The Hokage was a bit upset when he heard the confirmation that Orochimaru was indeed in the village. On the other hand, he also had a geniune battle which validated his reasoning for Bakura's class. Bakura mentioned that several of the children in the Academy showed potential, and he would be willing to teach them.

Iruka still wasn't happy about that.

Naruto's team was still recovering from the encounter a day later. They had split up after helping Hinata's group get their scroll.

Naruto had crashed, unused to opening a shadow portal and had yet to wake up. Shino was still having trouble staying awake, and Sasuke was on look out. He was the only one still fully awake.

Shino and Sasuke had set up a series of traps invisible to most eyes.

The sound genin came, intent on killing Sasuke. Shino awoke to sounds of battle, and found Sasuke at the ends of his strength. He immediately summoned a monster he was still trying to control. A creature called the Great Moth.

Despite a real effort by the sound Ninja, the moth sent them packing. Now his main problem was getting it to behave.

Naruto woke up finally, took one look at the Moth and opened up a portal, which Shino promptly kicked it through.

Because Naruto packed for longer than a week, they had enough food. Sasuke still caught a few fish, mostly for something hot to eat.

Anko didn't know what to think of the crystal earrings Bakura gave her. Sure she knew most girls got jewelry by their boyfriends/husbands/lovers but she never expected him to. He was the most callous, uncaring, cruel and sadistic man she had ever met. He even beat Orochimaru in terms of sadism.

But...whenever he was with Naruto or her, he changed. It was small, hard to notice, but it was there. He lost a bit of his edge and his homicidal tendancies was curbed more. She even talked to his brother, or what everyone assumed was his younger brother, and he said his behaviour was highly unusual. Something about him not giving a damn about others before now.

Another thing bothered her...how did Bakura know exactly what to give her? And in her favorite color no less? Sure they had been dating for over a year, but when did he pick up on the little things?

Naruto helped Sasuke beat up the Water nin, while Shino kept his eyes on Kabuto. Naruto warned their stoic friend that he didn't trust him because of the aura he let off. And that was more than enough for Shino to keep half an eye on him.

Now they had to find the damn tower!

They entered the tower, listened politely to Iruka, and waited for the third test to begin. Instead they ran into Bakura who informed them that they had to lower the number of applicants down. Apparently more than they anticipated had passed, so they had to fight an opponent to take the third exam. Naruto groaned in horror.

"Nii-chan, there was a snake freak in the forest and he completely screwed up my chakra control!"

Bakura let Sasuke know which room he would be in. Then he took Naruto inside it...where a man with whiter hair than Bakura was standing there.

"Naruto, this is Jiraiya. He happens to be a seal master. Jiraiya, could you see if you can break the seal on him?"

Naruto did exactly what the weird toad guy told him, and felt immensely better when he removed the newer seal from his stomach. Then he went back to the arena while the two talked.

Jiraiya was both impressed and suspicious of the white haired jounin. Impressed because he rose through the ranks so quickly...and suspicious about his intentions towards Naruto.

"Old man, the only reason I happen to be here is because a trio of gods with nothing better to do sent me. And once I found out how bad the villagers treated my little brother, I had to do something."

"How bad was it?"

"They hated him. There were a few who didn't, mainly Iruka, Kakashi and the Hokage, but the civilians would have killed him if given the chance. Naruto only wanted to become a ninja because while they hated him, they at least didn't go out of their way to actively make his life hell."

Jiraiya seemed perturbed, and Bakura noticed it.

"I'm...Naruto's godfather. I knew his parents."

"Mind telling me who his father is? I want to have words with the bastard."

"He's dead. He died sealing the Kyuubi into his own son."

Bakura scowled.

"Yeah, I figured as much when the fox ranted about how he would like to have words with Naruto's father."

Jiraiya choked.

"You...spoke to the fox!"

"He's my favorite rant buddy."

Jiraiya agreed to train Naruto until it was time for the third half of the exam. Sasuke would go with Kakashi for Sharingan training, while Shino would train with his family.

