[FFML] [Naruto] Memories Lie chapters 3-4

[Nugar]

Been a while.  Maybe it won't take as long to get the next two chapters out.




Memories Lie chapters 3 and 4.

This is the third story arc of People Lie, earlier chapters of which
may be found at
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3745099/1/People_Lie

Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.  Fanfic writers get paid with
reviews, so if you like this story, how about some comments and
criticism?




	Sunlight streamed in the window, shining brightly on the white
styrofoam of a crushed ramen cup.  Little crumbs of dried noodles
spilt from its split seams, though the glue holding the waxed paper
lid on had held surprisingly firm.

	A head full of dark hair appeared in the window, looking in.

	Sasuke clung to the outside wall of the apartment building with
his chakra, looking in cautiously.  The window was open about four
inches, allowing fresh air to circulate inside, indicating that Naruto
had at least gone home once.  Flushing the stale air from his own
apartment was the first thing Sasuke had done as well.

	His eyes had slowed their bleeding that night, though he'd still
had to wash his eyes carefully to get them open when he'd woken that
morning.  He'd run through the forest around the village for hours
after he'd left the hospital, and he could still feel a portion of the
amazing power he'd summoned lurking deep in his coils, making him walk
taller, lighter, stronger.  His three white tomoe spun lazily as he
scanned the room.

	A small low table leaned against one wall, ragged splinters
dangling around a hole near one edge.  Clothes, dishes, and cooking
pans lay scattered about, mixed in with a spill of instant ramen cups
from a paper bag overturned on the kitchenette counter.  A bowl lay
undamaged atop a pile of sodden ramen at the center of a large wet
spot in the center of the room, reconstituted vegetables decorating
the edge like flotsam washing up on the edge of a lake.  Despite the
mess, there was no actual sign of a fight, as he could easily guess
the path of destruction, starting with spilling the ramen, punching,
then kicking the table, then on from there.  The rest of the path was
harder to read.  Unrecognizable scraps of several shredded articles,
plus a couple of shirts, were tossed haphazardly around.

	At first there was no sign of Naruto, but there was a flash of
something out of the corner of his eye, a bit of chakra hanging
motionless at the top of a thick comforter piled in one corner.  He
blinked, and the deep blue of the chakra resolved itself into a hand,
slender and graceful and clutching desperately at the blanket, the
only part of the body that wasn't covered.

	Sasuke had been astonished when he'd first looked in the mirror
after he'd drew on Naruto's power.  He still had the mature, three
tomoe sharingan, yes, but before he'd performed the summoning, his
tomoe were black, just like they were supposed to be.  But now, now
they were white.  And he could do something he couldn't before.  The
sharingan gave him the ability to predict and copy motions and
techniques, and also to see through and understand illusions.  Now…

	He could see chakra.

	He'd tried to use it like Hinata, to see through walls, or expand
his field of vision, or to see deep into someone's body, but it didn't
seem to work like that.  It was just like his regular vision, except
now, he could see the insubstantial.  But Sasuke didn't mind the
limitations.

	Naruto had given him a power he was sure his brother didn't have.

	For several long minutes he hung off the side of the building,
wavering in indecision.  Hinata had asked him to find Naruto.  He'd
found Naruto.  Naruto apparently wanted to be alone, he wanted to
respect that.  But something was wrong.  Hinata trusted him to take
care of any problems, but you did not intrude on someone's weakness.

	Suddenly wings were flapping against his head, and there was a
sharp, painful tug.  Nearly falling off the side of the building in
shock, he waved his hand madly over his head.  "Wha-
getoffameyoufuckingbird!" he cursed indignantly, shaking his head and
twisting, trying to see the infernal flying rat.

	Despite his efforts, his fingers never so much as brushed the
feathers of the incredibly agile bird.  It was a very stealthy bird,
too, gliding in on noiseless wings to steal a quick mating with the
gorgeous glossy black female that, for some strange reason, insisted
on riding around on the head of one of the small humans.

	The pigeon back winged in midair, hovering briefly as it decided
whether the sweet, sweet loving was worth the risk of being in close
proximity to the human, and Sasuke snarled in rage as he slipped a
shuriken out of a hidden pouch and prepared to commit avicide.

	He watched carefully for a moment as the pigeon hovered, a move
the normally lazy fliers rarely performed.  He could see each beat of
its wings before it happened, able to tell its next move from the
stressing of its feathers and the tension in its wings.  The
prediction ability of his genetic gift was actually the most deadly of
all its possible uses, and he used it to the fullest, throwing the
shuriken in one smooth motion at the exact spot the pigeon's movements
said it was going to be.

	Suddenly the wing beats quadrupled in speed as the shuriken spun
from his fingertips, yanking the bird upwards just as it was about to
slip backwards into the path of the weapon, which now sailed
harmlessly underneath to bury itself in the side of a building across
the street.

	Sasuke blinked in astonishment.  He'd seen exactly how the pigeon
was going to react to the throw, but the speed of its movements was
such that he'd been unable to correct his aim in time.  The pigeon was
fast.  Gritting his teeth in rage, he readied three more shuriken as
the pigeon cut across a breeze drifting down the street, then flung
them with all his speed and accuracy, bracketing the most likely paths
of infernal bird's evasive movements as well as its probable next
location.

	Cooing in alarm, it darted forwards even faster than it had
before.  Two shuriken buried themselves to the last point in wood, and
the third slammed through the glass of a window, followed immediately
by a startled scream.

	Hurriedly, Sasuke slid the window up in its tracks and slipped
inside.

	After all, he needed to find out what had happened with Naruto,
and you were supposed to take care of your own.

	Sasuke deliberately slid his leg across the windowsill, then
scuffed his feet slightly on the floor, a courtesy to announce his
presence if Naruto was asleep.  There were no sounds, no movements
from the corner.

	Now inside, he could see details that he hadn't before.  The
ramen had been spilled, but the pool of broth was one sided, as if
part of it had landed on something else which had been later removed,
then the table had been punched, as if Naruto had been in the process
of sitting down at it when he'd fumbled.  Several pieces of broken
chopstick lay under and around it, probably clenched in the fist that
had made the hole.  Small drips of water and vegetables made a trail
to the kitchen, ending at the sink, where Naruto had probably washed
off some of the scalding broth.  Probably the grocery bag had been
knocked over then, and Naruto had later stepped on one of the cups.

	He picked his way across the room to the corner where Naruto sat,
avoiding the clothes on the floor.

	Cautiously, kneeling on one knee beside the comforter, he spoke.
"Naruto?"

	Still, he got no answer.

	Carefully, he lifted the topmost corner of the thick blanket and
peeled it back, revealing a shaggy mop of blonde hair, the same shade
as Naruto's, but longer, done up in two deliberately cutesy  pigtails.

	Ah.  Naruko.

	Her face was buried in the comforter covering her knees, her legs
drawn up to her chest, one arm apparently around her shin, the other
higher, clutching the blanket she'd wrapped around herself.

	He hesitated.

	"Hey," he said, this time more softly, reaching to touch his now
female teammate on the arm.  "Naru… ko?"

	She didn't look up, but she did shift slightly, squeezing her
knees tighter to her chest.  Something that might have been a whine,
might have been a sob, choked off, emerged from her throat.

	Fuck.

	Scowling in irritation, he twisted and sat beside her, his back
to the wall, one leg tucked beneath him and the other knee upright.
	

	The apartment didn't look much better from this angle, since the
cheery beam of sunlight threw the obvious signs of misplaced rage into
stark relief.

	Sitting so close to Naruko let him focus on her, though.  Little
signs he'd missed across the room, like the slow movements of her
breathing, which were regularly interrupted by the tiniest of hitches,
or the infinitesimal clenching of her one visible hand.

	Apparently, she was crying.

	Such weakness was disgraceful, but, he also had to admit to
himself, it also slightly scared him.  This was Naruto.  Naruto mocked
his enemies' corpses, Naruto didn't flinch under the knife, Naruto
faced down…  Sasuke shook his head, shying away from the memory.  What
could make him cry?

	But, he realized, sitting there, watching in morbid fascination
as his teammate and fri…  teammate huddled in the corner in abject
misery, this wasn't exactly Naruto.

	"I'm sorry, Sasuke," she whispered into her knees, her normally
breathy voice laced with pain.

	"Sorry about what, Naruko?" he asked, looking away.

	She shifted slightly and looked up, tearstained cheeks and dark
circles framing her deep blue eyes.

	 "…everything."

	"Taking credit for everything is a bit self centered," he said,
forcing his tone to be light.

	"Mnnnnn," she whined, burying her face back in her knees.

	Sasuke closed his eyes in recrimination.  Damnit.  He tried
again.

	"You just need to be a little more specific.  If you're the one
who made them quit making tamarind flavored pocky, let me know now,
and I'll make your death painless.  Otherwise, it can't be that bad."

	She chuckled twice before it turned into obvious sobs, and it was
a moment before she stopped.  A very long moment in which Sasuke
regretted having intruded on this mess.

	"I-I just want to say I'm sorry for being so pathetic," Naruko
said shakily.  "I'm sorry for some of the things I've said and a lot
of the things I've thought, I'm sorry I wasn't…  I just wasn't enough.
I'm sorry I'm so damned stupid."

	Sasuke sat in silence for several moments, considering her words.

	"I admit, I'm not sure exactly where you're coming from," he
finally said thoughtfully.

	"I know," she replied, misery in her voice.  "And I don't want
you to, either."

	"Hm."

	Naruko let go of the blanket long enough to paw in frustration at
her eyes, red from her tears.

	"Why?"

	She sniffed.  "Because you'll hate me.  With good reason.  And
I've put too much time and effort into trying to make you like me, and
I don't want you to hate me."

	He stared at her until she looked up, guilt in her eyes.

	She wavered, fresh tears welling up.

	I thought you were stupid.

	I lied to you.

	I manipulated you.

	I thought about killing you.

	I only wanted you for your power.

	I only pretended to want to be your friend.

	I couldn't save Miko.

	I couldn't protect you.

	"I almost killed you," she finally whispered.  "And…  and
everything…  I was pr-  I was proud of some of it, and I didn't know I
was supposed to feel guilty about it all because I'm stupid and…
and…"  Her pretty face twisted as she started crying again.  "And I
hate, hate not knowing all this stuff I'm supposed to know."

	Sasuke raised one eyebrow.  "How-"

	Her eyes widened, realizing that she really didn't want to answer
some of his potential questions.  "Uh…  uh, Sasuke, when you used the
summoning jutsu…  That's not really how that's supposed to be done, I
went to the Hokage and I tried to make him show me a better way to do
it and that was a really really really stupid thing to do and now he's
pissed at me and you and Hinata's eyes are fucked up and its all my
fault and I was gonna come up with something on my own and damn the
risks cause I didn't really care-"

	"Naruko!" Sasuke interrupted, his eyes wide.  She was more upset
than he'd thought.

	Her jaw snapped shut.  In a much smaller voice, she said, "I
forced my chakra into you."

	He just looked at her.

