Naruto : Struggle Of Childhood

Betrayal

The rest of the week passed uneventfully. Tsunami and Tazuna never brought up the events of the night that Naruto had yelled at Inari. They seemed to think that it was better not to pry into the problems of other people. Naruto had to admit, he was glad he didn't have to explain.

Inari himself was avoiding Naruto. Whenever they would be in the same room by accident, Inari would leave as soon as possible. He didn't eat with the family again while Naruto was there, despite the frequent requests of his mother. Naruto once offered to eat in another room, but Tsunami wouldn't hear of it. She seemed to think that the two of them needed to talk to one another for this argument to end.

After the attack of the Demon Brothers, there were no other unwanted guests who tried to call on the family. Naruto hadn't done anything to the bodies to scare intruders off, since that would be too noticeable, but Gato didn't seem interested in attacking the house. Naruto still patrolled, and after he had managed to explain to his friends, they admitted that it was a good reason and that Naruto wasn't just skipping out of work. The fact was, Naruto was the only one who could do the job, no matter how much the others didn't like it.

Kakashi and his team continued to do their job, and the messenger hawk continued to arrive. Naruto would have loved to have intercepted it, but he had a feeling that Kakashi would know. The man was still asking questions about them every so often, not nosy enough to put Naruto on his guard, but too interested to put him at ease. Shino too continued to be a bit unnerving. Shino didn't seem to have anything against Hakumei, but he would make observations that really made everyone nervous. Yumi and Sasuke officially hated one another. She would have loved nothing more then to parade around Konoha with his head on a stick, and he had admitted to having way too much fun antagonizing her. The only good thing about this was that it kept her from noticing anything about the 'civies'. Naruto had a good hunch that she wouldn't just make statements. Easily the least threat was Kiba. He had no idea what was going on. They would have known too, his arrogance was matched only by his mouth.

The bridge continued at a very slow pace, mostly since the men that had been hired kept on quitting. It was basically only Hakumei working on anything now, and they were inexperienced and their work was slower than it would have been. Tazuna didn't seem upset by how slow they were moving, actually, he seemed rather impressed they had managed to learn so much.

Accidents weren't happening the way they had been at first, which was a good thing since Neji still was supposed to have fully recovered. The only problem was the Tazuna had started waking them up at dawn to get to work, even before him. In return, he promised to feed them for an extra few weeks when the bridge was done.

It was on one morning like that that Naruto woke up and looked out the window. He shook the rest of the guys awake, and then stuck his head into the girls' room and asked if they were up.

It was a little before dawn, and still very dark. Naruto didn't turn on any lights though, or even light a candle. This was a meeting that Naruto would have preferred that no one overhear.

"Neji, Hinata," Naruto said, when they had all assembled, "are they all asleep?"

Both had activated the Byakugen and nodded.

"I don't see any sign of them waking up either," Neji said.

"Yumi's charka signature is…rather strange…but it is her," Hinata said.

"She's ROOT, so she's going to be weird," Sasuke said.

Hinata gave him a troubled look, but didn't say anything else.