Vurt Ninjas 15
In which they meet an enemy who became a friend who in reality's probably still an enemy. Say that three times fast.
A few days later, Sasuke went into the bathroom to find Sakura messing with her hair in front of the mirror.
"It's okay," she said, glancing over. "I'm almost done. . . ."
She dragged a hand though her bangs one last time, and then sighed. "I've washed it as much as I can already, but there's still so much left in."
"I noticed the bathtub had turned pink," he commented, leaning against the door frame.
Sakura half-snickered. "Yeah. . . ."
"Can't you re-dye it?"
She shook her head, then pushed the bangs out of her face. "Not for a while. I dye my hair so much, it's already like straw even with lots of conditioner. . . ."
"You said you were going to quit selling drugs," Sasuke pointed out. "So you won't need to keep doing that anymore, right?"
"Heh . . . yeah. . . ." Sakura glanced at the mirror again. "Ms. Shizune probably won't know me when she sees what I really look like." She stared at the mirror for another minute; Sasuke shifted his feet.
"I'm going to stick with contacts until I get rid of this, though," she said abruptly, looking away from the mirror and starting to straighten up her combs. "I don't think I--if my eyes weren't green, but oh well."
"Wear the blue ones," he replied.
Sakura looked up at him. "Why?"
"If your hair were electric pink, you'd look like Beauty." Sasuke was beginning to realize he should have stayed quiet, and had folded his arms and was glaring at the floor. "You could . . . tell people you were cosplaying, or something."
Sakura continued to stare at him. ". . . What?"
He waved a hand back towards the bedroom. "In that box of manga Naruto keeps under the bed, there's one with a character that kind of looks like . . . she's got pink hair and blue eyes. That's it."
Sakura generously didn't keep prodding him to explain, but she didn't bite down her smile, either. "I didn't think you read comics."
"You two both work most days," he replied, straightening away from the door frame. "We don't have a TV."
Sakura chuckled again, and then pushed her brush and makeup to the side. "Here, bathroom's yours."
~
Like the dreamsnake that had bitten Sasuke, none of them suspected Gaara of being planted in that burger shop.
Not even Gaara himself.
"I really think it's Leland," Sakura continued. "You saw how he's treating the cousin who looked just like her. That was emphasized for a reason."
Sasuke shook his head and bit into a fry. When he spoke his voice was a pitch higher than reality--a necessity for him being out in public, but creepy nonetheless. Sakura wasn't fond of staying home much, but had to admit that if it was a choice between hearing Sasuke like this and being bored in the apartment. . . .
"You can't base it just on what Ino saw," he replied derisively. "She wasn't even watching this until now. It was Jacoby. Part of a whole episode last season was about getting that tape back from him."
Sakura made a 'pffft' noise and reached for her soda. "You're ignoring that brother's impact on the murder."
He frowned at her. "Which one?"
"The French ones . . . I can never say his name right. The drug dealers." She perked up slightly. "The one connected to Leo! He's as much a suspect as Dr. Jacoby, so what do you have to say to that?"
"Keh," Sasuke answered, but was kept from saying anything further by the man who came up to their table then.
"Hello," he said with a smile. "Sounds like you're playing Twin Peaks, too?"
Sasuke just looked at him. Sakura glanced at the counter from the corner of her eye; Naruto had been moving between lines the last few minutes, and--as ordered by the law of Murphy--had wound up stopping the line dead each time he moved. He was now standing resolutely in the far left and glaring at the middle and right as they moved forward faster to spite him.
"Me, I think Leo did it," the man continued, resting his palms on the table and leaning forward slightly, smiling. "You just can't trust a man like that, who doesn't know how to treat a woman."
"That's nice," Sakura replied, since Sasuke was still staring dispassionately. "Are you done now, or are you going to keep interrupting our meal?"
The man's smile fell, and he pushed away from the table with a snort. "Dykes," he muttered, as he started to walk off.
Sakura paused for a moment, and then started laughing. She quickly tried to smother it with her hands, but then made the mistake of looking at Sasuke. When she saw the expression on his face, she burst into another fit of giggles.
Naruto glanced over at them. Sasuke turned away and glared out the window, reaching for the fries again.
