Wide-Screen Hell

Main Characters: Naruto, Kiba, Ino, and Chouji

Summary: Whose brilliant idea was it to move a fifty-inch widescreen up a flight of stairs? CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

A/N: This idea came to me when my family recently acquired a fifty-inch widescreen. I had to write it down and this is the result. I had a lot of fun writing it, so please enjoy my CRACK!

…

Naruto, Kiba, and Chouji stared with confused eyes at the blank fifty-inch widescreen. "It's not working." Kiba mumbled stupidly. "Why isn't it working?" he repeated with arms wide in a helpless gesture.

Naruto shrugged, blinked, and then shrugged again.

Chouji slammed a large fist into his palm and his mouth set into an 'o' expression. "Are you sure it's set on the right input?"

Kiba scoffed, "We're not that stupid." he snapped.

"So you admit you're stupid?" said a female voice. She flung a lock of platinum-blond hair over her shoulder and huffed. "What's the hold up?"

Kiba who was glaring at Ino for the 'stupid' comment was pushed aside by Naruto. "I don't know!" He exclaimed. "The TV is connected. The X-Box is on. It's just that the damn internet is…" Naruto paused in mid-sentence, his mouth left open in realization.

"The internet!" Kiba and Chouji exclaimed together, angrily and relieved at the same time.

Ino threw her head back in exasperation. "Oh my god. You guys are truly idiots. You invite me over so that we can do some online gaming on the new fifty-inch, and you forget the most essential part, the internet connection!"

Naruto was scratching the back of his neck embarrassed. Chouji, now that everything was figured out, was relaxing, leaning against the wall with a new bag of potato chips. Kiba was grinning and he made his way to the widescreen and kneeled before the Xbox 360 game console to find the internet cord and connect it.

"Um…Naruto?" Kiba's voice was muffled.

"What?" Naruto questioned, his hands already filled with game controllers. Ino plucking her custom pink controller out of the pile and twirling it between her hands.

"Where's the internet connection? This Xbox console doesn't have wi-fi so we have to have a cord. Where is it?" Kiba asked, standing back up and facing Naruto.

Naruto blinked. A moment too long passed and suddenly Naruto's eyes widened. "Fuck…The only connection we have is upstairs."

"Upstairs?" Kiba echoed.

"Yeah, in my room." Naruto said, the controllers that were in his hands were dumped onto a sofa cushion.

"How can we play online, on the widescreen, if the widescreen is downstairs, and the internet connection is upstairs?" Ino questioned with impatient eyes.

Chouji threw a now empty potato-chip bag into a nearby trashcan and joined the group. "You should of thought of all of this before, Naruto." he simply stated, obviously displeased.

"Well, I'm so sorry!" Naruto shouted his mock apology. "My dad just got a brand new fifty-inch widescreen and I invited my gaming pals over for a game party! How stupid of me!"

Kiba snarled. "No need to be so sarcastic. "

Naruto let out a breath. "I'm just pissed off is all." he mumbled.

Chouji, with a casual shrug of the shoulders, said: "Why don't we just take the widescreen upstairs?"

Naruto blinked. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Ino stepped forward with interest. "No, wait, that's a good idea, Chouji." She locked eyes with Naruto. "Naruto, I didn't come all the way over here to game on your pathetic black-and-white twenty-inch TV that you have upstairs."

"That's right. I want to game on the fifty-inch!" Kiba announced.

Naruto looked between the three gamers, eyes darting back and forth, and then back and fourth again. "Are you guys crazy?" he exclaimed. "We are not," he started to wave his arms about, "taking the fifty-inch upstairs!"

"Why not?" Kiba asked, arms folded across his chest.

"For one, this isn't my TV- it's my dad's. He's not going to like the fact that we took his widescreen from it's throne." Naruto said, a finger pointed at the gold-colored wall-hanger that was introduced as the throne.

Kiba shrugged. "He and your mom are out of town aren't they? I mean, that's why we are here. To have a game party."

