~A Little Freak Out~

Preparing the specialty of Ichiraku Ramen was a tricky thing. Because ramen tended to be served hot enough to burn most people, it took very special conditioning for the waitresses to be able to handle to procedure. Endurance to high temperatures had to be built up gradually, but most wait-staff would not stay on at the average restaurant long enough to develop that kind of ability.

It was, in all honesty, a harsh, grueling process that weeded out all but the best and the most fit among Ichiraku's waitresses. Out of the fifty or sixty waitresses who worked full time at the restaurant, only a handful were certified to do this, and there were only a few more if you counted the hundred-plus part time employees. Those of the waitresses who were now or at one time had been kunoichi often likened the selection process to the chuunin exams - intensely competitive, and with a very high chance of hospitalization.

And indeed, being able to endure the near-boiling temperatures of the ramen was very much an ability that you'd be more likely to find in a kunoichi than a random civilian. Ayame was one of the few non-shinobi employees certified to act as a human ramen topping, and that could mostly be attributed to training for it from a young age.

She was one of the most popular items on the menu, too, thanks to her part time job at the Playful Fox. Her work as a stripper was in no small way a form of advertising for herself at Ichiraku, and this regular publicity did much to run her price sky high. Because a waitress could only be in one human ramen at a time, and Ichiraku's was a very popular restaurant, ordering one was often done more like an auction than anything else - the highest bidder would get to have the waitress in her ramen, and everyone else would either have to try and get someone else or settle for regular ramen.

Some critics of the restaurant considered this a degrading and objectifying process, but most of the waitresses who did it (who were usually among the biggest proponents of this) would simply point to the extraordinarily high commission they got. Even the least demanded ones would earn as much as twenty-five percent of the final bid plus any gratuity, and the ones at the top of the boards were usually sitting pretty with as much as sixty percent of the final price, which was usually several times the stated asking

price.

Because of how specialized a job this was, and how much training it took for someone to be able to handle the heat, Ichiraku rarely took custom requests without having participants sign thorough liability waivers which placed any and all responsibility for possible resultant injury squarely on the heads of the customers.

Even Tenten, using a shadow clone, while accompanying Naruto, had to sign such a waiver.

It was just company policy. The only reason Naruto himself didn't need to fill out such a form was because he had himself been fully certified for this - he actually volunteered for free at the restaurant just to show his support, and when he did the bidding would reach absolute fever pitch. Such events were usually announced weeks in advance, with plenty of publicity throughout the Land of Fire and its neighboring countries, and usually the proceeds went either to charity, the village, or once in a blue moon even Ichiraku Ramen itself.

The last person to order a bowl of Naruto ramen had been the daimyo of the Land of Spring (formerly yuki no kuni), and the final bid had been equal to the price of around thirty S-rank missions. The cause then had been to find a cure for a very rare kind of degenerative disease peculiar to pure-blooded members of the Kaguya clan.

Kimmiko-chan had been immensely grateful for that.

But, as it was, shadow clones of Naruto and Tenten were currently waiting naked in the kitchen along with Ayame, and they were being washed down by one of the part-time cooks as the two furo-sized bowls of ramen were being prepared for them.

Tenten shivered and squeaked, feeling the hands of the admittedly pretty cook wandering rather liberally over her body.

"No need to be so handsy, babe," she remarked to the rather plain bluenette, squirming a little at the feeling of the girl's hands vigorously kneading and scrubbing her ass.

Naruto, whose erection was being very attentively polished by Ayame, laughed a little.

"There is, actually," he said cheerfully. "Doing that kind of stuff helps bring out the flavor, you know?"

Tenten, who was getting rather wet downstairs, blushed a tiny bit. "Oh," she said, before nodding, the blush receding as she smiled. "I see. Yeah, that makes sense."

She winked at him, and grabbed the cook's hands, guiding them over her body.

"If you want to get me good and juicy," said the weapons mistress huskily, "I would suggest doing..."

She whispered into the cook's ear. The poor girl's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, and she blushed a glowing scarlet.