	"I forced my chakra into you, and it could have killed you," she
repeated meekly.  "Just like I did with Hinata.  I took my chakra and
I rammed it into you and I didn't want to stop because it tasted good,
like everything good that's ever happened to me crammed into an
instant.  I could, I wanted to kill you, to just keep forcing power
into you until you popped like a balloon, just because it felt good.
And when you did that summoning jutsu it felt good, too, only you're
doing it wrong and it's dangerous and the bleeding eyes thing should
have given that away but I don't want you to stop and I think I'd do
anything if you'd just keep doing it and that scares the hell out of
me but I think I'd do it anyway-"

	Sasuke stopped her with a hand on her head and she burst into
silent tears, burying her face in the comforter over her knees again.

	"I'm going to do you a favor," he said seriously.  "Stop
talking."

	Her silent tears changed to sobs, and Sasuke watched, keeping his
expression carefully neutral.  So this was Naruto stripped of his
control.  No carefully chosen words, no artful acting, no hidden
agenda.  Just when he was starting to think he was made of iron, he
finally got to see the chink in the armor.  Here sat his teammate, the
careful plotter, the decisive leader of their team, now a girl crying
in the corner.

	Part of him wanted to turn away in disgust.  Part of him sneered
at the display of weakness.  Part of him was fascinated by Naruto
finally telling the truth.  Part of him wanted to exploit that for all
it was worth.

	But another part, a part he thought he'd thrown away long ago,
understood.  And he knew what he had to do.

	"Naruko," he said finally, rubbing her bare shoulder in an
attempt to be comforting.  "You know, I think you're actually more
messed up than I am."  He gave her a wan smile.  "It's okay.  I've got
your back."

	Her sobs grew to wails in an instant and she latched onto his
arm, abandoning the blanket as she fell forward and sideways,
clutching at the comfort of his arm.

	Sasuke's eyes widened at the sudden burst of movement, and he
nearly pulled away…

	But…

	Awkwardly, he sat there as she clung to his arm and cried, messy,
no holds barred crying with sobbing and hiccupping and tears and snot
and drool that she was getting on his shirt and his arm, but he still
didn't pull away as she curled her legs beneath her to one side and
clutched at his shirt.

	She was naked, he realized, because his arm was pressed to bare
flesh between her breasts and he could see down the curve of her back
to her butt and she wasn't wearing any clothing, but he kept as stoic
an expression as possible considering his naked teammate was bawling
her eyes out against his side.  It didn't make any sense, he'd fought
a climactic battle then ran through the woods to Konoha at full speed
carrying both Hinata and Naruto while they were all naked, but even as
he tried to reason away his embarrassment he finally had to just give
up on it all altogether and kind of pet his friend's blonde hair while
he waited for her to calm down.

	And she did calm down after a while, snuffling and wiping her
nose with the back of her arm, but Naruko didn't pull away, still
holding onto his arm desperately.

	"Why?" he asked.

	"Why what?" she asked back after a moment, her usually sweet
voice raw from her sobs.

	"Why did you want me to like you?"

	"Because…"  She hesitated, looking down.  But...  he deserved to
know the truth.  "Because you were the best student at the Academy.
Because you were a genius from a powerful clan.  Because everyone
liked you."  She hesitated again, and looked up.  "Because you didn't
seem to like anyone.  Because no one liked me."

	He'd started to frown as she talked, but finally found himself
staring down at her upturned face in confusion.

	She sighed, looking away.

	"Lots of reasons, Sasuke.  When I was still pretending to be an
idiot at the Academy, I hated you.  I was just as good as you were,
but you flaunted it in everyone's faces, and they loved you for it.
They scorned me for being an idiot, but they really hated me when I
was smart.  And then we got put on the same team and I got to know
you.  I'm a better killer, you're a better fighter.  People believe
me, people trust you.  I want to lead people.  People want to follow
you."

	She shrugged wryly, and he did his best to ignore what that felt
like around his arm.

	"You saved me and Hinata despite being hurt yourself.  You ran
all the way back to Konoha carrying us, naked, ignoring everyone who
saw, and you didn't stop until the job was done even though you nearly
died of chakra depletion.  You woke me out of a coma."

	Sasuke smirked at her.  "I overheard a rumor that they're trying
to make 'Naked Sasuke Day' a holiday."

	Naruko snorted laughter.  "And here you are, ignoring the snot on
your arm, making me feel better."

	She sighed and rubbed at his arm, he brushed her hand away and
wiped at it himself with the hem of his shirt.

	"You're even a better friend than I am.  So, no, don't ask me why
I wanted you to like me."

	He shrugged, feeling magnanimous.  "I'm better looking, too, but
don't sell yourself short.  You're a better liar than I am, and you
have better hair."

	Abruptly, her pensive face turned into a pout, her bottom lip
protruding cutely.  "That's the kind of crap I'm talking about.
You're too good to be true.  I call bullshit."

	He blinked, surprised.  "Huh?"

	"I call bullshit on you!  No one real is so damned…  you!  Either
you're hiding something huge, or you're a great… big… fake!" Naruko
said accusingly, poking him with her finger with each word.

	"Hn.  My innate superiority is often hard for others to accept."

	"Oooohhh yeah," she said, touching her lips with her finger.
"I'd forgot about the whole 'you're a complete asshole' part."

	"Get off me," he growled, pushing her and her giggles away as he
stood and put some space between them.

	Naruko continued to giggle for several more moments, her blue
eyes bright with merriment and unshed tears.  She leaned against the
wall, her legs still folded to one side, which preserved some modesty,
but she made no effort to cover herself.

	He gave her an exasperated look.  "Why are you naked, anyway?"

	She pressed one finger to her lips and cocked her head cutely,
managing to look both thoughtful and vapid at the same time.  "Ummm…
Because I'm totally hot like this?"

	He narrowed his eyes.

	She held her hands out as if to ward him off, squeezing her
breasts together enticingly.  "Fine, fine."  She sighed.  "I spilled
ramen all over myself and was taking off my clothes and…" she waved
her hand vaguely, indicating the scraps of cloth and the general
mayhem.  "I was going to put on something else, but kinda didn't get
around to it."

	"Hn."  That would explain it.

	"So why'd you come looking for me?" Naruko asked.

	Sasuke shrugged.  "Hinata asked me to."

	"Ah.  She still at the hospital?"

	"No, some of her cousins came and took her back home.  She sent a
kage bunshin to ask me to look for you, something about not being able
to keep one going for more than thirty minutes."

	Okay, that was a tiny fib, she'd actually said ten minutes, but
he was curious if Naruko would react to the much longer time.

	She did react, but not how Sasuke expected.

	"Her family came and got her?" Naruko cried, jumping to her feet.

	Sasuke winced.  Damn the sharingan for copying movement
perfectly.  That was a sight he was literally never going to be able
to forget.  Naruko, leaping up, her adult sized breasts sagging with
inertia, making her pink nipples point at the floor, then rebounding
healthily so they actually, briefly, pointed at the ceiling, round
hips, golden downy fuzz, her pale, perfect skin flushed with emotion.
Naruko had a body clearly meant for mid to late teens.  None of the
academy girls were that… gifted…  even Hinata.

	"What the fuck, Sasuke!  Do you have any idea what her family
might do to her now that she has her eyes sealed?!  We've got to
protect her!"

	Naruko, leaping up, her adult sized breasts sagging with inertia,
making her pink nipples point at the floor, then rebounding healthily
so they actually, briefly, pointed at the ceiling, round hips, golden
downy fuzz, her pale, perfect skin flushed with excitement...

	"Her position as future clan leader was already shaky, and now
it's really in doubt, and she can't even see at all unless she takes
off the hitai-ate!  They want to put a seal on her and move her to the
branch family!"

	…leaping up, her adult sized breasts sagging with inertia, making
her pink nipples point at the floor, then rebounding healthily so they
actually, briefly, pointed at the ceiling, round hips, golden downy
fuzz…

	"Damn it, Sasuke!  You should have kept your eye on her, not me!
Sasuke!  SASUKE!  Damn it, are you even listening to me?!"

	Oh, yeah.  Naruko was upset about something.  He should probably
listen, since she seemed to think it was important.

	"Yeah, I'm-

	-breasts rebounding-

	"-listening.  Look, I don't know what kind of seal they're using-
"

	-golden, downy hair-

	"-but they can't do it in five minutes, Naruko.  With the seals
on her at the hospital-"

	-Naruko was naked-

	"-plus her byakugan permanently active-"

	-naked, flushed, blonde jiggling in anxiety right before him-

	"-they're not going to seal her until they figure out what the
side effects might be, right?  Right."

	Nodding in self satisfaction, he crossed his arms and let the
superiority of his logic stand on its own.

	-jiggling breasts-

	Naruko gaped at him in silence for a moment, her jaw working, but
no sounds coming out.  Finally, she sighed, and that made some
interesting additional movements as well.

	"Alright, Sasuke, you're probably right.  But still.  Hinata
doesn't like being with her family much, so we need to go rescue her.
Carry her shopping or something.  I'm pretty sure we all need gear and
weapons, and it's probably a good enough reason her family won't stop
us."

	Sasuke frowned.  Girls, shopping.  He'd never been with them, but
he'd heard stories.  On the other hand-

	-naked, flushed, blonde-

	-these were his teammates, and they tended to care more about
killing enemies than personal appearance, so maybe it'd be alright.

	"Okay, it's one plan," he allowed.

	Naruko nodded decisively.  "Right.  We should get going."

	Sasuke raised one eyebrow.  "You're the naked one."

	Naruko blinked, then looked down at her own bare breasts.
"…point.  Okay.  I should get dressed."

	Sasuke almost closed his eyes when Naruko started rooting through
her clothes and putting them on.

	Almost.

	But hell, it was just his teammate.  Not like he hadn't seen her
naked before.  But…

	"You're going as a girl?" he finally asked, nudging a subdued
orange t-shirt with the toe of his ninja shoes.

	Naruko paused, pulling a pair of her usual orange jumpsuit pants
on, her top still gloriously bare.  "…oh, yeah.  I'd forgot."  She
shaped a seal, and Naruko faded into Naruto in a few seconds, losing
some height and her curves, but ending up stockier and more solid
looking.  He was shorter, the shortest in the class, but Naruto was
also one of the most solidly built, with well defined muscles speaking
of considerable strength.  No wonder he usually wore such baggy
clothes, anyone who saw exactly how toned he was would immediately
consider him a threat.

	Sasuke flicked the shirt at him with a swift twitch of his foot.

	Naruto caught it and put it on.  "Alright.  We should go."  He
hesitated, looking at the floor, the looking back up at Sasuke, who
stared at him evenly.

	"Sasuke?"

	"Hm?"

	"Thanks."

	Sasuke shrugged, as if it didn't really matter.  "I watched you
stab an acolyte in the back without him ever knowing you were there.
Then you cut out his liver, dropped it on an altar, and jokingly
called him an organ donor while you hid the body.  Don't worry about
your dignity with me."

	Naruto nodded once, meeting Sasuke's eyes.

	Respect.

	Finally, he looked around one last time.

