Author's note: A bit of a transition chapter, but that can't be really helped.

Thanks to the following reviewers: 666snoopy; Iraheta 127

Warnings: Nothing in particular I think

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Kishimoto owns it.

I hope you'll like it!

Chapter 35

Yamato's absence in his house was clearly noticeable when they walked through the front door. Since he had died, nobody had visited his home: dust had already collected everywhere by now, giving the chairs and the table a dull look. Particles of dust floated around them when they went further into the house, looking around. Yamato had been very neat from the looks of it: everything had its own place and the sink was devoid of dirty dishes, not even a single cup left behind on the counter. Books were neatly placed in rows in the lonely bookcase and his bed had been made, almost rivalling a hotel bed with how tight the blanket had been pulled.

"Where should we go look for the blueprints?" Naruto questioned in a low voice.

It wasn't as if anybody would overhear him talking if he spoke in a normal voice, but the loaded atmosphere clinging to the house – imaginary or not turned them all quite subdued.

"Father mentioned once that Yamato had a study here where he spent most of his time sketching the designs," Sasuke answered, backing out of the almost sterile looking bedroom – save for the dust. There was nothing here except for a wardrobe, a bed and a nightstand; none of those contained anything remotely similar to blueprints.

"That might be the study," Gaara spoke up, jerking his thumb at a room at the end of the corridor. "Not that many rooms left that can function like one."

"Unless he lived with somebody else," Naruto commented, following the red haired man to the room.

"No, he was on his own from the start, I think," Sasuke said distractedly, going after them. "I never saw him with someone in particular."

When Gaara pushed the door open, it revealed a room which stood in stark contrast to all the other ones they had looked through so far. This room was still fairly neat, but obviously a lot less tidy compared to the others. Various piles of paper were placed haphazardly around the room and the desk was cluttered with a collection of pens, pencils and unfinished designs.

Several cabinets covered the walls from view, each one of them containing three drawers. Some of the cabinets had pictures placed on top of them, showing Yamato surrounded by several unknown people, ranging from kids – barely toddler age – to some elderly ones. They were all smiling in every picture; the backdrops either showing the back of a rural looking house or a lakeshore. They must have been family of Yamato's or close friends.

The implied reason as to why Sasuke had never seen any of them had him pressing his lips tightly together.

Turning his back to the pictures, he took a look at the designs scattered around on the desk. Frowning, he picked up one of them; his eyes honing in on the numbers written in neat pencil strokes in the upper right corner.

"He numbered all his designs with the date written at the end," he realised after looking through a couple of the other designs.

These appeared to be sketches of the southern wall, but extensions had been drawn in a different colour, showing the wall standing closer to the trees than it was in reality. These must have been the designs Yamato had prepared in order to expand the compound most likely.

"Meaning that if we look through the designs matching the year these walls were built, we should find the blueprints?" Naruto asked and already walked over to one of the cabinets, the one right next to the windows.

"Yeah, we'll have to look for the beginning of the year; that's when father gathered enough people to actually start considering building the compound," Sasuke replied.

More specifically, back then he had found enough capable people who could help building the place.

"Let's hope Yamato was a lot more organised with his work than I ever was with my study notes," Naruto said lightly, opening the first drawer.

"That shouldn't be a difficult bar to jump over," Gaara muttered, smirking when Naruto clucked his tongue and gave him the middle finger.

Naruto pulled the designs out of each drawer, leaving them all a pile to sort through. It quickly became obvious that this cabinet, however, would be a bust. The designs in this one were actually the most recent ones, though several of them had been crossed out with thick lines, showing that Yamato hadn't been content with the end result.

"What's the point in keeping them if he wasn't happy with how they turned out?" Naruto mumbled while they moved on to the next cabinet.

"He could have been thinking of recuperating some of it at a later date?" Sasuke shrugged, not particularly interested in the reason.

He had never been around when father had talked with Yamato about building the compound. Father had trusted the other man with this important job, though, so Sasuke had known he could trust Yamato to come up with designs sturdy enough to protect them against the zombies; that had been all that had mattered.

