Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise

Author's Note: And we're back with another installment of Sai's Library. Hello, everybody! Zen speaking. It has been a while, hasn't it? First off, thank you so much to all who read and reviewed the first chapter of Sai's Library. It was a hugely pleasant surprise just how well it was received, and to those of you who favourited, thank you for your confidence, and those who followed, I hope that I will be able to meet your expectations. Where have I been? Sorting out my life, which still needs a good deal of sorting, making slow painful progress on an own novel, and floundering in the quagmire of block. I can only apologise.

Anyway, enough about me. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy the second chapter of Sai's Library. Villains and plots begin to raise their heads!

Best, Zen :D

"Uncle Ban, Uncle Ban!"

The little girl kicked off her sandals and dashed into the house. Darting from room to room and slipping in the hallways, she slid to a halt in the kitchen where a man was stewing beans in a pot, humming quietly under his breath.

He wore an apron patterned with musical notes. When he pretended to ignore her, the girl scowled and moved to tug at said apron to get his attention. "Uncle Ban, I want to show you something."

"I'm taking the scum off the beans, Mameko. Give me five minutes"

She took a deep breath. "I need to show you something. Right now."

The man she called Uncle Ban - even though her mother insisted that he was not a relative and was just the man they hired to do the cooking with a little near-lethal home security on the side - paused and glanced down from his cooking. "What is it?"

"Something's made a nest under the house. Could we try catching it, Uncle Ban? Please? I've wanted a new pet for ages."

Ban set down his spoon. "What kind of 'something' are we talking about, Mameko?"

"A monkey." Her eyes were round and shining. "A big one. Really big. It's as big as a human, Uncle Ban."

A thoughtful pause, then Ban switched off the stove and put a lid on the pot of vegetables. "Well then," he said, turning to the little girl with a smile, "we'd better try and catch this monkey before it escapes."

As Mameko squealed with excitement and sprinted back the way she had come, Ban rummaged through the kitchen drawers and slipped his chosen weapon into the pocket of his apron.

He found Mameko squatting on the veranda with her head between her knees, staring avidly at something in the darkness on the other side of the garden.

"It's over there!" she hissed, thrusting her finger at a point in the shadows, and something flinched and slithered back beneath the house.

"Stay here, Mameko."

Mameko nodded. Ban stepped into his slippers and slowly crossed the garden.

The grey shape under the house shifted. Ban slid his hand into his front apron pocket.

The shape twitched, then a voice cried out: "Wait, Ban! It's me! Not the pipes. I haven't done anything. I'm just...lurking. Just lurking! Lurking and nothing more. Very suspicious, I know, but that's all I'm doing. I mean no harm! Got it? No harm."

Ban froze. That high-pitched nasal whine and shameless speed with which the man had rolled over and shown his belly were all too familiar.

"Crawler." Mameko was still listening and watching from the other side of the courtyard. Ban lowered his voice. "What do you want?"

"A bowl of rice would be nice." Crawler's voice oozed out from the darkness, sticky and silvery as a spider-web. "And a pair of fresh trousers, perhaps. Also, don't call me Crawler, Ban."

Ban slipped his hand into the front of his apron again and Crawler gabbled. "We're getting a team together for a mission."

"A team? Who's heading it?"

"Sister," Crawler hissed. "It was her idea."

Ban made to turn away. Mameko was still watching and was looking increasingly frustrated by the lack of monkey-capture. "Tell Big Sis that I'm busy making hotpot."

"It's Old Man Goishi," said Crawler in a rush, and it had the effect he wanted. Ban stopped in his tracks. "Remember, Ban? That old geezer with the lie detector ears? The one you and Koma were supposed to have killed off way back when?"

"Old Man Goishi is dead."

"Well, yes, now he is." Crawler took a moment to watch Ban stiffen and savoured his unease. "Sister found him living as a kind of magic man in some old backwater village, would you believe it? He got away, but, long story with its limbs cut off, he died in the arms of some Konoha ninjas, and," Crawler's eyes gleamed out from under the veranda, yellow like any animal's, "that research he stole - those notes that you and Koma were supposed to bring back to the Master, but said you couldn't find? He had them on him, you know? Old Man Goishi had them on him this whole time, and now the book has gone to Konoha."

Ban suddenly turned and signalled at Mameko to go into the house, mouthing, 'Monkey sick. Smelly. Runny poo. Yucky'. To his immense relief the little girl wrinkled her nose and disappeared. "What is Sister saying?"

"She's saying that now we know where the research is, we should go in quick and take it for ourselves, before Konoha works out what's landed in their we're going to sell it to the highest bidder and split the profit between us. Call it compensation for when Oto failed, or our pension, if you like. Sister's got prospective buyers lined up from all over the land, Ban. You'd never even dream the kind of prices these rich folk are willing to pay. We could live like princes!"

"Instead of crawling on our bellies under rich men's houses?" Ban said pointedly and Crawler closed his mouth with a sharp clack of teeth."I'm not interested, Crawler. I'm done with Oto, and even if it was by some error of mine and Koma's that Old Man Goishi lived, it's nothing that I need to atone for. Go tell Sister that I've already got a job, and good riddance to the lot of you. I'm sure you'll find exactly what you all deserve in Konoha."

"Yeah, Sister thought you'd say something like that," Crawler raised his voice, as Ban readied to return to the house. "She gave me a special message to pass on to you."

"Always were Sister's lapdog, weren't you, Crawler?"