	"Hold on a second, I need to clean up this mess," he said,
forming a different seal and making a kage bunshin.

	The clone popped into existence to one side and looked around.  A
mischievous look crossed over its face, and the clone quickly
transformed into Naruko, complete with a kimono, a frilly apron, and a
rugbeater.  She started 'cleaning up', really, deliberately bending
over and displaying her posterior to Sasuke as she picked up clothes.

	"You are a sick man, Naruto," Sasuke commented, walking over and
looking out the window.  A middle aged woman was out there, washing
the sidewalk.

	"Yeah, but I have nicer breasts than you," he replied with a grin
as they left the apartment and walked down the stairs.

	"But I have a nicer ass."

	"No way!" Naruto cried vehemently.  "Did you even bother looking
at my ass in that kimono?  It's round and tight and perfectly heart
shaped!  It's all I can do to keep from molesting myself!  Sure, I'd
protest at first, but I know I'd want it."

	"…you're a sick man, Naruto," Sasuke repeated after a moment.
"But I do so have a nicer ass than you, and I can prove it.  Let's ask
the first person we see, that'd be fair, right?"

	"Fine!" Naruto replied.

	A moment later, they exited the front of the building, right
across the street from where the woman was dipping water out of a
bucket with a ladle and wetting the sidewalk.

	"…Damn it, Sasuke," Naruto said tiredly.

	Sasuke just smirked.

	-tits-	
	
	xxxxxxxxx
	xxxxxxxxx


	"Yeah, Shino isn't so bad.  Once you get past the bugs deal, he's
actually a great teammate."  Sakura waved her had vaguely.

	Since their respective jounin teachers seemed to enjoy spending
an inordinate amount of time together, their schedules were
synchronized more often than not.  And since neither one of them were
making any progress in getting into Sasuke's pants, their oft stated
rivalry had largely subsided.  Best friends forever! they would loudly
proclaim, each one knowing full well that forever lasted until one of
them managed to score a date with Sasuke.

	"But isn't he like, really quiet?  In the academy he hardly said
a word.  I'd think he'd be kind of boring as a teammate."

	Sakura smirked.  "Yeah, he's quiet, but he's really smart.  He
acts all logical, so you'd think he wouldn't have a sense of humor,
but you can't just assume that.  I swear, he takes delight in messing
with Kiba's head."

	Ino smirked.  "And Kiba falls for it."

	"Every single time," she confirmed.  "And then he turns around
and plays a practical joke on Shino, and the next thing I know, I've
got to step in to keep them from killing each other.  Honestly.  Boys.
Kurenai-sensei says that it's good training for me as a kunoichi."

	Ino shrugged.  "Yeah, it's a lot like that on my team, except
completely the opposite.  Shikamaru and Chouji NEVER fight.  So
instead of stopping them, I have to get them moving.  At least they've
learned to listen, and I get more time with Asuma-sensei when they're
lounging around.  My taijutsu is really improving."

	"I guess that's good."  Inwardly, Sakura grumbled to herself.
Ino was already strong as hell in taijutsu, and could beat her nine
times out of ten.  At least she wasn't skilled enough in seals to
throw off Sakura's best genjutsu.

	"Oooooh, Sasuke-kun," Ino said abruptly.

	Sakura's head snapped up.

	Two boys were running towards them, not a full blown run, but the
casual lope of someone too impatient to walk.  Blond hair as pale as
Ino's caught her eye, and with a start she realized that it was Naruto
running right beside, and a little in front of, Sasuke.  He wore his
usual pants, but his customary jacket was missing, and instead he wore
a tight shirt the color of an unripe orange, which was much easier on
the eyes than his usual shade.  More astonishing was that the shirt
clung to him like paint, revealing muscles larger and more defined
than any she'd seen in the academy.  Naruto was short, noticeably
shorter than Sasuke, but he was broader through the shoulders, like he
spent serious time lifting weights.  Gone was the goofy, silly look on
his face he'd worn throughout school, instead he looked serious and
confident.

	Of course, Naruto paled beside the perfection of Sasuke's tall
dark form.  He wore shorts and a dark, loose shirt, which was sort of
disappointing.  He had the lean, whipcord body of the ideal ninja,
loose limbed and quick as a mongoose, but she'd only gotten a good
look of his bare body from the rear, and, except for his ass, only a
sliver of his back through the gap in the hospital gown.  Sakura
desperately wanted to see more.

	"Oh, hey, Sakura, Ino," Naruto said with a casual wave, slowing
to a stop beside them.  Sasuke stopped as well with a slightly sour
expression on his face.  "Missions this morning?  And how's the
training coming?"

	"Good!" Sakura blurted out.  "I learned two genjutsu!"

	"Asuma-sensei has helped with my taijutsu.  Forehead girl here
doesn't stand a chance in hell against me these days," Ino quickly
added, not about to be outdone by her rival.  "We're on our way to
team meetings, what about you guys?  Are you recovered yet?"

	"Mostly recovered, but we're on leave right now," Naruto replied
easily, flashing a couple of hand signs at Sasuke fast enough they
couldn't make them out.

	Encourage them to train.

	Sasuke sighed, as if he was being put upon.

	"It looks like it'll just be training for us for a while, unless
they find some missions we can take without a jounin sensei.  But
that's okay, right?  Training is important.  Right, Sasuke?"  Butter
wouldn't have melted in Naruto's mouth.

	Sasuke rolled his eyes and finally relented.  "Yes, you'll never
be worth anything unless you train hard and get powerful.  You can do
it, I believe in you, and all that."

	From the tone of his voice, it was abundantly clear that Sasuke
did NOT believe in them, nor did he think they could ever be worth
anything.

	"Thanks, Sasuke!" Ino cried, overjoyed at his encouragement.
"I'll work hard and I'll show you what a Yamanaka can do!"

	Sakura hesitated, not as willing to accept his words at face
value as Ino was.

	Naruto clapped a hand on Sasuke's shoulder, where it was quickly
brushed off.  "Oh, don't mind him.  He's just still grumpy because of
the whole nearly dying thing and Hinata getting hurt really bad, so
he's worried about her.  You know, she really improved a lot and
fought hard on our last mission.  Saved our lives, even.  I've never
seen a girl kill a chunin level fighter that fast, while injured,
even."

	Again, Sasuke rolled his eyes at Naruto's antics.  That guy was
hardly a chunin.  Hell, he wasn't even a ninja, even if he could do
that thing with the ichor and the ball lightning.

	"Yes, we should go see Hinata," he prodded.

	Let's go, Naruto.	

	"I-" whatever he was about to say was quickly shut off by
Sakura's shout.

	"Incoming!"

	Three genin scattered, leaving a disappointed pigeon to loop
quickly through the air and retreat.  Sakura didn't move, knowing what
the 'threat', or lack thereof, was, and Ino was too startled to do
anything but get out of the way.  Two shuriken from Naruto and one
from Sasuke, his last one he'd grabbed that morning, flew after the
bird.  One of Naruto's hit a flowerpot and shattered it with a rain of
ceramic shards and dirt.  Sasuke's hit a cat lounging in the morning
sun, which yowled loudly with its last breath.

	"Damn that thing is fast," Naruto said in wonder, tracking the
blur through the sky.

	"No kidding," Sasuke said bitterly.  "That was the fifth shuriken
I've thrown at it this morning.  That pigeon ain't natural."

	"What the hell was that?" Ino demanded.  "A bird?"

	"Ah…  I think it's a descendant of one of Konoha's carrier
pigeons," Sakura said hesitantly.

	All three looked at her.

	"Well, back before the first ninja war, Konoha raised homing
pigeons to carry messages, but the problem was they'd get eaten by
hawks raised by this clan that lived in Grass and the messages would
be intercepted.  So people bred them to be faster and smarter, and
even use chakra, so they wouldn't get intercepted anymore."

	"But we use hawks," Ino replied, confused.

	"Yeah, the clan in Grass raised the hawks to keep up with the
faster pigeons, so finally the Konoha message corps gave up, killed
the people raising the hawks, and brought the birds back here.  We've
been using them ever since."  She preened.  They were all staring at
her, impressed.  She was the top student in the academy in studies,
with reason.

	"So that one is probably a descendant of those original pigeons.
Chakra would explain why it's fast enough we can't hit it at a
distance."  His pride stung, Naruto didn't want to admit that the
infuriating flying rat might be fast enough that he couldn't hit it up
close, either.  "Well, at least it's not a flying chakra bear.  That
would really suck."

	Sasuke winced, able to imagine a twelve hundred pound flying
chakra bear with a deviant interest in his head all too vividly.
"Thanks for the warning," Sasuke said to Sakura grudgingly, "but I'd
be a lot happier if you'd killed it instead."

	Sakura wilted.  "I'm sorry, Sasuke-kun, I wasn't thinking.  Next
time I won't freeze, I promise!"  She started mentally reviewing what
she knew of the pigeons and where she could find out more.

	"No one has told me what the hell is up with the pigeon!?" Ino
repeated, half questioning, angry at feeling very left out of the
loop.

	Glancing at Sasuke, Naruto stepped closer to Ino, leaning close.
"You saw how fast that thing is, right?  It's a food thief.  Sasuke
had set some pocky sticks down and it stole one of them.  He takes his
pocky very seriously."

	Ino glanced at Sasuke, who was watching their exchange with a
stony face.

	"And now, we really must be going," Naruto said with a final wave
before breaking into a run, Sasuke right behind him.

	Ino looked at Sakura.  "…pocky?"

	Sakura nodded, completely seriously.  "Don't ever steal Sasuke-
kun's pocky."

	Ino's face crinkled up.  "…ooookay…"  Then her expression
blossomed into a smile.  "Was Sasuke hot today or what?"

	Sakura pressed her hand to her chest and sagged dramatically
against her friend.  "Ooooooh, remind me.  Remind me."

	After several moments they resumed their journey across town,
where they would split up to join their respective teams.
	
	"And did you see Naruto?  I had no idea he was so…  strong
looking," Ino added after a moment.  "He didn't look as good as
Sasuke, naturally, but that shirt really showed off his muscles."

	"I wish Sasuke was wearing that shirt," Sakura replied in
agreement.  "But yeah, I know what you mean.  I kinda always thought
Naruto was just the class idiot, but some of the things Sasuke and
Hinata said in the hospital…  I think he's actually really strong.
Like how Shino almost never says anything, but is really smart.  Or
what you were saying about Shikamaru."

	"Hinata loves him," Ino added.  "And yeah, I think you're right.
Sasuke respects him.  I don't think I've seen Sasuke impressed by
anyone before."

	Sakura sighed morosely.  "He respected Hinata, too, did you hear
the way he was talking about her?  She killed a chunin.  That's
probably why he isn't interested in us.  We're not strong like
Hinata."

	"I kicked her ass once!" Ino reminded Sakura.

	"Yeah?  And how'd that work out for you?  Long term?"

	"…shut up, Forehead."

