Exodus

By EDelta88

Chapter 5: Cleaning House

Though the night was pleasant and the skies were clear, it was a somber scene when Team Shikamaru made camp the night before returning to Konoha. Sasuke had barely spoken a word since he rejoined the group, preferring to keep a thoughtful silence or glare sourly at nothing in particular as a dark cloud seemed to hang over his head.

"So, what's eating you, Uchiha?" Kiba asked, finally breaking the silence.

"Kiba!" Chouji scolded.

"What? Like we aren't all curious? It might even be mission relevant!" Kiba defended himself.

Shikamaru sighed. "You're the only one who hasn't reported," he pointed out. "Is it relevant? Or did you just have a bad time of it down south?"

"I know why Naruto left," Sasuke explained glaring into the fire.

Shikamaru wasn't sure if it was a trick of the firelight, but he could have sworn that Sasuke's eyes flashed an angry crimson. "You found her," he observed, keeping his voice carefully even.

Sasuke remained silent, admitting nothing as his features shifted to a stony facade, cold and unreadable.

Shikamaru scowled. For Sasuke to get close enough to find out why Naruto had left but not retrieve her, there had to be a reason. For him to refuse to share those reasons? Something else was at work here. "…And?" he pressed, purposefully vague to draw as much information as Sasuke was willing to share.

"When we get home, I'm cleaning house," Sasuke replied, a dangerous timber in his voice.

The others all went stiff.

"Are you asking for help or just offering professional courtesy between being maddeningly cryptic?" Shikamaru drawled.

Sasuke gave a humorless snort. "A bit of both, I guess."

"Well, I can't speak for everyone, but depending on the reason? Sure, I'll probably join your little witch hunt. Now, quit the mystery act and tell us what in all the hells is going on. Please and thank you," Shikamaru snarked, glaring at his friend.

"Depending on the reason?" Sasuke hedged.

"If it's good."

For a moment, there was silence as Sasuke considered this and glanced around to gauge the reactions of his teammates. If the earnest nods and grim, resolved scowls were anything to go by, they were not only with him but more insulted that he hadn't considered their support to be obvious.

Sasuke nodded slowly, decision made. "Oi, Hyuuga," he called.

"Hm?" Neji replied warily.

"How did you miss that Naruto was pregnant?"

Silence, thick like swamp water and twice as sickening, overtook them.

"…What?" Neji croaked.

Sasuke stared into Neji, equal parts searching and frustrated. "Naruto was pregnant when we were sent after her," he repeated as he kept a careful reign on his temper. After all, there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation. Sasuke didn't know all the secrets of Byakuugan, after all.

Silence reigned.

"So!" Choji chirped, taking a bite of his dinner with a smile that was entirely too cheerful to be anything but dangerous. "Who are we going to kill?"

Everyone blinked, eyeing the normally easy-going boy nervously.

"…Well, that explains why she tried to fold me up like a yard chair, I guess," Kiba inserted lamely, trying to break the tension.

"She was-" Shikamaru started haltingly before a lump in his throat brought him up short. "Really?"

Sasuke nodded stoically, glaring into the fire. "His name is Uzumaki Kairyu," he told them solemnly. "He looks so much both of us that it hurts. He has my face and my hair but… he has her eyes." And, even with only knowing his son a short time, he could tell he had his mother's spirit.

Kiba snorted. "Sounds like he's going to be a heartbreaker," he snickered.

Neji, meanwhile, couldn't help but stare at Sasuke in open astonishment, his mouth working like a fish out of water as he tried to form an answer. "She was…" he started, only for his voice to fail him, trailing off into nothing. Then he blinked, his face twisting as something clicked into place. "Huh…" he muttered, bemused.

"That's it?" Sasuke demanded incredulously. "That's all you have to say?!"

"No, it's just—" Neji cut himself off with a frown. "Naruto's coils have always been… different," he explained. "I understand now that it has something to do with the Kyuubi, but she's always had this extra mass of twisted chakra woven into her coils. Several actually. I'm assuming some of that has to do with the seals that contain the Kyuubi and others are either the Kyuubi itself or its chakra interacting with her system."

"So?"

"It made her coils… dynamic?" Neji tried. "They were always changing. Some of which could be explained away as her growing up; puberty and all that. In hindsight, there was an anomaly with her coils that day, but I didn't think anything of it because that's just how Naruto's body seemed to work."

"Tch," Sasuke hissed in displeasure but said nothing more. Some part of him knew he was being unfair. A part of him that, if he was being completely honest, knew he was displacing his anger at himself—at not knowing. At missing the obvious—onto the Hyuuga boy.

"This is a good thing," Shikamaru interrupted, looking thoughtful.

"What?!" Sasuke demanded and he wasn't alone as many of the other members of Team Shikamaru gave their leader incredulous looks.

"Ignoring the fact that everyone has been looking for Naruto herself and not some random single mother?" Shikamaru replied, quirking a challenging eyebrow at them. "Naruto is an Uzumaki and the Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi. People are going to be extremely interested in any children she might have. If we had reported even the possibility that she could be pregnant, Tsunade would not have been able to keep any of this quiet. As much of a shitty situation as this is, it might have been the best-case scenario."

Sasuke scowled in displeasure but didn't contradict Shikamaru's logic. From that point of view… he was probably right.

"Now then," Shikamaru continued, "why are we cleaning house instead of planning a welcome home party?"

Sasuke's scowl deepened. "Naruto refuses to return to the village while it's unsafe for Kairyu."

Shikamaru nodded, assuming his thinking pose. "Naruto wasn't treated especially well," he mused, more to himself than anyone else. "What else did she say? Did she have specific requirements? Names? Particular problems within the village?"

They spent the rest of the night discussing what information Sasuke had been able to get from his former lover and planning their next move.

Meanwhile, half the world away, Jiraiya slipped unseen into one of his many safe houses, carrying a care package stuffed with fresh clothes, money, and falsified documents. Everything anyone would need to vanish from the face of the Earth and start a new life.

What he was not expecting, was to find Uchiha Itachi waiting for him.

"We have a problem," the young missing ninja told him, cutting straight to the point without preamble.

Jiraiya sighed, dragging a hand down his face in frustration. "What is it now?"

"The Akatsuki is on the move. They've gotten tired of waiting."