Time for a change ...

OMG i am sooooooo sorry i am this late to update. uni is just taking over is taking over, i hate having group work when nobody except a few does work (me being one of them)

but it is done now and i hope i havent lost to many readers from this.

thank you so much zanax and Kirai for ur comments. if i forgot any i am soooo sorry didnt mean to, i give everyone a big brownie piece. oh and thank you to my other readers it has reached 3000 this time. hehe

and of course thank you to my beta, i promise i wont give up the story, she is going to ignore me if i do hehe.

well hope you enjoy and dont forget to comment.

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“You got to be fucking kidding.” Sasuke, who had kept quiet for a minute or so trying to get over the initial, half yelled at Orochimaru. The snake like man ignored him and turned to Shikamaru.

“Well done Shikamaru, I see your mind is still sharp.” He grinned “But there is always room for improvement,” Orochimaru smiled an evil smile, the possibilities of improvement were already forming in his mind. “And how about you Gaara, still can’t sleep?” The red head was about to answer when the raven decided to speak again.

“Wait a minute … you said operations? What do you mean the odd operations here and there? Don’t bloody skimp on the details, I want to know … we want to know.”

“Now, now Sasuke, I would have thought with your family background you would have learned to ask nicer.” Orochimaru smirked as he saw the angered look in the boy’s face, it was rather amusing to anger the youngest Uchiha. “Before I tell you anything,” Orochimaru scanned the 3 boys sitting on the couch. “I take it Tsunade has continued to supply you boys with your medicine or else you wouldn’t still be here.”

“Yes Orochimaru-san.” The blond finally decided to speak “Shikamaru made sure we take it.”

“Good. It pleases me to hear that. But I would like to have a full scan of all of you … Kabuto!” The snake man snapped his fingers.

“I’ll assemble the medic team at once,” the grey haired man disappeared from the office leaving the 5 of them alone. Sasuke was more confused now than he had been when they first entered this place.

“Medicine? … What medicine?”

“To keep the monsters in check,” Naruto said not looking at Sasuke.
Sasuke looked at them blond who obviously was trying hide where he was sitting but due to lack of camouflage, the closest he could get to hiding was to curl into a small ball.

“Naruto …?” Sasuke sat down next to the blond and placed an arm around him, he wasn’t sure what he meant by keeping the monsters in check but what ever it was, it scared the blond. Orochimaru frowned when he saw Naruto’s reaction

“Despite being a genius Sasuke, you are rather slow sometimes.” Sasuke glared at the snake, Orochimaru rolled his eyes. “Regardless, enhancing the human physique and mentality with drugs have their limits, that’s where the operations come in.”

“First it was only small improvements,” Orochimaru continued. “replacing bones with metal and so forth, standard experiments.” Sasuke tightened his hold on Naruto, the images of Naruto lying on a surgeon’s table with tubes and green cloth covering his body. It was hard knowing how much the blond might have suffered, how all 3 of them might have suffered. “But as much as we succeeded it wasn’t anything new, the Mist Country was doing the exact same thing. Six years ago we stumbled across a myth about 9 chakra monsters living around the world in harmony with the nature and all that crap. At first we only thought it really was just a myth but then the excavation team came back with the 9 of them it was a quite the shock. Nevertheless, it created a huge opportunity. Imagine, having the monsters under our command. We could easily win the war.” Orochimaru paused a little before continuing. “But as you can assume, those monsters were, or rather are, hard to control. So for about 4 months we struggled to find a way to subdue them to the level of obedience. It wasn’t until Kabuto thought of the possibility of fusing the chakra monsters to a human. You see the monsters are very much like people in one way … they like being alive. But so far in our little experiment we have yet to find a way to kill them. Humans, however, are very easy to kill as you know and that’s where the brilliance lies. We had some unsuccessful experiments of fusing the two together, it appeared that the human body can’t take the strain of chakra levels like that of the monsters, well most humans anyways.” Orochimaru glanced over at Naruto and Gaara. “But during the process, we learned something very valuable. Whenever the human host died the chakra monster also died, thus we gained leverage.”

Sasuke was not sure whether he wanted to throw up or beat the man, sitting smirking at his desk, to death. All the pieces that were lacking in the story before were now being revealed and the answer that was awaiting at the end was something Sasuke did not want to know, despite it already being known.