Sasuke's expression had threatened deadly harm when Naruto finally came over after getting his food and asked what had been so funny, so Sakura just shook her head and made 'I'll tell you later' motions with her hands. Naturally, that didn't improve Sasuke's mood much. Nor did the fact that Naruto confiscated his fries in retribution once he figured out that it had something to do with him.
Sasuke swiped his drink in return; Sakura finally had to swear and tell them to act their age--and that if they spilled anything on her clothes, she was kicking their asses.
Naruto was still in the middle of wolfing down the handful of fries he'd managed to keep a hold of when Sasuke yanked the carton back, when he suddenly froze. Sasuke and Sakura looked over--her with curiosity, him with lingering annoyance.
Naruto ignored them both and sniffed the air deeply.
He swallowed the fries with a small choking noise a couple seconds later, then shoved his chair back and stood. "Let's go."
"What?" Sakura asked, looking up at him.
Naruto scooped her drink and plastic salad container onto the tray, accidentally tipping the cup over as he did. "Let's go."
Sakura continued to frown at him, but when Sasuke stiffened--of course, Sasuke had been scanning the area once he noticed Naruto's nervous behavior, she wouldn't have thought of something like that, no, her character was useless, so why was half of her surprised--and stood as well, she caught on.
Sasuke grabbed her by the arm as she scooted away from the table, and then pushed her over to the other side of Naruto, in the middle of the aisle and farthest from the booths and tables.
He pushed her there behind Naruto rather than in front of him, so it wasn't until she'd stepped away from the other man's back with an irritated noise that she saw Gaara sitting at the table.
She jerked and froze.
Naruto had to slide an arm around her waist to get her to take a few stumbling steps again. Sasuke had moved to the other side of Naruto, putting himself between both of them and the booth they would have to pass.
Gaara was staring at Naruto, eyes wide. It took Sakura a moment to realize that the reason he looked wrong was because he had eyebrows.
It took her another moment after that to realize there was someone else in the booth, sitting across from him, and that it was his sister. Temari, the girl with the fan and the weird hair, except that she didn't have the fan and her hair was just in two pigtails, normal. They both looked normal.
Gaara was still staring at Naruto, and Naruto was staring back, and Sasuke was a step to the side, hand dangling by his thigh even though there was no weapons pack there, and Sakura realized that at some point all three of them had stopped in the middle of the aisle. Other customers were muttering as they pushed past.
It was Temari who moved first. She'd been drinking a soda when they started to walk past, and at first had stilled and kept it in place, straw between her lips; but after several seconds passed, she shifted faintly and began to set it back on the table.
Naruto jerked then; and a moment later he tightened the arm he had around Sakura's waist, pulling her closer, and then slung his other arm over Sasuke's shoulders.
And then he bared his teeth at Gaara.
He stalked forward a second after that, growling in the back of his throat, and Sasuke and Sakura were forced to move with him.
Sakura almost looked over her shoulder when Sasuke shoved open the door, to see if Gaara was still watching them with that confused, lost expression; but she could still taste the granules of sand that had drifted into her throat when she'd been crushed against the tree, and didn't.
Sasuke drove out of the parking lot skittishly, taking the turns too sharp and wrenching the stick to shift gears. Naruto glared out the window and kept a fist pressed tight against the glass.
"He's not a bad guy," he said abruptly, when they were several blocks away--past the turn for their apartment, in fact. It was hard to tell if Naruto was talking to them or himself. "He's not. It's just . . . how things happened."
Sakura glanced down at her hands, folded in her lap. A few moments later, Sasuke jerked the car sharply to the right.
Sakura reflexively grabbed the door handle at the turn; Naruto caught the one attached to the ceiling and snapped at Sasuke about his lousy-ass driving. Sasuke ignored them both and turned into the first lot they came across, one for a movie theater and a few miscellaneous shops.
"Sasuke?" Sakura asked, after he'd parked slightly over the lines and turned off the engine.
"He recognized us," Sasuke replied, staring at the steering wheel. "Or you at least," he added, jerking his head slightly at Naruto without looking over at the other man.
"Yeah?" Naruto replied, but Sakura was already catching on.
"He recognized you because he's played the game," Sasuke continued, hands tight around the wheel. "At the chuunin exam, the Sand was allied with Orochimaru."