Chouji and Ino were nodding in agreement. Naruto's wide blue-eyes darting between all three. "You guys are serious?" They all nodded again. "You want to lug this great big thing up that flight of flimsy stairs to my room?" Naruto asked again, his hand gesturing toward the general direction of the stairs.

"Why not?" Kiba said.

"Why not?" Chouji echoed.

Ino smiled a somewhat evil smile. "Why not?"

Naruto looked at all three, a grin slowly growing on his face. "Why not!" he declared.

…

The fifty-inch was lighter than they expected. The only problem was that it was too wide (of course, that's why it's called a wide-screen), and it was too tall (again, that's why it's called a widescreen). It didn't balance well in their hands, which were now nervous and clammy. All four gamers were crowding the fifty-inch while only two of them were holding it up and the other two were simply standing close with their hands raised in case the TV tipped over.

If Shikamaru was here he would of called the stairs troublesome. They were narrow and the railings were restricting. The presence of four teenagers, not to mention a fifty-inch widescreen, was downright chaotic. Everybody was yelling with panic and warning when the widescreen would so much as sway. They were more than halfway when the yelling and arguing started to grate on everyone's nerves.

If you were to ask them later what had exactly happened, they would say that it all happened too fast to recall. This is a lie. It happened in a rare, extraordinary case of slow motion. Naruto was carrying one end of the widescreen while Chouji carried the other. On the sides stood the pair, Kiba and Ino. Kiba's back was digging into the railing but he paid it no mind as his dark-brown eyes watched the wide expanse of the screen before him. Ino stood on the other side, her arms raised in readiness, and her back glued to the wall.

Naruto was walking up the stairs backward. Chouji doing most of the lifting and pushing. It all started with one wrong step. Chouji, with his ears filled with loud voices, started to walk faster. Naruto not expecting the sudden speed couldn't find a new footing…and so… the widescreen swayed.

Remember, this all happened in slow motion…

The widescreen s w a y e d.

Naruto's eyes widened.

S W A Y I N G

Chouji couldn't reclaim the balance.

T I P P I N G

It bounced off Ino's hands and swayed toward Kiba.

F A L L I N G

It went over Kiba's head and over the railing in one fluid motion.

C R A S H

The sound was horrible. Horrible. So, so, horrible. Four pairs of eyes stared horrified at the fifty-inch widescreen that laid scattered and broken at the bottom of the stairs. Suddenly someone screamed. It was Ino. Her poor face was paler than the moon. Her mouth open so wide, the unholy shriek seemingly tearing itself out of her gullet.

Kiba raced down the stairs, stumbling on the last few steps and finding his hands buried in broken glass.

Naruto's once blank face abruptly twisted into an indescribable expression. "Oh God…" He mumbled, barely above a whisper. "Oh God…Oh GOD, OH GOD NO!" That whisper quickly turned into a roar. "NOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Kiba could be heard crying, downright sobbing like a broken-hearted teenage schoolgirl.

Chouji was throwing up in the corner. Steady streams of chucked and improperly chewed food hitting the floor.

Somewhere babies were crying, dogs were barking, and flowers were withering.

Ino was still screaming. Her shriek of madding anguish could no doubt be heard across town. Her arms held up toward the sky and her body slouched over as if she was in physical pain. Her shrieking stopped, she took a large intake of breath, and let it out another horror film scream.

Naruto didn't, couldn't, stop shouting. "Holy Mother of Christ! Oh No! WHY! Why, sweet Jesus, Why! Take me instead! Take. Me. Instead!

Somewhere an earthquake was tearing down houses, tsunami's were drowning cute little puppies, and hurricanes were making it impossible to drive anywhere.

The series of screams didn't stop. The poor widescreen laying dead at the base of the stairs. Kiba chocked on a sob. His hand clawing at his own chest where his pain-filled heart lay.

"TAKE. ME. INSTEAD!" Naruto continued screaming, clutching the railing and looking up toward the ceiling as though he could see heaven. "TAKE ME INSTEAD!"