“Sadly, it did not matter how much we improved the human body and mind, the monsters would still not manifest themselves to their host fully. We lost a lot of monsters.” Orochimaru sighed, he was more concerned that he had lost his trump cards than actually killing, God knows, how many people. “But as luck would have it, there were 3 very strange boys in my possession.” Orochimaru grinned even more as he noticed Sasuke’s eyes widened. The raven did not want to hear, the words he knew would make everything real. The words that would take away the one and only good thing in his life.

“Tell me Sasuke, how does it feel to bed one of my creations?” Naruto felt sick, or at least he thought he did. He had never been sick, but Iruka had been sick once and the older brunette explained what it was like being sick. He had told him there were many variations of sickness, which again complicated things.

Sasuke on the other hand was fuming, he was beyond any human comprehension of anger. The snake like man had tainted his blond, yes, his blond. Sasuke wanted to leap at the man and tear his head off, but something told him that if he let go of the blond he would only cause more pain. Instead, he tightened his hold around the boy again, hoping that it somehow would convey his feelings, his concerns. The raven had never been good with wording his emotions, but unlike Naruto, Gaara and Shikamaru who didn’t know what emotions were, until recently. He was an Uchiha and an Uchiha did not show any emotions, despite feeling them.

“Orochimaru-sama.” Kabuto re-entered the room after being away for the last half hour “The medical team is ready,” he announced. Orochimaru got out of his chair and walked to the front of his desk.

“Well then boys shall we?”

“The hell they will!” Sasuke finally voiced his anger as he stood up.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that tonight Sasuke-kun.” Orochimaru emphasized the kun

“And your point being, bastard.” Sasuke growled at the man “Yo …”

“Sasuke …” Naruto tugged Sasuke’s jacket arm. Sasuke turned and looked straight in to the beautiful blue eyes of his lover. “… It’s fine.”

“But Naruto …”

“Sasuke let it go. Your name might have an influence on the outside, but in here … your name holds no meaning.” The raven turned his head and looked at Shikamaru. This was the first time the lazy brunette had ever used his first name. A little bewildered at the sudden change in formalities, Sasuke found himself annoyed at the brunette, it wasn’t so much the brunette himself than it was annoying how right he was. Sasuke sighed as he watched Gaara and Shikamaru walk past him towards the door where Kabuto stood waiting. Naruto stood and walked past Sasuke, who’s head had dropped, but instead of walking to the door like the others he stopped next to the raven and held out his hand.

“Come Sasuke …” Sasuke looked up again meeting a half smiling face of the blond. “Let’s go,” he spoke softly. The raven took his hand and nodded. Orochimaru wasn’t sure he liked the whole aspect of emotional development. Emotions were always in the way, especially when killing someone.

The 4 boys entered a huge white/metallic looking room. The lights in the ceiling were bright and were probably the cause of the metallic colour in the room. All around, there were people in white doctor cloaks maneuvering around different machines and wires on the floor, which again, were all placed around three operating tables, which also seem to be having the same colour scheme as the cloaks. One of the long walls was made out of glass and on the other side there were more people wearing the lab coats, scribbling down words on a clip board whilst they seemed to be watching other ‘test subject’. Unlike the trio, all Sasuke could do was gape as his eyes roamed the room.

“Well boys, you know the drill.” Orochimaru lifted up his hand and signaled to one of the lab people. One of the guys nodded before turning to another and saying something Sasuke couldn’t hear. The other man nodded and went off and collected 3 more people, who then began preparing the operating table. Then the two men walked up to the trio and took them each to their own table. Sasuke watched from the entrance as Naruto undressed all the way to his boxers and lay down on the table. One of the white clad people, began washing certain areas with what looked like disinfection fluid, then another followed placing wires with white medical tape. Sasuke assumed that the people must have been doctors, or so he hoped. The thought of untrained fingers fiddling with his blond, or even touching him, in general, was not an image he liked to see.

