The Dark Side of Akatsuki. Chapter 13

Title: I'm Surrounded By Idiots

Naruto trudged down the streets of Konoha. It was too lively, in his opinion. Sasuke was silent beside him.

"It just feels wrong, you know?" Naruto said, continuing a rant he had ended a minute earlier, "Like, it's only been a week and everyone's talking more about his successor than about the old man himself." He scowled, but his heart wasn't even in it. He had taken the Hokage's death terribly hard.

Naruto had always dreamed of becoming the Hokage himself one day, and whenever he had imagined it, he had thought it would be the old man himself who handed the hat down to him personally. The Third would retire peacefully, and Naruto would become the Fifth Hokage. That was that. Well, not any more.

Sasuke spoke up, seeming distracted. "Yeah, I know. We need to get out of the village for a while. This place is stifling."

Naruto nodded, eyes glum. He had spent the last year stuck outside the village on the slopes of Mount Myoboku with a bunch of toads, and this wasn't in any way the return he had hoped for. Actually, the village had been pretty good to him recently. A couple of years back, Sakura had finally got fed up with hearing him make up stories about the past Hokage whose ranks he wished someday to join and had made him spend a day in the library actually learning something about them. Really, it shouldn't have taken so long, but due to his upbringing Naruto was barely literate. He had the whole 'child of a hero' thing to thank for the sudden shift in treatment, he supposed.

Seeing the name 'Uzumaki Kushina' as the wife of the Fourth Hokage had sparked a couple questions, which had soon spread like sparks catching fire when answers were suspiciously lacking. Soon, coincidences had mounted and, when certain people had refused to talk, Naruto had resorted to spreading made-up stories about himself in an effort to provoke a response. Around the time when the village was abuzz with worry that Naruto was literally the child of the Nine Tails Demon Fox, the Hokage had stepped in to set the record straight.

Since then, his life had gotten a lot smoother. He just wished he could say the same for Sasuke.

They continued walking down the street, and Naruto kept catching people scowling when they saw the young Uchiha Chuunin. Naruto cursed under his breath and felt like spitting.

"Yeah, I can see why you'd wanna get out of here, too," he said.

"What? You can?" asked Sasuke, bewildered. Naruto wasn't sure why his friend was acting like such a spaz all of a sudden.

"Yeah, dude. Everyone's giving you the cold shoulder. I've already had to threaten some jerks with beatdowns for talking shit about your family, you know."

"Oh… right. Yeah, all these armchair intelligence experts are convinced they know who's behind this all... If you ask me, they're just jumping at shadows. It's not a big deal. But thanks."

"Whatever, man. Let's get out of here if we can."

'Although,' he thought to himself, as he caught sight of a girl coming down the street, 'there's something to be said for not being around a bunch of wrinkly old toads any more.' The person in question was the cute Hyuuga girl whom he had seen from time to time over the years. Hinata. And, boy, time had really been good to her. Wow. Gotta play this cool.

Naruto gave her a wave and a greeting as they approached, and her white eyes widened in shock. With a high-pitched squeak, she sort of stumbled in place then stammered out a response.

"N-Naruto! You're back! I- oh- Sorry!"

Then she covered her face and rushed past in a hurry, disappearing down a nearby alley.

Naruto sighed. Some things hadn't changed.

"Man, how's a guy supposed to get a girl's attention when she won't even give me the time of day, huh?" Naruto grumbled.

"What? Wait, what are you talking about?" Sasuke asked, confused.

"Girls, man! I'm talking about girls. Come on, didn't you see that back there?"

Sasuke frowned, staring at Naruto. "I saw something, yeah, but what do you think just happened?"

"It's the same thing that always happens when I try to talk to her. She finds some excuse to run off, or says she's feeling bad. It's enough to get a guy down, ya know?"

"You're serious." Sasuke's voice was flat, without inflection. "You're actually serious and not just kidding me here."

"Yeah, what's your problem?"

"Oh, no, nothing. I mean... You really don't-" Sasuke paused, before adding, "Huh. I can't believe you hung out with that foul old man for a year and still..."

"What? Still what? What the hell are you talking about?"

Sasuke shook his head. "No, you know what? I'll explain it when you're older."

Naruto glared at his friend, but it didn't illuminate the matter. Eventually, he gave up. Together, they moved onward until they reached the Academy.

In an organization like Konoha's Shinobi administration there are really only two methods of management: Order through fiat, and order through paperwork. A good leader could either keep things working smoothly through attentive focus and delegation to deservedly trusted underlings, or through administration of a good system that could function on its own through well-understood and well-documented rules.

The Hokage's unexpected death had revealed an unusual problem, which was that all of the employed ninjas, bureaucrats, and ninja-bureacrats had different opinions on how the village had actually been run when you got right down to it. Some people had come into work every day and listened to the first competent person who had a job for them all the way up the line to the Hokage. Others had relied on systems and procedures that had been in place for decades, sending reports and requests to the appropriate individuals and receiving orders and mandates by the book.

Apparently, the Third Hokage had never gotten around to making the rogues play by the rules. Either that, or he had never gotten around to fully dismantling the bureaucracy. Or, and this opinion was growing in popularity, he just liked being a dick to certain people.

So it was that Naruto and Sasuke proceeded through the hallways of the Academy's Administration buildings, dodging a stream of bureaucrat-nin herding a stampede of filing cabinets on wheels down the corridors like their lives depended on it.

The building was a madhouse.

As they passed a very loud room on their left, both of the young men were forced to dodge suddenly as a storm of shuriken whirled out of the open doorway and embedded themselves into the opposite wall. The inside of the room was filled with people arguing vigorously about qualifications skills, ages, and management style, and the discussion had evidently grown heated enough to descend into random outbursts of violence.

!!!Suscribe for more chapters in advance¡¡¡

Patreon: patreon.com/Suzy177