"She said to remind you that she always looks out for her little brothers, that there ain't a whisper on the wind she hasn't heard, and that, in the interest of her favourite little brother," Ban's expression was as inscrutable as a thunderhead as Crawler went on, "she's quite ready to send certain paternity test results to the master of this household, concerning a certain little girl. How old is that sweet little bluebird now, Ban? Four? Six? Still a little chick that's small enough to swallow."

Ban's hands curled into fists. "Mameko stays out of this."

"Only if you agree to come into this."

Ban breathed down his nose. "Is Koma on board?"

"Oh, Sister made sure of it," Crawler purred, and Ban couldn't suppress the shudder that ran down his spine.

He stole a glance towards the house. Mameko's sandals had been left under the veranda again. They were small and yellow, still barely the length of his palm.

"So small," hissed Crawler from under the house, as though he could read Ban's mind. "So young, and so loved. What will the master of the house think when he finds out - ?"

"He won't," Ban closed his eyes. "He won't find out. Where are we meeting?"

"The old inn on the north road."

Ban clenched his jaw and nodded. "I'll be there tonight."

A low chuckle from beneath the veranda. "Sister will be pleased."

The shadows under the veranda stirred, eddied like a cesspool, and Crawler was gone.

By ten in the morning, Sai had read the entirety of Eyeball's first three chapters.

By eleven, he had carefully jotted down notes onto a sheet of paper, pinned it above his bed and interrogated them from every angle of reason he could think of, until he was content that the words weren't lying to him.

Eventually, around the time the Academy students were hurrying home and he could hear their voices passing beneath his window, Sai closed the book, slipped it into the back pocket of his trousers and went to put on his shoes.

Root had a systematic approach to measuring training progress. They trained and then, every once in a while, they were given free rein to try out everything they had learned against a test subject as close to the ideal as possible. They would afterwards observe the results and gauge the difference between 'desired' and 'achieved' outcome.

Sai liked the idea of systematically measuring progress. It made him focus and feel strangely warm and 'up-feeling', like a cork in water, when the gap between 'desired' and 'achieved' got so small he could barely see the difference between the two.

The day he had worked out the exact angle and pressure of putting an arm around a companion's shoulders he still treasured as something of a triumph. No longer did men turn cherry red and inch carefully away from his arm. No more did Sai need to worry about a startled kunoichi's slap - a plus considering that Sakura's slaps tended to introduce Sai's nose to the nearest concrete wall.

Progress in some areas were more difficult to measure than others, even when he tried enlisting help. Measuring his comprehension of park bench etiquette had almost convinced a little old lady that he was stalking her until Sakura had intervened.

It was all work-in-progress. Not so much 'baby steps' as 'ninja steps' - a measured creeping pace with each step placed as precisely and carefully possible, just in case there was an exploding tag about.

Anyway, if the Academy children were already going home, Sai's ideal test subject was likely on his way home too.

Sai adjusted his forehead protector. It was time for Ocular Communication Test Round One, and as the book had specified, there was only one place to go and one man to find.

Twenty minutes later, Sai was standing outside the grey door of Uchiha Sasuke's flat.

He pressed the doorbell and wondered which smile was most suitable for the occasion. Possibly I-Come-with-No-Intention-to-Maim Level Three, or Love-and-Peace Level Four, although the latter still needed a lot of work.

He had just settled on This-is-a-Cat-that-People-Consider-Cute-but-I-Don't-Know-Why-So-Let's-Smile-at-the-Cat-and-Call-It-Cute-Anyway when the door opened. Sai hadn't heard any approaching footsteps, but he wasn't in the least surprised.

Uchiha Sasuke looked out from over the chain-lock with an expression that was so unhelpfully stony and uncommunicative that Sai half-wondered if it was deliberate. A small crease formed between Sasuke's eyebrows.

"Naruto isn't here," said Sasuke, after a beat of uneasy silence, in which Sai had peered intently at the frown lines on Sasuke's forehead and decided that Sasuke was perhaps feeling deeply insecure, so it was up to Sai to be the bigger man in this conversation. "Sakura isn't here either. They're probably both still in the training field. If they're not there, I don't know where they are. Try Kakashi. He's stalked them before."

Wait, wait, this wasn't how a normal doorstep conversation was supposed to go.

It was supposed to start with a greeting. Then if the two knew each other reasonably well the person being visited was supposed to invite the visitor into their house.

Oh. Of course. This was the point where such treacherous factors as 'context' and 'situation' came into play and everything turned as intricate and tangled as a knitted model of the chakra system. Sasuke watched Sai flounder in the sea of social dos and don'ts in typically unsympathetic silence.

The corner of Sasuke's right eyebrow began to twitch.

Ah, eyebrow twitching, noted the sagely voice at the back of Sai's mind, the one he assigned to the wise Oonishiki-sensei, combined with the slight flaring of the nostrils, there is a high chance that test subject Uchiha, S. is feeling annoyed, irritated, and/or frustrated by your presence.

"Are you going to stand there staring at my forehead all day, or do you want something?" Sasuke sighed.

Sai weighed the relative merits of more forehead studying against reviewing his progress and decided on the latter. "Can I ask you a question?"

Narrowing eyes, and note the increasingly prominent twitches in the right eyebrow. "What?"

Sai took out Eyeball from his pocket and consulted the appendix. "On a scale of one to ten, how annoyed would you rate your current emotional status?"

The door slammed shut in Sai's face and Sasuke vanished from sight.

Wind-chimes hanging outside the neighbouring flat tinkled merrily in the summer breeze.

Taking a leaf in persistence out of Naruto's book, Sai pushed open the letter-flap and called in Sasuke's wake: "If you don't mind me making my own assessment, I shall consider that a seven."

