Hey, Tsunade-baa-chan..?

Pen name: Dream Wyvern

Title: Hey, Tsunade baa-chan..?

Pairings: NaruSasuNaru.

Disclaimer: Ohmygod, you really think I OWN Naruto?! .. Well, thanks! Buuuuut, I don't.

A/N: This is the second story I've ever attempted to write in my life - never completed the first, either. This not complete as of yet, and I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to do that, as I have many IRL responsibilities. But it's something! And I hope to finish. It's not supposed to be the longest story in the history of the multiverses anyhow, maybe three chapters or so in the end (so completing it is possible!). Giving the good 'ol first person POV the college try here, too.

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Sasuke left today.

He does that a whole fuck of a lot, or so it seems to me.

I should have strangled him. Choked him lifeless before he could even think about it.

There's no use in thinking about these things now... I'm no Monday morning quarterback.

But I can't stop.

It fucking hurts. It hurts in places I didn't know I had.

And let me tell you, I'm aware of many and sundry places in me, places that can ache like no tomorrow.

No tomorrow, heh. That shit keeps on sounding better and better, don’t it though?

I've come to a realization, you know. Whatever Gods there Be - They mean Sasuke to be my end.

I guess Whoeverall runs this shithole of a universe saw that Sasuke couldn't take me in a fight, so now They're trying to make me off myself.

Sasuke... left!

After... after everything.


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It was pouring. I was so mad. Couldn't a guy catch a break?

I'd been minding my own business, not bothering a soul in the world, just hanging out and playing Final Fantasy VIII for the umpteenth time. I knew how the game ended already, but my gaming marathon had been a welcomed break from all the missions -- the sleeping on the dirt, the blood from other people and me too. I even had some of this to-die-for raspberry tea; I'd been sipping at mug after mug of it against the weather (I had to kill the whole box of it before anyone saw I drank this kind of limp-wristed stuff, you know?) and I'd been all comfy in my little bachelor pad. Freaking psycho-Konoha could be cold as a witch's tit in the winter, even though the heat was enough to give frickin' Ifrit heat-stroke in the summertime.

It was winter now. And did I mention it was raining?

So, it was wet and windy and cold outside, right? And who should pound on my door but --- I excavated myself from my favorite bean-bag to find out, after slinging my Playstation controller onto the floor with a wallet-sassing crack -- nobody! Fuck!

But, damnitall, there was a note, I saw it even though I tried not to. Stupid Tsunade would seal her message-scrolls in hot pink.

I grabbed it from where it’d been stuffed into my lidless (and slightly flooded) mailbox, broke the wax, and read –


-------
Uzumaki Naruto.

I know it is a free day for you, so I am confident you will find the time to check out a small matter for me.
A Missing-Nin is approaching the Main Gate as you read this. I would like you to intercept him before he reaches it.
I would not assign you this task if it weren’t especially suited to you. No one else comes to mind that might handle this with some measure of understanding, and I am in a pinch.
Control your fresh little mouth and you will do fine.
Find out what he wants, get it to him if it is within reason, and from there I don't really give a shit what you do.
It would be preferable, however, if you were to prevent this gentleman from entering the village at all. In a time of imminent war, scandal, anger, and internal dissent amongst our shinobi are not acceptable risks.
Work it out.
With any luck, it is but a small thing he seeks, one that will alert no one of this visit.
Only if this situation involves Konoha to a significant extent do I intend to make a federal case of this.
Get rid of him as quickly as possible.
I will expect you to report to me personally concerning this encounter in twelve hours' time.

The Fifth Hokage.
P.S. -- You did want to continue training for the title of the Sixth, am I right?

-------


I sucked in a huge breath whilst hop-sidling my way back inside. I danced the dance of only the most temperamental and frustrated (luckily, I found the presence of mind to pound the door shut behind me, in the short meantime). Finally, that held breath escaped me in a not-quite-mindful-of-noise-pollution blast that strongly resembled the commonly used word, in canine-enthusiasts’ circles, for girl dogs.

Like my free days were "time to check out” shit for that old bag! Fresh mouth, what the merry Christ?! Expect me to report?!

I glanced, then did a double-take at the googly-eyed black cat clock on my wall, which read five-thirty p.m. She wants to see me at five in the morning?!

And, oh yeah - "A MISSING NINJA APPROACHING KONOHA IS A SMALL!" - pity, I’d liked sitting there - "MATTER?!"

I glared at the meaningless jumble of erstwhile-chairwood on my floor as I composed myself, finally deciding to just leave it.

I was really gonna have to pay more attention to my blood-pressure, 22 years old or not.

Gotta love Tsunade and her "covert" "tactics" of manipulation, hah?!

Long came to short, indignation came to resignation, and I came to find myself half-stomping up the sludgy roads that lead to the gate. All trussed up in my Chuunin gear, too, like a good fucking little doobie. Slavedriver!

I guess I coulda taken this "Missing Nin" thing more seriously, but if she wasn't gonna, fuck if I would, get me?

Not like anyone could take me in a fight anyways, heh.

S'prolly why she'd really given me this chore, she just didn't want to admit --- ...ohh but hot damn I knew that chakra...

It was about then, when I'd just stuck out my handsome, strong, sexy chin (it is too!), confident that no any one person or place or thing could stand so tall in the face of my inimitable awesomeness, that I felt my entire self just... dim.

Scratch the "Bitch" thing, Tsunade was a Miserable, Dried-Up old Sadist.

