BZZT. BZZT. BZZT.
A sharp, piercing sound.
BZZT. BZZT. BZZT.
"Ugh... shut up..."
Naruto rolled over. His face hit something hard.
Wood.
He opened his eyes.
He wasn't in his bed. He was on the floor. His own apartment floor.
It was clean.
And his back hurt.
"Ow! My... my back..."
He sat up, wincing. The blanket Sakura had given him had fallen off.
BZZT. BZZT. BZZT.
The sound was coming from a small alarm clock on the nightstand, next to the bed.
"Damn it! I'm coming!"
He stood up, his vertebrae cracking.
"Four... thirty? FOUR THIRTY?! It's... it's... the middle of the night!"
He looked at the bed.
Hinata was there, bundled under the clean sheets Sakura had brought. She was fast asleep. Her breathing was peaceful.
For a second, Naruto stood still, watching her.
The gray morning light was just starting to filter through the window. She looked... calm. Not like the bundle of panic and fainting spells from yesterday.
"Oh."
He felt... weird.
"Damn... Poor girl."
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"She fainted three times. Three. And now... she's sleeping in my bed. And I'm on the floor. And her dad wants to kill me. And now... I have to go to a slave job... before the sun is even up."
He moved stealthily. He didn't want to wake her. It was the first time he'd seen her not-terrified since the tree incident.
He grabbed his orange jacket. It was clean, but wrinkled.
The movement made the fabric whisper.
"Shhh! Stupid jacket!"
In the bed, Hinata stirred. She let out a small murmur and snuggled deeper.
Naruto froze.
"Don't wake up, don't wake up, don't wake up..."
She settled.
Naruto let out a sigh of relief.
"Okay. Off to save the world."
He paused.
"Or... file scrolls. Whatever."
He glanced at the kitchen. It was spotless. And empty. No food.
His stomach growled.
"Great. Hungry. And sore. And... it's four forty-five in the morning."
He slipped on his sandals.
"That hag! She's starving me!"
He ran through the empty streets. They were dark and silent.
"This is ridiculous. Not even the gate guards are awake. Who am I even going to wave at?"
He reached the Hokage Tower. He climbed the stairs. The main office was dark, locked.
"Great! She's not even here! She made me get up at this hour...!"
"You're late!"
"AHHHHH!"
Naruto jumped three feet in the air, pulling a kunai on instinct.
Shizune was standing in the shadows of the hallway. She held a flashlight under her chin, giving her a ghostly look. In her other hand, she had a coffee mug as big as her head. Her eyes were twitching.
"Shizune-chan! Don't do that! I almost used a Rasengan on you!"
"It's five-oh-two!" she hissed, her voice vibrating with caffeine. "You're two minutes late!"
"Two minutes! The sun doesn't even know it's late! Besides, I was... I was... taking care of my fiancée!"
He tried to make it sound mature.
Shizune's expression didn't change. "Follow me. And don't touch anything. The Hokage is in a... particular... mood."
"Particular? Worse than yesterday?"
"Yesterday she broke a desk. This morning... she yelled at me for how the coffee sounded when I poured it."
Naruto gulped. "Got it. No noise."
Shizune led him to a door he'd never noticed, behind a staircase.
They went down.
And down.
And down.
"Uh... Shizune-chan... where are we going? The torture chambers? Hell?"
"The archive basement. Sub-level four. Storage."
The air turned cold. And damp. It smelled... bad.
"Ugh... smells like... wet socks."
"Mold," Shizune corrected. "And rats."
They reached a giant metal door, rusted at the edges. Shizune pulled out a huge, jangling keyring and undid three locks.
The door swung open with a shriek that set Naruto's teeth on edge.
"This is it."
Shizune clicked on the flashlight and aimed it inside.
It was a huge room. As big as training ground three. And it was... full.
Mountains of scrolls. Piles and piles, up to the ceiling. Covered in dust and cobwebs.
"Whoa..."
"This," Shizune said, a kind of reverent terror in her voice, "is the archive room for failed missions from the last ten years."
Naruto stepped inside. The dust made him sneeze. "Achoo! Failed... missions?"