There was no reply. To be honest Sai hadn't expected one. He let the letter-flap fall, dug inside his pocket and pulled out the timer. The whole conversation, starting from the moment Sasuke had opened the door and ending when he had closed it, had lasted a perfect nine minutes. Why? Why could he never stay for ten?

"I'll come back some other time," Sai informed the closed door.

There was a muffled thud from the other side. It could have been many things, but there was a certain hollow quality to it that sounded suspiciously like a head being banged against a wall.

There was a view of Konoha that Sai had long promised he would draw as soon as he got the chance to do so and the light was right.

It was from an old crumbling chimney stack of a laundry. If he sat there on a clear day, he could look down and out along the roads, along the houses, all the way to the main gates, and pretend that he could touch every roof he saw and paint their edges with sunshine.

After visiting Sasuke, Sai went to the laundry rooftop and stayed there long into the evening until the snack bars had put their lanterns in the street.

On reflection, Sai's first test with Uchiha Sasuke had not been a total disaster. It may have gone more smoothly if Sai had taken less time to examine Sasuke's face, but at least he had correctly identified the signs of early onset irritation.

It would certainly have helped if Sasuke had stuck to more typical doorstep conversation conventions.

He slid a bookmark into the middle of Eyeball-rolling Chapter 3: The Elevation of Eyebrows

and turned out the lights. Tomorrow he was going to have an early start to make the most of another free day.

...A scrape of rubber on tile, a puff of dislodged moss and a feather-light touchdown on the window-sill.

The next instant Naruto was pinned to the opposite wall of Sai's bedroom by fifteen kunai and ten shuriken like a cutout of a jogging man.

Naruto spat the shuriken from his mouth."Sai! How many times do we have tell you this? You can't just assume that every guy coming in through your window is some kind of enemy ninja trying to kill you and steal your stuff!"

Sai indicated the clock on his bedside table. "Naruto, it's one in the morning."

"So? It's ninja visiting hours. Totally legit until four. Ask Kakashi-sensei." When Sai still looked perplexed and somewhat uncomfortable with the idea, Naruto laughed. "It's great to see you back, Sai. Now, a little help getting down, maybe?"

"Oh no - "Sakura ducked the shuriken that came spinning towards her eyes "- leave Naruto on the wall, Sai. He's looking perfectly comfortable where he is."

"Sakura-chan!"

Sakura settled on the window sill and smiled across the room. "Welcome home, Sai."

Neither seemed as panicked or desperate as Sai would expect if they were looking for aid in an emergency mission, so he lowered his hands with their fistfuls of weapons. "Thank you, but did this really have to be said right now at this time of the night?"

Sakura frowned. "Didn't you get Naruto's note?"

"I sprayed it on your door," Naruto chimed in, then whimpered when there was a tearing sound from the seams of his trousers.

Sai dimly remembered the huge orange 'WE WOZ HERE' that he had spent an hour wiping off his door on his return from the laundry rooftop. "Somebody had vandalised the entrance, yes."

Naruto starting squawking with outrage before Sakura cut him off with a look. "We actually came by earlier to see if you wanted to go for dinner, but you were out. What were you doing, Sai?"

"Sketching," he said, "and establishing communications with Uchiha Sasuke."

Naruto made a sound like a cat being trodden on: "What?"

"Establishing communications?" Sakura repeated uncertainly. "With Sasuke-kun? I see. That's..interesting, and how did that go?"

"It was educational. I learned that studying Uchiha Sasuke's face for a long time tends to make him uncomfortable and has a high chance of irritating him, and - " He suddenly noticed that Sakura's lips were pressed firmly into a tight thin line, and that the muscles at the corners of her mouth were twitching, a sign that she was - " - are you suppressing the urge to laugh, snort or giggle uncontrollably at something I have said, or am currently doing?"

"No, no, definitely not suppressing anything," Sakura wheezed, hugging her diaphragm. "But generally, Sai, staring at a person's face when they don't know why you're staring at them would irritate anybody, not just Sasuke-kun."

"I see," Sai turned to Naruto, who was still hung like a drying starfish on the wall and trying to unpick the kunai from his sleeves. "But it was mentioned that communicating with Sasuke was all about the eyes and the face. How did you come to understand this without careful study?"

Naruto finally freed his arms. He paused in removing the kunai stuck through his trousers to scrunch up his face. "It's kind of weird, but I've never really had to try as such. I don't know. I just get him, or maybe he kind of lets me get him. Sorry, man, I guess that doesn't really help."

Sai pondered on Naruto's reply until he was struck by an idea.

"So, this is a normal thing for friends to do? If they're friends? Am I right?"He gestured at Sakura at the open window and at Naruto who was fumbling for a kunai that had come precariously close to increasing the degree of asymmetry of his groin. "Visiting each other through the window at strange hours of the night. Because a friendship should not have time restrictions, and coming in through the window is a sign of trust that that person in bed is not going to kill you on waking. Yes, that certainly makes some sense."

Naruto and Sakura exchanged a nervous look as Sai paced in front of his bed. "Maybe I should try visiting Sasuke through his bedroom window - "

"NO!" said Naruto and Sakura in unison.

"Why not? Don't you visit him through his window at hours people would usually call inconvenient and intrusive as well?"

Sakura took a deep breath. "Sai, please just take it from us. You do not want to give Sasuke a surprise visit from his window."

"Why?"

"Sasuke-kun really doesn't like being disturbed. Naruto knows that, but - "

"Like I'd let his moods get in the way." Naruto yanked out a kunai from under his armpit and, at last, slid down the wall to land in a heap at its bottom. "Gods, that bastard's mood when he wakes up! It's like he thinks he's the reincarnation of a demon lord, or a demon cat...Yeah, a demon really pissed off cat."