Even though the designs themselves were all neatly organised according to their number and date of conception, the cabinets were a different story. The first cabinet contained the most recent sketches, while the second one went back a year before – only for the third cabinet to return to the beginning of this year. The fourth cabinet they looked through finally did yield the year they needed and they browsed through the papers, counting back the months until the start of that year. Having riffled through the papers to find the right months, they decided to remove the sketches belonging to the maps bearing the labels January, February and March. Sasuke started looking through the map labelled January while Naruto picked the February one and Gaara the one of March.

For a while only the sound of pages flipping disturbed the silence of the room. Sasuke didn't claim to be an expert in reading blueprints, but he remembered seeing the final sketches on father's desk all the way back at the start of all this. He still recalled them perfectly, so he was convinced any addition would stand out to him even when he wasn't an expert in blueprints like Yamato had been.

Nothing appeared to be amiss in the map he held, though. The blueprints looked just like they had when Sasuke had first seen them, not a single line out of place; nothing smudged or faded that could indicate an extra exit had been added. Was the extra addition in the map of March then? It could be even later, that was also a possibility. Danzo could have approached Yamato at a later date in time to request him to add the exit. Their meeting didn't necessarily had to have happened at the start.

"Got nothing here," Gaara sighed, slapping the map down on the desk.

"There's a page missing here," Naruto announced out of the blue; his fingers pausing between two sheets of paper.

"What? You sure?" Sasuke leant over his shoulder immediately, Gaara looking over Naruto's other shoulder.

The first page Naruto held up had been dated as 186/Feb while the next one stated 188/Feb. Naruto flipped to the next page, which showed 189/Feb.

"The page could have been misplaced?" Sasuke suggested doubtfully.

Naruto side-eyed him and snorted quietly. "You have seen how orderly the dude was, right? All the other maps had the pages in the correct order and you're going to tell me that it's this map only he fumbled? Yeah, no, unlikely."

Sasuke heaved a sigh, putting his own map down on the desk. "I guess so. If the blueprint isn't in this map, that means it has to be the one containing the one with the exit, no?"

"I'd assume so, yeah," Naruto said, leafing through the rest of the pages and coming up empty. "I'm willing to bet that the other maps are back to their regular order. That missing page has to be the one with the exit on it, but why didn't he keep it? You think he threw it away on purpose?"

"Unlikely considering he kept the scrapped designs," Gaara said critically.

"Yeah, I don't think he would have thrown it away," Sasuke said, shaking his head even as he furrowed his eyebrows. "I don't believe he had bad intentions. He was loyal to the entire Board, not just father. If Danzo approached him, talking about an extra exit, he wouldn't have necessarily believed that was a bad thing depending on what Danzo told him."

"I highly doubt you could consider Danzo charming enough to mislead anybody," Naruto said dryly, making Gaara snort. "But hell, the old croak managed to weasel his way into the Board, so what the hell do I know? Maybe he could indeed be charming when he wanted to be." He braced his arse against the desk, stretching out his injured leg and lightly shaking it.

"You okay?" Sasuke asked worriedly.

"Yeah, fine, the bandage's just itching a bit." Naruto waved off his concern and went back to thumbing through the designs. "So if Yamato didn't see anything wrong with Danzo's request for an extra exit, why didn't he put the blueprint with the others in this map? Think he gave it to Danzo for some reason?"

"No, father insisted that the blueprints stayed together in one place," Sasuke refuted the idea immediately. "He didn't want the plans of the compound to be spread around everywhere. There's no way Yamato would have given one of the blueprints away, no how matter how detailed it was."

"If he didn't give it away," Gaara said contemplatively while Naruto closed the map, "then did someone else take it?"

"Danzo could have taken it," Sasuke mumbled, gazing down at the designs covering the desk. "If he was visiting Yamato and Yamato was distracted at one point … It's not like Danzo would have wanted anyone to know what he had done."

"And if he suspected Yamato might blabber about it in the future, it makes sense he would take the proof with him – no evidence to back up Yamato's claim," Naruto finished his thought; his eyes brightening up briefly. "After all, who would ever suspect the old fucktard of putting everybody in danger?"