"Yes. The D-Rank missions that went wrong. The C-Rank missions where the client was eaten by a bear. The B-Rank missions where the ninja... well, just vanished."
"This place is cursed!" Naruto yelled, his voice echoing off the damp walls.
"It's damp. It smells weird. And I think," Shizune lowered her voice to a whisper, "something lives over there."
She pointed her flashlight toward a distant, dark corner.
Something moved.
It wasn't a small movement. It was a slithering. A sound of something large dragging itself over dry parchment.
Skitter-skitter-CRUNCH.
Naruto turned pale. "WHAT WAS THAT?!"
"What?"
"THAT! THAT SOUND! IT WAS BIG! IT HAD... LEGS! LOTS OF LEGS!"
Shizune shuddered. "That's... 'The Archivist.' Or so we assistants call it. It's probably just a very, very large rat. Or a colony of them."
"That wasn't a rat! Rats don't 'crunch'! Rats... squeak! That... that... ate something!"
Shizune decided to ignore him. She pointed the flashlight at a small wooden desk in the center of the room. On it sat a single candle and a box of matches.
"Your job."
"My job? Fight... 'The Archivist'?"
"File! All of them!"
Naruto looked at the mountains of scrolls. His jaw dropped.
"ALL OF THEM?! Shizune-chan, there are... there are... thousands! Millions! It'll take me... a hundred years! I'll be dead! Hiashi won't have to execute me, this place will!"
"Alphabetically!" Shizune continued, her voice high with nerves. "By the client's name! Not by rank! Not by the assigned ninja! By the client's name!"
"But... but... I can't even read half these names! They're... smeared!"
"AND!" Shizune shouted, "Do not use a Rasengan to clear the dust!"
"But I was gonna...!"
"I know! Don't! The last time a Genin tried to 'clean' in here with a wind jutsu, we lost the entire record of the 'Suna Butter Crisis'."
Naruto blinked. "The... what... butter?"
"Don't ask! It's a classified file! And no shadow clones!"
"But Shizune-chan, it's the only way! A thousand clones and we'd be done in... in a year!"
"No!" she said, backing toward the door. "The Hokage will detect them! She put a chakra-suppression seal on this room. It's on the door. If you try to use more chakra than it takes to light the candle, she'll know. And she will come down. And she will not be happy."
Naruto looked at the door. He saw a small paper seal pasted to the frame.
"It's a trap! This is... this is...!"
"It's your job!" Shizune said, already halfway out the room. "Your fifty-percent salary! See you at noon for your progress review!"
"Wait! Shizune-chan, don't leave me in here alone! With... with the thing!"
"And don't... feed... whatever lives in the corner! It likes meat!"
"MEAT?! SHIZUNE!"
CLANG!
The metal door slammed shut. The sound of the three locks sliding home echoed in the room.
Naruto was left alone.
In the near-total darkness. With the smell of mold.
And the sound of skitter-skitter-crunch coming from the corner.
"Great."
He lit the candle. The small flame barely illuminated the desk.
"Fantastic. Grounded. Broke. Married. And now... a librarian."
He looked at the nearest pile. "Okay. Okay. To work."
He picked up the first scroll. It was damp. And sticky.
"Ugh. Disgusting. This is worse than the buzzing milk."
He unrolled it. The ink was running.
"Mission: Find the cat Tora. Client: Madam Shijimi, wife of the Fire Daimyō."
"Hey!" Naruto smiled. "This is ours! Team Seven! Our first mission!"
He kept reading.
"Status: Failed."
Naruto froze. "Failed? What do you mean, failed?! We found that demon cat! Kakashi-sensei said so!"
He read the ninja report, written in Kakashi's lazy handwriting.
"Report: Target (Tora) was recovered. Client (Madam Shijimi) refused to pay the full fee, citing 'emotional distress' of the cat. The cat then... bit the client, clawed the client's son, and escaped out the window. Client is now demanding compensation for the bite and scratched furniture. Mission classified as 'Failed - Mutual Chaos'."
Naruto stared at the scroll.
