Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ None the Wiser ❯ Next Stall Over ( Chapter 10 )

Title: None the Wiser

Author: The Uke Reformation

Genre: Naruto

Subgenre: Romance/Drama

Summary: There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching...SasuNaru, yaoi

Rated: R for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

Author's Note: -blithering like an idiot- OMIGOD IT'S FINALLY CHAPTER TENTENTENTENTEN! This marks a huge milestone for me; I have never in my life kept a fan fiction going this long, or made this many people happy by doing something that made me happy! It's amazing, and I'd like to thank all of you for making this possible for me. My debut as a yaoi authoress hasn't gone half as badly as I thought it would and I am so happy! Arigatou, ne… I hope you enjoy the read. (Bet on it being confusing, if you weren't already. Why? Cuz - tada! - I'm like that. xD Smooches!)

Note: It's like Gaara: addictive, psychotic, and gay gay gay gay gay. With nice legs. Gaara has very nice legs.

Disclaimer: Copyright The Uke Reformation, 2006. All rights reserved.

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None the Wiser

By The Uke Reformation

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Chapter 10

" Bleeding girl in the

next stall over. “

Naruto had a way of never understanding his own actions, when it came right down to it. There was a long, lingering part of his life that had been dictated completely by other people's decisions where he had just kind of lost track of himself, and that had a way of catching him by surprise. He'd just stopped really interacting with his brain, and it caught up with him, sometimes.

No, it was his feet that usually made his decisions, now. He had a well-justified fear of cars and their trapped interiors, and the same went for buses. Airplanes were out of the question just based on how much he hated having to be that close to people he didn't now for that long of an extended period - where the hell was he going to go that he needed an airplane, anyway? Trains weren't so bad, but with his luck, he usually ended up riding them when they were in the one condition he couldn't tolerate: empty. So, with no other real way to travel, he walked.

That wasn't so bad, relative to where he was situated. Never let anyone tell you that San Francisco isn't a pedestrian city; it is. To say otherwise is to make a mockery of everything San Francisco stands for. It's true that the city is rather large, but not `LA' large. Everywhere is accessible if your legs are strong enough - hills get to be less of a distraction and more of just a regular occurrence to be overlooked. And Naruto's were definitely strong enough.

So if he was going somewhere, he was walking. It's true that Naruto accepted rides from Kakashi, but not on a regular basis. His house was close to school, but that was only for convenience-purposes. He liked walking, really, even if he never listed it as a hobby. He got around the city, too, and he made his rounds pretty easily. Hardly ran anywhere - just walked. Naruto walked everywhere, and reasonably so. Everything was usually in walking distance.

Yamanaka Hanahazukashii, state-of-the-art flower shop and beauty parlor was no exception.

Not that he'd known he was going there before hand. After all, his feet did the thinking. Not him.

Truthfully it had been rather rude and undistinguished to depart in the manner he had. Truthfully, though, he didn't entirely mind. Desperate times called for desperate (if not callous) measures. This time counted. Inari and Yohko flooded his panicked thoughts entirely. And so, he had said nothing to anyone, really, slammed the telephone receiver down, and bowed himself out with utmost haste.

'Where could he have gone?'

It was a bad situation. Very bad. For Tazuna to come around so suddenly only to be shot down, and then for his only grandson to disappear on the same day - the evidence was extremely incriminating. Even if the man was in his fifties, was in the hospital, was suffering a gunshot wound to the shoulder, he also was extremely wealthy, and was more than very deserving of Naruto's criticisms. He was setting them all up for failure - affecting the lives of people who wanted only to be hidden. It was one thing, one simple little thing, and he was ruining it in his futile attempts to prove a ridiculous point. Naruto wouldn't have hesitated to blame Tazuna for all their dooms.

And, consequentially, he didn't.

He barreled down the street, not running but walking very briskly, long coat barred against the late October wind that swept up against his chest and ruffled his hair. He felt like he was pacing, going back and forth, and yet was fully aware (as he jostled through the tightly packed crowds on the sidewalk) that he was going forward. Or at least, he was traveling in only one given direction. 'Forward' was always based on relativity.

At any rate, he knew where he was going. Kind of. In a 'I'll get wherever I'm getting to eventually' kind of way. He was far too lost in thought to focus on anything else. Everything in his head was tumbling about, chaotic and hectic and whirling in a way that made his stomach clench most painfully. He had to find him. Absolutely had to. Children didn't just go missing randomly - not children who had guardians like Inari did. Yohko panicked far too easily for most people's tastes, but she was well justified and if anything it kept her children better protected than if they'd been born to an international celebrity. That wasn't to say she didn't let them do as they pleased a lot of the time, but she did so with a great amount of moderation.

She kept those kids close. Real close, in a way that was probably suffocating from where they stood. But her fear for them was real and they knew it well enough not to complain. They honestly didn't know too much to the contrary, so it wasn't as if they were going to battle to get away from their mother whenever they got the chance. They were very sensitive when it came to Yohko's mood fluctuations, and understood better than anyone the woman's instability. They trusted her for the most part, but they knew what they couldn't do, what would hurt her. They were too considerate to just go running off that irresponsibly.

Inari wouldn't have just left. It was true that he didn't get along with Yohko all the time, or see her as a mother to the extent that Konohamaru did, but he was careful. He didn't anger her or make her cry on purpose anymore, the way he had when he was younger. Even when he had done such things, when he was three and four, he would've never thought once of running away. He knew what was out there, what she was trying to protect him from almost as well as she did.

It was the stuff that was out there that they feared the most, after all. Naruto coughed harshly into a balled fist that caught it before his brain really had time to register that it had come. The air was unreasonably cold today, he thought. He shook his head, upset. He needed a plan. A battle strategy. The only thing that really occurred to him was that he was following his feet up South Van Ness, past lots of quaint little shops filled of small things that did not interest him even on a good day. Where was he going? Graphing it out rather roughly in his head, Yohko had probably already walked the Castro several thousand times, and Kakashi was on Market. He needed to check other places in that area, and he was a while away, a few blocks down near 19th. Strategically speaking, walking wasn't going to be his best option at the moment, but off the top of his head he couldn't recall any alternate modes of transportation available that didn't strike down hard on any of his phobias.

He hesitated for a second, though, something occurring to him. He reevaluated his position. If he kept walking northward, as he was right now, he would hit Enterprise first, in, oh, give or take two blocks. And then what...? Well, from there, if he really couldn't go anywhere except on foot, he was going to have to turn left and walk for a few more block until he hit Ramona, then travel that up until he hit Clinton Park. That would take way too much time. It was four-thirty now. If he took that route on foot, even if he walked as quickly as he could, it would take at least a hour, and that was easily the difference between light and darkness. The sun was already dangling tediously low in the sky - it was October after all. He coughed again, trying to warm his cold fingers. There had to be some quicker way to travel.

It then occurred to him just in what direction he was traveling, and on which street.

'Wait a second...'

He was on Van Ness and - he looked over at the street sign as he walked another crosswalk - 17th just now. Given the direction he was going...Enterprise was directly in front of him, and then...

He moved his fingers nervously. The idea would be imposing upon Ino's hospitality, but the situation was rather dire.

He ought to at least give it a shot.

Okay, so that meant walking past Capp, crossing the intersection at Enterprise and...

-----

Yamanaka Hanahazukashii, unlike most stores of its name was not located all that near Little Osaka. The word 'hanahazukashii' means 'beauty that could put a flower to shame' and it was well chosen. Warranted, very few customers out of the tidal wave that flowed in on a regular basis could've known that, but it was quite the hotspot as it was. At first it hadn't advertised at all, but it had become quite the popular little joint simply by word of mouth with a speed to rival the sound barrier. Now it was almost everywhere. It wasn't part of a chain (had it been, the name would've been catchier) but it was well-kept and respectable for what it was; the revolutionary idea to conjoin both a beauty parlor and flower shop so that the two complimented one another.