	"She was pretty scary in the hospital," Sakura admitted, not
rising to the bait.  "I mean, the Hyuga are supposed to be really
strong, but I always thought I could take her, you know?" she said
honestly.  "Like you did in the academy.  You're better than I am at
taijutsu but I AM working on it.  But I guess she's been training
really hard, too, or something.  When Sasuke woke up and went into her
room, she was blind and just sitting in a chair, and I don't think she
said more than five words to me the whole time, but it was kinda like
when Kurenai-sensei gets serious about something.  Like she'd kill me
in an instant and not think twice."

	Ino winced, remembering how fast she'd been pressed against the
wall with a scalpel against her temple, and Hinata hadn't even
appeared angry.  Hell, she was blind at the time.  That was sort of
humiliating after she got done being scared.  "Killed a chunin level
ninja, Sasuke said.  Well, I'll just train harder, too!  I kicked her
ass once, I'll do it again, and then Sasuke will respect me!"

 	Sakura nodded abruptly, finalizing her own mental plans to make
Sasuke like her.

	They walked in silence, Ino shadowboxing the air as she imagined
her training with Asuma, Sakura lost in thought.

	"But you know, Ino, I'm really kind of jealous of her," she
admitted.  "Shino's okay and Kiba isn't anywhere near as bad as I
thought, but she gets to be on a team with Naruto and Sasuke.  I wish
I was on that team."

	"You?  Hah!" Ino scoffed.  "Like they'd ever put you on a team
with those two.  Not in a million years, Forehead."

	Sakura's shoulders slumped.  "Yeah, I guess so."


	xxxxxxxxx
	xxxxxxxxx


	"Well, hopefully, they won't give us any trouble about taking her
out of here.  But Hinata's family tends to be a bunch of assholes, so
don't count on anything," Naruto said seriously, looking down the road
at the offshoot that lead to the Hyuga district.

	"Hn."

	"Yeah, we'll have to play it by ear.  There's too damned many of
them and they're too damned powerful for us to take in a fight.  I
could probably unleash the beast and give both you and Hinata all the
power you can stand, and we'd probably still just end up dying
together.  But the Hyuga respect boldness and power more than they do
anything else, so don't act weak or scared.  We're young, but we're
powerful ninja of this village, and we have to act like it."  He
clenched his fist, his expression serious.  "Still, if they won't let
her go…  ordinarily, I'd swap a henged clone with her and sneak her
out, but the Hyuga tend to be too damned good at figuring that kind of
thing out, and I haven't been able to fool Hinata with a henge yet, so
I don't want to try it.  I guess we'll just have to retreat," he
finally admitted reluctantly.

	"Hn?"

	Naruto winced.  "If they're really preparing to seal her eyes
permanently because of all this recent crap, we have to stop them, no
matter how unlikely it is we'll succeed.  If we can, try to give her
the chance to prove how strong she is, so they'll make her the heir
and not seal her.  If we can't…"  He shrugged.  "They give up their
status as potential resources and become enemies."  A small, mean
smile twisted his lips.  "And we know what to do with our enemies."

	"Hn."	

	Plans settled, they started walking forward casually, trying to
project an air of confident purpose but at the same time not be
confrontational.

	Naruto scratched his chin thoughtfully.  "You know, Sasuke, I
think that last 'hn' of yours was quite possibly the coolest, most
evil nonverbal thing I've ever heard you say."

	"I'm glad you think so, Naruto.  You know, I actually practice my
nonverbal sounds at home for a minimum of at least one hour every
night, sometimes using a tape recorder to make sure I get them right.
Most people don't really seem to get the subtleties, but it's actually
quite heartening that I now have an audience who cares."

	"…damnit, Sasuke, you almost gave me a heart attack.  You're a
freak, you realize this, right?"  Naruto complained.

	"Hn."

	"Stop doing that!  You're not allowed to have a better sense of
humor than I do!"

	"It's okay, Naruto, you can't be best at everything.  You
underestimate your importance as owner of the best pair of breasts in
our age group."

	"You suck, Sasuke."

	-tits-


	xxxxxxxxx
	xxxxxxxxx


	They were stopped once as they entered the compound, but once
they were determined to be teammates of Hinata they were allowed to
progress.

	They didn't run into any other Hyuga until they reached the
largest house in the district, clearly the home of the clan head.
Hinata's father, Hiashi Hyuga, was even outside, apparently standing
in deep contemplation of the whitest orchid flower Naruto had ever
seen, which was growing from an ornate planter sitting on a stone
base.

	Hiashi looked up as the two boys approached, both boldly walking
up to stop right outside of his immediate range, prudently cautious
not only of the jyuken, but also the range he possessed as a fully
grown adult.  His eyes took in Sasuke, then Naruto, and narrowed
dangerously.

	"I have heard what happened on your ill fated mission," he
stated, an undercurrent of contempt flavoring his words to the two
boys who'd failed to protect his daughter.  "What are you doing here,
demon?"

	Naruto stared back boldly, unwilling to back down from Hinata's
bastard of a father.  He was a demon when he needed to be.  He had the
nine tailed fox sealed in his belly, and he could let part of that
power out if he had to.  He'd killed before.  He'd tortured before.
He'd fought and killed a shoggoth single handedly.  One white eyed man
was nothing before him.

	 "I've come for your eldest daughter," he growled.

	Hiashi stared at him for a moment, his expression unreadable.

	"I shall have someone inform Hinata that you are here for her,"
he replied, and walked away.

	The two genin stared after him.

	"He's the evil father?" Sasuke asked quietly as soon as he was
out of earshot.

	"Yeah, what a bastard," Naruto said darkly, tightening the knot
of his hitai-ate.

	"No, I'm serious," Sasuke continued.  "He just let her go without
any trouble.  This is a problem because…?"

	Naruto gave him a look.	

	 "How uncaring and heartless do you have to be to send your own
daughter out with a deceitful, untrustworthy subhuman demon such as
myself who probably has designs on not only her nubile young flesh,
but her purity and innocence as well?  He's already completely passed
Hinata off as heir in his mind, and now he doesn't care what she does.
I guarantee that I'd see a lot different reaction if I got within
twenty feet of Hanabi, his other daughter and current favorite."

	Sasuke blinked.  "So you're saying he's a bad father because he
lets his girl be around you?  Because you're evil and malicious and
you're planning on ravishing Hinata?"
	
	Naruto grinned abruptly.  And winked at him.


	xxxxxxxxx
	xxxxxxxxx  Begin chapter four.


	I've had a lot of time to think, lately.

	Since I've been blind.

	I've been told by other members of my clan that we Hyuga spend
more time looking at things than the other clans do.  It makes sense,
I suppose, since 'sense' is what it's all about.  I would imagine that
an Inuzuka would spend more time smelling things than I do, and I have
no idea what the Aburame clans feel.  With my eyes sealed, it feels
like I've been cut off from the world, forcing me to turn inward.

	This is a problem, because it means that my chakra centers are
out of balance.  My head is overpowering my heart.  Already my
emotions and feelings are muted, distant, and inconsequential.  I'm
thinking, analyzing, talking to myself in ways I've never done before.

	On the surface, an outsider would probably imagine the Hyuga clan
to have nothing but self absorbed arrogant ninja with no regard for
anyone but themselves, but that's just how we deal with the nature of
our worlds.  Actually, since we constantly experience the wonder of
the world around us as perfect visual input, we tend to spend a lot
more time thinking about the outside world than the state of our own
mind.  Our heart chakra tends to be more developed than average, and
our emotions run deep.

	We appear cold because, partially, we choose to hide our passions
lest they be used against us, but mostly, we're too busy experiencing
the world around us to spend much time talking about it.  But our
emotions are strong, nearly overpowering in some circumstances.  Just
look at my cousin, Neji, but I suppose, once again, to a non-Hyuga he
must appear to be rather distant.  When you know what to look for,
everything he does screams at the turmoil in his heart.

	Chakra is a delicate balancing act.  The human body is robust,
but remarkably vulnerable to itself.  Too much thinking, too much
emotion, too much expression, too much of anything, or not enough of
the same, and the body will tear itself apart from the inside.  Each
person must find his or her own harmony, and true enlightenment is
reached only when that delicate balance between the centers is
reached.

	Naruto has reached that balance.  It's one of the things that
drew me to him.

	Really, such things are easy to see for a Hyuga.  Let the
students in the temples fumble and estimate, while their masters have
learned to pray and feel.  All I have to do is look.

	Naruto understands that the true shinobi must think and feel in
equal parts.  He empathizes with his enemies to the point he feels
what they feel.  He thinks like his enemies so he decides what they
decide.  And when his empathy and his intelligence have worked
together so that he becomes his enemy, he destroys them.

	Sasuke and I could not do that.  Sasuke mind dominated his heart.
He has a keen mind and an analytical way of thinking, either a natural
consequence of his dojutsu or despite it, and coupled with that
dojutsu makes him a formidable opponent in a purely physical battle.
I have always been ruled by my heart, and Naruto helped make my heart
strong, showed me how to discard the fear that paralyzed it and
crippled me as a person.

	But now…  Now I worry.  Because Sasuke is not Sasuke.  He smiled
at me when I met them that morning, a small, ironic smile, but a
genuine smile none the less.  Naruto looked at him with warmth and
humor and gentle friendship, and at some length, over an okonomiyaki
breakfast that Naruto suggested, I got the story of their morning.

	I expected satisfaction.  After all, Naruto's plan had worked.
He had solved the unsolvable.  He had cracked the enigma of the
Uchiha.  We had our ally, our friend.

	I expected jealousy.  Naruto had someone else to rely on now.
And, if the story of his anguish the Hokage had put him through was
true, Sasuke had proved to be the kind of ally he needed to shore up
his own weaknesses.

	I felt…  neutral.  I thought about what had happened, and
compared it to what I knew.  Naruto had his weaknesses, and he was
always very forthcoming with me about them, a sign of his trust and
reliance.  I even detected hints of embarrassment as he told his side
of the story, baring his mistakes and his emotions to me, but he would
not allow himself to waste any more time than necessary on
embarrassment or guilt, so he gave me the facts.  This is both logical
and a sign of love.  Naruto counted me as close to his heart as he
himself.  I needed to know everything possible about him so that I
could guard those weaknesses, just as he guarded my own.  He did not
do things half way.

	For Sasuke to have suddenly displayed the empathy and
consideration he did, however, aroused my curiosity.  I raised my
hitai-ate and looked at him carefully.

	His chakra was astonishingly erratic, fluctuating wildly, mostly
around his heart and throat centers, emotion and expression.  Oh, and
his eyes.  I hadn't missed the white tomoe the first time I saw them,
and through the story, Sasuke smugly admitted to his new ability, so
like my own, yet smaller and distorted like a reflection in a pool.

	While he adjusted to the changes in his body, Sasuke was both
unpredictable and vulnerable.  Emotions were his weakness before, when
his mind dominated, and they were his weakness now that he had
rediscovered them.  I would have to inform Naruto.

	Yet, a careful examination of myself revealed something very
similar, yet in reverse.  I was dangerously exposed, the harmony I had
gained through careful practice with Naruto utterly destroyed.  I was
just as vulnerable as Sasuke.  I would need to correct this.

