Something Precious

Chapter Fourty Nine

The conversation at the table was pretty well non-existent. The wound of their recent loss still bleeding; the damage yet to be determined.

It wasn't nessassarly a tense silence, but it was so painfully notable in the absence of their talkitive Uchiha. It lingered, not just around their table; they were not the only ones in that cafeteria that had lost someone in the recent battle.

Someone sat themselves in the last empty chair on Naruto's left side, causing him to flinch in surprise. They didn't say anything, instead they placed a plain-looking, brown covered book. Looking up, Naruto met the waiting eyes of Captain Kaito. "Captain." Naruto acknowledged, not moving for the mysterious book as he was probably supposed to.

"Come now Naruto;" the Captain chided. "We are past such formalities by now. It was your strategy that may be to thank for winning with only the casualities that we did. You saved many lives." he finished softly.

Minato nodded his agreement while Kakashi and Rin looked on with confused curiosity. They hadn't been told of Naruto's part in the battle yet.

"You would have managed." Naruto shrugged of the praise uncomfortably.

"Maybe. Maybe not. But without you a lot more would be dead." Minato said, probably trying to be reassuring. But Minato didn't know Naruto the way he thought he did. He didn't know the connection Naruto felt to the other nations, the loyalty and obligation that was formed over three long years of constant war imwhich he fought beside them.

Naruto looked up sharply, a hard glint to his cerulean eyes. He felt rage invade him, the first sharp emotion he had felt in a while. "Would there be? Your only counting our casualities; what about them? What about the enemy casualities? How many families with be grieving tonight because of my blade? This entire war is pathetic!" his voice was rising, drawing attention of the entire room. No one could doubt he sincerity of his words, his voice saturated with emotion; not just rage, but grief and self-loathing as well. "We kill them and say they deserve it because they kill us! But you realise that for them it's the same thing?! Every man you kill has a family; every woman has a dream, a goal! At the end of the day, they are still people, still flesh and blood, with mind and soul just like us!! We aren't any different from them! We are no more and no less than anyone else who fights for their village as we do; so why must we kill like we do?! It only creates more hatred and more pain; an endless cycle that no bothers breaking because it's familiar, even comfortable in a way! It makes me sick." he growled the last sentence lowly, quietly; but everyone still heard. You could hear a pin drop as his speech was digested. Some faces in the room held a new kind of understanding, some of them held rage, but every one of them held at least some degree of surprise. His words rang in the silence.

"You could make a lot of enemies going around saying things like that." Kaito warned.

Naruto huffed rather like a child who had been sent for a time-out. "If you don't have the guts to voice your beliefs than what's the point in having them."

Kaito shook his head coming to the conclusion that when in regards to himself, Naruto had rather reckless tendencies. "Anyway, I didn't come over here to debate morals. Look at this." he took the book back to himself and started fanning through it. "This came out this morning."

Finding what he searching for, Kaito dropped he book dramatically to the table infront of Naruto.

Naruto stared. "A bingo book." he deadpanned. "So what?"

"Look." he tapped repeatedly on the page.

Kakashi's visible eye widened as he craned his neck to see what they where looking. The face was Naruto's, and the price on the Uzumaki's head was insane, yet looking under the warnings and it only advised caution.