Mind, the entire operation was pretty unorthodox. The location could've been more ideal, the customers less ditzy and the manager a little bit older, and (if at all possible) a high school graduate, which - at the age of seventeen - Yamanaka Ino was not. She was smart when it came to most things. That wasn't the arguable point. But intelligence, for both her and the majority of her family, was disregard able if the need arose. And when it came to the Yamanaka's the need arose far more often than it would have with most people. Passionate dreaming came before education, as evidenced by the fact that Ino's father had been the first in their family to even attend college, and that in itself was considered an achievement.

It wasn't a bad thing so much as it was a little unusual. But the Yamanaka's were headstrong people who knew what they wanted out of life and were determined to get it, one way or another. As far as safety went for a girl of Ino's age and build, Natoma was a blessing. Sure, it wasn't uptown, nor was it downtown, but it wasn't Candlestick, and it didn't get the pretty little windows in front punched out every day or two, so everything was good. It also had a duplex upstairs where the young woman could live relatively peacefully, and so long as that was true, Naruto had opted to let her go about things her own way.

The shop was relatively empty when he got there, for it being a weekday. Of course, he thought, most people hadn't gotten off of work yet. It was a good thing, too. Both the bins outside full of white and lavender African Irises, and the marble-tiled floors of the salon were empty of witnesses to Naruto's jitters. Had there been, he would've had a lot of explaining to do, seeing the kind of customers his former student tended to attract: over-sympathizing, melo-dramatic chatterboxes, the whole lot of them. They weren't all women of course, but they all pretty much acted the same way.

The girl he was currently pursuing was bent over the counter, her silky blonde hair up in a high ponytail. The way she had positioned herself, ballpoint pen halfway between her teeth and elbows on the counter, propping up her face, she seemed to be engrossed with a ledger of some sort. The small bells on the door jingled, signally Naruto's arrival as he clattered in out of the street, looking ruffled, and she blinked up at him, looking surprised.

She seemed to only stay surprised for a few moments, though, recovering from his entrance quickly enough and turning back to her notepad. She spoke to him offhandedly as always, seeming used to his tendencies to burst in with a flurry of smoke, a ragged appearance, and a large amount of fear-induced hyper activity. "Oh, hey there, sexy. You want something?"

Naruto raised an eyebrow at her tiredly, cheeks flushed from the cold air outside. Ino could be a really talented flirt without putting her mind to it at all. The fact that that didn't bother him as much as it should have bothered him, having been her teacher only a year prior.

"Do you deck yourself out in purple deliberately, or just because it's all you have to wear?" The teacher gestured to her clothes of choice: a low-cut top, combat boots and worn-out denim jeans that were probably the height of fashion, all the aforementioned shade of plum.

"Do you always act stupid or can't you help it?" Ino said, shrugging in a way that made her golden hoop earrings jangle.

Naruto sighed. "Listen. I need a ride."

Ino glanced up, tone gone serious. "Where to?"

"Up near Yohko's place."

Ino sighed. "I can't take you now. You're gunna need to wait."

"This can't wait, Ino."

She stood up, giving him an analytical look. "Well, it's gunna need to. That, or you're going to have to walk."

"Inari's missing."

She blinked.

"What?"

"They can't find him anywhere. He's gone."

Ino's eyes seemed to harden, gone deep, and she folded her arms. "Since when? How long's he been gone?"

"Since three, give or take."

She put a hand to her lips, pensive. "That's no good...he's way too little to be running around who-knows-where for that long..." She looked him in the eye. "Okay, so it's important, I got it. Doesn't change the fact that I can't give you a ride right now..." She looked off for a second, thinking hard, before looking to him again. "Can you drive yourself...?"

Naruto nodded. "You got a helmet?"

Ino walked behind the counter and reached under it, bringing one out and flinging it at him. He caught it easily enough, full in the chest. It looked like it would fit. Not that he really minded. If it didn't he would just have to make do. By law he had to have one on; he didn't have to have one on that fit properly, just one that would stay on his head. Most people would intuitively think that the two things naturally coincided, but Naruto was not most people, and knew better.

He lifted it, looking it over. Ino went to the register, popped open the drawer and lifted out a pair of keys that jingled incessantly, and glistened in the lighting. She tossed them directly at his head and he caught them without problem, the helmet situated on his other hand. When he looked over she was already at the back, pushing through the transparent curtains at the end of the corridor that held the bathrooms, and motioned quickly for him to follow.

They walked, him behind her, through the plastic gateway into a brightly lit greenhouse, with high ceilings. It smelled nice, and contained warmth that Naruto wasn't used to at this time of year. The air was tropical, alive with the wet, balmy fragrance of the plants that bloomed in all greens, exotic blues and magentas and pinks, all around them. Through the window sky-light above them, Naruto could see the burnt light of the sun filtering through the soft fog that was beginning to haze as a sunset became inevitable.

At the end of the greenhouse, they encountered another solid wall and a thick steel door that Ino opened without hesitation. Again Naruto followed her through it, hit immediately by a chill that ran through him and made goose bumps spring up all across his skin. All around, lilies and other delicate flowers were settled in bins of water. Through another door and they were out in a back alley, gleaming motorcycle in front of them.

Naruto whistled, despite himself. There was nothing to help his appreciation for healthy machinery.

Ino leaned back, chest puffed out, seeming as proud of it as he figured she had a right to be. "Yeah...she's pretty, you've got to admit." She looked over at him, smiling. "Take good care of her, hm?"

Naruto nodded absently. "Oh yeah." He looked back at her. "You sure he won't mind...?"

Ino laughed loudly. "You think I care?" She punched him lightly in the arm. "He left it here. If he wasn't anticipating me using it, he should've kept the keys. And you'll be careful - you're not as bad a driver as Sakura, or anything. So get out there and find our boy, won'tcha? It'll be fine."

"Him anticipating you using it is way different is way different than you auctioning it off like this," Naruto chuckled.

Ino shrugged. "Hey, if it comes right down to it, he's way too lazy to come after you."

Well, he couldn't argue with that.

He jammed the helmet on his head - it fit very well, as it were - and moved to buckle the underside. "I can't thank you enough Ino."

She waved him off. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just find your kid and bring 'im back in one piece."

-----

 

When Naruto pulled up to the Kubome the sun had long sunk behind the horizon. The fog clouded both judgment of civilians around him and the moonlight that should've shown down upon him. As it was, the headlight of the motorcycle was more than enough as it purred to a stop in the parking lot, and he cut the engine. He clenched and unclenched his hands and stretched his shoulders to try and choke out some of the stubborn cold that had seeped in through the folds of his skin. The wind had refused to die down and was only made all-the-more bitter by his riding through it the past two-and-a-half hours.

He hadn't found a thing, needless to say, or he would've been in much higher spirits. It wasn't that he hadn't searched everywhere. He had. He'd searched high and low, low and high. Places he knew Yohko and Kakashi would've checked three billion times before. There was always a chance, his brain told him. Always a chance that his 'one more time' would make some significant difference. He'd run Market up and down from end to end, which is no easy feat, and he'd made the circuit thrice. He'd veered off into back allies and corner stores all the way.

He'd checked everywhere, turned the whole city upside down and shook it for good measure. Everywhere, from places they went daily, to places they went monthly and annually, to places they'd only visited once. He coasted past the Café they all went to for brunch on holidays; he rode through the wide, empty streets where he knew they played with the other kids. He even went past the Mission District a ways, just to see if he could find anything at all to act as indicant of what to do next.

But no. There was nothing. Not hide nor hair nor puff of dust nor tire track to suggest where he might have disappeared to. And he truly had. Disappeared, that is. There was no evidence, no anything. They had to find him, but there was no way they could, going off of how long they had kept up their search and how little they had turned up. And, of course, they couldn't go to the police...not directly...

So they were pretty well stuck. And it was more than likely that Yohko was going nuts.

He knew he was.

He unclipped the helmet and remembered the very useless fact that he had no way of really securing the bike in place. How the hell did Ino keep it from being stolen? Just leaving it out on the back walk...that was absolutely ridiculous. Not entirely unlike her, but ridiculous nonetheless. With his luck, he was amazed that it was still under him. There wasn't much to be done about it, of course. He'd found a parking space and that was what he was going to go off as what would probably be the only luck he had that evening.