“What are they going to do to them?” The raven asked. Still confused by what was going, not that he would admit that. He just kept his eyes on the blond like a watch dog would protect his bone. Orochimaru watched the raven with fascination. His memories of the boy were that he had been emotionless, just like his father and brother. The few times they had the pleasure of meeting, Sasuke had always just glimpsed at him before ignoring him completely. But now the raven’s emotion were on display for everyone to see, despite the raven’s denial if ever asked.

“Just some regular tests,” the older man said.

“What kind of tests?” Sasuke asked as he watched the lab cloaked people look at monitors as they talked amongst themselves and wrote what ever the result were down on a chart.

“I didn’t know Uchihas had room for emotions.”

“Answer my question bastard, what kind of tests are they?” Sasuke growled. Orochimaru rolled his eyes as he took a deep breath.

“They are different tests to see how the balance between the host and the chakra monster is still working.”

“What do you mean still working?” Sasuke finally removed his attention from the blond and looked at the snake.

“The balance between the chakra monster and the host is a fine balance, Naruto and Gaara have very strong immune systems and an inhuman tolerance to pain. Making it possible for them to host and survive another entity to live inside them. However strong they are … they are not that strong, which is why we give them medicine to balance out what ever the monster is taking to survive in them.” Orochimaru explained.

“Wait, you’re saying that the monster is eating them alive from the inside?”

“No, we give them the medicine for fun.” Sasuke could hear the sarcasm in Orochimaru’s voice.

“Fuck you, you are deliberating killing them … remove them!” Sasuke snapped.

“The monsters might be slowly killing them but removing them means immediate death.” Orochimaru. Sasuke felt his chest tightened.

“Excuse me Orochimaru-sama. The tests are done and all is stable,” one of the men overseeing the tests informed the snake man.

“Good, we will continue the physical tests tomorrow. Escort the boys to their room and tell them to be prepared for 1 pm tomorrow afternoon.” Orochimaru instructed before waving off the man again. “Well, then Sasuke, it is getting late and since I assume you’ll be staying I suggest you start following the blond.” With that Orochimaru left Sasuke at the doorway.

Naruto, Gaara and Shikamaru got handed their clothes again and they began to dress. The blond glanced over in the direction of where Sasuke and Orochimaru were standing, but now there was only the raven left and his facial expression was of anger, maybe even disgust. Naruto sighed, there were emotions flying inside him he could not explain except that they hurt.

“Hey you okey?” Shikamaru asked the blond, the brunette noticed the saddened expression and according to Iruka it was a natural thing to ask people that.

“Yeah I think so, it just hurts here.” Naruto pointed to his heart.

“You sick? Want me to get a doctor?” Gaara interrupted the conversation.

“No it’s ok it only hurt when I look at Sasuke,” the blond stated, glancing at the raven again.

“Oh … what does that mean?” The red head asked.

“I dunno.” Naruto responded before sighing heavily again.

“Boys, Orochimaru has instructed me to tell you to retreat to your room and that you need to be ready for your physical test at 1 pm tomorrow afternoon.” The boys nodded and began walking toward the doorway and Sasuke. “Oh and Uchiha-san has been given permission to stay for the night,” the man informed them before walking out the other exit. Sasuke watched as the trio walked up to him, not sure what to do or say he started with the only ice breaker he could think of.

“Hey …”

“Hey …” Shikamaru responded as he walked past him, Gaara only nodded, he didn’t like how the raven seem to hurt his friend for no reason. The blond, however, stopped in front of him trying his best to smile.

“Hey …” Sasuke repeated himself.

“Hey …” They looked at each other, Sasuke desperately wanted to reach out to touch the sunshine before him but he found himself hesitating, earlier the blond had avoided his touch and he wasn’t sure if he coud handle having the blond repulse his touch.

“Um … I was told that I … that I could stay.” Sasuke found himself being nervous, Naruto only nodded in response. Again a dead silence floated between them making both feel uncomfortable, probably Sasuke more than Naruto since Sasuke was the only one knowing what being uncomfortable felt like.

“So I … where should I … you know … umm…” Sasuke wanted to mentally slap himself.

“With me.” Naruto took Sasuke’s hand, his chest hurt from being around the raven now that he knew but another part of him wanted, needed to be near him no matter what. Sasuke’s face lit up and a genuine smile spread across his face.

“Yeah.”

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there ya go, please comment