	I found myself being dragged from shop to shop through Konoha,
mostly leaving my forehead protector over my eyes and using auditory
clues to examine my awareness.  My family is well aware that a
strength, when removed, can be the worst weakness, so we had developed
some useful techniques to compensate for the rare circumstance when
our eyes were useless.  Some of it involved listening carefully, but
mostly it involved our other strength, chakra manipulation.

	By wrapping chakra around me, I could 'feel' my surroundings
without actually touching.  The range was limited by how much chakra I
had, and it was far less efficient than using the byakugan, but I
could use just enough to get by,  whereas my byakugan was in full
force every time I unsealed my eyes.  About a meter's worth around me
kept me from running into things on the rare occasion Naruto, or even
Sasuke, Sasuke!, wasn't guiding me by touch.

	We stocked up on the common shinobi weapons at one of the
armories, and I dutifully checked them all for cracks or other defects
in workmanship such mass produced weapons like kunai, senbon, and
shuriken would tend to have.  Not that I had ever found a defect, but
only a fool does not insure a weapon is the best available with every
ability at his disposal.

	I use few weapons, but I put a brace of kunai and two dozen
senbon in a new weapons pouch and strapped it to my thigh.  Sasuke did
likewise, though he favors shuriken and disdains senbon, where Naruto
and his kage bunshin Naruko filled up a pouch apiece with a mixture of
everything.  He put them both on, one in the center of his back, one
to the left of that, in his preferred method.

	After that was a more exotic weapons shop where both Naruto and
Sasuke spent some of their money on nonstandard equipment.  Naruto
favors heavy gauge wire, where Sasuke likes to have a lot of the
thinnest, most flexible available for his many techniques.  Naruto got
one new aikuchi style wakizashi in a black lacquered sheath, and put
in an order for two more just like it, since, despite the throwing
weapons he carries, Naruto is most effective with a blade.

	xxxxxxxxx

	*swish*  *swish*

	The dried rushes of the acolyte's broom scraped across the sanded
granite of the walkway rhythmically, flicking minute amounts of dirt
and the occasional leaf off the stone.  The daily ritual took him down
the steps, and all the way down the path, a journey of several hundred
yards. Fortunately, at least from the viewpoint of a lowly acolyte,
the path was narrow.

	It was a strange ritual.  Not that every other temple didn't do
essentially the same thing, but I'd never seen another temple that had
a public area inside the courtyard where cold hearts and whole livers,
black with congealed blood, lay arranged in some sort of butcher's
feng shui on low stone tables exactly the right height to bark your
shin on in a dark night.

	The first time we'd come to the temple, following a small
procession of villagers, each carrying a bloody offering to the
temple, I'd honestly been glad to see the creepy arrangement.

	We'd found the flies.

	I won't lie, when Naruto pointed out the lack of insects I'd been
worried.  Flies swarm to blood.  For something to violate that natural
fact spoke to me of the most unnatural things my imagination could
throw up.  Then, though, I'd be glad to find out that the reason none
were at the farm was that ALL of them were at the temple.  A gigantic,
buzzing, black cloud that actually blotted out the sun sometimes.
I've never seen so many insects, and I've met several Aburame.

	But, at least they were there.  That was natural.  My fears
eased.  I had no idea that what we'd see later would take every
imagined 'unnatural' thing I'd even imagined and dissolved it in black
ichor.

	As we watched the young priest sweep the path, though, unnatural
things were far from my head.  He was just a civilian, a worshiper of
an undoubtedly foul religion.  This was a clean, simple operation.

	I watched carefully from an adequate distance, completely
concealed from even thorough eyes by a bush I had curled up beneath.
Sasuke was closer, high in a tree.  Naruto was the closest, simply
waiting patiently behind a bush behind a shadow clone that had already
henged into the young priest.  Funny to imagine Naruto in a stained
brown robe and that ridiculous topknot of hair.

	The acolyte drew close, and the clone raced through a series of
hand seals.  Naruto drew and struck at the base of the clone's head
with his wakizashi just as the clone finished the seals.  There was a
soft burst of chakra…

	…and Naruto silently guided what had been a clone onto his
shoulder and left the bush near the path, joining us farther in the
woods as the acolyte continued sweeping the path with barely a
momentary hesitation in his movements that almost instantly
disappeared.

	Naruto was a big fan of kawarimi.  It wasn't quite a shunshuin,
but if you used it right, it'd get the job done.  The clone had
replaced itself with the young man right before Naruto had struck,
then took his place at the broom.  No one but a highly experienced
ninja would have noticed.

	Sasuke raised his eyebrow at Naruto when he used the elegant,
single edged blade to make three neat cuts in the man's lower back,
then pulled out the liver, whole.

	"I'm sure he'd have been happy to be an organ donor," Naruto
explained with a glint of amusement before he used the hensou to mimic
an old man from town.  "For him, it's probably like dying in church.
And now I'm off to drop something in the collection plate."

	xxxxxxxxx

	Sasuke had been rather surprised to learn the true extent of
Naruto's skill with a blade.  Unlike his focus on complex combinations
of ninja equipment and taijutsu, Naruto had spent his academy days
learning to move silently and kill with a single blow.  Naruto
probably could kill Sasuke in a fair fight, even if Sasuke's skill
made it extremely unlikely that he'd beat him in any other way.

	It takes more skill to defeat an opponent and leave him alive
than it does to just kill him.  But the best way to live long enough
to gain that skill is to leave a trail of harmless corpses.

	Naruto's words.  I'd taken them to heart.

	For his part, Sasuke replaced the two extremely large, folding
fuuma shuriken he'd used to such devastating effect on the chakra
bears.

	xxxxxxxxx

	The kunai hit the bear's tough brown hide and sunk to the handle
right behind the shoulder, probably the one place on the body where it
had the least distance to go before it hit something vital.

	Its deep, angry growf took on a bass, rumbling timbre and its
whole skin twitched around the kunai, but it was like a pin prick to
the huge beast.

	For something that left prints like it was a cub walking around
in mommy's paws, it was a giant, probably weighing at least a ton.  A
ton of shambling muscle wrapped in skin like a pile of shaggy felt
blankets.

	Naruto ran forward and slammed a foot against the ring on the end
of the kunai's hilt, pushing it to its full depth in the bear's side,
right before it turned with deceptive speed and sliced him into six
chunks with one swipe of the chakra blades it used as claws.  Naruto
disappeared with a puff of smoke and chakra, and the bear shambled
farther out of the trees.

	"We've got another one!" another Naruto called from farther in
the swamp.  "Taiju kage bunshin no jutsu!"

	"Another one!" yet another Naruto called.  "Taiju kage bunshin no
jutsu!"

	I wrapped an explosive note around a kunai handle and waited
while Naruto's clones harassed and harried the chakra using bears,
throwing dozens of kunai and senbon at the bears faces, mainly
targeting the eyes, mouth, and nose.  Shuriken he hurled from the
rear, doing little real damage but angering and driving the bears on.

	Finally, one bumped a stick sticking out of a bush.  A large log
with a sharpened stake on one end fell from the trees and slammed into
the bear's side.  Its roar of anger changed to one of pain as it was
knocked to one side, and it limped noticeably as it tore the offending
log to splinters.

	We'd made dozens, nearly a hundred altogether, traps, but they
were scattered over a wide area.  We'd concentrated them in the swampy
area, but it would be foolish to assume that they had to come from the
water, so traps actually ringed the fields, watched by the odd clone
of Naruto.  Even at the swamp, we'd chosen for defense in depth, and,
since we weren't sure what would work, there were many of all types.
Defense in depth works best against an invading army, and, despite
their numbers, the each bear managed to cover a surprisingly large
amount of ground before hitting a trap.  Some never hit one at all,
and the ones that did didn't always run into anything effective
against their strength and toughness.

	The sharpened stake driven by the force of a falling log worked
pretty well.  The bear lived, but it was hurt badly, and it actually
stopped to lick at its wounds.

	No intelligence here, despite the ability to use chakra.  One
bear ignored a deliberately obvious trap involving four particularly
springy saplings and some good twine that fired four metal tipped
spikes from four different sides.  It roared defiance, but at least
one had found a lung, and its muzzle was soon red with bloody froth.

	Sasuke had lucked out and was lightly harassing a bear near one
of the relatively few traps we'd made based around an exploding tag.
A few shuriken in its flesh enraged it, then he casually stood on the
other side of the string trigger.  It charged, he used a kawarimi, and
the explosion engulfed its head.

	Astonishingly, it actually remained standing for several long
moments, shaking its head slowly back and forth like a horse bothered
by a fly, despite the fact that it no longer had eyes nor ears.
Slowly, like witnessing the fall of a shogun, it collapsed.

	But there were more coming.  Even putting out their eyes with
senbon did little but enrage them, and a number of Naruto's clones
found out that the bear tracked quite well with its smell alone,
taking the loss of its eyes in stride.

	I hung back to close any gaps, but Sasuke went forward once more,
bringing out a clever set of blades that rotated and clicked into
place, showing themselves to be the immense curved points of a
windmill shuriken.  Spinning his body in a deliberate windup to impart
maximum speed to the fuuma shuriken, he hurled it at a bear standing
on its hind legs, harassed by only three of Naruto's clones.

	Surprisingly, it parried the tremendous shuriken with a casual
bat of its paw, chakra formed claws protecting it from the keen
whirling edges.

	The second shuriken hiding in its shadow took the bear in the
throat with a nasty gurgle.

	The shadow shuriken is a technique developed and proudly owned by
Konoha.  Doubtlessly at least some other villages have it as well, but
I'm told it was ours first.  	

	Sasuke casually pulled on the pair of nearly invisible wires
attached to the shuriken and they flew back to him like obedient
hunting hawks.  He slid to one side and caught them by their center
rings, already scanning for a new target.

	Naruto had finally managed to put down one of his bears, pounding
kunai into its throat and the back of its neck with kamikaze shadow
clones.  Two others roared and stood on their hind legs to swat at
their tormentors like the first, and Sasuke quickly went after one.

	One bear ignored everything thrown at it and charged out of the
woods, ignoring the spikes in its back and sides and the great
bleeding rents in its belly from a concealed lever trap.  I hit it
with the exploding kunai, and it died three seconds later.

	Okay, so I killed one.

	With an exploding tag that sprayed loops of intestines over the
grass and splattered everyone with blood.  It was dead.

	So why did it feel like cheating?

	Why did I feel vaguely jealous as Sasuke used his clever wire
tricks to guide the fuuma shuriken past wildly swinging paws and hit
both the standing bears in the throat within seconds of each other?

	Was my bear not dead?

	xxxxxxxxx

	Exploding tags are a perfectly valid way to kill someone, I
reflected as I spent some of my own money to purchase three more at a
seal master's shop near the Tower.  As genin we are allowed to draw
one each per month, except in special situations like our last
mission.  Kakashi-sensei had given us a chit saying we needed special
equipment for making traps.  Now, however, I drew my one allowed, then
bought three more, then added a selection of small flash bombs and
smoke bombs to my stocks.  So long as I was blind, I supposed I should
use the standard tricks of the blind fighter to properly balance a
fight.  Of course, by 'balance', I mean tilt it in my favor, since all
I would have to do is raise my hitai-ate and no smoke or flash would
hinder my sight.