"Naruto tries to visit him anyway, and - er - " Sakura pursed her lips and Sai narrowed his eyes. Whatever was happening between Naruto and Sasuke was clearly of some concern to her. "- there's some kind of war going on. And Sasuke-kun's window is the frontline."

"Hey, it's not like I didn't give Sasuke a chance to stop me," Naruto objected.

Sakura folded her arms. "Really?"

Naruto's smile widened into a crooked grin. "Yep. I totally did. I said, 'Hey, Sasuke, I'll leave you alone on one condition. I want a recording of you saying, 'Who dares disturb me from my slumber?' on tape to keep for all posterity'."

"What did he do?" Sakura asked in a kind of awed 'what-root-vegetable-do-you-have-between-your-ears-instead-of-a-brain' horror, the kind that only Naruto could inspire.

"I'm not sure. I think something went flash, and then bang, and then zip-zap-zip, and then I woke up covered in chicken and rice in the Inuzuka dog trough and Kiba's mum was standing over me with some kind of massive spoon."

Sakura winced in sympathy. She cleared her throat and turned back to Sai. "The moral of that story, Sai," she paused to check that what she was about to say next was idiot-proof, perhaps in the same way a mother might check a new toy for sharp edges, "is don't visit Sasuke at night through any of his windows."

A pity. Sai had been getting curious to see what kind of traps Sasuke had set up. For the time-being, however, he nodded and Sakura turned her attention to the state of his room.

Sai braced himself. Generally speaking it was tidy enough for his needs, but she always disapproved of something - be it the lack of decoration, the empty plates on the table, or the breadcrumbs he had failed to sweep away after charcoal-sketching.

Tonight, her eyes fell upon his bookcase and its expanding collection of paperbacks, then alighted on the slim red book on his bedside table.

She pointed at Eyeball from the window frame. "Is that a new book?"

"No," he replied quickly, stuffing down a curious urge to shove it under his pillow. "It is a treatise and it is probably quite old, although, yes, it is new to me."

Sakura peered at the book again and a thought crossed her mind."You're getting through those books really quickly, aren't you, Sai? Look at the size of your collection. It's practically a library."

Naruto crossed the room to the bookcase. After a moment of squinting suspiciously at the titles, he selected a bright pink volume Sai recognised as Sarcasm is so Easy by Mamushigawa Maruko. "Are these books actually helpful, Sai?"

"Yes."

Naruto seemed a little taken aback by Sai's response, but he replaced the book on the shelf and nodded nonetheless. "Alright. If you say so. I guess I'll have to take your word for it but, Sai, a lot of these things are probably easier to work out if you spent more time hanging with people rather than these old books, you know?"

"Spending time with people doesn't come easily to me, Naruto."

Naruto frowned. "Well, yeah, I get that, so you need practice, right?"

"Naruto," Sakura cut in, "I don't think you do get Sai."

"What do you mean?"

Sakura hopped off the window sill and went to examine the bookcase alongside Naruto. "Think, Naruto. Apart from Sai, how many ex-Root ninja do you know actually regularly come out into Konoha society? Tsunade's got a list of them. There should still be about twenty or so in active service, but I've never seen a girl with a seahorse tattoo anywhere. All the ex-Root ninja practically vanish outside of missions. They keep to themselves. Compared to them, Sai's a social butterfly."

There was a pause, in which Naruto looked at Sai and mouthed 'butterfly', apparently as incredulous with the comparison to a nectar-sucking flying insect as Sai himself.

Naruto scratched the back of his head. "Well, they've got to be around Konoha somewhere. What do you think, Sai? Are there actually ex-Root Anonymous sessions going on in town that all the rest of us just know nothing about?"

Sai shook his head. "I highly doubt it."

Whether he would recognise a fellow member of Root if they passed him in the street was also doubtful. The few group trainings they had had had been done in masks under conditions of complete silence and total chakra suppression, communication reduced to rapid ANBU signing code when it was desperately needed. When even the members of Root could not distinguish one individual from another, Danzo had called that a success.

To cloud the eyes of the enemy, then they needed to cloud the eyes of the allies. Danzo was thorough in his control of his shadows. He blinkered them to each other so that they looked at and saw only him and no other. It was only one of his brutally efficient methods for shaping his personally selected tools.

"You know, Sai, this library of yours," said Sakura contemplatively, considering the bookcase again, "I reckon other Root members might find it useful too."

"Do you think so?" Sakura nodded. He looked at his collection and tried to imagine others struggling through them in the same way he had. It was an interesting idea. "I could put together a book-list, if that would be any help."

"I was thinking more along the lines of you opening up a borrowing service and potential reading group for the ex-Root ninjas, Sai."

But, surely 'reading group' was an oxymoron? Reading was such a personal, private and quiet experience. How could it be possibly be done in a group? How could anybody gain from being in the company of people doing and saying nothing but turning pages?

More importantly Root ninjas did not form groups. Two was a cell. Any number, however, higher than two was considered 'one' again.

"From what I've seen - well, I guess, 'not seen' is the better term, ex-Root ninjas haven't integrated back into Konoha society at all as well as we'd all hoped." Experience had taught Sakura to spell anything important out as slowly as possible. "This might be a good way of getting them to come out more and meet people. And it'll all be under the guidance of somebody who understands exactly how they feel and what they find difficult, and knows how to go about sorting those problems."

Sai looked at Sakura's expectant face and it finally clicked. "Me?"

"What do you think, Sai?" Naruto started drawing shapes in the air with his arms. "You could have a sign-up stall! With a great big banner over it saying, 'Sai's Library', and everything. Hey, I'll make it for you! This thing will be so much fun."

