The sealed kunai

Chapter 66: Dead Wall Reverie

"Such a fool."

Hearing the words that he most recently heard a deadly, deadly enemy say to him, Naruto's eyes popped open only to get a hard blast of sunlight straight to the ocular orbs. And he hadn't turned the contact lens back on in his Sharingan eye, so he basically ate a solar flare to the face.

Squinting harshly and keeping his right eye shut in the brightness of the room he was in, Naruto realized that he was back in his house. His own bedroom to be exact. Well at least Tobi hadn't taken all of his roof off. He left enough for his bedroom to be covered from the elements.

Turning to his side with a hand on his head he saw the origin of the fool comment as he saw the uniformed Maki sitting with one leg crossed over the other. Her white porcelain mask sat in her lap and the cloak that she'd worn to better disguise her identity as a Root ANBU during the battle rested nearby on the floor.

"Maki-chan." Naruto greeted, keeping his right eye closed while he looked at her, "How's the village?"

"It's fine." Maki informed him with a small smile, "The battle is winding down, but there are still small remnants of the white plant men holding out and hiding in certain areas around Konoha. Don't worry, we'll find them and get rid of the rest."

In the meantime the village was still under heavy security, with constant, more vigilant patrols in addition to the active hunting parties, as well as extensive guard placements than normal at high-priority places that could have been potential targets to the remaining White Zetsus that might have wanted to go down fighting if they were really that obedient to the masked man that had led them into battle.

Even if they didn't know they'd just been diversions for him to get to what he really wanted. But he'd failed in both of his endeavors to obtain those things. At least that was what Maki had figured. There was no sign of the masked individual when the search party that brought Naruto back located the site of the battle's conclusion.

So now Naruto's battles in Hi no Kuni resulted in two landmark locations. The forest of bone, and yet-to-be-named gigantic, barren plain that had been blown into the middle of the forest due to one of the attacks dealt during the last fight.

When word about that got around Konoha, everyone was just glad that he'd been willing to take the battle as far away from the village as he did.

"So." Naruto said with a nervous look, "How pissed off is Tsunade-baachan?"

"At you? Very."

"But I won."

"But you were stupid and fought the masked man alone."

Okay, really? If anyone else had been out there with them they would have gotten blown away at one point or another. Tobi hadn't been screwing around and had finally realized that he had to fight to kill, even if he just wanted to capture him. The way he conducted himself in the battle with the techniques he used reflected that.

Naruto just stared at her with one eye before holding out his hand in her direction as if expecting her to have something for him. Maki just stared at him blankly with the most killer poker face he'd ever seen on a woman before she slowly reached over and dropped something into his hand; his contact lens that he proceeded to stick back into its proper place.

"Mission etiquette says that you cannot question the confirmed mission plan while the mission is in progress." Maki admitted, moving over to sit down on the side of Naruto's bed, "But since your fight wasn't really a mission, and since it most definitely is over now I feel I'm completely in the right on calling you a gigantic jackass."

"Yeah, I'd tolerate that if you were my wife." Naruto drawled, taking note of the way Maki's cheeks heated up even if her stony expression didn't change, "But you're not. You're just my sexy little junior." Winning solved everything. If you went about something the wrong way, as long as you won, what could anyone really say? "So what's up? Any news?"