Ayame laughed.

A little while later, the bowls were wheeled out of the kitchen. Steam rose from them in great clouds, and as the dishes approached Naruto and Tenten felt the air get noticeably warmer and more humid, like the inside of a sauna, almost. Looking over the rims of the two giant bowls, they could see themselves each bathing in one of the ramens.

The Naruto shadow clone and Ayame were having passionate sex in the steaming hot broth, noodles draped over their naked bodies and wrapped around their entangled limbs. Ayame's moans were as loud as screams, the shadow clone's cock vigorously tenderizing her delicious cunt while its hands kneaded her breasts forcefully, massaging and teasing.

Tenten licked her lips, mouth watering at the sight of Ayame and the shadow clone of Naruto doing it in her ramen. She could see places where the clone's spunk had pooled around various toppings, and the smell of the pair's combined sex was truly overpowering.

In Naruto's bowl, meanwhile, the shadow clone of Tenten was floating on her back, smiling invitingly at the blond. She had narutomaki covering her nipples like ramen-themed pasties, and she was masturbating herself with a radish, of all things.

"You look delicious, Tenten-chan," remarked Naruto, his eyes raking up and down her kage bunshin's naked body.

"So do you, Naruto," replied the weapons mistress, licking her lips as she shamelessly ogled his shadow clone's toned muscles, and Ayame's fine-ass body. "You both look good enough to eat," she purred.

Grabbing her chopsticks, Tenten deftly plucked up a slice of chicken that had been sticking to Ayame's round, cushy bum. She plopped the thin, perfectly cooked piece of meat on her outstretched tongue, taking it into her mouth and chewing. Tenten's eyes widened, and she moaned, unable to help herself. The flavor of the meat was incredible, so tender and juicy, with just the right kind of seasoning and cooking to maximize the cut's potential.

She ate some more of the ramen, picking enthusiastically around the continually writhing and moaning bodies of Ayame and Naruto's shadow clone. It was delicious. The spices of the broth were subtle but flavorful, the arrangement of the toppings was colorful and enticing, and the noodles were utterly flawless in their taste and texture - not too soft, but not too hard, and in just the right proportion to the rest of the dish.

Of course, that much by itself was only par for the course as far as the ramen of Ichiraku Ramen, but what made this truly magnificent (aside from the added flavor of those two gorgeous slabs of meat and their mingling ejaculate) was how it was put together. How your food looked was almost as important as the actual taste - indeed, the appearance of a meal could greatly influence how it tasted to people - and the overall presentation of this meal was perfect. It was truly a masterpiece of culinary erotica, an experience that blended human beauty and the appeal of sexuality with subtle flavors and filling noodles.

It would be lie to say she didn't quickly find herself masturbating as she ate.

"Mmm..." Tenten moaned lewdly, sucking up some noodles that had gotten wrapped around the base of the Naruto clone's cock. "This is delicious."

Naruto, who was dipping some noodles and sliced veggies - held between his chopsticks - into the Tenten shadow clone's pussy for extra flavor, nodded and hummed in agreement.

"One of my favorites," he said, noisily slurping up his noodles. The shadow clone in his bowl was squirming in a mixture of agony and ecstasy, her skin bright red from the temperature of the ramen.

Tenten mischievously pinched one of Ayame's nipples between her chopsticks, plucking up a bit of tempura that had gotten stuck there. The waitress yelped, and moaned, coming in Tenten's ramen for the umpteenth time. "I think it might be my new favorite, too," she remarked cheerfully, before noshing the tempura with a bit of pork.

"It's expensive, though," Naruto helpfully reminded her, before playfully kissing the kunoichi's clone on the lips, swishing some of the delicious broth between their joined mouths. A few seconds of this later, he swallowed it down, and let the deeply blushing kage bunshin fall back into the soup.