The absolute cynicism coating Naruto's voice had Sasuke snorting in spite of everything, making Naruto briefly flash a smile at him.

"Next stop is Danzo's place then?" Gaara suggested, rolling his shoulders.

Naruto straightened out from his slouched position, stretching his arms.

"Yeah, if the others haven't found it by now already," Sasuke said and with one last look at the room, they left.

By the time they showed up at Danzo's apartment, it appeared as if a whirlwind had raged around furiously here. Papers were strewn around everywhere across the rooms, pillows had been thrown off the couch and unzipped, their white stuffing pooling out. The ostensibly looking portraits had been removed from the walls and dumped on the table. Every drawer, every door had been opened, revealing the content in the cabinets and closets. Even the carpet was no longer covering the floor, having been rolled up and put to the side.

Chiyo supported herself with a wrinkly hand on the couch, quirking an eyebrow at their looks of disbelief. "What? Never seen a thorough inspection of a room before?" she scoffed. "My, you three must have been bloody angels as kids. The gods know my darling daughter was a master at hiding shit."

"Looks like you were a master of finding her shit, though," Naruto commented casually and stepped over a discarded pillow. "Any success here?"

Gaara prodded against an unzipped cushion, looking blank-faced.

"Actually, yes." Hiashi walked out of the bedroom, waving a blue map through the air. Grimly he opened it, revealing the missing blueprint. "Found it under a loose floorboard underneath the bed. There's no way we would have thought to ever look underneath there."

"Not until I told you to do so," Chiyo pointed out smugly. "Loose floorboards, hah! My dearest daughter really believed she was so smart when she hid that whiskey bottle underneath one. Tsk, she was always underestimating me!"

"The fuck kind of family did she have?" Naruto muttered underneath his breath.

"The exit's on there?" Sasuke asked, tensing up slightly. It had to be, because why else would have Danzo hidden a blueprint?

"Yeah, and I know where it is," Hiashi confirmed, pointing at an innocuous looking line in the lower right corner of the page. "That's the basement of this building. This puts the exit near the boiler."

"This building doesn't connect to the walls, though," Sasuke pointed out, throwing the barest of glances at Gaara, who kept his face neutral. "Which means the bastard must have made a damn tunnel to get out of the compound without being seen."

"If only he would have exerted this much effort into being a decent man," Chiyo said critically, eyeing the blueprint unimpressed as she braced her weight against the couch. "The four of you, go check the tunnel. Unlike Danzo my legs aren't exactly in the shape needed to do so many stairs at once."

"You wouldn't think that with how this apartment looks like," Naruto mumbled, smiling innocently when she regarded him with piercing eyes.

"Let's go. We have to know where the tunnel exactly ends," Sasuke spoke up before she could start grilling Naruto about what he had said.

"You followed him all the way to the basement?" Sasuke asked underneath his breath, following Hiashi at a small distance.

Gaara shrugged lightly, nodding imperceptibly. "Tracked him down all the way there and to outside," he replied, barely moving his lips.

Sasuke would have been confused how Danzo hadn't noticed someone trailing behind him, but from personal experience he knew just how silent Gaara and Naruto could be when they wanted.

The basement was empty, naturally, seeing as barely anybody needed to visit it at any given time of the day. It only had some cardboard boxes stacked up against the wall, filled with stuff the inhabitants of this apartment building either didn't need anymore or wanted out of the way. Even with the boxes piled up in front of the wall, the basement had a rather dreary look with its gaping emptiness and dirty grey floor. The flickering lightbulb with the occasional short buzzing noise certainly did little to improve the atmosphere.

The boiler they were looking for had been placed around the corner of a wall which stuck out slightly. The light didn't reach that far, draping the corner in near absolute darkness.

Feeling around the wall, relying on touch more than sight, it didn't take long for Sasuke to notice a strange ridge, akin to running his fingers across sandpaper. He pushed carefully right next to the ridge and the wall gave away, swinging backwards underneath the pressure. If Sasuke didn't hate that old bastard so much, he would have been impressed with how he had successfully made the door go up in the rest of the wall this much. Unless you had an idea where to look for, it was highly unlikely that anybody would suspect a secret door here in this part of the wall. As it was, in front of him nothing but pure darkness greeted him; the air perhaps slightly cooler but it was hard to tell when the basement itself wasn't warm by any means.