Which left a very bored Bakura. No assignments, no missions and no brats to train. All his students were training for the last half of the exam or for the battle which would most likely come during.

Luckily for the Hokage (and the ANBU who had to clean up whenever Bakura was feeling particularly murderous and went on a minor killing spree) Anko was free for the month.

So Bakura did the one thing which always amused him. He asked Anko out on a date. Several times.

Bakura took Anko to her favorite dango shop and said "Dango's on me."

As they chatted, Bakura took one drink too many and kissed Anko. Surprised, but not in the mood to clock her boyfriend, she kissed him back. It was then that Bakura had a moment of clarity, despite being drunk off his ass.

He was deeply in love with Anko. They shared so many interests (torture, sadism, poison, dango, and they were ninja in the same department), plus they got along so well. Bakura knew when to back off and Anko always knew when she was about to go too far.

Once he figured out his true feelings, he decided to talk to Malik about what to do next. (More like he wanted to bum some cash off him to buy what he needed.)

"Oy, Malik. I need to borrow some cash off ya."

Such opening lines do not inspire confidence, particularly if the one saying them is a five thousand year old thief who had a tendancy to kill those who pissed him off.

'Then again...Bakura usually buys me drinks. Meh, maybe he'll tell me why he needs money this time.'

"Why, and how much do you need to borrow?" said Malik, honestly curious. He was taking a drink of the soda from the fridge when Bakura answered him. Ryou was in the kitchen cleaning up after lunch. He was only half paying attention when he heard his former yami reply.

"I need about 50,000 ryo for a ring."

A loud crash was heard from the kitchen at the same time Malik began choking on his drink.

"Come again?" said Malik, sputtering. His soda almost slipped from his hand before he realized he had a drink in it. Ryou fortunately stopped the fall before more got on the carpet, his eyes wide in complete shock.

Bakura patiently said "I need about 50,000 for a ring. Did I stutter?"

Ryou finally asked the question both were now wondering, "Gift or...?"

Bakura gave his former hikari an annoyed look, "Engagement."

Both boys fell over in a dead faint. He decided to speed up their recovery by going into the kitchen, ignoring the broken plates and grabbed a large mixing bowl. He filled it up to the brim with freezing cold water, walked back to the door and hit both boys with it. They came to sputtering and shivering.

Ryou stared at his yami in complete and utter shock. Never in his wildest imagining would he believe Bakura planned to get married. Even if the woman in question was practically his female double in almost every way. Malik took a good long look at his drinking buddy and said "Are you serious about this? No chance of you turning back?"

Bakura gave his coldest grin, "Took me till last night to realize I was actually in love with her. So yes, I am serious."

Ryou looked at Malik, and both boys came to a decision.

"We'll help pay, but on one condition."

Bakura looked at them shrewdly.

"What condition?"

"We help plan the wedding."

Bakura took a moment to fully realize what they had said. Since he honestly had no problem with male couples, (even if the more froufrou ones got on his nerves), he decided to accept their help. At least they had good taste.

Bakura had enlisted the help of Ryou and Malik to set up a date where he could ask Anko to marry him. the first thing on the menu was him cooking dinner, which she always loved because while she could find food in any forest or wilderness, she couldn't cook worth a damn. Bakura, on the other hand, was an excellent cook.

And right away, things went to hell. The stove wouldn't work, and Anko was coming over in ten minutes. So, in a desperate bid to make this work, he decided to improvise.

He was going to use a low level fire disk Sasuke showed him from his family scroll collection.

Anko would probably like the show as much as the food.

There was a knock at the door. Bakura opened it to reveal Anko dressed up for the date. She was grinning, wearing the earrings Bakura had gotten her a week ago.

"Am I late?"

"Not at all. Hope you don't mind eating off a campfire jutsu."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Stove decided to die on me."

She grinned.

Probably in protest for daring to allow Gai to cook on it two days ago.

Bakura didn t mind Gai's rather strange attitude. Just as long as he didn t do the Sunset of Youth thing in front of him. Last time that happened Gai was in the hospital for a week crying in a corner. Bakura and Anko had tried to correct some of his more disturbing training issues.