He put the kickstand down and took the keys from the ignition, leaning the bike over as he climbed off of the seat. Pushing the keys into his back pocket, he reached up and removed the helmet, still rather lost in thought. He tucked it under his arm with a sigh. Well, if this was the only thing he could do... Taking care of Yohko was going to be hell if he knew her at all; she would either be loud and screaming, or soft and anti-social, both relatively dangerous states of mind for her to be in and likely accompanied by crying. Chances were they would have her in with someone who was more used to seeing her while she was having her 'fits', and the two of them would be quarantined off to the side...

That didn't give him a huge amount of wiggle room. Not that he was about to criticize the procedure, Yohko the very least. He knew better than anyone what she'd been through just to get those kids. She breathed them in; their presence was the very reason she was stable enough not to live in a world of fits. He couldn't keep her out of an asylum anymore. He wasn't around enough. They kept her upright, though, despite her violent mood swings and mental problems that should keep her in a hospital. They kept her functioning, and they worked as a pair. With one of those elements removed, Yohko was thrown into a piece of reality that clashed very abrasively with her state of mental wellbeing.

He was walking up the walk when he first noticed them. The lights coming off the Kubome were faulty, which was fitting in regards to its resources, and it flickered like a strobe, illuminating the two for just a second. But Naruto knew to trust his instincts - he'd been trained to trust his instincts - and what he'd seen was far from a mistake. He knew what he had seen. It made his stomach jump, for no apparent reason, to know exactly what he'd seen. But just that slight shift in the bushes beside him assured him that it was worth pursuing, and he stepped off the side of the concrete, walked three feet so that he'd better angled himself, and marveled at the view.

Those rumors about Haku, it seemed, would not prove entirely false. But that didn't mean it wasn't quite the sight to behold. Zabuza rarely ever took the ribbons away from his face, after all, and Naruto (who had never seen Haku outside of an academic setting) was not at all surprised with the boy's fashion sense, with seemed to revolve around fishnet at this time. He wasn't sure he would've have bothered with the fact if Zabuza's fingers hadn't been intertwined in it and his tongue hadn't been halfway down the very compliant throat of the boy in question. They both smelled very much like sex. It emanated off of them even, where they were on the ground, with the drug dealer on top of the schoolboy whose legs were slung around his waste in a very drunk fashion. Haku's hair seemed significantly longer when he was lying down, and it was strewn all about them like a sheet.

Naruto raised an eyebrow, mostly because he wasn't sure he was supposed to react. It was undeniable that they looked very good together. It was also rather undeniable that his suspicions were more than confirmed. That, of course, apart from the fact that some of his mother hen instincts were having aneurisms over the fact that this was definitely as bad as it looked: gay crack-dealer-on-illegal-minor-statutory-rape-sex-thing, it was. Or something of that nature. He didn't know how to react even emotionally; surprise was ruled out rather quickly, and filled in by a weird mix of anguish, disgust, and sexual appeal. Whichever came first, he reasoned.

In light of the situation, maybe it would've been better if he hadn't been noticed in the first place. But it wasn't as if he was just going to walk away. How the hell did you walk away from something like that? The ability eluded him. It was odd, actually, how Zabuza was the one to notice him first. He was, after all, the one with the lesser opportunity to do so. Somehow, though, in pulling out of Haku's mouth, the man chanced a glimpse at him, where he stood over him.

"Ah...wouldja look a'that? It's Uzumaki." He was nothing short of breathless, but he seemed to mask it well as he sat up off of Haku's chest. He looked completely at ease with the entire situation, which was not unlike him. Naruto knew that look he wore. The 'oh, don't mind the person I'm having sex with, talk with me old chum' look. It was really creepy. Who pulled out of hormones that quickly? Only friends of his, of course...that figured.

Naruto quirked his eyebrow a wee bit higher. "Having fun?"

Zabuza chuckled. "Jealous?"

"Of him?" Naruto put his hands on his hips, wrinkling his face and shaking his head lighter. "Nah. Your sense of a romantic getaway scares me to say the least. I mean, c'mon, a hospital? You could'na done better?"

Haku blinked up at him, seeming to have recovered his breath. It was easy to see that he was considerably more surprised than Zabuza - that, or much more caught up in the mood - but he handled himself pretty much the same way, taking it all in and using what reaction he had sparingly. The two of them kept their cool remarkably well, Naruto noticed.

Zabuza nodded to the helmet. "Been out and about? Tha's unlike you."

Naruto shrugged. "I guess."

"Are you looking for something, sensei?"

Naruto met his eyes for the first time that evening and smiled weakly. "Yeah...kinda. How are yuh sweetie?"

"I can't really complain, sensei."

"That's good." Naruto looked back at Zabuza. "You better not giv'im some sorta STD, punkass."

"Oh, look who's talkin'."

"Have yuh seen Inari?"

Zabuza coughed out a laugh. "Why are you asking me? I haven't seen much of anything except this one for a good coupla hours now."

"Cuz I'm askin' just about e'rybody. Listen, I know this'll be rather difficult considering the most compromising situation I've found you in, but could yuh please keep an eye out for him?" Naruto shifted his weight from foot to foot. The cold was tiring out his legs, and making them sore. He was just itching to move, but Zabuza was one of the most mobile people he knew. Not necessarily reliable, but that wasn't what he was after right now.

"You lost a kid?" Zabuza whistled. "Man, no wonder the bitch was way bitchier than normal."

Naruto did not half restrain his urge to land a blow to the side of the Momoichi's skull.

"Hey!"

"Not now, pookie." Naruto's voice was full of protective malice, and came out in a low growl. Zabuza rubbed at the spot to the side of his head, still giving him a look.

"Yer in one helluva mood."

"Yeah. Thanks fer noticing."

Zabuza shrugged. "I've been over to Japantown and back, today. Di'nt see anyone tha' looked like Inari. Sorry, bitch."

Naruto sighed and reached up to rub it his head. "Kay."

"How long you been lookin'?"

Naruto held up three fingers, his eyes closed against a pounding headache.

"Hours? Damn."

"Yeah. Long day."

Zabuza shook his head lightly. "You should'na whacked me so hard. I didn' know yuh'd been out that long."

"Yeah, I know." Naruto watched him. Haku looked pensive from under him, even with his hair and clothing mussed the way it was. Naruto dug into his back pocket and flipped open his wallet. "Only got eighty bucks though." He dug the four twenties out and flicked them at his friend's face.

"What for?"

Naruto shrugged. "Food. Shelter. Whatever you want."

"Can I pay to get somebody knocked?"

"Off? Or up? S'long as it ain't me or anyone I know, I really don't care."

Zabuza jabbed his fist into the air. Naruto snorted.

"Take care of yerself, yuh slimeball."

"Can do."

Naruto turned and stepped back onto the path with ease, walking up a ways before he heard Haku call out to him.

"Naruto-sensei."

He stopped and looked over his shoulder. "Hm?"

"Will you be in school tomorrow?"

"Maybe. Why?"

"No reason...just out of curiosity."

Naruto smiled at him.

"Make Zabuza buy you something nice, Haku."

The boy half-laughed. "I'll think about it, sensei."

Naruto nodded and went the rest of the way up the walk, and through the double-sliding glass doors of the hospital, musing over the fact that he almost never saw the whole of that boy smile. It was either his mouth or his eyes that didn't participate. He wondered for a second, as the doors slid closed just behind him, if he should bother telling anyone.

But the sounds of screaming echoing around the hospital reassured him that he truly had no desire to cause that many people pain. In fact, he didn't have the desire to cause anyone pain, now or ever.

He just ended up at fault because he was the wrong type of person.

But whatever.