You think I wasn't gonna start calling her that? That's a bet you'da lost.

Like I was really gonna believe she hadn't known who this "Missing Ninja" was.

I kinda just stood there a sec, trying not to have a total conniption in the middle of the street. I'm no dumbass, despite what people choose to think, and I knew that if I could sense him, he sure as shit could sense me right then.

There was unfair, but then there was totally freaking unfair, uncool, and wrong! The last time I'd seen him, we'd been only Genin, and he'd been trying to kill me, all the while feeding me some crap about how he thought of me as his best fuckin' friend or even his brother or something! He'd left me for dead out there! That's it, I just knew Tsunade had to be some kinda senile, to forget that crap.

She better of forgotten anyways, or I swore I'd take those stupid pigtails of hers and swing her around by 'em!

C'mon, fuckin' Sasuke?

It wasn't possible, but still his chakra pulsed on the edge of my senses.

I'd thought he was dead! If he wasn't dead, I'd kill him for leaving me -- us for that crazy creepy snake... man... Thing.

Sasuke'd known damned well that that Orochimaru meant to flatten Konoha, and there was no way I was gonna let that shit go down on my beat!

Besides, how fucking low did you have to be to let someone think you were dead for ten years?

I couldn't think of nothing else but to just go to him already, so that's what I started to do; waving The Sadist's scroll negligently in front of the gatekeepers' eyes as I trudged past, I didn’t bother to wait for acknowledgement. They could take it up with her later, if they wanted; I didn't have time for that kinda bureaucratical bullshit, you know?

Cussing, ‘cause if I didn’t I’d be thinking, I zeroed in on the area I’d felt Sasuke’s presence emanate from. I unconsciously took the least accommodating paths as I went, probably trying to buy myself precious thinking-time. It didn’t seem to do me any good, though, I was just suddenly so… depressed.

I shouldn’ta been depressed, right? I was gonna be seeing my friend again. Even though I still carried his aging Konoha headband everywhere I went anymore, some part of me’d sorta up and died in this last year, just gave up hope. Gone was gone was gone, and damn me if Sasuke hadn’t been just that. I’d promised Sakura-chan that I’d return her Sasuke to her, too – see, now, that little train of thought wasn’t gonna bring me to any station I particularly relished visiting. I picked up my mantra of curses again, though for this bout of it I sounded like the whiny little "Loser" Sasuke’d always said I was, even to my own ears.

All of a sudden, my hand was up at the level of my eyes, clutching a kunai, tip facing my temple, the pinky deftly resting through the ring at the end of the handle. Huh, guess I caught it, and even a "Blockhead" like me could venture another guess at who’d thrown it. I could feel my assailant’s body-heat still embedded in the weighty, dark metal; it bled into my palm through the wrappings of its hilt like some kind of cataclysmic yet needful disease. Far from indignant at what anyone else would have seen as an assassination attempt, I was filled instead with dismay at the way that lingering warmth sent an unbidden wave of emotion through me. What, after everything that had happened (and what hadn't happened, like him showing his sorry ass up once in a while to say “Oh, hi, I’m not dead!”), I was just gonna waltz up to him like some sorta welcome wagon?!

It only figured.

I went to grouse onward in the direction which I knew he was laying for me when something occurred to me. Sasuke’d always been one hella fast guy, it’d gotten to the point where even I would have to throw out Kyuubi’s senses to follow or detect him sometimes. All that, meaning to me, that that dagger’d been way too easy to catch with me mostly unawares, even for a “casual greeting” sort of assault.

Yeah, we’d been some kinda chums, having often said our hellos and how’d-you-dos through the launching of shuriken and kunai – and on one memorable occasion, a great Windmill shuriken the size of a small burro. (No, that one wasn’t from me!) But as I remembered, we’d liked it that way. Acted like we'd hated it, but that's us for you, see.

So I stood there a sec, wondering at the lameness of his strike, ‘til I thought about what kinda dunce I probably looked like to him right then. All vacant and spacey when I was under siege. I shook myself a little; snapping out of it, I came to find myself much more than exasperated when I was once again in my own self… ever feel like that?

“SASUKE UCHIHA, YOU SNOT-NOSED SONUVA WHORE! COME OUT HERE BEFORE I DRAG YOU OUT BY YOUR SCRAWNY LITTLE NECK.” I howled at the treetops, simultaneously giving half a dozen squirrels coronaries and sounding nothing like I’d wanted to, with words that weren’t ones I’d’ve chosen - or was even glad to have said. What's up with that already?!

I was met with silence; that wasn’t even third cousin to a surprise. An old, old game, this one.

So, after holstering my new-found kunai with a smugness manufactured purely for the benefit of theatrics, I walked on, more slowly now as my ears began to lightly ring with Presence. I growled to myself (still sounding too querulous for my tastes), trying to convince myself that this “Missing Nin” project was just like any other banal mission I'd pissed my life away with these last several years - or at the least, to look like I could give ten shits about it.

A few old fallen trees later, and more than a few “what did I step in now”s after that ...I scented him. It’d taken a bit to be able to do that ‘cause the rain’d sorta dampened the smell half out of things… but now it was clear; his particular flavor was a plainer indication of his closeness to me than if he’d come up and given me a wet willie or something.

Not that he was emotionally capable of anything like that, but it woulda been cool... I spoze.

I looked up from the ground (you really gotta watch your steps out there sometimes), and what I saw pretty much killed any lackadaisical kind of mood I’d shoddily hammered together.

'Suke...

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End Part One.