". . . No," Naruto said quietly, fist clenching around the handle. "No way. . . ."
"But Temari recognized us, too," Sakura interjected, and Naruto glanced back at her. "And she was--I mean, you don't usually eat lunch with people you think want to kill you, right?" After a pause, when neither of them replied, she added: "The expression on his face was like after your fight. So if he's played that far, then he should have changed a little, no matter what he was like."
Sasuke snorted. "Why would something that convenient happen?"
He was still glaring at the steering wheel, but Sakura looked at him anyway. "We've been affected by it. Why should he be spared?"
She inflected the 'he' more than she'd meant to. Naruto looked out the window again and made a quiet noise in the back of his throat, but didn't speak.
After a minute of silence, Sasuke unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door. "Sakura, you drive."
"Uh, okay . . ." she murmured, unbuckling her own belt and climbing out. She went through the drivers' side door, so that she wouldn't have to pass Naruto even though he wasn't looking out the window anymore.
Sasuke yanked the door shut behind him and buckled up before pulling out his phone; Sakura had barely gotten her own door closed, and was adjusting the rearview mirror when he started dialing. Naruto glanced over the chair at him--but a moment later, his face darkened.
"Oi," he said harshly, twisting further in the seat, "you're not calling--"
Sasuke glared and made a sharp motion to cut him off. A few seconds later, though, he glanced down.
"I know," he said in reply to whoever had spoken. And then, a moment later, "I need your help."
Naruto clenched one hand into a fist, gripping the other one around it. Sakura was still holding the edge of the rearview mirror, but she wasn't moving it any more.
"I know," Sasuke said again, "I'm sorry," and then Sakura let go of the mirror in order to force Naruto to loosen his grip on his fist. He was starting to cut the skin.
After several moments passed--even though Sakura was straining to hear the other person speaking, she couldn't; Naruto probably could with his heightened senses, though, which was likely why he had his lips drawn back over his teeth--Sasuke continued. "Can you tell me anything about someone named Gaara?"
Another pause, and this time Sasuke sounded slightly confused, first saying "I don't think he has a--" before catching himself and changing it to "I don't know his last name."
Whatever the person on the phone--Sakura had a good idea who it was by now, but didn't want to believe it until she had to--said in reply to that, it made Sasuke say "Yes" in a voice that was flat where it should have been sarcastic.
"He'll be connected to the game Konoha," he said. "And probably to Orochimaru." Another pause. "I can't verify the last part. But I know he will have bought at least several feathers, probably from an operator named Kabuto Yakushi." Sasuke hesitated again, though this time it seemed to be on his own part, before adding, "He may be a foreigner, but that's also something I can't verify."
Sasuke was fidgeting, something Sakura hadn't seen him do often and couldn't connect to him doing while speaking to Itachi of all people. He also wasn't looking at either of them, was staring at his legs or maybe the floor instead.
"Okay," Sasuke replied a few moments later. He wetted his lips slightly, another nervous gesture that was starting to scare her in a way that only the incomprehensible could do. She glanced over at Naruto, and saw that he was clenching his hands too tightly again. ". . . Yes. Th--. . . thank you."
"Goodbye," Sasuke finished after another moment, and then closed the phone and dropped it on the seat beside him like something diseased. He shut his eyes and made an effort to lean back against the seat, but his back was too tense.
"What'd he say," Naruto demanded, voice cracking slightly from his effort to keep from yelling.
"He doesn't have time to bother with it now," Sasuke replied, eyes still closed. "He'll call me later."
Naruto pulled the hand that Sakura had loosened again free and wrenched it through his hair, but bit his lip.
He didn't want to say anything any more than Sakura did--in the game, Sasuke had lost it over Itachi, had outright attacked him and then only got worse when Naruto's jutsu thing was stronger. The real Sasuke didn't seem to want to kill his brother, but still. . . .
"Let's go home," Sasuke said after several more painfully silent moments passed. His eyes were still closed. "People are going to start giving us second looks."
"Right," she murmured, and started the engine.
"Buckle your seat belt," he added.
"Yes, yes--" Sakura started to say, and then remembered how his parents had died. She reached for the belt quietly. Naruto was glaring out the door again and grinding his fist into the seat beside his thigh.