-----

 

It should be dually noted that, with as powerful a voice as she had, Yohko's screaming was a force to be reckoned with. She wasn't an Uzumaki for nothing - they were loud, violent people even when they didn't mean to be. So when their tempers (or sanity, as the case may have been) was scraped away and they actually got to the point where they were those two things intentionally, the product was something that most people would've looked at as a fate worse than death for any witness. When they got angry they got really angry, and if paired with sadness, that rage was doubled in potency. Perhaps they did, indeed, feel too much for their own good, and when it came out, it came out like a siren.

When Naruto had arrived on the scene, he'd been able to identify his cousin's location by his ears alone. One would've thought that three hours of being angry beyond all reason would've worn a person down. But Uzumaki's weren't like that. Stamina was their strong suit, if anything, and if they were angry, they stayed angry until convinced otherwise. It was one of the reasons that Naruto was one of the only people who could reason with his cousin when she was like this, and vice versa; everyone else got too tired to deal with them after awhile.

He signed himself in and asked no questions. He didn't need to. He'd known the general direction he was heading to begin with, but with all the sound to aid him, he knew pretty much exactly where to go. Down the central corridor, past the elevator and under the sign reading 'Psychiatric Ward'. Follow the echoing crashes and tortured voices until you come to the first door that's surrounded by people. It wasn't so hard to find as it was to listen to.

Of the gathered crowd, he could identify three as nurses he had never met, Kakashi, and a small child who stood against the door, who was Konohamaru, without a doubt. He dug his fingers into his pockets, trying to cope with the sounds. He noticed that there was another nurse down the hall who was leaning against the wall, her head in her hands. This obviously wasn't hard for just him to take.
He got very close to them, nudging his way in between Kakashi and one of the nurses. "Hey." His voice sounded exhausted, even to his own ears.

"Hey." The scarecrow's voice was almost shaky, which was alarming. Naruto met his eyes. It had been like this for a while, then, and was probably even worse than it sounded. He noticed a small cut on the man's forehead and shivered slightly, nodding to it. "You've taken your shift already, I suppose?"

He nodded softly, silver hair shimmering in the light. "She's in quite the spot."

There was a smashing sound from inside the room followed by another piteous screech. Naruto's stomach clenched.

"I'm guessing she hasn't run out of things to throw, then. That's a surprise."

It would've been funny if he hadn't been dead serious. Kakashi nodded. "Yeah. We thought so too."

"Who's in there with her right now?"

"Shizune. She's good on her feet, from the sounds of it."

Naruto swallowed hard. "How easy is it going to be to get me in and her out as safely as possible?"

"I don't know. Yohko hasn't crowded us yet, but you never know."

The blonde nodded, tense. This wasn't going to be easy.

He remembered Konohamaru and met the boy's eyes, kneeling down. "Hey, kiddo."

The five-year-old nearly bowled him over the way we jumped on him. Naruto managed to keep his balance and held him close. He knew that if it was hard on him, it had to be hard on Konohamaru, who had not only lost his brother today but had to watch his mother suffer for it, unable to do anything for her.

"You've been really strong, today, Konohamaru," he said gently, into the boy's hair. "Thankyou."

"Can you make her better, Naru-niisan?" Konohamaru's voice was hiccup-y, evidence to the tears he was fighting so bravely to hold back.

"I can try my hardest. You've just got to keep hanging in there, okay?" He pulled away slightly, looking into the boy's face. "Can you keep doing that for me?"

Konohamaru nodded hard, jaw held tight. "Yeah."

Naruto looked to Kakashi, who he knew was watching him. "How do we let her know--"

The man reached over him to rap sharply on the door with his knuckles. Immediately, all movement on the other side stopped. Naruto rose slowly, preparing himself for the worst.

The door opened and closed again quickly and sharply as Shizune hurried out. She was short - shorter than Yohko even - with small breasts and hips, and dark eyes. Her dark hair was tousled, and she looked exhausted in her lab coat. She sported a bruise to her collarbone, instead of blood, like Kakashi, and her hands were shaking.

"Ah...Naruto-kun."

Naruto nodded his greetings. "You alright?"

Shizune sighed, brushing herself off haphazardly. "I suppose. She's in deep though." She looked him full in the face, obviously concerned. "Are you sure you want to--"

"I don't really see it as a choice," Naruto said simply. "I know I'm not completely safe from becoming like this either, but I'm probably the only one who can calm her down even a little, by this point."

Shizune looked upset but nodded. "Mind yourself, Naruto-kun."

"I promise I will."

Kakashi put a hand to his arm, and he looked over. "Be careful, Naruto. Tell us if you need out of there, whether you think it's in her best interests or not. Understand?"

"I'll be careful, Kakashi."

The man nodded, releasing him and Konohamaru stepped back so that he could walk forward.

Shizune put her hand to the handle. "Ready...?"

He nodded. She opened the door and he went in without hesitating, or waiting for his brain to catch up to him, letting it close. He felt Kakashi's eyes on him and set about completely ignoring the last part of what the man had just told him.

Nothing could've prepared him for what met his eyes.

Yohko was curled into a ball in the center of the room, sobbing into herself. All around her was the wreckage of what had to be a good fifteen tantrums elongated over the time she'd been trapped her. The bed had been flipped over, and now the frame was apart from the mattress, parts of which were missing so that its insides were strewn all across the tile. The blanket and sheets were around Yohko's shoulders, and dragged across the floor, some parts of them sopping wet. The pillows were no longer existent, feathers shaken out everywhere. Bits of the ceiling tile were dented from objects having impacted them. Most of the medical equipment had either been ripped apart of thrown into the walls; fragments of glass littered the corners of the room. The last thing to have been tossed seemed to have been a vase of plastic flowers, the pieces of which crunched under his shoes as he entered. The contents, a few ugly looking sunflowers were snapped in half. He could see a swipe of blood across one side of the room.

He shifted uneasily, watching her. "Yohko...?"

"Go away." Her voice was muffled by the sheets and her knees.

He sighed. "Yohko..."

"Go away! I don't want to talk to you."

"I know you don't. You don't want to talk to anybody."

"Go away, then. Leave me alone."

"You don't want that."

"Yes I do."

"No you don't. You remember what being alone is like."

Yohko was quiet for a minute.

"Listen to me."

"All I've been doing all day is listening to people."

Naruto came forward, dropping down to try and look into her face. She clenched the hands holding the sheets over her back tighter, refusing to lift her head at all. He sighed.

"I know that."

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do."

He did. Yohko always submitted to other people's wills just because of how much she hated confrontation. But that made some believe that she was easily won-over, or that she did not maintain her own self. The latter part of that statement was more or less true, but she hardly let other people define her. She was closed off and small and deep and dark, and she let no one interfere with that. She was suspecting and nervous about almost everything and she had a right to be. As one of the few people she trusted completely, perhaps the only one still alive, he knew that all she did all day everyday was listen to people.

They were both silent for a minute before Yohko began talking again.

"They took him from me, Naruto."

Naruto finally reached forward to touch her arm softly. "Who?"

"I don't know!" She yelled, startling him slightly. He watched her carefully as she choked out the rest of it. "...I don't know... Someone... Something took him from me... And I can't go to anyone... I can't find anyone who does know, and no one can help."

"Yohko..."

"I can't even get the police to help me! I can't even... I can't do anything...I can't do anything, because no matter what, they'll take him from me. Either the government will or...or..."

Naruto reached forward again, concerned with how frantic and sporadic her thinking patterns were, but jumped again when she started yelling.

"The government...the fucking government! When have they ever done anything? They never tried to save us...they never tried even once... And now they want to take away my children? They can't do that! They...they...!"

"Yohko...!"

He grabbed her without really thinking about it, pulling her close to him even though she thrashed about wildly. He locked his arms around her even though she was still screaming and pounded against his chest, clawing at his arms. He kept her close to him against her will, because he just didn't know what else he could do. He needed her to speak more clearly.

"No! No...!"

"Yohko stop screaming!"

"No! They'll take them from me!"