While Tenten had barely made a dent in her own ramen, Naruto, with his voracious appetite for the noodle dish, was already down to pretty much just the broth and a few stray bits of meat or vegetables. And, in fact, he chose now to grab the bowl by its sides and - in a remarkably mundane display of his strength - lift it up to his mouth, tilting his head back to drink down the Tenten-flavored fluid. And the shadow clone in his bowl slid down to his mouth, her pussy colliding bodily into his lips when the broth was around half-drained.

"Ahhn...!" the clone squealed, eyes widening. She came explosively all over Naruto's face, the force of the impact against her womanhood pushing her to orgasm, before dispelling in a puff of white smoke, the crash disrupting the chakra that maintained the clone's structure beyond its ability to self-stabilize.

Naruto didn't take any particular notice of this, himself, being quite used to shadow clones and their quirks, but Tenten immediately stopped eating. Her eyes widened visibly as the clone's remaining chakra was reintegrated into her system, carrying with it the kage bunshin's memories.

The chopsticks fell from the weapon mistress's hands, and her face rapidly paled.

She let out a piercing shriek.

"What the hell?!" she screamed, whipping her head around wildly, suddenly wide-eyed and tense. She half jumped, half fell out of her seat, scrambling frantically, blindly over Naruto. "What the hell!?" she repeated, dropping into a combat stance as soon as she hit the floor, eyes moving this way and that as she seemingly frisked herself for a few seconds, before finally producing a kunai in her left hand.

Naruto was genuinely surprised and perplexed by this abrupt freak out from his date. "Tenten...?" he said uncertainly, getting up out of his seat. His erection still stood bare and proud, peeking out boldly from his as-yet-unzipped zipper.

The brunette stared at Naruto and his naked cock, disbelief evident in her eyes. Her mouth was agape, and her body was shaking.

"Wha... What the actual goddamned Hell?!" she shouted, practically hyperventilating. "N-Naruto...?! What are you doing... Wh-what the fuck do you think you're doing?!" Anxiously, she clapped her hands together into a shaky ram seal. "Release!" she cried, wildly fluctuating her chakra. "Release!" she cried again, pushing harder, a visible glow coalescing around her form. "RELEA

She was stopped by the feeling of Naruto's hand on her shoulder.

"Tenten?" he said quietly, those bright and soulful blue eyes of his staring concernedly into Tenten's own. "Are you okay? What's the matter?"

A bit of the tension in the weapon mistress's frame evaporated. "I..." she murmured. "I... No! I'm not okay!" she snapped weakly, shaking her head. "What's going on, Naruto? What are we doing here? Why aren't we still on the battlefield...?!"

The blond frowned. "What are you talking about, Ten-chan? We're on a date. Don't you remember?" he said. "And what do you mean, the battlefield?"

Tenten shook her head more frantically. "No..." she said. "No. No! This isn't right. Don't you remember? Madara! That Tobi guy! The Fourth Shinobi World War! Isn't any of this ringing a bell?!"

"Tenten..." Naruto murmured. "Calm down. You're delirious. We aren't at war. There hasn't been a war in almost twenty years. And there were only three big ninja wars. There was never a fourth."

The brunette shook her head again, but her movements were a little weak now. "No..." she muttered. "It was now... We were... we were fighting... against those Madara and Tobi guys. D-don't you remember...? Naruto, Neji died! You saw it! You were right there when it happened...!"

Naruto frowned a little. "Do you mean Nejie-chan...?" he said softly, brow furrowed in confusion.

Tenten stared at him strangely. "Wha... Nejie...? No! Neji! Neji Hyuuga! Don't you remember him? How could possibly have forgotten...?!"

Now it was Naruto's turn to look at Tenten strangely.

"Him?" he said, confused. "Ten-chan... There hasn't been a man other than me since the First Hokage. Did you hit your head, or something...?"

The weapon mistress's jaw dropped.

"What?" she said. "No, that's impossible...! Naruto, the First died decades ago. What you're saying is utterly preposterous... it's completely impossible!" She groaned, then, clutching a hand to her forehead. "Ugh..." she grunted. "What... what are all these...? These memories..."

She shook her head, staggering weakly. She looked close to collapsing, but Naruto wrapped an arm around her to support the brunette.

