This isn't completely true to the canon timeline. It's also crack. Just use your imagination (anything is possible if you believe hard enough). All characters are of age...whatever that means in a society that allows twelve-year olds to murder. /bitterness

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Kishimoto. No one is making any money off of this except for the guy who owns the internet cafe.

Naruto draped an arm heavily around Sakura's shoulders and peered at her through half-lidded eyes. He swayed slightly, clearly unable to balance himself, even while supported by something else. To his credit, Sakura wasn't that steady herself.

A slow smile spread over his face. "I love you, Sakura-chaaaan," he slurred. His expression suddenly brightened. "Hey, hey! Guess what? I'm drunk." He collapsed in a fit of giggles, nearly bringing Sakura with him.

Sakura peered down on him from her precarious perch on a stool with appropriate solemnity. "You should go tell Sasuke how much you love him, too."

Naruto grabbed the countertop of the bar and dragged himself into standing position. He stood there a moment while the world righted itself, then turned back to Sakura with a look of intense consternation on his face. "But I love youuu, Sakura-chan," he protested before squinting his eyes in an approximation of a glare. "Sasuke's a bastard."

Sakura gasped in realization. "He is! You should tell him that." She paused, then nodded to herself sagely.

Naruto, always willing to oblige in this particular area, pushed himself off the counter and staggered to Sasuke's corner booth. He plopped down in front of his erstwhile sometimes-best friend (and five empty sake bottles occupying the table between them). Sasuke glared out from under thick bangs, which were drooping more than usual, at the new and entirely unwelcome addition to his table. Said company was pointing a dramatic if unsteady finger in the general direction of his nose.

"You," Naruto declared solemnly, "are a bastard."

***

Sakura turned away from the rising voices coming from a corner of the room and faced Ino. "Where were we," she asked, taking another sip.

Ino stirred her drink with one perfectly manicured fingernail. "Livers," she answered, removing the finger and sucking the alcohol off of it slowly, all the while looking at someone over Sakura's left shoulder.

"Right. Livers." Sakura blinked at her owlishly. "You know who has a liver? Sasuke-kun."

"That's great, Sakura," Ino, answered distractedly. "Hey, can you tell me if you think Sai-kun is looking this way?" She craned her neck a little more. Sakura turned a full one-eighty degrees on her stool and peered at the other nin currently passed out on a table in the middle of the bar.

"No, I don't think so," she answered off-handedly before tilting her head thoughtfully. "I don't love him, you know."

Ino raised an eyebrow. "Sai-kun?" she asked skeptically.

"Well, him too, but I meant Sasuke-kun." She turned back to Ino as Naruto banged his fist on the table he was sitting at and shouted "You are drunk, you bastard!" and whispered conspiratorially at Ino's right cheekbone.

"Not because he has a liver," she clarified. "Everyone has a liver. But Naruto is right." At this point she overbalanced and caught herself on Ino's lap. After clambering back up onto her barstool (and taking another sip of alcohol) she continued as though nothing had interrupted her. "But he's so lonely, you know? I want to help." She rested her chin on her hand and sighed dreamily. "And he's reeeally good-looking. He needs a hug. Hugs release endorphins."

"I think he killed it, though," Ino responded as though this were a logical an intelligent continuation of their conversation. Sakura blinked.

"Killed what?" she asked, confused.

"His liver!" Ino looked at Sakura as though she was a little slow. "He drank five whole bottles of sake."

"Ooooooh," Sakura replied, waving her right hand around in a way that was supposed to indicate unconcern. "Sake won't kill his liver. It's got only, like, 16% ethanol. Only people with reeeally low tolerances get drunk off of sake."

Sasuke chose this moment to say to Naruto, quite loudly, "What do you know? You wear orange!"

Ino stared triumphantly at Sakura. "Unless you lack alcohol dehydrogenase," the other girl conceded. Ino's look of triumph turned into one of exasperation.

"Sakura, your science is killing my buzz. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to have to help Shikamaru get laid." As she gracefully swung herself off the stool, Sakura could have sworn she heard her mutter "God knows he needs it."

***

Shikamaru had been using a napkin to outline a plan to overthrow Danzou in the event that he successfully ousted Tsunade-sama. He had been debating whether or not to use Naruto as a figure-head. There was a pros and cons list at the bottom right-hand corner. So far the pros included only the very unconvincing fact "I like him." The cons were numerous enough to have started populating the back of the napkin. Then Ino sat down next to him with little to no regard for his artfully crafted pyramid of shot glasses.