"Yohko, listen to me! They're not taking them from you! I won't let them, do you understand? No one's going to take your children away from you as long as I have anything to say about it! Look at me Yohko - look at me!" He shook her lightly by her waist. "We'll get him back Yohko! You've got to believe me when I say that. Yohko, look at me. Right now."

She finally lifted her head to gaze up at him. Her eyes were swollen with the twin streams of tears that ran down her cheeks, which were sticky with moisture. They shone in a way that was so tragic it could've inspired a similar reaction in him. But as the strength of the situation, he knew just how much he couldn't afford that. He was way too compassionate a person, dammit.

He loosed his hands a little, confident that she was no longer so desperate to get away from him, and reached up to wipe her right eye clean with his thumb. She hiccupped softly. He sighed and leaned their heads together; keeping is voice soft so as not to work her up again.

"Good. That wasn't so hard, now was it?"

Her arms encircled him and she buried her face in his chest. He let her do what she needed and rested his chin on her head, breathing in the scent of her long hair. Her skin was unreasonably cool, he thought, as if she had expended so much energy in the past few hours that it had stifled her ability to produce body heat.

"Naruto...if I ever lost those children, I'd die."

He kissed her forehead. She continued onward, voice small and raw from crying and yelling so much.
"I know I didn't give birth to them...but...but they're just as much my children as if I had...they really are...I just...I'd just die Naruto...I'd die...I swear I would..."

"I know that."

"I...I'm just so scared..."

"I promise we'll find him, Yohko."

She nodded and went quiet again.

Naruto held her for a very long time, becoming less and less aware of when the tears stopped and started. Yohko kept them quiet, out of consideration for him, he thought. They didn't think much of anything. They just stayed together, never shifting positions and never faltering. After what seemed a very long time, Naruto noticed that Yohko had fallen asleep against him, which he didn't particularly mind even if his legs were going to sleep from his having sat on them for so long. She was exhausted and it showed.
Not long after that, a knock resounded on the door. Naruto glanced up at the knob, not knowing exactly what to do. He didn't want to move his cousin for fear of disturbing her. She was very much asleep, of course, but he knew what a light sleeper she had a tendency to be. Her deep sleep was much more easily to intrude on than with other people.

"Come in."

It was all he could really think to say, after all.

Kakashi poked his much frazzled head inside, eye blinking.

"Well, now..."

Naruto laughed softly. "Wore herself out, I guess."

Kakashi shrugged, walking in. "It doesn't surprise me. What with you to comfort her and all those hours of hard searching paired with the number she did on this place..." He trailed off, the impact of his words enough to substitute as an end to the sentence, and looked around the room, as if analyzing the damages.

Shizune followed him in, closely, looking curious beneath her all-business front. "I'm just glad she didn't hurt herself."

Naruto nodded, finally exhale his relief, small as it was. "Yeah, same here."

Shizune nodded slowly. "Naruto-kun...will you stay the night?"

Naruto pondered over it for a second, watching Yohko's sleeping face. He had no desire to abandon her. To do that would be traitorous if anything - she was depending on him right now. But, weighing the options, the dependence of the school on him was greater at this time. He'd already had one unexpected sick day in the past week. To have another one was to potentially overstretch the bounds of his overseer's hospitality. Tsunade and Shizune already required that the Dean give him more off days than the normal instructor in regard to his condition, but few of them were ones he could use of his own accord. The majority of the time, he needed that time for appointments and the like, and to push that point could have very serious repercussions.

He finally shook his head. "I'd like to keep her with me if I could...but I really have to go to school tomorrow."

Shizune sighed and nodded. "I suppose it's for the best...She'd be best off with you, after all. I'm not sure I'll want to leave her unattended, though, especially with Konohamaru--"

"I'll be fine." Said boy seemed to have entered behind the two adults and now stood beside the door. "We can go home with Naru-niisan, and when he goes to work in the morning we can wait until he comes back. I'm grown up enough." His arms were folded and he wore a very stubborn expression.

Shizune patted him lightly on the head. "I know you think that, Konohamaru-kun, but as your mama's doctor..."

Kakashi interrupted from where he stood over Naruto. "I'll go with them Shizune. Unlike Naruto, I can miss school tomorrow. I haven't used any of my sick days yet, and I was planning to anyway, so that I might keep looking for Inari."

"You've already phoned in a sub then...?"

Kakashi nodded. "Kurenai offered to do it for me."

"Generous of her." Shizune smiled. "Well...I suppose I can't object on grounds of doctor/patient obligation."

The scarecrow shrugged. "It's easier to keep Uzumaki's together than otherwise."

The doctor nodded and turned to Naruto. "If she wakes again, she'll likely need her sedatives." She reached into her pocket and handed her a bottle. "It's prescription and it's all the same dosage so tell her to do exactly what she does at home every night. If she's somehow unable, it's two and a good amount of water. Don't let her take them dry; it irritates her throat. Don't give her any of yours, either. Yours are a different type of medicine, and a lower dosage."

Naruto nodded, taking them and shoving them into a pocket. "Got it. Two with water of hers, not mine."
Shizune nodded as well. "Very good." She turned to Kakashi. "Will you be--"

"Taking them home," he said, "yes."

"Alright...I won't arrange for any transportation then. Naruto-kun, will you need any help getting her out to the car?"

Naruto shook his head. "I'm good."

"Alright. Be careful...all of you."

Naruto nodded, and the woman turned to leave. She gave Konohamaru one last pat on the head, gestured to her nurses and walked away down the hall. Kakashi watched her go before turning to his friend.

"Can you really carry her?"

"Yeah...I think."

Kakashi helped him up, and it took him a while to fully adjust as the blood rushed to his legs, long denied. It was a painful experience, but not in a way that made him loud. The pinpricks that ran up and down only lasted a few minutes after all and he didn't want to jostled the person in his arms and wake her up. They walked slowly out of the hospital and down into the parking lot, him holding Yohko, Kakashi to his right, Konohamaru to his left.

"Oh, hey...I rode here on--"

"Nara's motorcycle. I know."

"Well, technically it's Ino's right now."

"I called Nara. He said he'd come and get it tomorrow if you gave him the keys and helmet at school."

"Man, I gotta haul those things to school? That sucks."

Kakashi sighed, half chuckling. "Just get in the car, you moron."

Naruto managed to maneuver Yohko into the furthest window seat in the back, and sat himself opposite. He saw her fingers move as her eyelashes fluttered, and she blinked up at him, face illuminated by the street lamp above the car.

"Where are we...?" She clutched at his arm, child-like and almost fearful.

"Shh," Naruto said, hugging her gently before setting her down. "We're going to my place."

She nodded quietly, and looked over his shoulder at the open car door. He turned to look, too, facing the cold air and bright lights of the night outside. Konohamaru watched them, looking passive. Naruto backed out and let the kid up on the seat, where he scrambled into his mother's arms. The two of them said nothing as Naruto shut the door behind them and climbed into the passenger seat, buckling the seatbelt across his chest.

He watched them both for a while, as they pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street. There was no argument that they made quite the pair; but they looked so forlorn and lonesome without their pillar third that it stung him. There was really no doubt in his mind. They had to find Inari before this got any further out of hand.

-----

Naruto blinked and sat up.

Something was wrong.

He couldn't place it.

But something was wrong.

He yawned routinely, and disregarded it. Looking around he could sense it was morning. He wasn't really awake, per se, but he knew what was what. Kind of. He glanced around. He was lying on the couch, his blanket having been flipped off of him during the night. Oh. That must've been it. He was cold then.

Whatever. He could handle a little cold.

He further examined his situation. If it was morning than it was time for work. Sure. Work. School. Whatever. He could do that. He picked himself up off of the couch, scratching his chest. Ah, his clothes were still on. Must not have changed. Didn't matter. Nobody was going to care. He reached down to get his coat off of the ground and stumbled slightly, just barely falling.

He was strangely dizzy, but not in a way that really bothered him. He threw the coat around his shoulders and walked into the kitchen in his socks. He reached into the freezer and dug a piece of frozen French toast out of the open box, popping it into his mouth and biting down. Cold didn't matter. He was totally good with cold.