"Memories...?" he said, frowning softly.

"Y-yeah..." Tenten murmured. "I... I don't know what's going on. It's like, like this world is all just an illusion..." She hissed, clenching her teeth and wincing. "It hurts... My head hurts..."

Naruto was quiet. Deciding to see what was wrong, he closed pulled up a bit of kyuubi chakra. Immediately, thanks to the physical contact with Tenten, he could feel everything she was feeling.

Her mind was overflowing. It felt like there were two lifetimes worth of memories inside her head, threatening to burst her psyche at the seams. They were so vivid, too. Just standing there, holding onto Tenten, he was getting so many flashes of similar yet contradictory memories. His extensive experience with the shadow clone jutsu was the only thing keeping the jinchuuriki standing as he was bombarded with image after image.

The world he saw in Tenten's memories was so strange, to him. There were men, there. Indeed, most of Naruto's fellow ninja were men in these visions. And yet it was not a happy world. So much sadness and loss. Even just from Tenten's perspective, he saw a world of so much tragedy and woe. In these visions, there were so many people different or missing altogether, so much violence and strife.

It daunted Naruto, to see a world so much worse than this one, and yet at the same time, it felt so familiar...

He shook his head. No. He didn't know what was going on, but surely these visions were just from some sort of nightmare, or genjutsu. They weren't completely dismal, yet there was so much that was worse than the world he knew that it seemed almost insidious, nefarious.

But before the cascade of images came to a halt, he was assaulted with one final vision. Two men: one with long spiky hair and two rinnegan eyes, and the other with much shorter hair and a distinctively scarred body, as well as one rinnegan and one sharingan. Even as men, he recognized these two immediately, but the impressions of fear and hate that he got from this image, all the innumerable negative emotions he felt Tenten associate with these two, set the tiniest seed of worry in his gut.

"Obi-chan..." he whispered. "...Mari-chan..." Despite himself, he frowned thoughtfully. Surely, this was just a constructed illusion, some kind of false memory...

...yet, he could not help but wonder. Doubt, if only the smallest hint of it, began to foster in his stomach.

He was sure it was nothing, but maybe he would have a word with Obi and Mari, once he got home. If Kumiko was successful in restoring their memories, then maybe they would know what all of this was about...

Hopefully this was just some kind of twisted joke.

"You okay, Ten-chan?" Naruto asked the brunette, once she had mostly calmed down.

"Yeah..." she said slowly, nodding her head. "I don't know what came over me..." She put a hand to the side of her head with a groan. "What happened?" she muttered. "My head is killing me, and I feel so weak and shaky... and my heart is beating so fast..."

She shivered weakly, leaning limply against Naruto. Her eyelids fluttered briefly up and down.

"You don't remember...?" Naruto whispered.

Tenten frowned softly. "Remember what? One second I'm eating some ramen, and the next I feel like I just ran a marathon, and I can't even stand up. Other than that, nothing. Why? Did something happen? My head kinda hurts..." she said softly, a faintly dream-like quality to her words.

Naruto was silent for a very long moment, deep in thought, perplexed and bemused. Finally, though, he spoke.

"No," he said softly. "Nothing happened."

Tenten's frown became a smile. "That's good..." she said dreamily, nuzzling her cheek into the crook of the blond's neck. "I feel horny," she purred, casually hiked up the hem of her cheongsam and pressing herself hard against his body. "I need you inside me so baaaad..." she moaned, rubbing her pussy greedily against his erect manhood.

"Mmm..." Naruto hummed absently. "That's nice." He cupped one of the brunette's now-bared buttocks in his hand, bringing another up to tease Tenten's breasts through the fabric of her dress He bucked his hips against hers, inching himself inside.

Grunting, he started to bounce the kunoichi up and down on his shaft while Ayame watched, dutifully remaining silent in Tenten's ramen, diddling herself eagerly to the sight of the two ninja starting to go at it. And the incident with those strange memories soon faded into the back of Naruto's mind, all but forgotten in the face of some quality kunoichi poon.