"That cat! I KNEW IT! I knew he was evil! He was always evil! And now I find out we lost money!"
He sighed. "Okay. File. 'S' for 'Shijimi'. Or 'T' for 'Tora'. Or 'C' for 'Cat, Stupid'."
He walked over to the shelves. They were huge, made of rusted metal, and reached up to the dark ceiling.
He found the 'S' shelf. It was... full. And covered in something sticky and dry.
"Ugh! What is this? Honey? Or... slug slime?"
He decided to leave Madam Shijimi's scroll on the floor. "'S' pile. Provisional."
He picked up another scroll.
"Mission: Walk Kiba Inuzuka's Ninken. Client: Tsume Inuzuka. Assigned Ninja: Choji Akimichi."
"Haha!" Naruto laughed. "Choji walking Kiba's dogs! This is good!"
He unrolled the scroll.
"Ninja Report: Mission compromised. Dogs found a Yakiniku stand. I was forced to... consume the evidence. And the mission pay. In damages. Akamaru is now... larger. Mission classified as 'Failed - Delicious'."
"Haha! That... that is so Choji! Of course! Okay. 'I' for 'Inuzuka'. Or 'C' for 'Choji'. This is impossible!"
He sat on the dusty floor. "I can't do this. It's stupid. And I'm hungry."
He looked at his hands.
"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu."
He put his fingers together. He gathered a small amount of chakra.
ZZZZT!
A sharp pain shot up his arm, like a thousand needles.
"OW! DAMN HAG! SHE WAS SERIOUS!"
He rubbed his arm. "No clones. Great."
Skitter-skitter...
The sound was closer.
Naruto jumped to his feet. "Stay back! Whatever you are! I'm... I'm filing! I'm busy!"
He grabbed the candle. He held it up toward the darkness.
A pair of small red eyes stared back at him from the top of a scroll pile, about thirty feet away.
"AH! IT'S REAL! SHIZUNE, YOU LIAR! THAT'S NOT A RAT!"
He grabbed Choji's scroll. "TAKE THAT! 'FAILED - DELICIOUS'!"
He threw the scroll into the dark. The eyes vanished. He heard a crunch and then a faster skitter, moving away.
Naruto was panting. "It... it ate the scroll. It ate Choji's report!"
He looked at the mountains of scrolls. He looked at the locked door.
"I'm trapped. I'm trapped in a damp, cursed library with a... a scroll-eating thing."
He sighed. A long, shaky sigh.
"Okay. Okay. 'Maturity.' 'Responsibility'."
Hiashi's face appeared in his mind. "Execution."
Hinata's face. "She fainted three times."
His empty wallet. "Fifty percent."
"ALRIGHT!" he yelled at the dark room. "I'LL DO IT! I'll file this stupid room! I'll file every stupid lost cat and every failed barbecue mission! And I'll do it alphabetically! And... and I'll fight off the Archivist! But I'll do it!"
He sat down. He grabbed a new pile.
Hours passed.
Actual, agonizing, boring hours.
Naruto learned more about Konoha's failures than he had ever wanted to know.
"Mission: Test new Dango flavor. Assigned Ninja: Anko Mitarashi. Report: 'The Dango was good. Anko ate the entire shop's supply. And then the supply of the shop next door. The shop went bankrupt. Client refuses to pay.' Anko! That goes in 'M' for 'Mitarashi'!"
"Mission: Observe Rock Lee during his 'Midnight Training'. Client: Maito Gai. Assigned Ninja: Maito Gai."
Naruto blinked. "Huh? He assigned himself a mission?"
"Ninja Report: 'I failed! I could not keep up with his burning youth! He ran five hundred laps around the village on his hands! And I could only do four hundred and ninety-nine! My own spring of life is wilting!' What?! Haha! Those two... are... weird! So weird! Okay. 'G' for 'Gai'."
He was starting to... almost... enjoy it. It was like reading the village's most embarrassing gossip journal.
"Mission: 'Hot Springs Research'. Client: Jiraiya. Assigned Ninja: Jiraiya."
Naruto's eyes lit up. "Hey! Pervy Sage!"
