly floated over to join the group of ghosts and Sasuke. "What's the plan?" Kiba asked, his hand holding tight to the cuff of Shino's jacket.
"You too?" Naruto asked.
"I, too, am not so cold that I would let a friend suffer." Shino crossed his hands over his chest. "What can we do to help?"
Suddenly, Shikamaru's eyes popped open. "I have the plan."
"You do?" Sasuke kept his eyes trained on Gaara, who was stalking back toward the slowly disappearing Lee. "Shit, he's going under! Naruto, can you blast him out like you did me?"
Naruto prepared to do so, but a shout from Shikamaru stopped them. "Wait!"
Shikamaru never shouted, or even raised his voice above a low groan if he could help it, so they all turned and gave him their undivided attention from shock.
Sniffing a little in annoyance, Shikamaru groused, "Now that I have your attention, here's the plan: we blast Lee out of there after we douse him with holy water, since the water will hurt Gaara but not Lee. Once that is completed, Sasuke goes in with the knives to provide cover for us, Naruto keeps blasting Gaara with the sand, Kiba and myself will mess with the sand he's trying to use by pulling it in the opposite direction with our telekinesis, and Shino grabs Lee and pulls him out of there. That sound like a good plan to everyone?"
"Yes, but start it fast!" Sasuke tightened the grip on his weapons. "Lee's not going to last very long in that sand trap; I've been in it, and it pulled me down in under a minute. We have to move now!"
Lee was in a little bit of a different position from Sasuke; he had been trapped face up, rather than face down, so Gaara had left his face free of the sand while submerging the rest of his body in the tight dampness. Surprisingly, the draugr leaned over the phantom, and with an almost gentle gesture, traced a finger made of sand down his face. Lee didn't flinch away from it, instead asking Gaara something the others couldn't hear. At this, the draugr himself flinched and drew back as if burned, then screamed aloud to the sky something unintelligible, sending a smaller tidal wave of sand over Lee to cover his face.
Sasuke started running forward as soon as the sand started to move, hoping to make it to Lee before he got dragged down too deep. Behind him, he heard a small scuffle, followed by Shikamaru's order.
"Give me the holy water!"
Then the vial of holy water went sailing over his head, held upright by telekinesis until it reached the spot where Lee lay buried, then it turned over and spilled its contents on his shallow grave of living death. Just before Sasuke arrived, a blast of power carved a crater in the space just above where Lee was, showing the boy coughing up sand from his lungs. The sand, contaminated with holy water as it had been before, blasted up into Gaara's howling face and blinded the monster, causing him to stagger around and let out an inhuman cry of pain that even Sakura, Ino, and Choji reacted to.
"Holy shit!" The cry came from Kakashi, who, a quick glance confirmed, had taken off the top part of his mask so he could see what was happening. Throughout the rest of battle, Sasuke could hear him relaying a play by play to the other humans who were blind to what was happening in the fight.
Gaara immediately tried to slough the sand from his skin and gather new grains for armor, but Naruto kept blasting the sand on the ground into clouds and drifts, and Shikamaru and Kiba kept tugging on the particles, trying to keep them from becoming a solid mass, so Gaara eventually gave up and simply covered his whole body with a thin layer of the stuff, hard as diamonds and the same color as the beach, making it seem like the small cove had conjured up a malevolent creature as its protector.
Sasuke jumped between the coughing Lee and the pain crazed draugr, providing cover for Shino, who had been following close behind him, to grab the phantom and get him out of the danger zone. He heard him try to protest briefly, then a muffled thump as Shino clapped a hand over his mouth and slung him over his shoulder, carrying him away from the battle. Good; there was one objective accomplished.
But Gaara, as if realizing that his quarry was getting away, paid no mind to Sasuke even as he tried to attack the draugr, and shoved him aside, sending him tumbling in favor of stretching out a hand for one final blow to his victim: he picked up the shards of pure silver from the bracelet he had broken earlier, and slammed them in a handful of sand straight into the base of Lee's spine. Gasping in horror from the ground, Sasuke could only watch at Lee buckled and screamed in pure agony just before reaching the safe zone. Shikamaru stopped pulling on the sand and ran out to assist Shino, and Kiba couldn't keep it away from Gaara by himself, so the sand started swirling around the sand draugr once more.