He peered into his bedroom and spotted both Yohko and Konohamaru with ease. They were both still asleep. He swallowed the rest of his French toast. That was good. He checked the floor in the living room, ironically, the place he had slept. There was Kakashi, asleep on the floor. That was good too. He could go to work then. No need to wake anybody up or anything.

The nausea wouldn't go away, but it didn't bother him. He grabbed his untouched briefcase from the kitchen counter, went to entryway and got his shoes on. He smacked his pocket. Keys: check. Oh, wait. He had to bring that crap for Shikamaru today. Maa. He didn't feel like it. Tomorrow.

It didn't register for a while that tomorrow was a Saturday. When it did, he was already halfway down the stairs.

'Too late now...' There was no way he was going back up again. The door shut loud. Had that always been true?

Out the gate and down the street three blocks. Up the stairs, through the double doors, down the hall, turn past the bathrooms, turn left at the end of that hall and keep going till you hit another set of double doors. Through those, through the courtyard, through another pair of doors directly across from them, take a right, take a left and walk until you almost hit a dead-end. He knew it like the back of his hand.

He reached into his back pocket and took out his key ring, yawning again, very widely. The whole world seemed...thicker today. Harder to move through. Just all around...heavy. Or something. He didn't linger on it, and unlocked his room, going in as soon as he heard the telltale click.

His eyes were met with emptiness. Oh yeah...he didn't have hall duty today. That meant he could be early two times in one week. He smiled groggily. Cool. He was gunna prove Sakura-chan wrong, then. That was awesome. He itched his chest again, his coat feeling unreasonably warm. He shrugged it off, not really minding as it dropped to the ground at his feet.

Something was off. But he didn't really mind it. He reached forward and fingered the smooth corner of a desk. It was...magnetic almost, the lonely frictionless-ness of it. Yeah...magnetic.

He was really, really sleepy...

-----

 

"...sei..."

"...sensei..."

"Naruto-sensei...?"

"Naruto!"

Somebody had just flicked him in the cheek, he knew that much. He groaned loudly, rolling slightly to swat at it. Man. What the hell was he laying on...? Something really hard...not to mention cold. Jesus, whatever it was, he was going to be in quite a lot of pain if he ever got around to sitting up. But he didn't want too...he was really tired. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed whatever it was that wanted him up would leave him alone.

"Naruto, wake up!"

He groaned again. "Five more minutes..."

"Naruto, do have any idea where you are? You have to get up!"

"I'unwanna...!" he whined, his speech thoroughly slurred due to the fact that he was still half asleep.

The same person, who had flicked him before, a girl his brain was starting to recognize as Sakura, smacked his belly. "Naruto, get up!"

"Ow!" Naruto's voice was still very whiney as he opened his eyes, squinting in the bright light that shone down on him. He rubbed his stomach, still wearing a grimace as his vision perfected itself, resuming to its normal 20/20. "That huuuurt!"

"You don't have any idea where you are, do you?"

"Sensei, are you alright?"

There were many faces hovering in his line of vision. Sakura's was foremost, chastising and mildly concerned. Surrounding her were none other than his students: Akamaru with a very furry coat over her uniform; shy Hyuuga Hinata who was fiddling with her skirt; Chouji, who was chewing on something and blinking; Kiba who was wearing the same coat as Akamaru.

His stomach jumped and so did he, eye twitching slightly.

"HOLY--!"

He would've shouted something foul to go along with it if he hadn't managed to tip himself off of the desk he'd been sleeping on and into another. He smacked the backside of his head against the table adjacent to the one he'd been lying on, and landed hard on the floor.

"Oh, Christ!"

"Sensei!"

The class hurried to surround him as Sakura pushed her way into the circle again.

"My God, what's up with you?"

Naruto rubbed the back of his skull. "Not a lot up. I seem to have a sincere problem with down, though."
Sakura put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. Naruto rubbed his head harder, trying to outdo the pain.

"Jesus...how long was I out?"

"How would I know? You've been here ever since any of your students came in."

"And you didn't wake me up?"

"We tried!"

Akamaru nodded. "It's true, sensei. You wouldn't wake up until Sakura-sempai started smacking you around."

Sakura glared at her. "No offense, or anything," the Inuzuka girl added hastily, seeming afraid of the older girl's wrath.

"Crap..." Naruto kept rubbing, upset. "That's really weird..."

And then it dawned on him.

"Aw, fuck..."

"Naruto!" Sakura smacked him, more out of habit than of lack of consideration for his wounds.

"Ow!" Naruto winced and rubbed at the spot some more. "Don't do that!"

"Don't swear!"

"Fine!" Naruto got up and parted his students as he went to remove his jacket from where it was on the chair. Someone must've picked it up, he reasoned. That was nice of them. He rifled through the pockets and found what he was looking for, before letting out a sound of frustration, making sure to keep the language to himself, just incase Sakura was still unable to control her disciplinary ways.

"Wh-what is it, s-sensei...?" Hinata volunteered from back in the crowd.

"It's nothing... Just looks like I took my cousin's meds, by accident."

"Yohko's?"

He blinked back at Sakura, having temporarily forgotten that she had known him long enough to identify his cousin by name. "Yeah. She's staying at my house for a while." Never the complete truth, of course, but never a real lie.

Sakura nodded, looking sympathetic. "Yeah, I heard. Ino called me yesterday."

Naruto chuckled. "That girl certainly gets around."

"I suppose... Are you all alright?"

"We didn't find him, if that's what you're talking about."

Sakura nodded grimly. Naruto reached popped his back, yawning. No wonder...Yohko's dosage was stronger. Ugh. He felt like he'd just recovered from being stoned to death. Fatigue paired with lingering stress, he figured. That and the medication didn't wear off half as easily as he was used to. God. He was never doing that ever again. It was like being stoned. Hadn't he noticed that it was dark outside when he was walking to work...?

That and his shirt was completely unbuttoned. Praise the heavens for wife beaters. It would've killed him to be wearing nothing underneath. All in all, of course, his wardrobe was rather dysfunctional. It was sporting wrinkles every which way, and against the force of gravity, and he was sure his hair looked worse. Not that it really mattered. It was his own tiredness that bothered him the most. He sighed, brushing his pants off and starting to button up his shirt.

"Morning, guys." He waved offhandedly, not looking up from his task while doing so.

"Good morning sensei!"

"You're off by one," Sakura said, pointing to the line of buttons. Naruto cursed and undid them so he could start over. The cherry-blossom shook her head. "You're doing it again." He undid them all and began to start over. She let out a deep sigh and came forward. "Moron! You keep doing it exactly the same." She reached forward and started from the bottom, heading up, quicker than anything.

"Nice...! You're good at that." Naruto watched her, slightly amazed, and very glad. He could see Sasuke staring at him from out of the corner of his eye, and it made him very, very self-conscious, which, in itself, was uncomfortable. Sakura, unaware of it, rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, didn't I tell you? I practice cross-dressing in my spare time."

"Really?" Naruto stared at her.

"No!" Sakura smacked him in the stomach again, having finished with the buttons. "You're just dumb!"

"Oh, well, if that's all..."

Sakura rolled her eyes again. "If you're up, I'm going back to class."

Naruto shrugged. "Fine. Be careful."

"Yeah, thanks for the memories, you hobo."

"That's mildly offensive."

Sakura's bark of laughter caught him on the cheek and she disappeared out the door.

Naruto glanced up, and perused the room. "Was I really that sound asleep...?"

Akamaru nodded, having taken her seat. "Yup. Sure were."

Naruto rubbed at his head. It was developing into a habit, he noticed. Great, something to further add to what was sure to be his going bald. Just what he needed. He might as well just get ahead of himself and shave it all off... "That's crazy." He turned to his favorite Akimichi and shouted.

"CHOUJI!"

Said boy jumped to attention. "Y-yes?"

"You may be happy to learn that you aren't failing."

Chouji blinked. "Is...that all, sir?"

"Yup."

He sighed, seeming relieved.