At least now Lee didn't wear that green monstrosity outside of training.

Bakura got to work while Anko chatted with him. He was making mac and cheese, something she hadn t had before. Once the noodles were tender enough, he put the cheese cubes, pepper, butter and milk in.

The fire disk Sasuke taught him was working just as well as his stove, if not better. That is, until some idiot genin startled him with an explosive light tag outside the window courtesy of a poorly thrown kunai.

Bakura cursed, then realized with horror that the idiot kid had caused him to burn the macaroni and cheese.

He stuck his head out to see who the idiot kid was that he planned to torture...er, train.

It wasn t a Konoha genin. It was some idiot from Iwa. The fool took one look at him and grinned evilly. The grin Bakura sent back at him made the kid realize how screwed he was now.

Since the dinner was definitely ruined, Bakura said "How would you like to spend the next hour torturing some schmuck from Iwa?"

"He the reason that you overpowered that jutsu?"

Bakura gave a grimace in return.

Anko's nose twitched at the smell of burnt cheese, noodles and sour milk.

Bakura heard a noise, and growled.

"Dammit, I wanted to kill him! Get back here Neko!" yelled Bakura.

"First come, first serve," retorted Cat, who's real name was Yugato.

"So what now?" asked Anko. She was hoping for his homecooking tonight.

"Dinner outside the dango stand?"

Her grin widened. The meat bun seller who worked across her favorite dango stand wasn t half bad.

Bakura chucked the ruined dish outside the window, to the fury of Kiba who was unlucky enough to pass by. Akamaru barked in thanks, and quickly ate the mess. Kiba would later spend the next six hours cleaning up the explosive diarrhea caused by the burnt milk.

Anko didn t mind the rough start of the date. Bakura was the most interesting man she knew, and he actually cared about her.

As they were heading towards the meat bun stand, they heard a commotion.

"What's going on?" asked Bakura.

"Food poisoning. Apparently the meat they bought for the food had eaten grass poisoned by a shinobi battle."

Bakura bit back a curse.

"Dango then?"

A loud crack was heard, and they turned to watch as the dango stand's chairs broke apart. Upon further inspection they found out that an Aburame child lost control of his newest insects...which happened to be termites.

'Is this a sign that things aren t going to go well during our life?' thought Bakura.

He looked at Anko.

"Skip dinner?"

"Might as well. Somehow, I don t think we'll be able to eat tonight."

Their next stop was the biggest tourist spot in the village, next to the weapon shop.

It was a tea place.

Rats in the tea. Dear Set, is everything going to go wrong today? growled Bakura.

Anko looked highly amused.

"Why are you so upset? Did you have something special planned today or something?"

After the next stop, which was Ichiraku Ramen, (Naruto had helped the old man clear out the last of his ramen makings) so he could restock Bakura simply took them to the Forest of Death. Which was under guard, so they couldn t get in.

Finally, Bakura took her up to the Fourth's head. Thankfully there was a small cropping of trees on it, so he could bang his head against it. Every time he tried to be romantic, something went horribly wrong.

During his self inflicted head trauma, something fell out of his pocket.

Anko helpfully picked it up...only for the lid to fall open. Bakura finally stopped banging his head when he realized Anko was perfectly silent.

She was staring at the ring in absolute shock.

"Can't say I didn t try to propose in a nice place," he said quietly.

Anko was still in shock, but she finally managed to regain her composure enough to say "You do realize this is one of the best places to do that, right?"

Bakura looked at her.

"You can see the entire village, and the lights during the Chunin Exams are spectacular."

Bakura looked out. Now that he wasn t trying to inflict brain trauma anymore, he looked out and saw what she meant. The lights had always been bright when seen on the mountain, but now they were particularly colorful.

So Bakura did what he set out to do. He got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. Anko said yes, though she was still in shock.

Later, when she thought back to how hard Bakura tried to propose to her, she would laugh her ass off. Out of all her coworkers, only Ibiki wasn t shocked to hear that Bakura had finally asked her to marry him.