Naruto screamed as well, and started to charge at Gaara, but Sasuke was faster. One of his knives had been dropped during his tumble on the ground, but he had learned his lesson during the first fight and grabbed the spare one from his belt. Running forward to gather momentum, he jumped on Gaara from behind, finding his body through the cloud of sand and wrapping his legs around it, then bringing both knives down through the obscuring barrier to find some portion of the hard armor to hit.
Immediately, all the swirling sand dropped and Gaara froze, and Sasuke found that he was perched on Gaara's back, grasping his middle tightly with his legs, and had stabbed him directly at the base of his skull. The point of impact between the hardened sand and the silver started to flake away, then his whole armor began to crumble. Sasuke, not wanting to be that close to the ghost when he unfroze, jumped off his back and circled around to face Gaara from the front.
What he saw shocked him. It was the first time since the first battle he had seen Gaara's face up close, and the place where the silver knife had grazed him on his forehead last time was still red and raw. However, it was different than Sasuke had left it; instead of a simple red mark, Gaara had carved and clawed at his own forehead until the word LOVE sat above his brow, outlined in his own blood. A single line of it trailed down and dripped into his eye, making the turquoise turn a shade of mottled reddish purple.
With a scream, Gaara unfroze and launched himself at Sasuke, who held up his knives in preparation for battle. However, Gaara did not go for a direct fight, like last time: instead, he grabbed Sasuke's wrists, making both of his knives useless, and hissed at him, speaking in the quietest voice Sasuke had ever heard him use.
"Why couldn't you just leave him?"
"For what?" Sasuke spat, struggling to free his arms. "For you to kill? I gave you a second chance, Gaara. You wasted it!"
"No," the ghost almost moaned. "So he could tell me what this means." He let go of one of Sasuke's hands to touch the bleeding word on his forehead.
Oh. Oh.
Jesus, Sasuke knew the ghost had been murdered by his own parents, but to not even have a concept of what love was? How sad could you get? And it was probably Sasuke's rant when he had spared Gaara during the first fight that caused the chaos inside the draugr and sparked off this most recent event, and that just made Sasuke feel worse.
Even though Gaara had both of his eyes closed and had released one of Sasuke's hands, Sasuke still didn't attack him, his own mind whirling in thought. Was there a way to bring Gaara out of this?
He was snapped back to reality as Naruto hurtled toward them with the knife Sasuke had dropped earlier, holding it aloft even though it had to be burning him. Gaara let go of Sasuke's other hand and dropped into the sand, disappearing without a trace before Naruto got there, but the ghost, crazed with grief for his friend, tried to follow him, and would have stabbed the ground if Sasuke hadn't grabbed him by the middle and held him back.
"Stop, Naruto! Lee's the most important thing right now."
Naruto kept struggling for a few more seconds, then Sasuke's words got through to him and he sagged in Sasuke's embrace. They both turned to see what had happened to Lee, who was on the ground surrounded by the other three phantoms. Kiba was holding his hand, so Sasuke knew it was bad. Quickly, they each shot each other a glance before running back across the sand to the injured phantom.
As soon as Sasuke saw the damage, hope plummeted from his chest, leaving it a bare chasm. Gaara had shoved the two shards of the clasp of the bracelet deep into his spine where it connected to his pelvis, and the silver was going to poison him from the inside out. Already, it was spreading through his nervous system, causing little spasms as he tried to talk, which Shikamaru kept trying to keep him from doing.
Shino stood up as Sasuke and Naruto approached. "He's not doing too good. Do you think he'll pull through?"
The silver would have to be extracted, Sasuke knew at least that much. But Lee was a young ghost, so he couldn't remain corporeal for an extraction, which meant that the instruments would have to be made of pure silver, which would only injure him further, and which Sasuke did not have. Not only that, but Sasuke had no formal medical training, and didn't know how to do such a delicate procedure without injuring Lee to the point of death. In other words, the odds of Lee pulling through this were not good.
But what he said was, "Get him to the Hokage, fast. We don't have much time."