	Sasuke got some flash bombs, since he was fond of them, and
Naruto didn't buy anything extra from the seal shop, claiming his
wakizashis were fine for him.  Of course, I knew he was also trying to
get a scroll that would teach him how to make his own exploding tags,
but it was restricted to chunin and higher, and they were keeping a
sharper eye on him since he'd stolen the scroll of forbidden
techniques from the Tower.  Anyone could make their own flash bombs or
smoke bombs, we learned that our final year in the academy, but the
chemicals to make one were only slightly less expensive than the
finished item, so it was rarely worth the effort.

	We were done with weapons, and it was only late morning.  After
that came personal gear, clothes, and armor.  None of which was
general issue.

	So we found ourselves wandering in and out of shops in the market
district of Konoha, looking at mesh armor, bed rolls, and hundreds of
other little items offered for sale.

	"Hey, Sasuke!  Checkitout!" Naruto called gleefully from near the
front of one shop owned by a retired kunoichi.

	I cautiously took a peek, then covered my eyes again.

	Naruto had found a rack of plush dolls for children or young
girls and had picked up one of a strange, creepy little superdeformed
person of ambiguous gender, its cloth mouth opened in a soundless
scream that took up half the face, as if it had seen something that
ate at its very soul.  Bulging cloth eyes took up the remainder of the
face, and its fingerless suggestions of hands seemed to tear wildly at
the spiky black 'hair', though really they were sewed to the top of
the head in a manner suggestive of a particularly nasty torture.

	 "Hn?"

	"You should buy this!  It conveys all the rage and horror that
you feel inside but are too cool to express!"

	I could feel Naruto's bright, mischievous grin as he displayed
the screaming doll to Sasuke.  It's good that he's happy.

	Sasuke grunted noncommittally, though I could tell that he was
ever so slightly offended.

	I thought that would be it, but a few minutes later, I heard
Sasuke move to the back of the store, his sandals squeaking on the
floor, which had been polished with nightingale wax, probably to aid
the old woman in keeping track of her customers and making sure none
of them shoplifted.

	"I wasn't going to mention it, but I saw something back here that
reminded me of a member of our team.  Perhaps you should buy her to
sleep with when you get lonely."

	Naruto made a strangled noise.

	Against my better judgment, I took another quick peek.

	Sasuke was smirking, displaying another plushie, and I saw why it
had been put in the back.  It was Tsunami, the blue haired, enormously
well endowed snail riding heroine of the long running Icha Icha Lucky
Streak comic manga that was popular with some adults.  The plushie was
another chibi type, with a, shall we say, 'well stuffed' body and the
character's trademark snail pet 'Zip-zip' on her shoulder.

	In that split second I had used to look around, I noticed that
both his and Naruto's eyes flicked over to me as they shared that
moment of male humor.

	With my eyes safely shielded by my forehead protector, I stared
blankly at nothing at all, pretending obliviousness.

	Interestingly, I could swear I felt their combined gazes on my
breasts.  Happily, I also found out that the steel and cloth covering
my eyes also managed to cover my blush.

	…not that I minded the looks.  I was the most gifted girl my age
in every way possible.  After years of being ignored by everyone, I'd
found that the attention was nice.

	Ever since that day Naruto told me to hit him, I haven't been
lonely.  It truly is the most wonderful feeling in the world.

	Soon, Naruto would figure out the correct technique that would
allow us to summon part of his immense power.  We would share that
contract with other people, his, and by extension my, power and
influence will grow, I will be confirmed as heir to my clan, we will
rise in the ranks, and one day…

	Well, I'll leave that thought for another day.  I believe Sasuke
is attempting to get Naruto to buy a package of condoms and I have to
support my teammate-

	-I mean, break up their argument before we get thrown out of the
store.

	Again.


	xxxxxxxxx
	xxxxxxxxx


	"Freeze!" Sasuke hissed.

	Both Naruto and Hinata froze.

	Belatedly, Sasuke added, "It's that damned pigeon.  He's over
there behind that sapling."

	Hinata uncovered her eyes and looked around, quickly spotting the
bird in question.  They were still in the shopping district, and had
just left a store specializing in camping gear.

	"Let's get him this time," Sasuke hissed, his sharingan spinning
rapidly.

	Each of them pulled out a number of throwing weapons, Naruto and
Hinata choosing senbon, and Sasuke pulling out four shuriken which he
attached wire to.

	"I'll try to surprise him on the other side of the tree," Sasuke
said quietly, readying his attack.

	The others nodded, knowing what their part would be.

	The shuriken, guided by the chakra infused wire, looped perfectly
around the tree, two clanging together where the pigeon had pecked at
the ground, seemingly unaware, two more crossing paths a foot higher,
compensating for the bird's speed if he took flight.

	Once again, the pigeon proved faster, darting away from the
spinning blades.

	Naruto hurled his senbon next, waiting for the bird to get high
enough that a miss wouldn't hit anyone on the streets.  That proved
prudent, as the needles buried themselves in the side of a building
across the street.

	Hinata went last, her byakugan giving her an edge as she tracked
the pigeon's flight.  While she didn't have the predictive abilities
like Sasuke, she could see the glow of chakra around the wings as the
bird manipulated the air currents to drive itself faster than muscles
alone.  Three senbon missed, but one hit the pigeon square in the
breasts.

	"YES!" Sasuke cried.

	"Awesome, Hinata!" Naruto cheered.

	"No, wait," she replied quickly, as the bird, instead of just
fluttering as it died, actually broke apart with a crack and a puff of
chakra.  Shards like pottery rained down upon the street.

	"NO!" Sasuke cried.

	"A clay pigeon replacement?!" Naruto exclaimed, stunned.  "What
the hell are we facing?"

	"There!" Hinata shouted, throwing another brace of senbon to
punctuate her words.

	"He's getting away!"

	"Not this time," Naruto growled.  "Kage bunshin no jutsu!"

	Four clones appeared around him and, working as one, grabbed the
real Naruto and hurled him into the sky.  Just as he was reaching the
apex of his flight, he made two more, then used them to push off of,
jumping even farther into the sky, never taking his eyes off the
pigeon spiraling into the sky.

	Sasuke and Hinata blinked at the new tactic as Naruto ascended
higher than any of them could jump, even using chakra enhanced
muscles.

	Over and over, Naruto made clones and pushed off of them, letting
them poof out of existence as soon as he was through.  The wind
streamed through his hair, buffeting him gently above the Konoha
rooftops as he closed in on the unsuspecting bird.

	
	xxxxxxxxx
	xxxxxxxxx


	"Ino, you're a harsh taskmistress," Asuma chided gently as they
all walked through the streets together.  "You shouldn't beat up
Shikamaru just because he'd rather train in tactics than taijutsu with
you."

	"I didn't beat him up because he was complaining," Ino said
reasonably, tugging at the fighting wraps around her left wrist.  "I
kicked his ass because he keeps holding back and letting me win."

	"Mmmblengh," Shikamaru grunted vaguely, trusting everyone to get
his complaint despite his mouth being opened wide as he felt of his
back molars with one finger.  He had a black eye and a sour
expression.

	"Yeah, well, I'm just making sure it's more troublesome for you
to hold back than it is to fight me with all you've got.  At least
Chouji doesn't pull his punches."

	Chouji shrugged.  "I don't have to, you dodge most of what I
throw at you anyway.  I don't mind being your punching bag now and
then."
	
	Ino smiled at him wryly.  "That'd be a lot sweeter thing for you
to say if one of my punches could actually hurt you.  You're a rock,
Chouji.  But a rock you can break, punching you…"  She sighed.

	Asuma laughed.  "You're all doing great.  Just relax, nobody
makes chunin in a day."  He was actually pretty pleased with his genin
team.  The famous Ino-Shika-Cho combo held just as true today as it
had for their fathers, each bringing something vital to the table.

	Almost as if he could sense his sensei making a food analogy,
Chouji piped up.

	"So where should we eat for lunch?" he asked.  "We had udon
yesterday, but if it's good one day, it's good the next…"

	Shikamaru kept quiet and rubbed his bruised eye.  It was too much
effort to speak up, really, since he didn't much care and it would be
decided without him no matter what he said.

	"Sushi, maybe?" Ino replied.  "Been a while since we had sushi.
Rice keeps you lean and quick and the sugar gives you energy."  She
punched the air a few times.

	Asuma groaned.  "Please, have pity on your sensei's wallet."

	"Sushi is indeed good," Chouji replied gravely.  "Though, given
the training we have been doing, perhaps we need something with more
protein."

	Ino opened her mouth to retort, but something caught her eye.
Flashes of orange, high in the sky, moving erratically.  Blinking, she
realized that it was Naruto's orange pants and pale orange shirt she
was seeing as he made bunshins over and over, flying through the sky
over Konoha as high as the top of Hokage memorial.

	"Oh my god," she whispered, staring at the flying blond, who was
drifting nearly directly overhead.

	Shikamaru glanced at her, looked up, and blinked in astonishment.
"What the fuck?"

	"Barbeque?" Chouji said thoughtfully.  Then, he, too, looked up.

	Naruto finally gave up his aerial assault on the pigeon and began
his descent to the ground.

	From the height of the Sandaime's forehead.

	Asuma darted forward, unsure how well catching the boy would
work, given the speed at which he was approaching the ground, but he
couldn't just let the kid go splat.

	Naruto, however, had a plan.  As he neared the ground, he
performed a mass shadow clone jutsu, making dozens of copies, all of
which he put between himself and the ground, balancing carefully, feet
first on the stomach of the clone below him.

	Faced with an immense falling mass of flailing bodies, Asuma
decided it would be best to just stand back and hope for the best,
grabbing his genin and moving them back to a safe distance.

	Seconds later, the mass of Narutos hit with a tremendous whack,
each dying and disappearing as the impact overloaded what the chakra
construct could handle.  They didn't dispel in order.  The first three
to hit the ground died at once, but the one Naruto was standing on
died next, followed by a few in the middle, and Naruto's careful, feet
first fall was thrown awry.  His world went topsy turvy as uneven
impacts hit his feet and legs, sending him spinning madly down through
a rapidly dispelling stack of clones.

	He hit the street shoulder first with a sickening thud, all the
air whoofing from his lungs and his legs pointing almost straight up
for several moments before they slowly fell forward and thumped
against the stones.

	Slowly, Asuma, Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji crept closer and stared
down at the dazed boy.

	Running feet alerted them and they all looked up to see Hinata
and Sasuke racing for them, their eyes wide with concern.

	Naruto chose that moment to suck in a deep gasp, twisting his
bruised shoulders painfully as he levered himself up on one arm and
rubbed at the back of his head, staring at the faint streaks of blood
on his fingers in dazed bemusement.  Blinking, he looked around,
slowly, at the audience that had surrounded him.

	Everyone stared at him in a mix of disbelief and concern.