Naruto turned to the rest of the class.

"Anything else I can do to make your guys' day better?"

"ICE CREAM!" Kiba yelled from the back of the class. The rest of the class clamored in approval.

"Ice cream?" Naruto blinked. "Seriously?"

"Yeah!"

"Oh...well...I'm broke, so no cigar as far as that goes..." He shrugged off the various forms of sighs and groans that echoed around the room. "You guys wouldn't want it this early in the morning either. S'bad for your teeth."

"Teeth shmeeth! I want ice cream!"

"I'm broke! No ice cream. No anything that's going to cost me any money."

"Couldn't we make some sort of human sacrifice, asking the gods for ice cream that rained from the sky?" Akamaru said, from her place in the front.

"For one, no, it's illegal, and for another, no, you don't need ice cream that badly." Naruto went to his lectern and began taking roll. He knew without really looking down whose name was where, and who was in attendance of his class. Almost everybody was there, he thought, and giving the room a once over, he discovered that this was, indeed the case. Everyone was there...everyone except Haku, whose seat was empty.

He blinked, shrugged and marked the 'absent' box with his pen.

"Sensei?"

"Haku's absent. I hadn't noticed."

Akamaru blinked, trying to stifle what was definitely a look of disappointment. "Aa, so he is..."

"Other than that though everyone is here, yes?"

"Far as we know, sensei," Akamaru said nodding. The rest of the class murmured in agreement.

"That's good..."

“What are we doing today, sensei…?”

Naruto grinned. “Well, you've started reading The Crucible in your English classes, haven't you?”

There was a collective nodding.

“Well, I figured I'd take about a day or two to orient us all with the atmosphere of Salem, and the McCarthy era. It'll help you guys better grasp whatever your teachers are getting you to read.”

The class blinked.

“What does the McKipper era have to do with Shalom?” Kiba called from the back.

“I don't think there was a McKipper era, Inuzuka-kun,” Naruto said, tweaking an eyebrow at him. “The word is McCarthy. And Shalom is Jewish, Mr. Global-Awareness; Salem is where the infamous witch trials you'll be reading about took place.” If he could've insulted Kiba more, he would have. But that wasn't as legal as he would've liked - he'd stick to poking fun.

The dog-boy frowned back at his teacher and snorted. “What's the dif?”

“There's a lotta' `dif'. There's just about as much `dif' as there is between today and the sixteen-hundreds, although your oh-so-creative-vocabulary doesn't seem to reflect as much.”

Kiba's face flamed. His sister laughed openly and he snapped at her. Naruto promptly beamed him (long-range; he was mildly proud of himself) with a spare book he snatched up off of the shelf of his whiteboard, and then, ignoring Akamaru's giggling and Kiba's griping for the time being, turned to address the rest of the class.

“Okay, so, I'm guessing none of you know who-”

There was a rapping sound from just outside the door. Naruto blinked. Knocking echoed from behind the metal once again. Grinning, he turned from his lectern and trotted over to open it. It could only be one person. There was only one person who ever knocked on his door.

He through it out and leaned on the doorframe. “Neji! Long time no see.”

Said sophomore looked less than amused. “If you really missed me so much you could've gone out of your way to corner me somewhere and talk me to death. You don't seem to have any trouble doing it with anyone else.”

“Oh, Hyuuga, for shame!”

“Look who's talking…”

Naruto chuckled and folded his arms. “What do you want?”

The Hyuuga's crystal-colored eye twitched ever so slightly.

`Ah. So it is something I'll regret asking about. Jolly good.'

“I need Shikamaru's gear back.”

Naruto paled.

`Crap.'

“Uhhhhhhh…”

“If you don't have it for me sensei, I swear to God I'll rip your eyeballs out.”

`Crapshitfuckshit.'

“But I liiiike my eyeballs…” Maybe pleading would work?

The Hyuuga twitched again.

Okay, so pleading wasn't going to work unless he tried harder.

“Hey! I've got an excuse!”

“I. Don't. Care.” Twitch. “I. Need. Shikamaru's. Gear. Back.” Twitchy-twitchy-twitch-twitch.

“I. Don't. Have it,” Naruto said, bearing down on him. “Deal.” Naruto did not like being pressured for things that weren't exactly his fault. It was sort of his fault, since he was the one to have taken the stuff in the first place, but since it wasn't his fault Inari had gone missing, he wasn't really to blame for that either. And the drugs were an accident - so he wasn't exactly his fault, and therein lay the problem. Shikamaru was just going to have to deal with that until he got the stuff back to him.

“How am I supposed to deal?” Neji snapped. “Shikamaru isn't going to let me back into the classroom without it.”

Naruto stared. Oh. So that was the reason Neji had come over and not the Lazy Bum himself. That made sense.

Then again, he didn't really care.

“So?”

Neji grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him down so that they stared eye to eye. His voice was terse and quiet, an indication that the Hyuuga was rather angry by this point. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to maintain an A-minus average in Akuma's class?”

Naruto blinked, slightly taken aback. “Um…hard?”

“If I miss even one class period, he'll drop my grade to a B. A B-plus, but B nonetheless. Do you have any idea what that means?”

“Uh…the family I stopped from murdering you last year will finally be justified in doing so…?”

Neji graced him with a very acidic look. Ah. Score negative three-thousand for landing it in one. Naruto swallowed.

“Uh…if I were too, uh, oh, I dunno, find something that looks remotely like a helmet and keys, would that help any?”

“Have you no brain, Naruto?”

“Well, you know, people wonder sometimes, but-”

“If you do not find something to appease me very quickly I will remove your limbs and pickle them in a jar.”

“Hey, now-”

BANG.

Naruto froze. Not just stilled, as Neji did, but froze. His back went rigid and a tremor whizzed up his spine, draining his face of cover. A squeal of fright from Akamaru was smothered fast and the chaotic buzz that followed as students turned to one another and began to talk brought him out of his stupor. He looked down the hall.

“What the hell was that?”

Neji followed his gaze. “Gunshot. Definitely. Handheld semi-automatic from the sound of it.”

Naruto turned to him and moved forward from the doorway. “Yeah, I guessed as much; where, you think…?”

It was a very tall man with a bandana and frightening build walked by them, footsteps heavy. His skin was a deep tan, and two scars ran down the expanse of his face, making him seem foreboding, and his voice backing up the assumption with it's depth and gravelly-quality.

“Bathroom. For certain.”

“Ibiki…” Naruto darted out of his classroom, hardly noticing the clatter behind him as he made to do so. “What's going on?”

“I don't know, but we're going to check it out.”

Naruto nodded haphazardly, and turned to Neji, about to say something when the boy cut him off.
“I'm coming, as well.”

Ibiki nodded from where he was halfway down the hall, and Naruto let out a frustrated sound of a strangled nature. Behind him, his door - which had almost shut completely - opened sharply, revealing Akamaru, who seemed to want to know where he was headed.

“Sensei—”

“Stay inside the classroom, Akamaru. Don't let anyone leave while I'm gone.”

“Sensei…!”

He scampered to catch up with Ibiki and Neji, not acknowledging her.

When he finally caught up, the chill he'd felt earlier was coiling in his stomach. He felt jumpy and out of breath. “What are we looking for, exactly?”

Ibiki shook his head. “Something. Anything. If anyone's got a gun in here, we need to know who it is and where they've got it - not to mention why it was just fired—”

He cut himself off as they came around the corner of the hall where the bathrooms were located, and they all stopped dead in their tracks. They just stopped and stared. Neji was as close to gaping as Hyuuga's got, mouth hanging a slight bit open, and Ibiki's eyes were wide. Naruto could've had a seizure and not noticed, so taken was he by the scene displayed in front of him.

A girl lay in the middle of the aisle, face down in a pool of her own blood. Her hair was short and strewn all about her head, where the offending bullet hole lay - it was dyed platinum blonde, a fact that was exposed by her dark roots. She wore the standard uniform that all students wore, all of it spotless. Her own eyes were just within view; open, white, and pupil-less. They seemed to have rolled into the back of her head post-mortem.

