white gold lines

one

FIVE FOUND DEAD IN HOKAGE SUITES

The newspaper was slammed down on hard wood. Head shaken. Cigar pressed and extinguished.

Hinata pretended not to notice over orange juice. Hanabi inquired, always did. "What happened?"

"Nothing that concerns you," Hiashi's cold answer. He held out his arm, a servant placed diamonds onto the cuffs of his shirt. He hadn't even looked up. "Where's your brother?"

Hyuga Neji, Hinata's twin and preferred child of Hiashi Hyuga. He was a prodigy and the only one Hiashi ever spoke business with.

"Don't know," Hanabi answered, unbothered, unconcerned.

Hinata tried to read the article as Hiashi turned an eyebrow up at his youngest daughter. She was about to get a mouth full for her attitude, something that happened nearly every day over toast and jelly. Hinata leaned forward, her eyes catching the words cocaine and Akatsuki.

The latter had no effect on her. The first left her confused. Should her father be upset about cocaine? Not likely.

Hanabi got all of her sister's questions answered. "Why are you so mad at that?" She pointed with a butter-laden knife. "You've got an underground business or something?"

Hinata sighed as her father did.

Hiashi turned a stern eye, looking like he wanted a glass of whisky at eight in the morning. "No, Hanabi. We are partnered with the Uzumaki's, remember?" Hiashi sent a pointed look Hinata's way. She flushed red. "This is one of their hotels-it's bad business. They're probably in a lot of trouble because of this."

Oh, Hinata thought. That made more sense. Hinata idly wondered how Naruto's family was handling the ensured uproar. She hoped that they had a good PR team.

"Speaking of Uzumakis," Hiashi stood just as his assistant entered the room, holding his ipad. "Naruto is coming over today, right?"

"Y-yes," Hinata finally spoke. "It's Tuesday."

Hiashi didn't say anything after that. His attention was on his assistant and he left shortly after. Hanabi grabbed the discarded newspaper, making a face. "Father is boring. I was hoping that he was in on the drug cartel."

"You watch t-too many movies," Hinata said, rolling her eyes.

"You don't watch enough, you're boring." Hanabi shot out. Her words were always laced with poison. Hinata never really blamed her, when razor sharp words brought on razor sharp attention. Hanabi needed what she could get, especially since she was so young. "No wonder you own fiancé doesn't like you."

FIVE FOUND DEAD IN HOKAGE SUITES

Neji held the article in front of Sasuke's face. Sasuke barely blinked. "Sucks," He said. He shoved the ipad away from his face and went to get into Neji's car. "For Naruto."

Neji just frowned, "Why do you think I'm showing you this?"

Sasuke hated Neji's persistence. "Chill, I read it when I woke up."

"You're not even worried about this?" Neji was a level head guy. Practical. Knew what was and wasn't a big deal. "In Naruto's own hotel too."

Sasuke was just in a bad mood. Mornings usually left him that way. "Look I know you're excited, but can we talk about this later?"

Neji seemed perturbed at being called 'excited,' but he got the message and put his ipad away. Sasuke was always irritable in the mornings...afternoons...evenings. Sasuke was always irritable.

"You picking up Uzumaki today?" Sasuke questioned after a few minutes of silence.

"Nah, I don't even think he's coming to school. His parents have to do a press conference regarding the incident and hotel security. I think they want him there."

Sasuke nodded, "Well, the party's still on, right?"

"That all you care about?" Neji smirked. "I'm sure it is. That's all Naruto cares about too."

"Friday's a pretty big night," was all Sasuke said. He spent the rest of the ride ignoring his friend in favor of a book. Neji worried about everything. Nobody knew that about him, it was kind of annoying. "Talk to Nara or Inuzuka?"

"Kiba's been in America for the past week. He'll be back in time for Friday." Neji shrugged, "And you know Nara, no one can ever get a hold of him so I didn't even try."

Eventually they reach their school. They were thirty minutes early and Neji hadn't eaten breakfast, so they made their way to the dining hall. On the way, a smaller girl ran up to them and promptly crashed into Neji.

Sasuke rose an eyebrow as the girl turned an interesting shade of red.

"S-sorry, Neji." She looked up. Her eyes danced between the two of them, looking shyly away from Sasuke. "O-oh, hello Uchiha-san."

"Hey," He replied. Sasuke didn't know much about Neji's twin sister since they were in different classes. He just knew that she was painfully shy and unfortunately engaged to his best friend. Good luck to her.