	Slowly, he raised his hand to the sky, clenching his fist and
shaking it.

	"You win this time, gravity!" he cried in defiance.

	"I think we should get you to the hospital," Asuma began, but
Naruto shook his head, though he quickly stopped and groaned at the
spikes of pain it sent through him.

	"Nah, I'll be…  fine…" he replied, attempting to stand on wobbly
legs.

	Hinata quickly gave him a hand and pulled him up onto her
shoulder, Sasuke supporting him from the other side, and together the
trio staggered off, Naruto dragging his feet more than walking.

	Asuma and Team Ten watched in silence.

	Silence, at least, until Chouji nudged his teacher's elbow.
"Barbeque?" he asked.

	"Yeah, okay."


	xxxxxxxxx
	xxxxxxxxx


	"Are you going to be alright, Naruto?" Hinata asked for what must
be the thousandth…  third time.

	"Yeah, yeah, I'm alright," he replied, attempting to be
reassuring.  "I'm already getting feeling back in my legs.  It's a
tingly, burning kind of feeling, but it's something, and that's good,
right?"

	"Yes, Naruto, your crushed spine putting itself back together in
the span of about five minutes, keeping you from being a paraplegic
from the rest of your life and never being a ninja again, can probably
be considered a good thing."

	"Aww, Sasuke, I'm touched.  I didn't know you cared," Naruto
replied with a grin.

	He glared at the blond, then gave him a comforting, if rather…
hard…  pat on the back.  "Of course I care," he said with fake
camaraderie.

	"NNNG!" Naruto all but screamed, his body seizing up in pain.

	"Sasuke!" Hinata yelled.

	"Hn," he smirked, somehow managing to indicate that, see, he was
getting the feeling back, so everything was good.

	"Hinata?  Should you keep leaving your eyes unsealed?" Naruto
asked when he could speak again.

	She shrugged slightly, though not so much as to jostle Naruto.
"I'm watching your bones heal, it's very fascinating."

	"Ah.  Well, perhaps we should take a break somewhere until…  Oh,
hey look!  It's Anko!  Hey, Anko-san!" he yelled, waving.

	Sasuke blinked.

	Anko was an adult kunoichi wearing a long brown coat with dark
hair twisted into a sloppy ponytail sitting at an outdoor café, busily
working on some sort of project.  As he grew closer, he saw her
chewing absently on the frayed end of what was once probably a dango
skewer, given that she had an open box beside her with three more full
skewers.  Her project turned out to be a large leather bound book
propped up on its bottom edge as she industriously worked on the
inside with a needle and thread.

	She looked up, and her expression of concentration melted into a
broad, slightly deranged grin.

	"Naruto!  And little Hinata-chan!  My advice come in handy yet?"

	Hinata shook her head sadly, easing Naruto gently down into a
nearby seat.  "Not yet, Anko-san, but soon, hopefully."

	"Yeah, that's not a creepy way to start the conversation at all,"
Naruto said with a roll of his eyes.  He gestured at Sasuke.  "Anko?
Meet Sasuke.  The naked Uchiha."

	Anko's grin seemed to turn even more predatory as she leaned the
book forward and rested her chin on the top.  "I was walking out of
ANBU headquarters when you ran by that morning, kid.  Cute butt."

	Sasuke leaned down to Naruto's ear and whispered "Told you," with
a smirk.

	"Yeah, yeah, whatever, asshole," Naruto grumbled.  "Sasuke, this
is Anko Mitarashi, the most deadly, some say the most psycho, woman in
Konoha."

	Sasuke raised one eyebrow.  "Mitarashi?  Yes, I've…  heard…  of
you."

	"No doubt," Naruto said with a smirk.

	Anko shook her head seriously, making the book wiggle on the
table.  "No, no, all those rumors are false.  Actually, I gave up sex
when I discovered the taste of fresh blood."

	He glanced at Naruto, then back at her.  "So how's that go with
dango?"

	She blinked, then smiled slowly.  "Someone else's fear is always
the best sauce," she replied with a wink.  "So you're teamed with
Naruto and Hinata, huh?  How's that working out for you?"

	Sasuke shrugged in false modesty.  "We're alive.  Our enemies
aren't.  Pretty good, I'd say."

	"Hah!  That's what I like to hear."  She looked back at Naruto.
"I was a little worried about you way back, since I didn't think you'd
find the right team, but looks like they did a pretty good job of
assignments.  And under the Copycat, no less."

	"Well, Kakashi-sensei is off somewhere doing something incredibly
classified, probably killing people from the shadows, as usual.  So
right now we're sort of between teachers.  Want to corrupt some
impressionable young genin with your murderous techniques?" Naruto
asked hopefully.

	Anko grinned, but soon her expression faltered and she shook her
head regretfully.  "No, sorry, Naruto, but I'm still forbidden from
teaching you any of my jutsu, even if you do have the chakra to use
it.  You know the old man and his rules."

	Naruto sighed and nodded.  "Yeah, he's pissed at me right now, so
I guess there's no point in making it worse."

	"Ano," Hinata interrupted, looking at Anko appraisingly.  She
still hadn't covered her eyes again.   "You're forbidden to teach
anything to Naruto, right?  But, what if you weren't teaching,
exactly."

	"Hm?"

	Hinata smiled mischievously.  "What if, say, you were just
practicing your techniques?  At a public training ground?  And, say,
maybe an Uchiha with a mature sharingan happened to walk by?  Surely
the Hokage couldn't blame you then.  You know those Uchiha, pesky,
sneaky little jutsu thieves."

	Sasuke raised one eyebrow at Hinata's assessment of his family,
but he had to admit, she had a good idea.  He'd get the techniques,
which would add to his own skills, but since he could only perform one
at a time, it would make perfect sense to teach them to his teammates.
He had to admit, Naruto's grandiose plans about cooperation and
increasing each other's power seemed pretty farfetched at first, but
if Naruto could convince the older woman to let him copy her jutsus,
everyone benefitted.

	Anko's grin was back in full force.  "You know, that's entirely
true.  Those damned Uchiha are some pretty pesky thieves, at that.
Nice, Hinata-chan.  I think we'll try that, though if you think I'm
gonna show you everything in my bag of tricks you're a fool."

	"Fools don't live long," Naruto said dismissively, "and you'd be
a fool to do that.  But we, as poor, inexperienced little genin, could
surely benefit by just being close to your awesomeness."

	"Flattery will get you surprisingly far," Anko noted.  "But not
today.  I may not look it, but I just got back from an A rank this
morning, and I'm not gonna do anything big for the rest of the day."

	"What are you doing?" Sasuke asked, jerking his chin at the book
she had pressed against her neck.

	She blinked.  "Oh, this?  I'm just updating my facebook."

	"Facebook?" Hinata asked.

	"Yeah."  She lay the book flat and spun it around, showing the
flayed, pale, bloodless skin of some luckless man's face that she was
now sewing industriously onto a page of heavyweight paper.  Across the
bottom of the page she had carefully wrote 'Rintarou Nishi, Kamatachi
of Grass'.

	Sasuke dimly heard Hinata say something inane, like 'oh, that's
his face', but he was busy being slightly distracted.  Or not so
slightly.

	Anko's long coat gaped open in the front, revealing that her idea
of a bra was a second, shorter mesh shirt over the wire mesh body
stocking she wore beneath the coat.  And, wow, she was extremely well
endowed, making even Naruto's female form pale in comparison.  He
couldn't actually see her nipples, they were hid by her coat, but
there was some significant cleavage on display from her throat to her
upper belly, where the edge of the table pressed.

	-tits!-

	Naruko, leaping up, her adult sized breasts sagging with inertia,
making her pink nipples point at the floor, then rebounding healthily
so they actually, briefly, pointed at the ceiling, round hips, golden
downy fuzz, her pale, perfect skin flushed with excitement...

	Oh, crap.  He really wasn't ever going to be able to forget that.

	"Yeah, Ibiki was the first one to start it, but now there's about
a dozen of us who have facebooks here in Konoha.  It's really growing
in popularity!" Anko said enthusiastically.  "We show them off to each
other sometimes.  Like, here, look at this one."  She flipped through
the pages rapidly, many of them thick and lumpy against each other
thanks to the human skin matted on them.

	"Bloody Malth?  Who's that?" Hinata asked.

	Anko blinked, then shoved the book at her, stabbing at the
fleshless skin of the forehead with her finger.  "This guy?  You've
never heard of Bloody Malth, The Iron Mask of Blood?"

	Hinata, Naruto, and, belatedly, Sasuke, shook their heads dumbly.

	"Bah, kids these days.  I wonder that they claim to teach you at
all," she griped.  "Anyway, this dude was seriously bad ass, and I
stabbed him in the eye."  She flicked the neat edges of the bisected
eyelids dismissively, though not without pride.

	"Nice," Naruto replied, feeling the need to say something.  "But
was that a penis I saw a couple pages back?"

	Sasuke groaned mentally.  He had seen it, the inked silhouette of
one, at least, and was hoping it wasn't going to be mentioned.  Some
things you just didn't want to know about people.  That, and he was
afraid it wasn't just the silhouette.

	"Oh, this?" she asked, flipping to the page.

	Yep, there was an inked impression of a penis.

	"Yeah, sometimes I keep a sort of picture as a reminder.  You
know how old men will ink a fish and slap it on paper to prove how big
it was?  I heard of this guy who was doing the same thing with women's
breasts, and I thought that was a pretty neat idea, except I'm not
really interested in breasts."

	…Wow, what a great idea, Sasuke thought, watching hers jiggle
with her enthusiastic motions.

	"I've got a couple in here," she mused, flipping through the
book.  "Tsukada, and Sousuke, and I've got Asuma around here
somewhere, but he was passed out drunk and it was soft, so it's just
blackmail material, whoops, heh, you probably didn't want to know that
about your teacher," she said with a giggle, quickly turning the page.

	"Iruka-sensei?" Naruto said, his voice rising into a screech.

	"No, he's in the back…  oh, yeah, he was your academy sensei,
right?"

	Sasuke had his eyes firmly shut.  He'd caught the name written
below that one, and she was absolutely right, he didn't want to know
that about his sensei.

	"Ano, Anko-san, why did you keep that one?" Hinata asked, her
hand darting out and stopping the flip of pages on one with a two inch
ink print.  "That's kind of small, isn't it?  I mean, it's wide, but
still, most of them I've seen have been way bigger than-"

	Anko tugged on the page and it unfurled like a centerfold.

	"Oh."

	"Dretric," Anko mused, a strange smile on her face.  "A rank
mission a long, long, long, loonnngg-"

	"I think we get it," Sasuke noted.

	"-way from here," she finished with a giggle.  "They don't make
them like that around here, girls, so don't bother looking."
Carefully folding the page back up, she closed the book with a snap.
"Well, that's all the corruption I have the energy for today.  I don't
think I've slept in like ninety hours, so I'm gonna go home, wash the
gimp, and get some sleep.  See you kids tomorrow!"

	Taking a moment to gather up her book and dango, she disappeared
with a swirl of bare dango sticks.