He turned his head and shared another look with Gaara, who inclined his head once.

"Anyone have some kind of light with him?" Naruto inquired, peering around Sasuke into the pitch black tunnel stretching out in front of them. "Because if I somehow manage to trip and wreck the cut again, that old hag will probably lock me up in her basement. Not into that kind of shit for the record."

"No record of that needed," Gaara muttered.

"There's a torch right behind the boiler," Hiashi said and reached out to grab it. He gave it to Sasuke. "You all got any weapons on you just in case? We have no idea where exactly this tunnel ends."

"Got a knife," Sasuke replied, because even within the safety of the compound he rarely went somewhere without carrying at least one weapon.

"I've got my dagger," Naruto said, patting his thigh once. "Of course, if I had known we would go treasure hunting immediately, I would have grabbed my crossbow instead."

"And I've got a blade," Gaara confirmed. "We're good to go."

"All right, let's go then," Hiashi decided. "Before people start wondering what we're doing here."

The tunnel was rough, far from completely finished. Wooden panels supported the walls and the ceiling, preventing the earth from collapsing on top of them but that was just the rudimentary basics of a tunnel. The air was muggy here, quite unpleasant, and if they had been a tad too broad in the shoulders, there was no way they would have been able to make their way through here. The tunnel was narrow, barely high enough for them to walk comfortably, forcing them to keep their heads slightly bent. Foot imprints with a single dot next to one of them were evenly spaced out: proof that Danzo had been using this tunnel to leave the walls.

The trek wasn't especially long; if pressed to guess, Sasuke estimated it took them around five minutes, maybe six tops to reach the end of it though their pace was brisk. The end of the tunnel was actually above them; a small ladder leaning against the wall providing the only way out of here. The ladder ended right underneath a hatch; the woodwork of it rough to the touch. Clearly Danzo hadn't bothered to sand the edges before using the hatch. Where did it lead to, though? If the hatch had been right outside the wall, it would have been noticed immediately given that they did regular perimeter checks every two to three days. No way a hatch wouldn't have been noticed in all that time.

Sasuke was the first one to climb up the ladder, steadying himself before pushing against the hatch, throwing it to the side, which was followed by a rustling noise. At once it became clear why nobody had noticed the hidden exit before. The tunnel ended right at the beginning of the tree line, going up amongst the trees and bushes. The rustling noise had been a large, dead bush being moved to the side when he had pushed the hatch aside, he noticed upon climbing out the tunnel. He moved to the side to let Naruto, Gaara and Hiashi climb up as well.

"Well, that certainly explains it," Hiashi said, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips. "He didn't leave right outside the walls, but used the trees as a cover instead. Smart. I doubt anybody would think to check underneath a bush."

Naruto bent down to study the hatch and the dead bush. "This hole needs to be filled up and the rest of the tunnel has to be collapsed," he commented before straightening up and looking around them.

Gaara glanced around as well. "You can count yourselves lucky so far that nobody else discovered this," he remarked. "This tunnel would have been a great way to infiltrate the compound."

The irony of supposedly nobody else having discovered the tunnel before them was not lost on Sasuke and he bit down on his lower lip.

"We know about it now, so we can block the tunnel," Hiashi stated reassuringly. "We need to come up with a way that won't risk anyone's life, though. It's not like filling the hole would pose a lot of problems, but collapsing the tunnel entirely? That's a whole other issue."

"An issue that needs to be solved, though," Sasuke said firmly. "Naruto's right. If an outsider discovers this, they'd have a direct way to infiltrate the compound and we would have no idea until it was too late."

Hiashi turned towards the grassy patch where they had found Danzo's body. "Reckon someone followed him from here and killed him?"

"If they did," Naruto said neutrally, his hands resting on his hips and his eyes cool, "they did us a huge favour, don't you think?"

Sasuke squeezed his shoulder and exchanged a look with Gaara. "Let's go back inside. Father needs to know about this."