He unrolled the scroll eagerly.
"Report: 'The research was a resounding success! The hot springs are Grade A! The water quality is excellent! The female staff is Grade SSS! Especially the—'"
Naruto paused. "Wait? Why is this in the 'Failed' pile?"
He looked. At the bottom, there was a note in different, sharper handwriting.
"Addendum from the Third Hokage's Office: 'Jiraiya was discovered, beaten unconscious by the bathhouse supervisor, and thrown into the street. Client refuses to pay the supervisor's hospital bill (he broke her wrist). Mission classified as 'Failed - Deserved'."
Naruto let out a laugh that echoed through the entire basement.
"HAHAHA! Even the old Hokage knew he was an idiot! 'Failed - Deserved'! 'J' for 'Jiraiya'!"
He was laughing so hard he didn't hear the skittering approach.
"Haha! Grade SSS—! Ow!"
Something bit his ankle.
"OW! GET OFF!"
Naruto kicked. He saw something the size of a small dog, covered in... scrolls? Or... fur?... tumble back into the darkness.
"Damn it! The Archivist! It bit me! I'm going to get scroll-rabies!"
He rubbed his ankle. "Stupid rat-thing."
He was tired. The candle was almost gone.
"Ugh... what time is it? Eight? Nine? I'm hungry. And my ankle hurts."
He looked at the piles. He'd barely made a dent.
"This... is... hell. Paperwork hell."
He sat down on a pile he had labeled "Cats."
"Just... five minutes. I'm gonna... organize... the 'G' pile... mentally. Yeah. Mentally."
He closed his eyes.
CLANG.
The metal door banged open, flooding the room with light from the hallway.
Naruto woke up with a jolt, covered in dust and cobwebs.
"AH! I'M UP! THE CAT IS IN 'S' FOR 'SHIJIMI'! I SWEAR!"
Tsunade was standing in the doorway. She did not look impressed.
"Noon."
Naruto blinked. The light hurt his eyes. "Noon?! Already?! But... but... I just...!"
Tsunade looked around the room. It was chaos. The original mountains were gone, but now there were dozens of smaller piles, labeled in Naruto's crooked handwriting, scattered across the floor.
"I see my new assistant is... productive." Her voice was as dry as the dust in the room.
Naruto scrambled to his feet, accidentally knocking over the "G" pile. Scrolls rolled across the floor.
"Ah! Grandma! Hokage-sama!" He bowed, trying to gather them. "I was... I was... organizing! Mentally! The 'G' pile is... complicated! There's Gai, and Genma! And... and... the Gekkō clan! It's very confusing!"
Tsunade stared at him. "You smell... like dust."
She stepped into the room. "And... honey?"
"Not my fault!" Naruto defended. "The 'S' shelf is sticky! And something bit me!"
"Something bit you?"
"The Archivist! It's real! Shizune can tell you!"
Tsunade sighed. She looked too tired to argue. She threw him something.
A small, dusty brown pill.
Naruto caught it on instinct. It was hard. And old. "What... what is it?"
"Your lunch."
Naruto looked at it. "My... lunch?"
"Soldier pill. From the archives."
Naruto's heart sank. "From the archives? From... down here?"
"From the 'Failed Medical Supplies' pile. Shelf 'P' for 'Poisonous'."
Naruto stared at it in horror.
"Expiration date: Ten years ago."
Naruto's face turned green. "Ten... years?! Grandma, you can't... that's poison! You're trying to kill me! Just like Hiashi!"
"Your job," she said, arms crossed. "I want a full report. Flavor, texture, and whether 'expired' means 'poisonous' or just 'tastes bad'."
"No! I refuse! That's... that's...!"
Tsunade raised an eyebrow. "Fifty percent salary, Naruto. And Hiashi was here this morning, asking about your 'progress.' Eat it."
Naruto looked at the pill. He looked at Tsunade.
"You hate me," he whispered. "You really hate me."
"You cost me an oak desk. Eat it."
Naruto shut his eyes. He popped it in his mouth.
And tried to chew.
It was like biting a rock.
CRUNCH.