The people probably stared again at the strange caravan, a boy with winking bits of light surrounding him followed by a dog and four more people, but Sasuke paid them no attention, instead thinking about what he could do to save Lee. There wasn't much choice; Lee was probably going to die, and become a spiritual spirit. The death would greatly pain the other phantoms, and even cause Sasuke grief, since he had gotten attached to the little band of mischievous ghosts, but he wasn't sure if there was anything he could do about it.
Sasuke thanked whatever or whoever was listening that the Hokage was empty when he and the phantoms burst through the door and entered the dining area carrying Lee.
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Kakashi asked, the first person back through the door.
"Yes. I need a large table in a room somewhere where I won't be disturbed."
"Done." He brought Sasuke to a back room he had never seen before, with bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling and a long wooden table in the center. The rest of the room was bare except for a few stools.
"We use it for storage in the winter," Kakashi said by way of an explanation, and Sasuke nodded.
"It's perfect." He gestured to the other phantoms. "Get him in there and lay him on the table face down - I said face down, Kiba!"
"Is there anything else I can do? Anything at all?"
Sasuke cast a single look at Lee, then turned back to Kakashi. "Go up to my room and bring me my suitcase. It's in the middle of the room, zipped up, so just bring it down without opening it."
Turning away, Kakashi noticed Sakura charging in through the door. "You catch that?"
"Yep." Gone and back in a flash, Sakura raced up the stairs and came back down with the suitcase balanced precariously in her arms.
Grabbing the suitcase, Sasuke brought it into the room, dropping it on one of the stools. Kakashi followed close behind him. "Anything else?"
Sasuke placed two hands on Kakashi's chest and shoved him out of the room, shutting the door firmly between them. Muffled through the wood of the door, Sasuke heard, "Point taken."
Taking his hands off the door, Sasuke turned around to face the table where four ghostly gazes were staring at him with fear and hope reflected in their eyes, and a fifth was limply closed. A single glance was it took for his experienced eye to know that Lee was not assured to pull through this. Taking a deep breath, he set out to crush their hopes.
"It doesn't look good for him." Gasps resounded from all around the room, but Sasuke foraged ahead. "Lee's young, and incorporeal- if I could at least touch him, he might have a better chance, but I can't. And I know that Gaara probably didn't know what he was doing, but those silver pieces are going to poison him from the inside out, and there's only one way to stop it." Silently, he withdrew a silver knife from his bag and laid it on one of the stools.
A shocked silence drew over the room, cut open by Kiba's rough, emotional whisper. "You have to… cut it out?"
"There's no other way?" Shikamaru asked, looking slightly sick.
Sasuke didn't respond to the questions, instead placing his hands against the table. "I leave this up to you, since you're his friends: either I try to cut the pieces out, or I try to help Lee fade before he dies and becomes a spectral spirit. Either way, there's a large chance I won't make it in time."
"Can't someone else try to cut them out?" Naruto asked frantically. "Someone with surgical experience?"
"Lee can't be touched by anything but silver. Another ghost couldn't hold the silver, and another human wouldn't be able to see him. I'm your only option."
This proclamation was followed by silence as everyone digested the hard news.
"There's no guarantee he'll fade, either," Shikamaru pointed out. "You talk about it, but I've never seen someone here do it. I don't even know if we can."
"That's why I'm leaving this up to you." Sasuke looked down at the lifeless form of Lee, clenching his fists in anger.
A small whimper broke into the conversation, and they all looked at Lee in amazement. One of his eyes cracked open, and his lips moved, just barely, but enough to speak. "Please, Sasuke," he whispered. "Please, don't let me go. I can't give up. Fight for me." Then his eye closed and he heaved a rasping breath before settling into shallow pants.
A silent moment was lost as they all stared at Lee, then Sasuke slammed his hands down on the table, shocking them all out of their reverie. "You heard him! We're doing the operation, dammit, but I'm going to need all of your help to get it done. Understand?" When four set of eyes turned blankly to him, he roared, "Understand?!"
All the ghosts jumped and nodded.
"Good." Sasuke pointed to Lee. "First thing, take his shirt off."
"But-" Shino tried to protest, but Sasuke cut him off.
"He's dying; this is no time to be worrying about modesty! Take his goddamned clothes off!"
Shino and Kiba started work on stripping Lee, and Sasuke turned to Naruto and Shikamaru, asking, "Do you know any ghosts who were doctors in their lifetimes?"