	Sasuke blinked and turned to the other two.  "Did she just say
she was going to go home and masturbate?"

	
	xxxxxxxxx
	xxxxxxxxx


	"Saguraki-san?" Sakura asked politely as the old, white haired
man opened the door to his house.

	He was clearly an ex ninja, moving with a grace and power not
usually seen in civilians, but he'd probably been retired for decades.
He had a somber face, but laugh lines crinkled at the edges of his
eyes and mouth, and his short white goatee was neatly trimmed.  He
wore a light tan kimono and geta shoes, and while relatively neat, it
showed signs of stains and dirt, indicating it was casual wear.

	"Yes, I am Rikuto Saguraki," he replied, blinking owlishly in the
evening sun.

	"Pleased to meet you.  I'm Sakura Haruno."  She bowed politely.

	Her day had, fortunately, been an easy one.  One D rank mission
involving nothing but unloading wagons of produce, plus three hours of
genjutsu training had left her tired, but not exhausted.  While
walking home through the village she had caught a glimpse of Sasuke
and his team disappearing into a clothing store, which had reminded
her of that morning.

	Now, here she was, after an appropriate bit of polite chitchat,
being shown to the roof of Saguraki's home, the last person in Konoha
to raise carrier pigeons.

	He had quite a few of them, too.  Four rows of coops lined his
flat top roof, each cage having a sheltered nest box and two bowls,
one for food and one for water, which could be filled from the
outside.  Most of the doors stood open, but many of them had pigeons
inside, sometimes two and three per cage.

	"I like to let them roam Konoha.  I can't imagine they'd be all
that happy cooped up all the time, but so long as I keep food and
water handy, they always return.  Used to, you had to trade them by
hand and keep them caged until you needed to send a message, because
they'll always return home, given a chance."

	"Ah.  So if I had one, I'd need to keep it in a cage or it'd come
back here?" she asked.

	Her cover story was that a friend had recently become interested,
yes, a boy, yes, he's cute, Saguraki-saaaan, please!, because pigeon
had taken a liking to him but wasn't always around.  She'd heard that
it might actually belong to someone, so now she had tracked down
Saguraki because it might be his and he'd know the most about them.

	"Yeah, but I guess if you get the one you want, and it comes
back, you can just come pick it up again.  I'm kind of glad, not too
many of you kids are interested in things like pigeons.  It's always
hawks this and hawks that.  I bet you didn't know that some of these
pigeons can be trained to use chakra offensively.  I watched this one
pigeon cut a hunting hawk in half with a kind of wind technique."

	"Wow," she replied, genuinely impressed.

	"Yeah, wow," he agreed, smiling.  Then his smile drooped.  "Of
course, it takes time to teach them things like that, and I have to
admit that some of the hawks can do even better.  But the pigeons are
still great companions for a ninja."

	Sakura nodded, walking up and down the rows of cages.  The
pigeons cooed and shifted, rustling their wings as they jostled for
position or pecked at seed in the bowls.  Occasionally one would take
off with a flap of wings, suddenly deciding to do one last avian
errand before sunset, but more often one would be coming in, sometimes
going directly in the coop, sometimes landing on the roof, liberally
covered in birdshit, and sometimes one would land on the top of the
coop and look around, cocking its head curiously at the new red human
in their territory.

	Most were kind of a slate grey with a shiny, shimmery purple
head, but others were pure white, and others were kind of a tan color.
They blended into a mosaic of feathers and bright black eyes watching
everything around them.

	There was a quick beat of wings, and Sakura glanced over to the
side.

	There he was.

	She blinked.

	She couldn't have said exactly how she knew it was the same
pigeon that had attacked Sasuke that morning, but she was.  She'd seen
it, though, better than anyone else, for she'd been the one to notice
it flying down the street, and sense its silent, purposeful dive
towards Sasuke's unprotected back.  And she'd also seen it at the
hospital, doing nasty things to Sasuke's hair.  On the surface, it was
unremarkable.  Standard slate grey with the purple feathered head.
But she was a ninja, and she was very good at sensing chakra.  The
pigeon had a presence, tiny, but there, unlike anything else she'd
ever felt, even from some of the other birds in the coops.

	"There it is," she said quietly, instinctively lowering her voice
to keep from scaring it.

	"Eh?" Saguraki asked, looking up from where he'd dropped a
handful of birdseed in one of the bowls.

	"There it is," she repeated, backing towards him.  "That's the
pigeon that I'd like to give to my friend."

	Saguraki looked over to the bird on top of the coop and raised
one eyebrow.  "Lamarr?" he asked, scratching his beard.  "You want
Lamarr?  He's…  he's an odd one."

	Lamarr cocked his head to one side, staring at Sakura with one
beady little eye.  Even though he was a bird, somehow the move was
suggestive.  "Cooo?" the pigeon asked softly.
	
	"Lamarr?" Sakura repeated.  "That's a strange name."

	"He's a strange bird," Saguraki assured her.
	
	"Coooo, cooo," Lamarr objected.

	"Well, it's definitely him," Sakura said after a moment.  "When
my friend was in the hospital, he liked to spend a lot of time on the
roof, and…  Lamarr…" she said, pausing at the name, "started coming to
visit."  Amazing what switching two words could do.  She bit her
tongue.  It was horrible and it was degrading and it was happening to
SASUKE but it was still pretty funny.

	"Huh," the old man said, staring dubiously at the bird.  "Well,
if that's the one you want, you can have him.  Free of charge."

	"Really?!" she asked, barely suppressing a squeal.

	And so it was.  Saguraki waited until the pigeon hopped down into
his preferred coop, then carefully caught him and put him into a
rickety old bamboo slat cage.  Sakura promised that he wouldn't be in
that cage for very long, and, with much bowing and thanks, escaped
with her prey.

	Take THAT, Ino!


	xxxxxxxxx
	xxxxxxxxx	
	

	She found Hinata and Naruto sitting quietly at a food stall,
Naruto aimlessly pushing around a leftover piece of cabbage covered in
teriyaki sauce with his chopstick as if he couldn't decide if it was
worth eating.

	Lamarr cooed and struggled briefly in her hand.  She had the cage
that Saguraki had given her, but, she didn't want to just admit that
she'd just found the owner and convinced him to let her have the bird.
It lacked a certain…  ninja quality to it.  No, she'd found the owner,
found where the bird roosted, snuck in, and grabbed him.  But she
wouldn't brag about it.  Modesty is a virtue, and the less you say,
the less you have to lie about.  So she'd quietly left the cage in an
alleyway where it wouldn't be noticed, and took the bird in hand while
she searched for Sasuke.  The worst thing that could happen was he'd
get away, and she'd just have to go back to Saguraki to get him again.

	It was a pretty good plan if she did say so herself.  A bird in
the hand and all that.

	In fact, it was a great plan.  Because the look on Naruto's face
when he glanced over at her and did a double take…

	It was really quite deeply satisfying.  She didn't bother to keep
the wide grin off her face.

	Naruto, for his part, groped a second and then grabbed Hinata's
shoulder.  It had already been a weird, stressful day, but the last
thing he would have expected to see was Sakura of all people walking
towards him, headpigeon in hand, grinning a positively evil, satisfied
smile showing a lot of teeth.

	She really did look like the cat that…  caught the pigeon.

	"What's happening?" Hinata asked, feeling him touch her shoulder
but not pass any coded information.

	"Ah, you're not gonna believe this, but Sakura is brandishing the
headpigeon at me," Naruto said, fighting to talk normally instead of
grin like an idiot and whoop.

	Hinata raised her hitai-ate and her eyebrow at roughly the same
time.

	"…Impressive, Sakura," she admitted, her lips twisting in an
equally amused smile.  "Bringing it alive?  That's an interesting
choice.  I don't think Sasuke wanted to interrogate it, but…"  She
shrugged wryly.
	
	Sakura grinned like mad, and the pigeon cooed in protest and
struggled as she inadvertently tightened her two handed grip.  "So
where is he?  Where's Sasuke?  I want to show him!"

	"He went to find a bathroom," Naruto replied.  "He'll be back.
What I want to know is HOW."

	"Not every battle is won with kunai and shuriken," she assured
him, eyes bright with satisfaction and triumph.  "A pigeon has to
roost, right?  I found his roost.  Caught him off guard.  Easy."

	Naruto's eyebrow couldn't physically raise any higher.  Hinata
giggled, and he looked at her.

	Sakura looked at the pigeon.  Lamarr, the old man said its name
was.  It cocked its head and looked back at her, cooing softly.

	Footsteps alerted them, and they turned to see Sasuke walking
towards them, back from the bathroom.  He glanced at Sakura, then back
to Naruto and Hinata, then back at Sakura again.  Then…

	Sakura's chest gave a little hitch, her heart skipping a beat.

	He noticed.

	His eyes grew wide.  He froze in mid step.

	The pigeon's tiny little bones popped like twigs as her strong
fingers curled through its feathered breast, and Sakura literally tore
the pigeon in half with her bare hands.

	Everyone stared at the now dripping, bloody mess.

	Sakura's eyes widened in shock.  She hadn't meant to kill it!
She had just planned on giving it to Sasuke!  But when he looked at
her like that…  her hands had convulsed involuntarily.

	She had done it, she had killed the pigeon.  She had killed
Lamarr.

	"Uh, Sakura?" Naruto interrupted gently.  "They're not fortune
cookies.  They put the message in a little tube on the leg, not inside
of them."

	Sakura stared back at him, uncomprehending, acutely aware of the
fever hot blood running over her fingers, making the soft grey
feathers stick to her hands.

	Naruto shook his head.  "I swear, smartest girl in the academy
and she thinks they put the message on the INSIDE."

	Hinata giggled as Sakura stood there in a daze.  "Ordinarily, we
don't let just any shinobi hang out with us, but since you've got
blood on your hands now…  Welcome to the club!  We'll have you
stabbing people in the kidneys in no time."

	Sakura glanced at Hinata, then, slowly, she turned her head to
look at Sasuke, holding her hands away from her body lest she get
blood on her dress, almost as if she were offering the bloody meat to
him.

	He looked at her, looked at the two pigeon halves in her hands,
then gave her a measuring look.

	"One date."

	And he walked away.
	
	Sakura blinked, shell shocked now that Sasuke had just agreed to
a date.

	"Stuff your bra."

	"Huh?" she asked dumbly.

	"For your date with Sasuke," Hinata elaborated.  "Stuff your bra.
He's a breast man, and you…" Hinata briefly cupped Sakura's chest in
derision.

	She stood there, still shocked that Sasuke, the coolest boy in
Konoha, her crush, her one true love, had just agreed to a date.
	
	"YES!" she cried suddenly, thrusting her fists, and dripping
pigeon halves, into the air in exultation.  "I am so totally rubbing
this in Ino's face!"

	Naruto's eyes lit up with glee and mischief, and he nudged
Hinata.  "Now that's a girl I can get behind!  It's one thing to beat
your friend out for a date, it's a whole different bird to shove a
mangled pigeon in her face!"

	"She is a credit to my gender," Hinata deadpanned.