"And you can get this done within the week?" Tayuya asked, genuinely impressed.
The carpenter that sat before her nodded excitedly. "Of course! With all the workforce your husband-"
"Not husband," she cut in. It almost hurt to see Blondie's face fall at that.
"-uh, with all the manpower your friend here is offering," the plump man continued, "It will be done in record time! It has been so long since I last got to build a real house!"
Tayuya rolled her eyes. What a stupid thing to get excited about. "Yeah, whatever. What's it gonna cost me?"
She felt blondie pout at her from the seat next to her.
"Ah... That's not something I can say for sure just yet. But, uhm, the most expensive thing is going to get the plumbing we'd have to get all the way over there..."
Tayuya shrugged. "Eh, no matter. Money is not a problem either way." She'd pay it with Orochimaru's anyway. And tip a lot, just to squander more of it.
The man beamed at her and tried to shake her hand. She pulled it away with a warning glare. He faltered only slightly. "It shall be done! But now, for the details of it..."
With the basic plan for her home set, Tayuya dragged the blonde, sexy, and fucking annoying extra back to the town's tavern. The rooms were pretty small but cozy enough. And the bed was pretty damn good. She'd already decided to find the guy that made it and commission the biggest fucking one he'd ever have made.
And lots of pillows.
"Never imagined I'd settle down this early in life," Blondie said as they got ready for bed, pulling his shirt over his head.
Tayuya huffed at him, pulling her own tunic off. She flicked it into his face. "That remains to be seen, Loverboy."
"Hey," he outed. "Even if you wouldn't have me live with you, I'd stay close to my child."
"I noticed," she commented dryly. "You've been fervently trying to reach it these past few days."
He grinned at her. "Yeah? And you've been feverishly... uh..."
She laughed, pushing him onto the bed. "Oh? Out of words?"
He grasped her sides, pulling her onto him. "Yeah, well, I've got other things."
"Oh?" she made mockingly. "Do tell."
His hands crawled down her sides until he reached the line of her pants. His thumbs suck under the soft fabric, pushing it down.
She smirked at him, pulling her legs up a bit and keeping her pants in place. "That's mine," she murmured lowly at him. "Not yours."
"Mm, that sucks," he muttered, pouting.
Her smirk widened a tad. "Yeah, not yet, though." She pushed his head back, her hand against his throat. "So? What ya gotta offer?"
His he looked at her over his nose, his eyes dark, pupils wide. Her heartbeat spiked. "Interested, are you?"
"Maybe a little." Her voice was too breathless, her skin too hot.
His hands moved up from her waist. She feared he could feel her heat thunder against her ribs, that he could tell how much he threw her off track. it was unnerving. It was amazing. And yet her hand was still at his throat. She could feel his pulse thrum under her hand and all she had to do now, was squeeze once and he'd be gone, out of her hair. Here in the remote, no one would find him. He wouldn't be a bother anymore.
Her breath hitched as he brushed past her breasts, his hands crawling up her back and onto her shoulders. He held her there, firmly, and met her gaze with an unholy fire in his eyes.
His smirk eased a ton of tension she hadn't noticed before. "Me, too." His fingers began to massage her shoulders, digging into the tense muscles.
"That's lame," she told him. Her hand slipped from his throat to rest over his heart. The nervousness was suddenly all but gone.
He pulled her close and she had to rest her forehead against his. "I guess." His hands slipped off her shoulders, so she pinched him. "Don't stop."
He smiled. "As you wish."
It was weird. And she liked it. It was also the first time she slept with him without having sex. It was really, really weird. And she really, really liked it.
Fuck. This wasn't her falling for that asshole, was it?
Kakashi glared at his Sensei and wished he could go back to his apartment and hide under his bed. But no. Yugao had dragged him out from under it and before the very pissed looking Kushina.
Who promptly kneed him in the face.
That could only mean Minato had snitched on him.
"Now," Kushina purred dangerously, "Tell me again why you didn't stop my son from leaving the village?"
Kakashi glanced at Minato, who was all but hiding behind his desk. "I..." Okay. So. There were only wrong answers here. "Because... I... am an incompetent pervert piece of shit?"
Kushina smiled. It scared the shit out to him. "Exactly!" she agreed happily. She turned to her husband and Kakashi allowed himself to take a shallow breath. "Now, do we have any idea where he is?"
Minato shook in his seat and frantically shifted scrolls across the table, his fingers stitching to grab one of his three-pronged kunai. "Uh, uhm." He glanced at Kakashi. "Y-Yugao did say she saw him, uh, with a... girl."
Kushina's eyes glinted dangerously. "Yugao, hmmm?"
Yugao did decidedly not glare at the Hokage. In fact, she did her utmost to ignore his presence in the room. Which was rather easy, given that she cowered in fear right next to Kakashi. He was smug about it, she could feel it.
"Yes, lady Kushina?" she dared to ask.
"Who was this... girl you saw my son with?" she asked pleasantly, but her eyes were cold as ice, the sweetness in her voice so false it could have salted the earth.
So she told her story of the girl with light red hair and the two of them spending all but an entire day in a hotel.