"Fun?"

"Definitely. Oh, and you've got to have library cards," Naruto added, nodding gravely. "With embarrassing mugshots of all the people who signed up."

Would it really be fun?

"And we'll have to find one of those stamps that the librarians beat up their books with, or maybe we could ask Konoha Library if Sai could borrow one?" Naruto turned to Sakura, who was smiling and watching as Sai quietly turned over and wrestled with the concept of 'fun'.

Fun.

Drawing was fun. Spending time with Team Seven was fun, or it was, until Sasuke had cramped up the table. Watching little children's faces when he conjured up an ink rabbit from his scrolls and sent it hopping down the street was fun.

More recently, listening to Sasuke bang his head against a wall had also probably been fun.

Sai rather liked fun.

He modulated his smile category and level to I-am-Sincerely-Trying-to-Look-Sincere Level Five.

"I...like the sound of that."

Naruto craned his neck over the edge of the gutter.

Nothing. Not even a crackle of static.

It was all very quiet tonight, so quiet that he could hear his own heart beating in his chest loud as a festival drum and he thought it a miracle his target hadn't heard it.

Or perhaps his target had heard him, but was waiting for him to make the first move.

Naruto huffed and crouched down on the tiles. As if he was going to fall for that trap again. If a waiting game was what they were going to play, then Naruto was going to play it to win.

The night was warm and thick as a treacle pudding and it wasn't long before a sheet of sweat was sliding down the back of his neck. Naruto thoughts turned wistfully to his bed, with its cool sheets and electric fan within arm's reach, shielded by one of mankind's most precious inventions - a mosquito net.

He slapped at a little bugger that had whined in his ears and dared to land on his arm.

"The things I sacrifice for our friendship," he muttered, looking over the gutter at the window again. "Honestly, what would you do without me?"

Gripping the edge of the roof with his fingers, Naruto jumped, twisted and swung his body over in a long fluid arc, bringing both his feet up for a neat touchdown on the unsuspecting window-sill...

The air rippled and the curtains vanished.

"Damn it, a genjutsu!"

The window-sill was lined with three gleaming spools of ninja wire, and, drawing closer to the ledge, Naruto saw that it wasn't just the sill. Wires encircled the entire window frame and had been draped across the glass like tentacles. They threaded under the latch into the bedroom, where they snaked across dark blue covers and ended wrapped around the fingers of one Uchiha Sasuke.

Who was now very much awake and trying his damned hardest to electrocute Naruto on landing.

Lightning screamed down the wires in a burst of sizzling blue-white light.

A split-second choice between jumping face first into a wall or being fried to a ninja crisp. Naruto flipped his body away from the window and crunched into the plaster, ducking to avoid a shower of sparks that had been scooped from the wires by the wind.

Brick and plaster dust settled like a grimy snowfall. Or dandruff.

Hinges squeaked and Sasuke pushed open the window.

"Hah! You missed me, bastard!" Naruto unstuck a hand from the wall to shake a triumphant fist in Sasuke's direction. "Got to wake up earlier to catch this Hokage-in-Waiting!"

At the sound of his voice, Sasuke's eyes slid sideways and down.

Covered head-to-toe in a fine white powder, Naruto's clothes were smoking, every hair on his head was standing on end and an impression of his face had been left in the side of the building.

Sasuke clicked his tongue and turned away.

"Oh no, you are not blanking me after that electric window stunt!" Naruto called after him, loud enough that the whole neighbourhood could probably hear him, but that was okay - public humiliation was just another weapon in Naruto's arsenal. "Just what the heck was that, Sasuke? That actually might have killed someone!"

Sasuke regarded him down his nose. "It was a giant cockroach trap."

"Yeah?" Naruto looked wide-eyed over his shoulders, squinted into the alley and shrugged. "Well, I don't see any cockroaches, so sorry to break it to you, but your trap's failing."

"Naruto, what do you want?"

The window frame was still crackling but Naruto inched tentatively along the wall towards it anyway. "Er...ninja visiting hours?"

"Go home."

"Shan't," he shot back with glee.

"What are you? A child?"

Naruto grasped hold of the drainpipe and hung from it by one hand. "Takes one to know one," he ground out through gritted teeth. "Alright, clear the gangway!"

He kicked off the wall and propelled himself feet first through the open window.

"I'm in!" Naruto crowed, shaking the plaster out of his hair and throwing himself onto Sasuke's bed. "I win this round! Which leaves the score at a nice, round two hundred and thirty one to...what was it? Two?"

Sasuke straightened from where he had dropped to the floor in a crouch like a spooked wildcat and closed the window with a sharp click. "Naruto, you insufferable - "

"Yes, yes, I get it, I get it. You're pissed that I disturbed your beauty sleep and someday you're going to shred me alive, feed me piece by piece to your pet chickens and turn my skull into a nest-box, but that someday is not this day, because I am already in your room, and you won't blow up your room," Naruto said with a smile of conviction. When Sasuke didn't move from the window, he added, "Look, if you're still pissed, you can try killing me tomorrow. I'll get clearance from Tsunade and everything."

Sasuke's murderous expression softened from a promise of death to all blond citizens of Konoha to a mere threat, before finally shifting to a suggestion that he was open to negotiations and would settle for just the one sacrificial offering.

"So?" Naruto prompted, once Sasuke had stretched his arms and let residue static disperse. "How's it going at the Academy? Any more kids fainting in fear at the sight of you? You know that they're keeping a tally in the staff room about that?"

Sasuke crossed his arms and leaned back against the window. "That friend of yours came here today."