A few days later, Sasuke went into the bathroom to find Sakura messing with her hair in front of the mirror.
"It's okay," she said, glancing over. "I'm almost done. . . ."
She dragged a hand though her bangs one last time, and then sighed. "I've washed it as much as I can already, but there's still so much left in."
"I noticed the bathtub had turned pink," he commented, leaning against the door frame.
Sakura half-snickered. "Yeah. . . ."
"Can't you re-dye it?"
She shook her head, then pushed the bangs out of her face. "Not for a while. I dye my hair so much, it's already like straw even with lots of conditioner. . . ."
"You said you were going to quit selling drugs," Sasuke pointed out. "So you won't need to keep doing that anymore, right?"
"Heh . . . yeah. . . ." Sakura glanced at the mirror again. "Ms. Shizune probably won't know me when she sees what I really look like." She stared at the mirror for another minute; Sasuke shifted his feet.
"I'm going to stick with contacts until I get rid of this, though," she said abruptly, looking away from the mirror and starting to straighten up her combs. "I don't think I--if my eyes weren't green, but oh well."
"Wear the blue ones," he replied.
Sakura looked up at him. "Why?"
"If your hair were electric pink, you'd look like Beauty." Sasuke was beginning to realize he should have stayed quiet, and had folded his arms and was glaring at the floor. "You could . . . tell people you were cosplaying, or something."
Sakura continued to stare at him. ". . . What?"
He waved a hand back towards the bedroom. "In that box of manga Naruto keeps under the bed, there's one with a character that kind of looks like . . . she's got pink hair and blue eyes. That's it."
Sakura generously didn't keep prodding him to explain, but she didn't bite down her smile, either. "I didn't think you read comics."
"You two both work most days," he replied, straightening away from the door frame. "We don't have a TV."
Sakura chuckled again, and then pushed her brush and makeup to the side. "Here, bathroom's yours."
~
Like the dreamsnake that had bitten Sasuke, none of them suspected Gaara of being planted in that burger shop.
Not even Gaara himself.
"I really think it's Leland," Sakura continued. "You saw how he's treating the cousin who looked just like her. That was emphasized for a reason."
Sasuke shook his head and bit into a fry. When he spoke his voice was a pitch higher than reality--a necessity for him being out in public, but creepy nonetheless. Sakura wasn't fond of staying home much, but had to admit that if it was a choice between hearing Sasuke like this and being bored in the apartment. . . .
"You can't base it just on what Ino saw," he replied derisively. "She wasn't even watching this until now. It was Jacoby. Part of a whole episode last season was about getting that tape back from him."
Sakura made a 'pffft' noise and reached for her soda. "You're ignoring that brother's impact on the murder."
He frowned at her. "Which one?"
"The French ones . . . I can never say his name right. The drug dealers." She perked up slightly. "The one connected to Leo! He's as much a suspect as Dr. Jacoby, so what do you have to say to that?"
"Keh," Sasuke answered, but was kept from saying anything further by the man who came up to their table then.
"Hello," he said with a smile. "Sounds like you're playing Twin Peaks, too?"
Sasuke just looked at him. Sakura glanced at the counter from the corner of her eye; Naruto had been moving between lines the last few minutes, and--as ordered by the law of Murphy--had wound up stopping the line dead each time he moved. He was now standing resolutely in the far left and glaring at the middle and right as they moved forward faster to spite him.
"Me, I think Leo did it," the man continued, resting his palms on the table and leaning forward slightly, smiling. "You just can't trust a man like that, who doesn't know how to treat a woman."
"That's nice," Sakura replied, since Sasuke was still staring dispassionately. "Are you done now, or are you going to keep interrupting our meal?"
The man's smile fell, and he pushed away from the table with a snort. "Dykes," he muttered, as he started to walk off.
Sakura paused for a moment, and then started laughing. She quickly tried to smother it with her hands, but then made the mistake of looking at Sasuke. When she saw the expression on his face, she burst into another fit of giggles.
Naruto glanced over at them. Sasuke turned away and glared out the window, reaching for the fries again.