It did nothing to ease Kushina's mood.
"I see," she said. "Dear?"
Minato flew out of his seat with sonic speed. "Y-Yes!?"
"I think we might have to send an.. army to see to our son."
Minato coughed. "Uh, an.. army? I mean... Kakashi can go?"
Yugao felt Kakashi stiffen beside her.
"Oh?" Kushina smiled languidly as if she hadn't thought of that all along. "Why, that sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?"
"Y-Yes, Lady Kushina!" Kakashi stammered. "I will depart as soon as-"
"Now."
"Of course!" Kakashi vanished in a sloppy body flicker, audibly crashing into something just outside the office.
"And you." Yugao stiffened. "You may accompany him."
"Of course!" Yugao was just happy to leave the room. But she took the time to give her Hokage the stink eye as she left him with his very pissed off wife. But her body flicker was just as sloppily executed and she crashed right into Kakashi, who had taken residence in one of the plants just outside the door.
"I hate you," she told him.
He nodded solemnly. "You know, sometimes I hate myself, too."
Tayuya, perched on a tree, watched the dozen or so clones of Loverboy carry planks of wood and stones to the spot that another dozen or so clones of him had just cleared to begin construction. Their- her house would stand a ten-minute walk uphill from the merchant town, up on the south side cliff of the island.
With coconut in hand, she watched the clones do their thing, guided and instructed by that carpenter guy whose name she already forgot and the architect guy who looked like someone dragged him through an oil barrel and slicked his entire face back, hair included.
In the shade of a few palm leaves, Tayuya got to watch over fifty clones of Loverboy, all of them shirtless, lift entire trees around all by themselves. Rippling muscles, hot ass scars, and a sheen of perspiration.
She clicked her tongue. Damn, why did he have to look so hot?
"Stupid ass blondie," she grumbled into her coconut. "Stupid abs. Stupid sexy forearms." She pulled a face, chucking the now empty coconut shell at one of the clones. "Stupid nice-guy."
The clone took the coconut right to the face since he had been staring at her like an idiot. And didn't dispel. She snorted. it was the original.
"Don't you have work to do?" she called down to him.
He grinned up at her, winked, and Tayuya felt like she could puke a dozen butterflies.
Shit. Stupid blondes. Pulling her knife from the belt, Tayuya reached for another coconut. Only to find that there weren't any.
Huh. Had she really just gone through seven coconuts in maybe half an hour?
Was this her pregnancy showing? Unlikely. She hadn't even had morning sickness yet. Not that she looked forward to it.
She almost fell off her perch when Blondie jumped up to her, landing with nary a sound. "What are you thinking about?" he asked, offering her a coconut.
She took it. "Coconuts?"
He laughed and it forced a few extra beats out of her heart. "I knew that. What else?"
She shrugged, not entirely sure herself. "I dunno. The kid, I guess."
"So... you are pregnant, then?"
As if there had ever been any don't with the sheer amount of sex they had had. "Yup. Seal didn't kill me and showed a positive. Neat, huh?"
"That means you're either pregnant or a stone," he said with a cheeky grin.
Tayuya gave a chortle. "Damn, you're on to me."
"You're surprisingly soft for a stone, you know that?"
She drove the blade of her knife into the shell of the coconut. "Oh, you know. Coconuts keep the skin soft."
"And wet."
She elbowed him. "Hey now, that's entirely your fault."
He put his arm around her shoulder and laid his thick head onto hers. "Is it? How'd that happen?"
She flicked his finger off her breast before it could slip under the cloth. "Yeah, I wonder. Grabby lil' shit."
The asshole blew air into her ear and she almost stabbed him in return. "Not like that, that's for sure," she growled at him.
"Hm? Then how?" His voice was low, gritty, and hot, and mind-numbingly good against her ear.
She sheathed her knife. "Why don't ya try and find out?"
Sex on a tree was awesome. She'd do it again, ten out of ten. Until it broke. The audience of two dozen clones made it a bit awkward though.
Karin had barely opened her eyes that morning. She had been unprepared. Because a cat of truly titanic proportions suddenly showing up outside of the lab was just not something she could stomach so early in the morning. The huge, black cat with ridiculously green eyes stared down at her as if it waited for something, not making a move.
"Uhm, hello?" she tried, not risking getting close enough to be squashed under those paws. "Can I, uh, help you?"
The cat's head bobbed. Was that a yes? Okay? And... now?
"And, uh, yes?"
The cat bent down, bringing its nose down to eye-level. Atop it was a scroll, sealed with a red ribbon. It bore the Uzumaki emblem.
"F-For me?" she stammered, the cat's breath almost blowing the glasses off her nose.
The head tilted and moved a bit closer.
She snatched the scroll off the nose as fast as she could, fearing she might lose an arm if she was too slow.
The cat meowed as it lifted its head, but it sounded like a lion's roar, so loud that Karin almost fell over. And then it vanished in a poof of smoke. In the sand where it had sat, the Uchiha fan. With a cat paw in it.
Alright. Karin was going back to sleep. This shit was too much so early in the morning.