"There's a really cute girl over there who's checking you out," Ino jerked her head rather unsubtly over her shoulder as the pyramid teetered precariously. Shikamaru sighed and obliged her by looking in the direction she had indicated. Hyuuga Hinata was sitting at a table, staring dreamily over his head at the corner Naruto was occupying. He sighed again and looked back to Ino, who was watching him, eyebrows raised in expectation. He turned back to the napkin.

"What! You're not even going to do anything about it?" she screeched, her voice hitting a frequency that never failed to drive him up the wall. This was why Shikamaru was not interested in Ino. He had a bit of a thing for strong women, but he had a lot more of a thing for his eardrums. She grabbed his arm and quite abruptly dragged him to his feet. As he had been writing at the time, the moment caused him to draw a huge black line across the entire napkin, effectively ruining all his careful plotting. He sighed exasperatedly, even as he was shoved at towards Hinata. "Go and talk to her!" Ino ordered bossily.

Momentum propelled him forward until he found reverse force in the form of Hinata's table in his stomach. He grunted in pain and she looked up at him in surprise. "Hello, Shikamaru-kun," she greeted, her voice barely above a whisper. "Please sit."

"Troublesome," he muttered to himself as he plopped into a chair, massaging his abdomen slightly. Hinata had already turned back to staring at Naruto, so he grabbed another napkin. His thoughts were interrupted by the object of Hinata's attention, who was making a triumphant announcement to Sasuke.

"The new moon! Because it's black." Shikamaru glanced over to where Naruto had nearly fallen out of the booth laughing. Sasuke glared bloody murder and poured the remains of the sixth sake bottle into his cup. Naruto righted himself and gasped out, "Like your soul," before doubling over in paroxysms of laughter again. The sake bottle shattered in Sasuke's grip.

Hinata chose this point in time to turn to Kiba, who was sitting one table over from her. Shikamaru began a new cons list consisting entirely of the things Naruto did when drunk.

***

Hinata stared at Kiba, who had been casting her unsubtle glances in between consuming large amounts of alcohol all night. She opened her mouth to say something. Kiba put down his glass and turned to face her fully, an expectant look on his face. Then she decided it wasn't worth it, put her head down and went to sleep. Just before passing out, she heard Naruto say something about how alcohol kills germs anyway, and Sasuke respond that the bottle had been empty, idiot.

***

Kiba hung his head dramatically in disappointment. He then downed the rest of his beer in three large gulps and stood up a little unsteadily. Figuring it was worth one last shot, he gently prodded Hinata in the arm, but she continued to remain dead to the world. Just his luck.

Since he was up, he decided to wander over to Shino, who was presumably staring intently at something. It was always hard to tell with those dark glasses of his. "Y'know," Kiba decided to inform him helpfully, "it's really creepy that no one can ever tell what you're watching." Shino's head tilted a fraction of an inch in his direction.

"What am I watching? I'll tell you. There's a spider decending into Hyuuga Neji's hair and he hasn't noticed yet because he's too busy glaring at you for looking at Hinata." Shino absently spun an empty glass with some sort of milky residue on the table.

Kiba glanced over at Neji, who was in fact glaring daggers at him. He really needs to lighten up, Kiba thought. To this end, he waved at him cheerfully. Neji whipped his head in regal anger so that he was facing away from them, a muscle working in his jaw. At this point, Shino upset the table as he jumped up. He raced across the room, a blur of motion and dived with arms outstretched to catch something nearly invisible.

That was when Kiba heard some loud cheering from a corner of the room. "Bet you couldn't beat that bastard!" Naruto crowed, pointing at a prostrate Shino.

"Hmph." Sasuke picked up his sake cup with his unbandaged hand and downed it in one gulp, gesturing to the waitress for another bottle.

After a moment's consideration, Kiba joined in the cheering and continued it long after Naruto had stopped. Akamaru howled from outside in accompaniment.

