How To Break a Mask (Sasunaru)

The Festival

How to Break a Mask

Author: Kinomi Akai

Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto, we would have gotten a lot more than episode 3's "kiss"!

Summary: An incident at the festival on Oct. 10th reveals that there is a lot that everyone doesn't know about Naruto. Smart!Naruto, Sasunaru/Narusasu, Rated M to be safe

Pairings: Sasunaru/Narusasu, mentions of KakaIru, as of now.

Warnings: Shonen-ai, yaoi, boy x boy, whatever to want to call it. Sakura "bashing" in earlier chapters.

Author's Note: First real chapter! Hope you enjoy.

"Blah" – talking

'blah' – thinking

'blah' – Kyuubi talking

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Last time:

"Naruto! We're gonna leave you behind if you don't hurry," came Kakashi's voice.

"Ah! Wait!" Naruto sped off after them, praying that nothing would go wrong...

Well, you can't blame him for hoping.

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Chapter 1: The Festival

As Team 7 approached the festivities, Naruto was becoming more and more serious about yelling something about diarrhea and bolting in the other direction. In spite of it being publicized as a day for celebration, October 10th was an anniversary of many, many deaths. In spite of all efforts, it had always seemed like a day of grief for Naruto, and even for Kyuubi. Different people dealt with grief in different ways, but to Naruto, it seemed most of those grieving in this village dealt with their feelings through trying to kill the one they blamed - and on certain occasions, nearly succeeding. It took a few incidents before Naruto gave up, and stayed far away from everyone on October 10th. He breathed out a puff of air and tried to calm his nerves.

'We're nearly there,' Naruto thought to himself.

'Calm yourself, kit. Stick close to your team, but have an escape route ready.'

Naruto could see the decorations and stands quickly approaching, and being able to see them more quickly and clearly than others was certainly not helping the panic building in his tried to calm himself and look for an escape route; roofs were the easiest option, but also the most obvious. There's no way Kakashi wouldn't notice it. Konoha had some side paths and alleys he could disappear in, but they were dark, and full of old memories. He might not be caught in them, but that wasn't what his past experience had taught him.

'You did not have the skills then that you have now.' Kyuubi's reassuring voice echoed through his head, and gave him the strength to keep walking.

But Sasuke was glancing at him from the corner of his eye, and maybe Kakashi was too - so he had clearly kept quiet for too long. A conveniently placed rock let him put up the act again. Pretending to focus on one of the stands in the distance, he let his foot get caught under the rock and quickly tumbled to the ground.

Sakura, Kakashi and Sasuke heard the bang, and turned around to see Naruto on the ground face first.

"Dobe."

Naruto immediately stood up at Sasuke's comment.

"I'm not a dobe, you teme!"

"Naruto! Don't you dare call Sasuke-kun a teme! He's way stronger than you anyway!" Sakura stepped forward and slammed her fist down on Naruto's head. He resisted the urge to dodge and braced for impact.

"Oww, Sakura-chan, that hurt!"

"Now, now you three. We need to keep going if you want to make it to the festival early!" Kakashi said.

'Whoever said we wanted to get there early?' Naruto thought to himself, while childishly grumbling and glaring on the outside.

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Villagers were glaring at Naruto as he walked by. The closer they got to the festival, the more people there were. Naruto tried his best to ignore the whispers that followed him. If the rest of Team Seven noticed anything off, they definitely didn't show it. But the villagers were always good at keeping quiet, and most other people couldn't hear like Naruto could.

"What's he doing here?"

"...his fault the Yondaime died..."

"...killed my sister, you know..."

"...shouldn't even be allowed outside..."

Naruto stared up at the sky. He tried his best not to let his smile waver, not to let his mask fall. He was extremely worried about what was going to happen at the festival. The anger was almost suffocating; he couldn't believe no one else had noticed it. He wanted to run, but he couldn't, he just had to...

'I'll just act like I always do...I have to...'

'Kit, the pervert's talking to you!'

"...do?"

"Huh?" Naruto realized that he hadn't been paying attention to what his teacher was saying. Not that it was probably anything important.

"Naruto, you should listen better. Kakashi-sensei just asked what we wanted to do, since we're here. Be more polite!" Sakura glared at Naruto.

"He's an idiot, right, Sasuke-kun?" She said, he glare quickly changing to a dreamy look on her face as she latched onto Sasuke's arm.

Naruto stopped listening when Sakura said "we're here". He had never felt this nervous before. He quickly hid his emotions and shouted;

"RAMEN! Let's get ramen, Kakashi-sensei!"

Kakashi sighed. "Naruto, ramen's isn't healthy enough to eat all the time. But it is about lunch time, let's get some food."

"Ramen is healthy! It's the best food there is!"

"I agree with Kakashi-sensei, don't you, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura argued, before looking up at Sasuke again.

"Hn."

Naruto pouted as Kakashi lead them towards a sushi restaurant.

"Let's eat here." He said, before sitting down and motioning them to do the same.

A waitress came to the table with a smile on her face, asking what everyone wanted. She was middle-aged, which only meant one thing to Naruto. Her eyes reached Naruto, her smile wilted, and her eyes narrowed. She quickly wrote what they wanted and went into the kitchen.

'Great. Now I won't get to eat again' Naruto thought to himself.

'Relax, kit. We'll get out of this festival soon. And you've gone longer without food.' Kyuubi replied.

'Do you think the rest of the team will notice?'

'You can make sure they don't. Pretend to eat the spoiled food or something like that. I'm sure they have to bring out something for you...'

And so Naruto whined loudly about how long the food was taking, getting a bump on the head from Sakura, who told him to shut up.

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