She smiled timidly before turning to her brother. "Father was looking for you. He wanted to discuss the Hokage thing, I think."

Sasuke found himself raising an eyebrow again. The younger Hyuga didn't stutter around family, apparently. He watched her more closely, taking in her strangely large sweater that had to be stolen from Neji. Girl's usually didn't wear that kind. The sleeves were too big and almost covered her fingers.

"Yeah, he called," Neji answered. "How was breakfast without me?"

Sasuke thought that was a weird question. Surly Hinata could eat without her twin. She functioned in school fine without him, since Neji was in the same class as Sasuke.

Hinata shrugged halfheartedly. "The usual. H-Hanabi was a brat and father didn't react to anything she said."

Sasuke wandered away from the conversation, no longer interested in sibling-talk. He was unused to seeing siblings interact with closeness. Usually, the ones he came in contact with were in competition with one another or just didn't talk at all. Neji and Hinata's exchange was almost refreshing.

"Nara," Sasuke came to stop in front of his friend's locker. Shikamaru was sitting on the floor in front of it, arms crossed, looking seconds away from sleep. For a guy who's parents owned the school he sure didn't take it seriously. Sasuke wondered how his parents tolerated it, but reasoned that they were probably like everyone else's parents.

Absent.

Shikamaru didn't respond so Sasuke kicked him. "Nara."

Shikamaru blinked up at him, a scowl in place. "What do you want?"

"I'm sure you've heard." Sasuke squatted next to him.

"Of course," Shikamaru put his head against cream colored lockers and took out his phone, showing Sasuke the screen. Sasuke took the phone and swiped through the many articles Shikamaru had opened. All about the Hokage 'massacre, -they were calling it now. "Troublesome."

A pink-haired girl suddenly appeared beside them, her eyes sharp. "Bastard deserved it," Sakura stood above them, speaking of one of the people who had been murdered. "I mean, he was going to prison anyway. He was on bail for child pornography. Disgusting. I hope they fucking blasted his brains out and-"

"Not the point," Sasuke grumbled, annoyed. He wasn't sure when Haruno Sakura had become a member of their 'group,' but she'd somehow wiggled in and made herself a fixture. Sasuke assumed that it was because of Naruto's raging crush on her. Now she won't leave. "We're out of business."

Shikamaru shrugged, "We'll find someone else."

But Sakura was still ranting about the pedophile they'd been working with, swears flying left and right, her expression perfectly disgusted. Haruno Sakura didn't look like she matched their group at all-or their school for that matter. She had pink hair that was cut short and choppy and piercings up both of her ears. She also had a mouth for feminism and social justice, which, by the way, no rich kid at Nara Prep ever talked about. Sakura was a weird brand of rich kid-a scary one. One that didn't originally come from money at all.

She was new money and didn't know what to do with it..and a basket case, but that was just Sasuke's opinion.

Sasuke just shook his head, "What if it's not just the matter of 'finding someone else'?" He suddenly knew what Neji was so worried about. "Someone was after him. After his business." He didn't say what he was implying. What if they're after us too?

"There are a lot of things he was wanted dead for." Was all Shikamaru said, but he too seemed a bit anxious.

FIVE FOUND DEAD IN HOKAGE SUITES

Kushina turned off the TV with an annoyed point towards it. She ran her hands through her hair, leaning back against the couch, "This is a nightmare."

Naruto looked back and forth between his parents, uninterested and bored. Their PR team had been up and knocking on the door of their penthouse since five am, and the police had shown up even earlier. Murders in esteemed hotels weren't as common as people liked to think and there was nothing glamorous about ruined cherry wood floors and red stained cocaine white furniture.

The police were out of their hair fairly quickly; they'd just been up to request access to security cameras, visitor logs, and basic info on the layout of the hotel.

To be honest, Naruto would rather be at school. His parents kept him home so that he could learn how to deal with situations like this and avoid talking to the press/paparazzi. He took out his phone as his parents spoke with the press. He had a few texts from Neji and Sasuke about the situation, but besides that, things were pretty boring. Naruto looked through the news articles despite the fact that'd he'd already been watching the news. There was a picture of Orochimaru's mugshot on one website. The man had been awaiting his trial for child pornography before his murder. Naruto was just shocked that he was on trial for that instead of murder or drugs.

He closed the app on his phone and leaned back in his seat. A reporter was asking about hotel security and how the Uzumaki's planned on fixing it. His parents were struggling to come up with answers, since they didn't quite know the details of the murder. The murderer could've been a resident at their hotel for all they knew.