Sasuke's expression had threatened deadly harm when Naruto finally came over after getting his food and asked what had been so funny, so Sakura just shook her head and made 'I'll tell you later' motions with her hands. Naturally, that didn't improve Sasuke's mood much. Nor did the fact that Naruto confiscated his fries in retribution once he figured out that it had something to do with him.
Sasuke swiped his drink in return; Sakura finally had to swear and tell them to act their age--and that if they spilled anything on her clothes, she was kicking their asses.
Naruto was still in the middle of wolfing down the handful of fries he'd managed to keep a hold of when Sasuke yanked the carton back, when he suddenly froze. Sasuke and Sakura looked over--her with curiosity, him with lingering annoyance.
Naruto ignored them both and sniffed the air deeply.
He swallowed the fries with a small choking noise a couple seconds later, then shoved his chair back and stood. "Let's go."
"What?" Sakura asked, looking up at him.
Naruto scooped her drink and plastic salad container onto the tray, accidentally tipping the cup over as he did. "Let's go."
Sakura continued to frown at him, but when Sasuke stiffened--of course, Sasuke had been scanning the area once he noticed Naruto's nervous behavior, she wouldn't have thought of something like that, no, her character was useless, so why was half of her surprised--and stood as well, she caught on.
Sasuke grabbed her by the arm as she scooted away from the table, and then pushed her over to the other side of Naruto, in the middle of the aisle and farthest from the booths and tables.
He pushed her there behind Naruto rather than in front of him, so it wasn't until she'd stepped away from the other man's back with an irritated noise that she saw Gaara sitting at the table.
She jerked and froze.
Naruto had to slide an arm around her waist to get her to take a few stumbling steps again. Sasuke had moved to the other side of Naruto, putting himself between both of them and the booth they would have to pass.
Gaara was staring at Naruto, eyes wide. It took Sakura a moment to realize that the reason he looked wrong was because he had eyebrows.
It took her another moment after that to realize there was someone else in the booth, sitting across from him, and that it was his sister. Temari, the girl with the fan and the weird hair, except that she didn't have the fan and her hair was just in two pigtails, normal. They both looked normal.
Gaara was still staring at Naruto, and Naruto was staring back, and Sasuke was a step to the side, hand dangling by his thigh even though there was no weapons pack there, and Sakura realized that at some point all three of them had stopped in the middle of the aisle. Other customers were muttering as they pushed past.
It was Temari who moved first. She'd been drinking a soda when they started to walk past, and at first had stilled and kept it in place, straw between her lips; but after several seconds passed, she shifted faintly and began to set it back on the table.
Naruto jerked then; and a moment later he tightened the arm he had around Sakura's waist, pulling her closer, and then slung his other arm over Sasuke's shoulders.
And then he bared his teeth at Gaara.
He stalked forward a second after that, growling in the back of his throat, and Sasuke and Sakura were forced to move with him.
Sakura almost looked over her shoulder when Sasuke shoved open the door, to see if Gaara was still watching them with that confused, lost expression; but she could still taste the granules of sand that had drifted into her throat when she'd been crushed against the tree, and didn't.
Sasuke drove out of the parking lot skittishly, taking the turns too sharp and wrenching the stick to shift gears. Naruto glared out the window and kept a fist pressed tight against the glass.
"He's not a bad guy," he said abruptly, when they were several blocks away--past the turn for their apartment, in fact. It was hard to tell if Naruto was talking to them or himself. "He's not. It's just . . . how things happened."
Sakura glanced down at her hands, folded in her lap. A few moments later, Sasuke jerked the car sharply to the right.
Sakura reflexively grabbed the door handle at the turn; Naruto caught the one attached to the ceiling and snapped at Sasuke about his lousy-ass driving. Sasuke ignored them both and turned into the first lot they came across, one for a movie theater and a few miscellaneous shops.
"Sasuke?" Sakura asked, after he'd parked slightly over the lines and turned off the engine.
"He recognized us," Sasuke replied, staring at the steering wheel. "Or you at least," he added, jerking his head slightly at Naruto without looking over at the other man.
"Yeah?" Naruto replied, but Sakura was already catching on.
"He recognized you because he's played the game," Sasuke continued, hands tight around the wheel. "At the chuunin exam, the Sand was allied with Orochimaru."
