"Little bastard almost killed two of ours, Captain." Kiba's upper lip curls in an angry snarl. He digs a vicious knee in the back of the young man he and Gaara have got pinned face down to the deck.
Naruto's eyes flit to the rest of his crew. Sakura has Chouji in hand, and while the spread of blood on his shirt looks spectacular she doesn't seem alarmed, just kind of put-upon. "Hey, Sawbones!" he calls anyway.
She spares him a snort and a quick roll of her eyes, and wipes her bloody hands on her boy's breeches. "Knife was too short to get through that lubber," she calls back.
Shika's broken leg has already been reset and bound, and he's drinking himself into a stupor to ride it out. Naruto's eyes return to the captive still struggling under two of his men.
The young man lifts his head, and then it's all pale, pale skin and ink-black hair and a pretty face that Naruto doesn't even notice right away, because the eyes harpoon him first. They're not so much inky as they are storm-at-night, where you can't see a damn thing but you know it's packed full of things about to kill you anyway.
... Feisty.
"Should we tie him to the mast?" Gaara inquires, tone clinical as he fists a hand in the prisoner's hair to keep him still.
"Yeah, and give him the lash until he-"
"Naw," Naruto drawls. "If he gets rained on and dies of lung congestion we'll never get our ransom. Noblemen are frail little things, after all."
He gets a wordless sneer and another rage-black glare in return. He smirks a little wider.
"My cabin will do fine."
He's already wondering whether he really wants to hand him back.
--oOo--
Sasuke kept telling him, "One day, I'll escape." Naruto always laughed at him, and told him, depending on the time of the day, to go play -- fight off boarders -- or to earn his keep as captain's cabin-boy. The Sea Fox had been in a dozen ports by now, and Sasuke had made a few half-assed attempts, mostly to prove he could, but never even looked tempted to actually follow through.
Naruto had the ship searched from mast to hold three times, and the port and village twice, before he accepted that Sasuke was really gone.
So was the Red Moon Dawn.