"We would like to assure our guests that our hotels have maximum security and that their safety takes priority," Minato was saying. "Police have yet to identify the murderer so we can neither confirm nor deny whether the criminal was a resident in our hotel however..."

Naruto tuned them out. His phone buzzed in his hands and he unlocked it, expecting a text from one of the guys. He was surprised to see Hinata's name flash across the screen and he opened it curiously.

Are you okay?

He was confused for a moment because, why wouldn't he be? Then he remembered the press conference going on at that very moment. He shrugged and told her that it wasn't a big deal. At least, not to him.

She responded back a couple minutes later;

Oh, everyone was making a big deal. I'm glad you're doing alright.

To be honest, texting Hinata exhausted him. She was too nice and too proper. Naruto didn't have the patience to try to be interested in anything she was saying. It was always "how are you"s and "Hope you're doing well"s. Not that Naruto didn't appreciate those messages...they just weren't messages he cared enough to respond to.

Okay, so he was an asshole. That had already been established. Unfortunately, his fiancé still hadn't quite got that message and continued to put her faith in him.

Naruto replied to her message, a quick dismissive text that he only sort-of felt bad about, Yeah I'm fine. Kinda busy. C u later.

Hinata responded Sorry for bothering you! v_v and Naruto almost felt bad. Almost.

It wasn't that he didn't like Hinata or anything...he just didn't want to marry her. He thought that that was a completely fair feeling to have.

"We'll that's ridiculous and degrading," Kushina was yelling at a reporter. "For God's sake we can't do background checks on those who wish to stay at one of our resorts!"

"FIVE FOUND DEAD IN HOKAGE SUITES,"

Kakashi turned to the television set, annoyed. "Turn that off, would you?"

"Yeah, sorry." Asuma said, a cigarette hanging from his lips. "Just wanted to see what the Uzumaki's were saying."

Kakashi shrugged and walked around the crime scene. There were five bodies total throughout the entire suite. The assumed target was Orochimaru.

It wasn't the first time Kakashi had stumbled on the name. Orochimaru was a known drug dealer and was considered popular among crime circles. He was known for trafficking things like cocaine and over the counter drugs, nothing ridiculously fancy. Kakashi had been keeping an eye on one of his cases, but that was before the guy was busted for child pornography.

He was all kinds of evil. Kakashi assumed that his murder was long time coming.

He stepped carefully over one of the bodies, his head tilted as he looked at the direction of the blood splatter. It was a small blonde woman, no older than 25. She was dressed in a cheetah print dress. Bullet straight through the frontal lobe. It looked like a clean exit through the back, too. The bullet should be somewhere around here...

Kakashi found it a few minutes later. He deposited it into an evidence bag and handed it to Asuma, "Send this to the lab." He paused, his eyes narrowing, "Did you find any weapons? A fingerprint would be nice."

"None yet," Asuma shrugged and put his cigarette out, "This bullet should help us find the gun, though. I'll send this off to Hitsugaya and keep looking."

Kakashi didn't reply and made his way back to where Orochimaru's body laid. His eyes were still open but there was no surprise on his face. In fact, he looked like he was smirking. His lips were pulled up in one corner. Kakashi walked around the body, his one visible eye lazily taking in the scene.

Orochimaru had been shot seven times in the chest and twice in the head. Kakashi assumed that it was the headshot that killed him, and that the chest shots were just to make sure that he was dead. It seemed a little excessive to Kakashi, but someone must've really hated him.

That part made sense. Finding the motive was easy, especially for an asshole like Orochimaru. He had a lot stacked against him but...

Kakashi frowned now. A guy as powerful and hated as Orochimaru had to have guards. Where were they?

Kakashi looped back around the suite, taking in each of the bodies. None of them looked like guards and three of them were scantily clad women. The last victim was male, a bit bulky, possible a guard. But surely Orochimaru had more than one?

Kakashi paused, thinking. An inside job, maybe? He turned on his heels to find his partner. He needed those surveillance tapes.

AN. Hey guys! This is a new fic I've been mulling over. So far I've written about six chapters each for three different variations of this fic. I finally decided that this was the way I wanted to go with it. Unfortunately, as this is the lastest version I've written (aka had the least amount of chapters complete + a rlly dodgy plot outline) I don't have much written for it.

I'd love to get some feedback to see if this is truly the direction I want to go, so please review!

(Side note: Any readers of Common Delinquents out there? This fic will share the same themes ;) (although not as much Deidara :( ))

Please tell me what you think!