"Your father didn't really seem all that bothered when we told him what had happened," Naruto commented later that evening.

They were spending the night at Sasuke's home this time with Gaara having taken up the couch downstairs. A long discussion about the ways they could use to collapse the tunnel had segued into father suggesting that Naruto and Gaara might as well spend the night at their place instead of making the trip back to their apartment. They weren't in any particular danger at night, but with the extra guards on shift now the less people moving around at night the better.

To Sasuke's surprise, it hadn't taken that long to convince both Naruto and Gaara. He had expected them to protest, maybe even state that they were old enough to go home on their own, but they had easily accepted the offer. Father had apologised that they didn't have a guest room, but Gaara had waved off his apology and had claimed the couch for the night. Naruto meanwhile had followed Sasuke upstairs to his bedroom, where they now laid entwined on the bed; their legs tangled together underneath the blanket and Naruto resting against Sasuke's chest with Sasuke's arms wrapped around him.

Sasuke had been rubbing small circles onto Naruto's upper arm, nearly putting himself into a daze, but Naruto's remark pulled him straight out of it. "I told you he would understand. Did you really think he would lock up Gaara?"

Naruto shrugged half-heartedly. "That arsehole was still part of the Board. Loyalty can be a funny thing sometimes," he mumbled; his eyes gaining a distant look for a couple of seconds.

"Father is first and foremost loyal to his family," Sasuke murmured and kissed the top of Naruto's head. "He never liked Danzo to begin with. Let's face it: I doubt many will mourn his death." If any at all.

"I guess." Naruto rubbed his head back and forth against Sasuke's chest, hesitating for a moment before he asked, "Are you bothered that Gaara followed Danzo?"

Sasuke glanced at the ceiling, at the way a thin silver beam of moonlight cleaved it in two parts. "Not really. I have known him long enough that it doesn't surprise me. Not after what Danzo tried to do. Tell me: did Danzo really trip and fell?"

When he looked down, his gaze locked onto blue eyes.

"Does it really matter?" Naruto asked in return and that answer could go both ways really.

It could mean that Danzo had indeed simply tripped in shock. It could also mean that Gaara had actually done more than simply surprise Danzo. Perhaps he had bashed his head in with a rock or had pushed him, ensuring he would crack open his skull against a stone. If he had murdered Danzo, he had succeeded in making it look like an accident instead.

Whichever it was, though – premeditated murder or a simple accident – the end result wasn't something Sasuke was disappointed about. Except that a dark part of him was of the opinion that Danzo had deserved to suffer a lot more than a simple cracked open skull.

"No, it doesn't," he decided eventually. "I guess it's more good riddance."

Blue eyes gleamed. "That's the spirit," Naruto grinned.

Their mouths met for one more kiss before sleep overtook them.

"Please for the love of everything that is holy and dear, tell me I can join the run with Sasuke and Gaara!" Naruto exclaimed, almost desperately.

It caused father to snort and he looked up from the schedule. "Didn't we put you back on the schedule a week ago?"

"Yeah, you did, but the old bag was looking at me funnily yesterday and I have no doubt she'd try to fuck me over even now," Naruto huffed, pouting for a moment. He bounded over to Sasuke next, proving that his thigh had stopped being an issue for more than a week already.

He wrapped his arm around Sasuke's shoulder, squeezing it. "But a little birdie told me Sasuke and Gaara are going on a run tomorrow, so please, please, tell me I can go out as well! I need some action here!"

"You've got to be the only weirdo desperate enough to go mingle with dead fuckers." Karin's amused voice floated over to them from the doorway.

Sasuke turned his head, watching how a grin unfolded across her face. She cocked out her hip, resting her hand on it. Her eyes glittered when she asked, "Hey boys, mind if I join in on the fun?"

AN2: For the ones who have read The Long Run, you know what's coming next. Brace yourselves :)

Going to do my best to deliver more updates this weekend; now I'm going to sleep.

Please leave your thoughts behind in a review; should you spot any mistakes, please point them out to me.

I hope to see you all back in the next chapter! Please stay safe and take care of yourselves!

Cuddles

Melissa

P.S. For more information about my upcoming and posted stories, please visit my profile.