"Friend of mine?" Naruto repeated, loathe to point out that unlike Sasuke he had plenty of friends.

"The one who looks like me." Sasuke scowled. "Sai."

Well, this was convenient. Naruto had been wondering how to broach the subject of Sai's 'Sasuke Communication' project, but if it was the first thing that Sasuke wanted to talk about that meant he had brooded on it, which was, with Sasuke's history, worrying. "Yeah, he told me he visited you."

"And you've talked to him since, clearly. What does he want from me?"

"He doesn't want anything from..." Naruto paused as he realised that strictly speaking that wasn't true. "Actually, he probably wants you to give him a chance."

"To do what exactly? Stare at my forehead again?"

Naruto couldn't resist laughing, even as Sasuke's expression hardened. "Is that what he did? Maybe he was using some special trick he read in one of those books of his. I remember when he tried to use a dog-training trick on me once. Something about a bell and a bowl of ramen."

Sasuke raised his eyebrows. It mystified him to no end how anybody could trust what was written in those kind of books. Especially after what he had discovered in Oto...

Naruto scratched the back of his head. He had suspected that things were going to be difficult, but judging by Sasuke's reaction, Sai had tried to learn bog-snorkelling by jumping headfirst into the deepest bog he could find and was now in desperate need of back-up before he drowned. "He's trying to get to know you."

Sasuke snorted. "So that the copy can replace the original?"

The words had slipped out before Sasuke could stop them and he instantly regretted it. They sounded petty and bitter even to his own ears.

Naruto slowly sat up and looked Sasuke straight in the eye. "Did you seriously just say what I thought you just said, or are you breeding a mutant talking mosquito strain in here with your toxic 'woe-is-me' clouds?"

"There is no need for me and that friend of yours to be friends."

Any other person might have found Sasuke's refusal to call Sai by name almost comically childish. For Naruto it summoned up far too many ghosts of a grudge that had cracked their team apart. "Sasuke, have you got something else against Sai that's not just about him being...Sai?"

Sasuke went silent and it was much too telling for Naruto's liking.

"Well, of the two of you, I think I know which one is looking more like the adult here." Sasuke twitched and Naruto grinned. It was still gleefully easy to get under his skin. Why did everybody else seem to find it so difficult? "At least Sai's working with the problem. You're just...doing what you always do."

"And what's that?"

Naruto flapped his hands, clucked, and wondered if he was going to live to see the dawn: "You're - pockawp! - chickening."

Ringing, cold, disbelieving silence that such insolence had been uttered in Sasuke's presence under his very own roof.

"Guess it all makes sense now, doesn't it?" Naruto went on, prodding and probing with the same giddy abandon as he might at a beehive and he could see the beehive beginning to stir. "Why you've got meat-eating chickens as summons. Why the back of your head looks like an impaled duck." He lowered his voice to a scathing whisper. "It's because you're the King of Chickening from your problems, Sasuke."

A tremor ran down the length of Sasuke's body.

There were a number of reasons why Sasuke had tried to warn Naruto away from his late night visits. Aside from the obvious that Naruto was a pain Sasuke was inflicted enough with during the daylight hours, it was also, to some extent, for Naruto's own good, and to ease the suffering of Sasuke's neighbours.

Perhaps it had something to do with his time with Orochimaru, when Kabuto had liked to drop surprises into Sasuke's room in the form of deadly mutant monsters and lock the door. Waking to a 'disturbance' in a foul mood, ready to scream curses so toxic they could punch holes in the atmosphere, and prepared to kill anything that dared so much as scuttle had become a mental reflex. The moments just after Sasuke was woken from sleep were the times his temper was at its least restrained and his judgement at its most impaired

In other words, there was no likelier time that Sasuke would blow something up.

And Naruto knew that, of course, which was why he kept coming back, supposedly to help Sasuke out of that unfortunate habit.

Sasuke really wished that he wouldn't because asking Yamato to fix the roof, and sending apologies around all the neighbours to convince them that, yes, he was sane and didn't need to be put in an asylum for the sake of public safety was becoming a chore.

But Naruto just wouldn't leave him alone, and with that quip about chickens (and the duck) he was definitely asking for it.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, the night patrol received word that a concerned citizen had called to report a disturbance in the flat above her.

This team of fine upstanding ninjas with the misfortune to be on patrol at that ungodly hour leapt gallantly to the occasion, ready to engage in 'hot pursuit' should the situation require it, but on arrival at the block of flats they slowed to an instinctive stop. Flashing lights and ominous creaks and groans rising from the entire length of the building tended to have that effect on any sensible ninja.

As per tradition, the patrol sent their youngest and greenest officer to scout out the scene. If anything went wrong for him, they could call it character-building and laugh it off in hospital later, such was patrol camaraderie!

The officer returned at a run, his face bloodless and sweat breaking out on his forehead.

"Report," barked the patrol captain.

The officer slapped the back of his hand to his forehead in a textbook salute.

"Sir! Yes, sir!" His enthusiastic salute flagged. "It's Uchiha Sasuke, sir."

The captain frowned. "Isn't he supposed to be under ANBU watch?"

"Sir! Yes, sir! But the ANBU watching him have decided to sit out on this one, sir!"

The other officers tittered until the captain glared them into silence. "Did they say why?"

"Sir! Yes, sir! Because Uzumaki Naruto is with him, sir!"

The captain raised his eyebrows as something . "Ah. I see. And they trust Uzumaki Naruto to have control over the situation?"

"Sir, they hope so, sir! They said that getting in between them just isn't worth the risk, sir! And they also wanted to let you know that they've got a betting pool as to how long the fight will be and who will win, sir, which the patrol are very welcome to join in with, sir!"