The two ghosts exchanged a glance. "Well, there is old lady Tsunade," Shikamaru ventured. "She used to be a doctor before she took her stint as owner of the Hokage."
"She sounds perfect; go grab her."
Naruto pointed at the closed door. "We can't; we can't go through walls with these-"
"Fuck it, just come here!" Sasuke grabbed Naruto and unclipped the bracelet from his wrist. "Now go find her, and bring her back as fast as you can!"
The phantom was off like a shot, racing through the wall to find the ghost of the old doctor. When Sasuke turned back to the table, he found Lee stripped to his waist, face down against the table and trembling at the chill air. Nodding in approval, he balanced the suitcase on another one of the stools, next to the one that held the knife, and dug inside it to find some other items he would need for the operation. Sasuke certainly wasn't a doctor, but he could improvise well enough if he was all they had.
Out of the suitcase came a pair of silvery mesh gloves, a cloth of the same silver mesh fabric, and a thin stick painted over with silver. Sasuke carefully wrapped the stick with the cloth so that none of the silver bits were showing, then set it aside, pulling on one of the gloves. Grabbing the arm of Shikamaru, who was the closest to him, Sasuke ran the glove along his skin and asked, "Does this hurt?"
"No. Feels a bit weird, but no pain."
"Good." Sasuke turned back to Lee and gently pressed the pads of two fingers against his back, away from his injury. Lee started to fidget and tremble at the contact, but when Sasuke removed the glove, the skin wasn't red or blistered, so it would be uncomfortable but safe to use on the sensitive ghost's skin. The same might not be true if he stuck it in his mouth, which was the purpose of the stick wrapped in cloth, but they might not need it, so Sasuke decided that he would cross that bridge when they got there. The cloth would allow Sasuke to be able to touch Lee and hold him down in the midst of the operation, so which was important because time was of the essence.
Already, Sasuke could tell that Lee was fading fast, the poison of the silver announcing itself in deep red streaks spreading across his back. If any of those streaks reached his heart or brain, Lee would die instantly, no matter what was happening elsewhere in his body. It was both a blessing and a curse that the silver pieces had gotten lodged in his lower spine: because they were in bone, the path to the heart, usually the easier one, was long and convoluted, so Sasuke had a lot of time before that happened. However, it also meant that the poison had almost a straight shot to his brain through the nerves in his spine, and that was what was holding the crunch of time for Sasuke.
Back through the wall came Naruto now, pulling a ghost behind him that Sasuke assumed was the "old lady Tsunade" referred to before, but she wasn't old at all. In fact, she was a younger middle aged woman with long blond hair, untouched by grey, and a tiny purple star in the middle of her forehead. Looking severely disgruntled at being disturbed, Tsunade crossed her arms and barked at Naruto, "Why have you pulled me from my resting place?"
So this Tsunade was a figure. That would make reasoning with her slightly easier. At least she wasn't a vegetative specter. Stepping forward, Sasuke caught her attention. "Excuse me, Miss. - Tsunade, right? - I heard that you were a doctor when you were alive?"
Tsunade jumped. "Dammit, a human's talkin' to me! I don't know to deal with that!"
Sensing the disaster about to happen, Shikamaru stepped forward. "Tsunade, we need your help. Lee's been hurt real bad, and we gunna need some of your doctor's knowledge to save him."
"You don't normally talk like that, do you?" Sasuke asked Shikamaru out of the corner of his mouth.
"She's mostly isolated, so Tsunade still hasn't lost her old Maine accent. It makes her more comfortable when we speak to her like that, even though it makes me feel like a grumpy old grandfather." Shikamaru whispered back.
Tsunade had turned to see Lee while Sasuke was distracted, and was brushing feather light touches along his skin. "What happened?"
Sasuke gestured to Shikamaru to explain, since she seemed more comfortable listening to him. "He's got silver pieces in his spine. They need to come out, and the human here's the only one who can do it. Can you help us?"
Skating her head sadly at the injury, Tsunade responded, "Anything for my boys. But once he gets better, ya need to come visit me more often, ya hear?"
"Excellent." Sasuke moved forward, and Tsunade jumped again, but held her ground this time. "I need to get the silver out, but since they're in his spine, I don't want to damage any nerves that could lead to paralysis, or worse."