***

Neji watched over the rim of his cup as that Inuzuka brat stared at Hinata-sama. She was completely oblivious, of course, but that didn't stop him from trying to kill her teammate with his eyes. There was a sticky moment when Neji thought he'd actually have to go to her defense, but then the Inuzuka presumably found his manners and wandered over to the Aburame instead of molesting Neji's suddenly sleeping cousin. He decided to continue glaring for good measure.

Suddenly the insufferable mutt made direct eye contact, grinned cheekily and waved. Of all things! It took an extreme force of will not to strangle him. He abruptly turned and looked the other way to avoid the temptation, chewing the inside of his cheek, and found himself facing Naruto, who stood up to applaud. Neji felt oddly gratified.

It was only when Naruto pointed that he realized the applause wasn't for him and his not-killing of fellow Konoha nin. He deflated slightly and turned to see what had inspired the cheering. The Aburame was pushing himself off the floor just behind his chair. As he dusted himself off Neji noticed a small spider crawl from the back of his left palm under his heavy jacket. Then he felt himself nearly aneurism as Inuzuka and his damned dog joined in. He pointedly turned his back on them, and found himself facing Naruto and the Uchiha again.

Against all odds, they had come to some sort of agreement over the seventh sake bottle, which Uchiha was currently drinking straight out of. The tiny, sober part of Neji hoped that he wouldn't remember any of this in the morning.

***

"Like the sun!" Naruto proclaimed in a dramatic whisper, grabbing his hair and attempting to wave it at Sasuke in demonstration. This was slightly impeded by the fact that it was still attached to his head. Sasuke, who didn't seem to notice the awkwardness of the gesture, nodded vigorously, then put a hand to his head as the world swam. Once it stopped moving he took another sip.

"Jerk," he spat out, putting his bottle down decisively.

"I dunno," Naruto said, tilting to the right until he was resting against the wall. "'Snot his fault he's like the sun. Maybe he dun know, y'know?"

"Well then someone should tell him," Sasuke heard himself say as if from a distance. He was vaguely aware that he had gotten up and was walking towards a table. This would be so much easier if the world would stop moving. Damn world…

***

Kakashi watched warily as a very drunk Uchiha Sasuke made a literal beeline for him, with all the weaving that entailed. The younger nin came to a sudden halt as he crashed into the chair situated on the other side of Kakashi's table. Apparently he was uninjured because he proceeded to turn the full force of his glare on his erstwhile sensei as though he was having trouble focusing, but was quite angry at both Kakashis in front of him anyway. Kakashi crinkled his eye into a crescent and raised a hand in greeting. "Yo."

Sasuke, if possible, glared even harder. Kakashi idly speculated on the possibility of the boy giving himself a stroke, but was interrupted by the accusing finger that was suddenly in his personal bubble. "You," Sasuke hissed, venom in every overly enunciated word, "are like the sun."

Kakashi was torn between being mildly intrigued and wanting to be left in peace. "Mm," he responded noncommittally.

Sasuke flopped down in the chair, his usual near-unearthly grace seemingly having deserted him. "No no no no no you are," he protested, as though Kakashi had denied it vehemently. "Because, because…" he paused and scrunched his eyes shut, as though trying to remember what he had been about to say. A moment later they sprang open and he continued. "Because when you stand up," Sasuke made an upward gesture with his arms to indicate what direction he meant, "it's always in the east." Kakashi took in his student's triumphant look, the seven bottles back at the table the boy had come from (as well as Naruto asleep against the wall), and then got up to pay his bill. There were some things in life that were beyond him.

At the table behind him, Sasuke laid his head on his arms and passed out.

***

Lee watched Gai-sensei challenge Kakashi-sensei to something with one of the most inspirational speeches he'd ever heard. Kakashi-sensei, however, seemed less than impressed, and proceeded to simply walk out the door. Then again, maybe he was tired. He'd left half a glass at his table when he walked out a few minutes ago…

Lee took another sip of his tea and turned to Chouji, his companion in sobriety by dint of being the only person in their generation with any tolerance. Chouji took another sip of his fourth glass of whiskey and held out the bag he'd been snacking from for the past half an hour. "Chip?" he offered. Lee took one and leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him as he did so. They had the whole night ahead of them.

Co-authored with Adi1, who turned to me one day while we were figuring out public transportation in Berlin and said "What kind of a drunk do you think Sasuke is?"

We didn't even miss our stop.

Edited 4/20/09 because we uploaded the wrong version. Sorry guys!