". . . No," Naruto said quietly, fist clenching around the handle. "No way. . . ."
"But Temari recognized us, too," Sakura interjected, and Naruto glanced back at her. "And she was--I mean, you don't usually eat lunch with people you think want to kill you, right?" After a pause, when neither of them replied, she added: "The expression on his face was like after your fight. So if he's played that far, then he should have changed a little, no matter what he was like."
Sasuke snorted. "Why would something that convenient happen?"
He was still glaring at the steering wheel, but Sakura looked at him anyway. "We've been affected by it. Why should he be spared?"
She inflected the 'he' more than she'd meant to. Naruto looked out the window again and made a quiet noise in the back of his throat, but didn't speak.
After a minute of silence, Sasuke unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door. "Sakura, you drive."
"Uh, okay . . ." she murmured, unbuckling her own belt and climbing out. She went through the drivers' side door, so that she wouldn't have to pass Naruto even though he wasn't looking out the window anymore.
Sasuke yanked the door shut behind him and buckled up before pulling out his phone; Sakura had barely gotten her own door closed, and was adjusting the rearview mirror when he started dialing. Naruto glanced over the chair at him--but a moment later, his face darkened.
"Oi," he said harshly, twisting further in the seat, "you're not calling--"
Sasuke glared and made a sharp motion to cut him off. A few seconds later, though, he glanced down.
"I know," he said in reply to whoever had spoken. And then, a moment later, "I need your help."
Naruto clenched one hand into a fist, gripping the other one around it. Sakura was still holding the edge of the rearview mirror, but she wasn't moving it any more.
"I know," Sasuke said again, "I'm sorry," and then Sakura let go of the mirror in order to force Naruto to loosen his grip on his fist. He was starting to cut the skin.
After several moments passed--even though Sakura was straining to hear the other person speaking, she couldn't; Naruto probably could with his heightened senses, though, which was likely why he had his lips drawn back over his teeth--Sasuke continued. "Can you tell me anything about someone named Gaara?"
Another pause, and this time Sasuke sounded slightly confused, first saying "I don't think he has a--" before catching himself and changing it to "I don't know his last name."
Whatever the person on the phone--Sakura had a good idea who it was by now, but didn't want to believe it until she had to--said in reply to that, it made Sasuke say "Yes" in a voice that was flat where it should have been sarcastic.
"He'll be connected to the game Konoha," he said. "And probably to Orochimaru." Another pause. "I can't verify the last part. But I know he will have bought at least several feathers, probably from an operator named Kabuto Yakushi." Sasuke hesitated again, though this time it seemed to be on his own part, before adding, "He may be a foreigner, but that's also something I can't verify."
Sasuke was fidgeting, something Sakura hadn't seen him do often and couldn't connect to him doing while speaking to Itachi of all people. He also wasn't looking at either of them, was staring at his legs or maybe the floor instead.
"Okay," Sasuke replied a few moments later. He wetted his lips slightly, another nervous gesture that was starting to scare her in a way that only the incomprehensible could do. She glanced over at Naruto, and saw that he was clenching his hands too tightly again. ". . . Yes. Th--. . . thank you."
"Goodbye," Sasuke finished after another moment, and then closed the phone and dropped it on the seat beside him like something diseased. He shut his eyes and made an effort to lean back against the seat, but his back was too tense.
"What'd he say," Naruto demanded, voice cracking slightly from his effort to keep from yelling.
"He doesn't have time to bother with it now," Sasuke replied, eyes still closed. "He'll call me later."
Naruto pulled the hand that Sakura had loosened again free and wrenched it through his hair, but bit his lip.
He didn't want to say anything any more than Sakura did--in the game, Sasuke had lost it over Itachi, had outright attacked him and then only got worse when Naruto's jutsu thing was stronger. The real Sasuke didn't seem to want to kill his brother, but still. . . .
"Let's go home," Sasuke said after several more painfully silent moments passed. His eyes were still closed. "People are going to start giving us second looks."
"Right," she murmured, and started the engine.
"Buckle your seat belt," he added.
"Yes, yes--" Sakura started to say, and then remembered how his parents had died. She reached for the belt quietly. Naruto was glaring out the door again and grinding his fist into the seat beside his thigh.