There was a crackle of lightning, the window shattered, and a blast of air swirled out of the flat to sweep up the glass and scatter it down the alley.

"Captain?" prompted one of the officers tentatively.

The captain swallowed and closed his eyes. As much as it was the Uzumaki Naruto and the Uchiha Sasuke, the patrol had their responsibilities of maintaining public order and in front of a young rookie officer he had to set the best example he could.

"Tell the ANBU that we won't be taking part in their bet, but that we will take their advice to heart, and leave it to the two young gentlemen to resolve their differences without interference. However, in light of a complaint from a civilian, we are morally obligated to try to reduce the disturbance. And, no thank you, the patrol does not gamble whilst on duty."

At the officer's stricken look the captain felt a twinge of guilt. It was never much fun being sent back to the ANBU with such a disapproving message, but the officer saluted and disappeared from the roof.

"Megaphone, please." His second-in-command handed the captain the huge loud-hailer he had strapped to his back.

The captain breathed in, cleared his throat and lifted the megaphone to his mouth: "To all those in the residence of Uchiha Sasuke, attention please. This is the night patrol speaking. We have received reports of a disturbance in the area, largely attributed to an overpowered fight in a confined space. We will not ask that you desist, but would like to suggest that you keep the noise down and- " the roof of Sasuke' flat blew off in an explosion of wood and tiles, and smoking pieces of rubble rained down onto the road and into the neighbouring balconies "- lower the level of firepower to the socially acceptable norms for fighting within a small domestic environment. Please note that any surrounding property damage will be severely punished by the Hokage. Also..." The captain paused and pulled out a crumpled memo from his pocket. "Captain Yamato has asked me to add that he looks forward to seeing Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke repairing Sasuke's roof the 'old-fashioned way', as he has grown tired of fixing it every three days and wishes them to learn the value of having a roof over their heads."

Somebody was cursing. Apparently a new dispute had begun as to who exactly was responsible for blowing open Uchiha Sasuke's roof. Meanwhile, lights were spluttering on in windows, curtains twitching and angry voices starting to rise from the other rooms.

"Well, we tried to reduce the disturbance," the captain remarked, as the young officer returned from delivering his message to the ANBU. The captain folded the memo into his breast pocket and returned the megaphone to his second-in-command.

"With all due respect, sir," replied the officer, still breathing hard from having dodged the falling rubble on his way back, "they heard your message loud and clear, sir. I don't think we can do much more."

"Quite so," the captain agreed. "The important thing is that we made known our presence at the scene and were able to professionally assess that it would not require our intervention."

"So, we're like the rubber stamp of approval?" said one of the other officers wryly.

The captain cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. "In which case, back to Patrol Route B, gentlemen!"

"And woman!" came a high-pitched shriek from the back.

"Gentlemen, and woman. I stand corrected."

The patrol team left the roof and returned to their usual course.

In the good old days, this was the part where the captain would have rung a bell, shouted the time and declared that all was well. The captain of the night patrol made no secret at the patrol base that he was rather partial to seeing the tradition re-introduced.

After all, nobody would fault that peace in Konoha was something worth ringing a bell about.

At the sound of gentle knocking, Yamato glanced up from his notes.

There was a thin shadow crouched at his window. As he looked, it lowered its hand, as though unsure as to what its hands were supposed to be doing, paused, then lifted to knock again.

Pushing open the curtains, Yamato squinted past the glare of the moonlight. When he recognised the young man he was pleasantly surprised.

He slid up the window with a smile. "This is unusual, Sai. What brings you here?"

Sai glanced over his shoulders. Anybody else would have thought he was embarrassed to be there, but Yamato knew better and old habits died hard. Not many places were quite as exposed as clinging to the face of a building.

"Apparently these are," Sai lowered his voice, kept his gaze fixed over his shoulders, "ninja visiting hours."

Yamato chuckled and opened the window wider. "So they are, so they are. Well, come on in then. You've already earned a cup of tea just by knocking. Kakashi-san isn't nearly so civil."

Sai dropped into the room and Yamato shut the window behind him before any of the summer mosquitoes could follow. "Have a seat. Would you like a drink? It's a warm night tonight"

"Yes. Thank you."

Yamato returned with a jug of cold barley tea. Sai had already sat down and was looking at the notes spread across the table. He glanced up when Yamato set the drink down in front of him. "Did I disturb you in the middle of something?"

"No, not at all. I should have finished going over these notes hours ago." Yamato sat down and shuffled the sheets together into a more orderly pile. "Anyway, never mind those. I'll tell you about all that tomorrow."

Something in Yamato's tone snagged at Sai's attention. He narrowed his eyes. "Actually, I'd rather hear about it now."

"Really? Are you sure? At this hour of the morning?" Sai's expression remained stubbornly stony. Yamato blew out his cheeks and caved. "Well, since you're here I guess now is as good a time as any. Tsunade called me in for an urgent meeting in the evening. We've had a call from our friends in Suna."

"From Suna? About what?"

"Apparently trouble. One of their ninjas got a tip-off from a contact in the black market about some ex-Oto ninjas who are banding together again. They call themselves the Echoes." Yamato poured himself another cup of tea. "The noise in the underworld is that they're planning on obtaining a certain artefact and auctioning it to the highest bidder."

"What's the artefact?"

"According to the contact, a dossier of Orochimaru's research." Yamato fixed Sai with a significant look. "A book, in fact."

"The old man's book," Sai said, lowering his glass and understanding quickly. "The big grey one?"