There was an intake of breath from the other ghosts; clearly, they hadn't even considered that possibility yet.
Examining the tiny and surprisingly blood free hole in the small of Lee's back, Tsunade asked, "What instruments do you have?"
Sasuke wordlessly held up the silver knife, and Tsunade stared at it without blinking.
"You're joking."
Still wordless, Sasuke shook his head.
"You're gonna kill him!"
"That's why I need your help." He held up the knife. "This is the only thing that can touch him right now, so it's the only thing I can use."
"Damn." Tsunade fixed Sasuke with a piercing glare, and he felt like she was looking through his body to find his soul, the part of him that would be a ghost if he was dead. "Then you're going to have to do exactly what I tell you. Now grab that knife and get ready to go."
Sasuke nodded, then bent over Lee's back, heart pounding and hands sweating. Laying down the knife in a stool, he wiped his palms on his pants before grabbing the knife again and setting up for the first cut.
The operation itself only took about ten minutes, but it seemed like hours to Sasuke, who spent the entire time with his sweaty hand cramped up around the handle of the knife. At the first biting touch of the silver, Lee had jerked and started to spasm, and the other phantoms had to hold him still so Sasuke didn't make a mistake in his extraction. Throughout the whole experience, Tsunade stood directly over Sasuke, breathing down his neck and barking orders at him, yelling at him when he got too close to a nerve and yelling some more when he wasn't getting close enough or going too slow.
When the knife touched the first silver fragment, Lee had started to scream, so Sasuke had shoved the silver cloth wrapped stick in his mouth. Tears started to stream from the phantom's eyes, but at least he was safe from biting his tongue.
When both silver fragments had been removed and the tip of the knife no longer rested in his flesh, Lee abruptly relaxed, the silver stick covered in cloth dropping from his mouth when his jaw lost the tension. The red patches on his back had gotten bigger during the operation but stopped growing as soon as the silver was gone. A single stripe lead from the small of his back, tracing a path up his spine, and ended just before it connected with his neck. They had made it just in time.
With a shuddering breath, Lee closed his eyes a final time and lay still. Sasuke put his knife down with deep sigh, rubbing his eyes because he had been afraid to blink for the past ten minutes. "Is he asleep? I thought ghosts couldn't go to sleep?"
"We can't." Shikamaru carefully let go of Lee's shoulders, which he had been holding down to prevent him from twisting during the operation. "He's unconscious. It happens sometimes when we exhaust all of our stores of energy in a difficult task. When he stores up enough energy again, he'll wake up."
"Should someone stay with him until he wakes up?"
"I will," Tsunade announced.
All the phantoms shot looks among themselves before Naruto stepped forward. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather go back? I'll bring you back to where you belong if you want, Grans. You don't need to stay by Lee; we can do that."
But Tsunade shook her head. "I helped with the operation, so he's my patient now, and I never leave a patient until they're completely healed."
"In that case…" Sasuke shot a dark look at the door, where he knew people would be crowding around, waiting for an explanation. "I need to go fend off the masses."
Shikamaru shot one last look at Tsunade, who was gently brushing the hair away from Lee's eyes with a supple hand, then nodded for the group. "We'll come with you."
The other phantoms nodded in agreement, then Naruto jumped up. "My bracelet! You took it off so I could go get the Old Lady! Where'd it go?"
For a second, Sasuke heart jumped up into his throat; those bracelets were expensive, and he had already lost Lee's, so he couldn't lose Naruto's as well. Then he calmed down as he remembered shoving it in his pocket when he had hastily removed it from the ghost earlier, and he brought it out with relief washing through him. "Here it is."
Naruto stuck his arm out for Sasuke to reattach it around his wrist, but Kiba jumped in between them. "Woah, woah, wait a minute! You're gonna put that thing back on? Voluntarily?"
"Of course I am," Naruto snapped, pushing Kiba out of the way. "I'm not like you, Kiba. These people, no matter what Sasuke's told them about me, still believe, in a secret part of their hearts, the story of the fox curse of Uzumaki, something that even I don't believe exists. How can I overcome a false curse other than to beat it with the truth? I can't afford to be misunderstood even once, because with all the real information Kakashi's been getting about ghosts, he really might be able to do some damage to me! So, yes, I want to wear the bracelet, because it may be the only thing keeping everyone from jumping at my throat!"