They all just stared for a very long time. Neji was the first to speak, his voice hoarse out of shock.

“Sh…Shirono Usagi…she was in my third period…”

Naruto had no idea what he was saying as he said it.

“Neji, go back to my classroom and hold down `1' on the telephone. It'll connect you directly the Dean - tell him to lock down the school. Tell the students that, on my instruction, you are all to lock the doors, curtain the windows, turn off the lights, get under the desks and be quiet until you are told otherwise by the Dean himself.”

Neji looked to him. “I-”

“Go now Neji!”

The Hyuuga whipped around and took off.

Naruto turned to Ibiki, panicking. His fellow teacher seemed to know exactly what he was thinking.

“You need a classroom to stay in, Uzumaki.”

“Not the issue right now - we have a dead student and somebody with a gun on campus.”

“Somebody with a gun who is most likely after you.”

“I'm only one person, Ibiki. We need to take on the responsibility of protecting give or take seven hundred people.”

Ibiki watched him, stoic and tight-lipped.

“You'll opt for spreading the word then…? That figures.”

Naruto clenched his fists and nodded down the hall. “Iruka.”

“I'll go to Azuma, then.”

“Right.”

“Be careful, Uzumaki.”

Naruto nodded and didn't really listen to him, charging away from the body and down the hall, throwing himself into Iruka's classroom.

Said dolphin blinked and turned to look at him. “Naruto…?”

“Iruka, we've got trouble. A whole lot of it.”

Suddenly, the PDA near the clock beeped very, very loudly.

There was a chorus of upset students up and down the rows. They were right to complain; the sound had, indeed been very shrill and piercing, in a way that made even Naruto's eardrums hurt. Iruka quieted them though, because of the eerie silence that fell out of the speaker. There was a crackling static that flowed out of it into the room as the students eventually hushed their chatter.

The Dean's voice floated out, after about twenty seconds.

"Teachers, the following is a lock-down."

Naruto stared at the voice, ice-cold. Everyone turned to look, perplexed. The man on the other side of the speakers, calm as anything, cleared his throat again, and continued to speak slowly and clearly, as if he were trying to be polite.

"I repeat: Teachers, this is a lock-down. Please proceed to turn off all noise-causing devices, and electronics. Windows are to be closed and shutters drawn and doors locked until further notice. All students in the halls, go to the nearest classroom immediately. This is not a drill. I repeat: This is not a drill."

They all stared at it for a few more moments.

And then, it all clicked, and Naruto could see Iruka's stomach plummeted and he sprung into action.
He whirled around, making for the door with his keys. "Hojo, pull the drapes across the windows."
Students jumped every which way like insects, making noises of panic. Iruka slammed his keys into the lock and turn, and Naruto almost smiled, hearing the satisfying click and feeling very glad that they didn't have any windows in the doors. He spun to the class, though, eyes hard. "Quiet! No talking! Everyone under the desks, now!"

They shut their mouths and jettisoned to safety, all clamoring over each other. Naruto flicked the lights off and checked everything over. A pair of girls were crying in the back, but he could see Sakura was consoling them as best she could. Good girl. He looked to Iruka, who looked both frightened and very grateful, but took him by the arm.

“Naruto, what's going on…?”

“Somebody was shot near the bathrooms.”

Iruka gaped. Naruto bit down on his lip bottom and hustled to get his friend under his desk.

“I-I…”

“Hush.”

His brain, which, out of panic, had begun to white itself out finally graced him with its presence.

`This is fucking insane.'

He hoped his class was alright.

-----

End Chapter 10

Ugh...this scene is going to give me nightmares after I write it. Why do I make fan fictions like this? I hate gore. (Maybe that's why...? So I can write about characters that hate blood and violence just as much as I do...? I don't know...) At any rate, I know that my writing just gets more and more full of crap and hard to follow by the chapter, so I shall provide all readers with a summary so that we can be sure everyone got it alright, ne?

Okay, so in the last chapter, Uzumaki Naruto - who at the time was visiting with his student Inuzuka Akamaru, and her family - received a call from one Hatake Kakashi, who told him that his nephew, Inari was missing. This chapter begins with him thinking about it, hard, trying to figure out where Inari might've vanished to. In need of a vehicle to get uptown more quickly than his feet can manage, he goes to Yamanaka Hanahazukashii, a flower shop/fashion boutique managed by his former student Yamanaka Ino. After a brief discussion, she lends him what turns out to be Nara Shikamaru's motorcycle.

Using the motorcycle, Naruto thoroughly searches town to no avail. With nightfall, he arrives at the Kubome, where he knows Kakashi will have taken his fitful cousin, Yohko, who is also Inari's mother (in case you never pay attention). There, he walks in on his friend Momoichi Zabuza, and his student Haku, who are in the midst of making out. He questions Zabuza as to if he's seen Inari around - he hasn't. Naruto thanks him anyway and, out of the blue, gives him eighty dollars, which he hopes he will spend on contraceptives. (I didn't write it in, but we were all thinking it. "BUY BIRTH CONTROL, YOU RAT. SAFE SEX OR NO SEX." -cheers-)

He goes into the hospital and spends alot of time disarming his cousin and calming her down. After that, he talks with Shizune, both he and Yohko's physician. They all come to an agreement that Yohko may stay at Naruto's apartment with Konohamaru as desired, if Kakashi stays with her as he's said he will. Shizune gives Naruto Yohko's medicine for that night (sedatives) and they all drive home.

Naruto wakes at probably sometime about four o'clock the next morning, having accidentally taken Yohko's medication instead of his own, dresses, eats and goes to work, where he promptly falls asleep on a table. He wakes several hours later to realize what happened and button his shirt, because Sasuke's drooling and it makes him nervous.

After sending Sakura packing because his shirt is buttoned and she is no longer useful to him, Naruto and his class proceed to have a very interesting and meaningful conversation about ice cream while Naruto takes roll. He realizes that Haku is absent, before starting to begin the lesson. He is interrupted by Neji, who needs Shikamaru's stuff back - otherwise he won't be allowed back into the room. He and Naruto argue for sometime before a gunshot rings out from close by. Intrigued and somewhat disturbed (to say the least) the join a passing Ibiki in going to investigate - what they find is a girl named Shirono Usagi, lying face down in a pool of her own blood. Naruto panics and sends Neji back to phone in a lock-down to the Dean, before rushing off to tell Iruka.

He has just entered Iruka's room when the PDA makes a weird noise before announcing that a lock-down is in progress. They lock the doors, close and cover the windows, turn off the light and voices, and get under desks because that is what you do in a lockdown. (Hideki told me, so now I know.) The chapter ends with the class going haywire and Naruto's brain freaking.

Does that help? I hope so. Yeah... So, like I was saying:

UGH-NESS.

It's not that I hated the chapter so much as I hated it's flow. It was really hard to write, when it came right down to it. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it was so directionally challenged. Did you notice how many detail were in there just about where the hell he was? I don't know why I did that. Don't ever use this fanfic as a guide to San Francisco. I swear, I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.
Or, maybe it's because we're getting into the darker elements and I don't feel like I've prepared for them enough. I definitely don't feel like making any more filler chapters though...those suck to write even more than ones like this do!

It took forever too. Not just to write, but I was almost done when my internet connection WHIGGED. I've spent WEEKS getting it back up.

But still! Double digits! -pumps hand and collapses- I'm the man...! Girl...! Demonic annoying cherub with fangs...! Whatever...

I WANT FAN ART.

I don't know why. But I do. Really bad.

Not that we have any scenes that work too well for that just yet...so I guess I'll wait a few chapters before actually starting the contest itself, but yes, I plan to commission you all to give me fanart. Why? Because I really want fanart. -sobs- You guys have no idea.

I really would like to thank everyone who's stuck with me so far...reviewers, flamers, BETAs. You guys are so dear to me, and I'd like you all to know how happy I am that this fic can go as far as I want it to.

-collapses- Even so, I think I'm going to die.

-- Lady Lamb