Yamato nodded and folded his arms. "Given the timings of his appearance and the emergence of the Echoes there's almost no doubt about it."

"The old man said that we needed to get the book to Tsunade," Sai recalled quietly.

"And that she had to read it and destroy it, yes," Yamato grimaced, "which is somewhat of a difficulty at the moment."

But reading was easy, Sai could attest to that. "I don't understand."

"Well, you can't read something that's unreadable and that whole grey book's been written in code, and it's apparently utterly and completely scrambled. Cryptographics are saying it's the hardest code they've ever seen. Can't see anything resembling sense in it at all, but that old Oto ninja clearly intended Tsunade to know what had been written in that book, so we've got to decode the book before it goes to an incinerator."

Sai sipped at his drink. It was cool with a clean wheaty tang. "I see."

"Until then, it's going to be kept under guard and the rest of us have to keep our eyes peeled for possible infiltrators. If they're already advertising a potential auction, those Echoes are already dead set on coming to Konoha and they're rather worryingly confident in their chances of getting their hands on the book." Yamato laughed and tapped his hand on the table between him and Sai. "So, what do you know? I had you check that book as a potential bomb, turned out it was kind of proverbial bomb after all."

Sai found himself studying the tabletop with all its twisting whorls and grooves. Flakes of metal from sharpening kunai had become engrained in the wood. "Is that something I should apologise for?"

"No, Sai. Not at all. We were just unlucky. Neither of us need apologise for anything." Yamato frowned into his barley tea as though he was trying to persuade it to turn into something a good deal stronger. "Although now I'm just itching to find out what that book's got inside it that's so important. I hope decryption get their act together soon."

Sounds of the night patrol trying to break up a ninja fight drifted in through the window. Yamato had a vague feeling he knew which part of the town the amplified voice was coming from.

"Anyway," Yamato went on brightly, distracting himself from the thought of another blown open roof by refilling his barley tea, "let's put that topic to one side. Is everything alright with you, Sai?"

On second thought, that sudden change of topic might have been a little too sudden for Sai, but it showed just how much progress Sai had made since the end of the War that he took it in his stride. Yamato was just a little bit proud of him.

"I am fine," Sai responded, before adding as an afterthought, "I think, but fine is quite complicated."

Yamato wrapped his hands around his cup and nodded. "That's good to hear."

"Why do you ask?"

"You're visiting me during ninja visiting hours," Yamato replied simply, but when Sai continued to look at him as though expecting more, he cast around for an explanation. "Traditionally, Sai, ninja visiting hours were the time in which those ninjas who couldn't sleep went out and visited others who were willing to talk when sleep wasn't an option they could bear facing, if you get my drift of things."

Sai shut down on the thought that Yamato was sitting perfectly still and wasn't drifting anywhere, and kept his face blank. "Oh."

"Although, times have changed." Yamato sat back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. "Nowadays it seems to be an excuse for friends to drop by whenever and wherever they please or feel they're needed."

"That's what Naruto told me."

"Ah, I see, I see." A thought occurred to Yamato and he broke into a smile. "Let me guess, you thought you'd test ninja visiting hours on me?"

"Should I have not?"

Yamato laughed and shook his head. "Go ahead and do all the testing you like. I'm honoured that you consider me as one of your friends. Yes, ninja visiting hours...It's the open windows policy, for the people who still find an open doors policy much too open for comfort. Having said all that, perhaps things are changing again. What with the war and what they've seen, I'd imagine it will take a long time for some to sleep easy again."

The incense coil on the sideboard gave out with a soft hiss and dropped a length of grey ash into a tray. Yamato rose from the table to change it for a new one and Sai refilled both cups of barley tea,the ice clinking in the jug.

"Of course, ninja visiting hours is open to abuse as well." Yamato shook the matchstick out and stubbed it in the tray. "Naruto-kun enjoys treading on Sasuke's patience far too much with it, and Kakashi-san could really take a leaf out of your book and knock, otherwiseImust just start taking a leaf out of Sasuke's book! But I'm not complaining about having people visit. It's lovely to have company." Because it didn't take much for Sai to get the wrong end of the stick, Yamato added: "The window's always open for you, Sai."

"...Thank you."

A bird trilled in a nearby pine, its song warbling and a little confused. Yamato paid it no attention. It was getting to that strange shadowy hour of the morning when even the birds seemed to have lost all sense of time. "So, is there anything you'd like to talk about?"

He settled into patient silence as Sai fished for a topic and the clock ticked evenly on.

Eventually, a glimpse of Yamato's book cabinet gave Sai the inspiration for conversation that he needed.

"Tomorrow," he told Yamato, "I am starting a library."

Outside the convenience store was parked a blue van. Just as the sun rose, the doors opened and a man from the Konoha Publications Office stepped out. Clipboard resting in the crook of his arm, he checked off each box of as it was unloaded and carried into the store, yawned, and checked the time on his watch.

Inside the store, the workers unsealed the boxes for the morning papers with cutter knives, peeled away the tape and began to stack them on the shelves.

Once that was done, there was still plenty of time before the earliest risers started to come in through the doors. One worker took the broadsheet from the top of the pile and snapped it open to examine the headlines.

EXPOSED!

proclaimed the front page in bold block capitals.

MAMUSHIGAWA MARUKO, GURU OF THE SOCIALLY CHALLENGED, HER TRUE IDENTITY REVEALED!

POPULAR SELF-HELP AUTHORESS REVEALED TO BE NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL NINJA SCIENTIST

Thank you for reading!

Next time: How to Raise Funds for Ethically Questionable Projects - Sai's library looks for members and scandal hits Konoha.

Best, Zen :D