"Hey, break it up!" Sasuke seized both of their wrists, glaring at them authoritatively. "Are you really going to fight in your friend's sickroom, where he was just on his deathbed?" Both ghosts hung their heads in shame, and Sasuke nodded approval. "Now behave."
Quickly fixing the bracelet back on Naruto's wrist then replacing all his tools back into his suitcase, Sasuke prepared to leave the room. Casting one last glance at the other ghosts, the phantoms who were set to follow him, the unconscious ghost on the table, and the mild lady brushing hair away from his eyes, Sasuke pushed open the door.
To his surprise, there was no crowd waiting to push past him and ask a million questions. For a second, the silence stunned Sasuke, then he walked a few steps forward into the room, noticing that it was completely empty. Where had they all gone? The last he had seen, at least Kakashi and Sakura had been standing there.
Voices on the other side of the doorway, which lead into the entrance hallway used by regular guests, caught his attention, and Sasuke walked toward it.
"Where is the Uchiha?" A familiar voice asked, one that should not be there. Oh, God. He wouldn't!
Kakashi answered firmly, "He is unavailable at the moment. If you would care to wait here, he should be out shortly."
"I don't think you understand. The Uchiha is expecting me. I need to see him now."
He didn't!
"And I don't think you understand. This is a formal establishment, and while you are here, you will behave according to our rules."
A disgraceful sniff was heard. "If this is an establishment that makes its customers wait for such simple things, I'd hate to see what your official rules are."
Fuck it, the Hyuuga came early!
Sasuke should have seen it coming; it was a common thing in their circles of society to arrive the day before the day they said they would arrive, just to make sure that they weren't being taken advantage of or to foil any arrival surprises. And here he was, probably all prim and proper, and here Sasuke was, casually dressed, sweaty, tired, and generally unkempt. Well, he dared that fancy Hyuuga to come of a battle with a draugr as well as Sasuke had.
Appearing suddenly in the doorway, Sasuke leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms, leveling a glare at Neji Hyuuga. "I thought you said you were coming tomorrow." His eyes roved across the room, taking in the details of the rest of the occupants. Sakura, Ino, and Choji stood to one side of the room, Kakashi on the other, and they were all staring with open hostility at the the two people in the center of the room.
Neji was standing haughtily in the center of room, a girl maybe a year or two younger than him close to his side, both with identical pale eyes. And sure enough, he was wearing a pressed suit and tie, and gave Sasuke an almost disdainful look at his attire. "I arrived early because-"
"Save your breath; I know why you're here."
The Hyuuga was clearly not used to being cut off, and he floundered in silence for a few seconds. Sasuke smirked at his expression. "And please forgive my appearance. This tends to happen when you perform spinal cord surgery with knife meant for cutting steaks."
A gasp came from the girl, probably his cousin Hinata, but Neji shot her a look and she quieted. "I do believe that you're telling me an untruth, Uchiha."
"Oh, he's telling the truth all right," Naruto quipped, appearing floating in the doorway next to Sasuke. "I can verify that."
Upon seeing Naruto, Hinata's pale eyes rolled up in her head and she dropped into a dead faint. Luckily, Sakura had seen her start to fall and darted forward to grab her, Ino and Choji not far behind, and together they managed to get her onto a nearby couch. Neji, for his part, was staring in shock at Naruto.
"Holy shit!"
"That's what I said," Sasuke said with an even wider smirk. "It's your fault if you didn't believe me."
"Believe you about what?" Shikamaru asked, pushing Naruto out of the way and floating in through the door.
If possible, Neji's pale eyes got even paler and wider. "Holy shit!"
"I believe you already said that." Shino pulled Kiba through the doorway, the last ones to enter the room. "How about a 'good morning' now?"
An open mouthed Neji gaped back and forth between the ghosts and Sasuke. "There's four of them? Four pure phantoms, all in one place?"
"Actually, there's five. The last one's the one I just performed spinal cord surgery on."
Unable to stand any longer, Neji sank into the nearest chair. "Holy shit."
Sasuke smiled; he really liked it when he was right. "Why do you think I called you here?"