A flavor exploded in his mouth. A flavor that was not human.
"BLECH...!"
He doubled over, coughing. "BLECH! IT TASTES... LIKE... CHALK!"
"And?"
"AND FEET! DEAD FEET! DEAD FEET... AND... AND ROTTEN FISH!"
He started spitting on the dusty floor. "WATER! WATER! I'M DYING! IT'S POISON!"
Tsunade smirked, a small, cruel smile. She tossed him a notepad and a pencil.
"Good. Write it down. 'Flavor: Dead feet and rotten fish.' And it's not poisonous. Yet. Congratulations."
While Naruto was coughing and desperately wiping his tongue on his sleeve, Tsunade pulled something else from her own sleeve.
A bento box.
Wrapped in elegant purple cloth.
Naruto's eyes lit up, watery from the pill. "Ah! Food! Real food! I new you weren't that bad, Grandma! Gimme!"
He lunged for it.
Tsunade slapped his hand away, hard.
"OW! What?"
"This," Tsunade said, holding the box out of his reach, "is your dinner."
Naruto blinked, confused by the pain and hunger. "My dinner? But... it's noon?"
"It's not for you, idiot."
Naruto's smile vanished. "Huh?"
Tsunade handed him the box. It was warm. He could feel the heat through the cloth. And it smelled... it smelled delicious. Like grilled fish and fresh rice.
"It's the stipend."
Naruto stared at her. "The... stipend?"
"The food I told you about," Tsunade said. "For Hinata-chan. Her lunch."
"But... you said it was my dinner..."
"It's your job to take her dinner. Or her lunch. Whatever. And," she added, pulling a small receipt from her pocket, "speaking of work... Hiashi already sent me the bill for Sakura-chan's cleaning."
Naruto's eyes went wide.
"It includes the rubber gloves, three bottles of bleach, two scrub brushes, and a 'biohazard fee' for the buzzing milk."
"WHAT?! A BIOHAZARD...?! THAT'S ROBBERY!"
"I'm docking it from your next paycheck."
"MY PAYCHECK?! BUT... BUT... THAT'LL LEAVE ME... WITH NOTHING! I'LL BE... I'LL BE... POORER THAN POOR! I'LL BE... POOR-NEGATIVE!"
"You'll be a 'responsible husband' who pays his debts," Tsunade said, clapping him on the shoulder. A cloud of dust exploded from his jacket. "Ugh. Take a bath before you go home."
"But I'm hungry! And my mouth tastes like dead feet!"
"Make sure she eats it," Tsunade said, ignoring him and heading for the door. "And don't you dare touch her fish. I know you like grilled fish."
"But...!"
"I'll be watching. And don't finish here until the 'M' stack is done. Shizune will be down to check on you at six."
"SIX?! THAT'S SIX MORE HOURS!"
"And don't let The Archivist bite you again! You might get an infection!"
The door slammed shut. CLANG. The deadbolt slid home.
Naruto was left alone.
Hungry. Tired. Sore. Covered in dust. With the taste of death and chalk in his mouth.
And holding the most delicious lunch he had smelled in weeks.
"...She... hates me..." he muttered.
His stomach growled. Loudly.
He looked at the bento. He looked at the darkness.
"Just... just one peek... I'm not gonna eat... just... smell..."
He untied the cloth. He opened the lid.
Steam rose.
Glazed, grilled fish. Perfect white rice. Brightly colored pickled vegetables. A small slice of tamagoyaki.
It was... beautiful.
"Don't touch it... don't touch it... it's for Hinata... poor Hinata... fainted three times... living on my floor... marrying an idiot..."
His stomach growled again. This time, it was a growl so loud and mournful it made "The Archivist" skitter in the far corner.
"To hell with my maturity."
He slammed the box shut. The smell vanished.
"Okay!"
His voice echoed.
"'M' stack! DAMN IT! 'M' FOR 'MARRIAGE'! 'M' FOR 'MISERABLE'! AND 'M' FOR 'ME, STARVING'!"
He got back to work, the hot bento burning his hands and the taste of dead feet in his mouth.