Somewhere an old lady was driving twenty miles per hour down an interstate, a man was cutting in line at a bank,…somewhere a vending machine ran out of Coca-cola.

Ino finally stopped screaming, her throat raw and eyes filled with tears. She staggered down the stairs like the undead and crouch down alongside Kiba before the carcass of the widescreen. "I'm so sorry." She wept, using the back of her hand to clean the snot and tears off her face.

Chouji, whose vomiting was reduced to dry heaves, also began to sob. He tumbled down the few remaining steps and collided with Kiba who didn't seem to notice at all. He sank his hands into the middle of the lifeless widescreen and tugged on the lose wires and broken glass. "Such an awful thing…" he murmured.

"Fuck! No! God, No! NO! You can't have him!" Naruto was now swearing. "Fuck! Shit! Shit! Goddamn Fuck shit asshole! Fucking Bill Cosby! Fuck you!"

Somewhere a kite string broke, ice cream cones were melting, and a little girl's lemonade stand was knocked over by an angry hot dog salesmen.

"Fuck! Fuck this! Fuck, fucking, fuck fuck! Fucker!"

Somewhere a check bounced, a lady was counting fifteen dollars in change at the grocery market, and a man stepped on dog shit.

"FUCK!" Naruto was now throwing things. He had made his way up the remaining stairs and into his room where he trashed it without restraint.

…

It was the following night when Naruto's parents finally made it back home from their romantic getaway. Except that the romantic getaway was anything but that. Minato was freely cussing as he pulled his bags into the entrance of his home. "That vacation was a major waste of time!" He snarled, pissed when he remembered all the annoyances he went through.

Kushina rolled her eyes at her husband. "Don't exaggerate, darling." She said.

"Are you kidding?" He exclaimed. "That baby wouldn't stop crying at the cinema. Those dogs wouldn't stop barking outside our hotel room," he threw his arms up. "That man cut in line in front of me at the bank! No matter where I went there was no freakin' Coca-cola in the vending machines! I was stuck behind that damn old lady who was driving twenty miles per hour down the interstate! My kite string broke, AND I STEPPED ON DOG SHIT!" He shouted, pointing at his now-clean left shoe.

Kushina just rolled her eyes again. "Just be glad we're home."

Minato nodded tiredly. "Right. I'm back home." He then smiled. "Time to spend some time with my love- my fifty-inch widescreen Betty!"

Kushina shut the front door as she watched her husband rush to the living room. She frowned when a second later she heard a very unmanly scream.

"WHERE THE FUCK IS BETTY?"

She ran to the living room, her eyes instantly noticing the empty wall-hanger.

"The throne is empty…" Minato whispered.

Kushina blinked. "Where is it?"

"That's what I would like to know!"

Kushina suddenly heard a noise and she moved forward to hush her husband. "Wait…Do you hear that?"

Minato went silent and strained his ears. "Yeah," he ran off in the direction of the muffled noise that sounded like sobs.

A second later she heard another very unmanly scream echo through the house, enough for the picture frames on the walls to vibrate.

"BETTTTTYYYYYYY!"

…

Somewhere an air-conditioner broke down in the middle of summer, a bird pooped on a newly washed car, ….and a fifty-inch widescreen fell down a flight of stairs…oh, wait, that already happened.

Then…Somewhere four teenagers were charged with manslaughter.

Minato: "You guys aren't getting away with killing Betty!"

-END-

Policeman: "Sir, can you show me where the victim is?"

Minato: "Here she is…My poor Betty!"

Policeman: "Sir,…that is a broken widescreen…"

Minato: "She was part of the family! The only one I could tolerate!

Policeman: "I'm sorry but there's nothing I could do."

Minato: "What kind of world is this when a man can't get justice!"

Policeman: "You want me to arrest your son and his friends?"

Minato: "Yes! I demand justice!"

Policeman: "Hmm..I guess I could take them in for the night…"

Minato: "Justice prevails!"

-END-