Honoka had just finished fixing that blasted hole in the roof when suddenly a tiny cat appeared out of nowhere on the gable right next to her.
"Oh, you scared me!" she told the kitten.
Belatedly she noticed the scroll that hung around his neck, held there by a red ribbon with the Uzumaki emblem.
"My apologies." The voice that suddenly came from the kitty's mouth was so deep and bassy, it shook the tiles of the roof and rattled Honoka's bones. "I did not mean to scare you."
Honoka squinted at the kitten, peeked behind and above it, but found nothing else that could have produced such a voice.
"Oookay," she made, "Why do you sound like an old man with a history of drinking tar?"
"Because I am."
"Really?"
"No."
Okay. A cheeky summon. "Are you perhaps... Naruto's?"
The cat gave a long-suffering sigh that sounded like an old engine sputtering to life. "Unfortunately."
Honoka grinned at the cat. "Sounds like you know him! So? You have a message for me?"
Minato could have cried in relief and wept in joy when one of Naruto's summon jumped through his window.
"Oh thank kami!" he muttered to himself. "Elder Neeko! Have you brought news from my son?"
The ancient, gray, and hilariously fluffy cat flicked her bushy tail in his general direction.
"No," the cat said flatly. And then she began to clean herself.
Minato almost slammed his head into the desk. Those damn cats! Just like the Uchiha!
"However," the ancient cat continued between languids strokes of the tongue, "I have come bearing a message."
"Yes!?"
"You, young Minato, are supposed to immediately inform Kushina of the fact that young Master Naruto has left the village in pursuit of his offspring. Or the bearer thereof. In case you don't, Kushina might be exceedingly angry."
Minato stared at her. "I know!" he cried. "I would have needed that a month ago!"
Elder Neeko, sitting on his desk, stared at his inkwell as if it were catnip. Before tipping it off the table. She continued as if nothing happened. Minato's eye twitched. "Oh, I have been tasked with this message about a month ago, now that I recall."
"And you come here now!?"
The cat gave a haughty sniff and poked a paperweight off the desk as well. "Young ones these days! I had other matters to attend!"
Minato gave her a flat look. "Was it yarn?"
"Exquisite yarn, you buffoon!"
Minato slammed his head into the table, hard enough to dent it. He hated cats. Couldn't his son just have taken the toad contract!?
Jiraiya was a lot farther south than he usually was but the grisly here were beautiful and the sake excellent. So there was no reason to be anywhere else. Still, the island sun was super hard and unforgiving. So he spent some time lazing around in the shade of a palm tree after he finished getting to his two contacts here and watched two dozen Naruto's chop trees. There was also a cat that-
Hold up.
Two dozen Naruto's were what!?
He had to investigate that.
Jiraiya followed the clones away from the village border, through a small patch of forest, up a hill and into a clearing. Where another two dozen of Naruto's were working at a house.
"What the actual hell?" he muttered to himself.
What was the boy doing out here? Was he on a mission? No, it couldn't be. Konoha had no contracts with anything so far off the Southern coast. Dammit. How long had it been since he last was at Konoha? He had last been there two months ago when Naruto had borrowed a toad for whatever reason. Jiraiya was still sour over that entire cat thing Naruto had going now, but he supposed the boy had been closer to the Uchiha than him while growing up.
Damn those Uchiha. Always messing stuff up.
Anyhow, back to the problem at hand: Why was Naruto building a house on a godsforsaken island in the southern Sea?
"Whatcha lookin' at, old man?" a voice, female, asked from above.
Jiraiya did his best not to appear as surprised as he was and looked up. Perched on the palm tree was a young woman with hair just a few shades lighter than Kushina's, drinking from a coconut. He could have mistaken her for an Uzumaki, but she lacked their trademark violet or - at least pinkish, as Karin's were - eyes something even the odd one out, Naruto, had.
"Mhm, I have spotted my apprentice and wondered why he was here," he said, puffing out his chest to look about as important as possible.
"Ah, the old perv," the girl acknowledged, slurping noisily from her coconut. "The fuck are you doing here?"
Jiraiya's face fell. "Pervert? I'm no pervert! I'm a-!"
An empty coconut half slammed into his face with jaw rattling force. "Shut up, ya old creep." The second half of the coconut sent him into unconsciousness.
Naruto knelt over his unconscious godfather and frowned. "Did he... try to look up your skirt?"
Tayuya snorted. "Idiot. I'm wearing pants."
"Yeah, but he has that stupid Jutsu that puts you into a skirt he can look up."
Tayuya reached for another coconut. "Oh, he pisses me off. Let me kill him!"
He caught her hand before she could smash the old fart's head in. "No! He's... uh, not that bad!"
"You hesitated," she observed.
"And he's my godfather?"
She rolled her eyes. "Fine, no killing the extended family."
"Good girl- OOF!"
He took the coconut to the face like a champ, that she had to admit.
"Breakfast?" she asked casually.
"Uhu," he nodded, rubbing his cheek. "Do you want to cook?"
"Yup!"
"Will it involve coconuts?"
"You bet!"